How Much Does It Cost To Fight a Stalker?

He showed up outside her house. Emailed her father. Threatened suicide.

And the drama was no movie, but the real-life stalking nightmare actress Uma Thurman, recently lived through. Since 2005, Jack Jordan, 37, of Massachusetts, an unemployed pool cleaner has stalked the star of Kill Bill (DIS) and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (NWS). After various incidents of strange and unwanted behavior, Jordan was charged with misdemeanor stalking and harassment. Now, Thurman, 38, is involved in a court preceding that could result in his spending up to a year in jail.

The trial began the week of April 28, and Thurman and her parents, Robert and Nena, have testified in a Manhattan court about the harassment Jordan has wrought. Robert Thurman testimony including reading from emails Jordan wrote.

Dealing with a stalker – either an intimate partner or a stranger who constantly writes and emails, shows up uninvited at work or at home, and sends unwanted gifts or presents— is not just a problem for movie stars. “Unfortunately, stalking is quite common, especially for women in this country,” says Maya Raghu, senior staff attorney for Legal Momentum, a women’s legal advocacy organization in New York. Each year some 1.4 million Americans face incidents of stalking. And, in their lifetime one in 12 women, as well as one in 45 men will be a victim of stalking, according to the Stalking Resource Center of the National Center for Victims of Crime.

Laws against stalking vary state by state, although there are federal laws against stalking contained in the Violence Against Women Act. Thurman lives in New York, where stalking is defined in the state penal code as when as person “intentionally, and for no legitimate purpose, engages in a course of conduct directed at a specific person, and knows or reasonably should know that such conduct is likely to cause reasonable fear of material harm to the physical health, safety or property of such person, a member of such person's immediate family or a third party with whom such person is acquainted.” The law includes harming the emotional or mental health of the victim, or causing a fear that a person’s workplace or career will be threatened.