This morning, keepers received the news that the city of Florissant(the city that KEEPERSKORNER calls home) has passed a law making internet harassment a crime.  For us, this is extremely good news because KEEPERSKORNER has dealt with such harassment–not once–but twice in the last eight months.  Both of these experiences were extremely unpleasant and emotionally taxing on all keepers.  From there, the situations only got worse so knowing that our city is taking internet harassment seriously feels like a major step forward to our system of alters.

The worst of our experiences with internet harassment began last April by way of our blog and continued well into July at which point the harassment began to include actual threats on the lives of our JM and keepers which we took to our local police department.  To be honest, we felt so very grateful that the police took what we were saying seriously and helped us find the appropriate resources for dealing with what was happening to us.  We were very fortunate because posting on our blog that the police and the ICCC were both involved in catching the person/people who were putting us through such emotional torture brought an end to that experience with our being harassed so badly.  But, truth be told, a lot of emotional damage was done to keepers before we found the courage to take the emails we were receiving to the police station.  Keepers had begun fearing even checking emails because we never knew when another one would be there waiting for us.  Our system had reverted back to having trouble sleeping because the person harassing us had begun threatening to show up at our home.  However, our local police told keepers we should have a phone with us at all times and that they would be here in seconds once keepers called 911.  That helped us a lot and gave us more of a sense of security being here at KEEPERSKORNER alone so much.

The person attacking us first began on our blog.  Since it quickly became obvious that there was no pleasing this person, we put our blog comments into moderation which set off the wrath of our harasser.  This person’s IP address was untraceable by normal computer geeks so we had to simply block that address from our blog.  Then, this person went to commenting in our guest book on KEEPERSKORNER.  The fact the comments had to be approved again set off the wrath of this person because none of his/hers were ever approved.  Before long, we had to block the IP address from our guest book as well.  Then, this person went to sending emails through our Contact Us tab on KEEPERSKORNER.  We could not block the individual IP address from said tab so we had no choice but to disable our Contact Us Tab for a while.  Unfortunately, this did no good because the person had the address for KK and continued emailing until such point that our lives were being threatened.  The police–on two different occasions–told keepers and JM that we were dealing with a severely disturbed human being who was doing this to us.  For keepers that was a frightening thing to hear and caused us to go deep into seclusion for a while.

The truth is that keepers are not overly popular people in some ways.  We had finished our testifying against our former therapist which made it a real possibility that he was trying to get even with us.  The fact that keepers had reported two different male family members to DCFS for inappropriate behaviors with young girls also made it very possible the one of them was trying to get even with us.  And there was the possibility that people even closer to keepers were doing the harassment.

The authorities and other ministries also had keepers begin realizing that there would be people who were angered by our ministry at KEEPERSKORNER.  As hard as it is to believe, there are people who will do anything they can to shut down someone who is trying to do a good thing.  (That still blows keepers minds even though we have come to understand the truth of it). And there are people who are not happy that keepers have healed and found our calling which has brought us such joy.  Those people wanted keepers to stay sick and under their control at all times.  So, by healing and beginning to speak out while following our dream to do our ministry, we were literally putting ourselves in harms way which is a frightening thought indeed.

Keepers were extremely impressed by how seriously the City of Florissant took our complaint about the harassments when we went to the police station last July.  We are even more impressed with our municipality for making it law that internet harassment is a crime.  To us, it is just one more statement that the officials do listen and do act on behalf of the little people like keepers and JM.  Since this has come on the heels of our former therapist being convicted by the State of Missouri, keepers will always be able to truly say the both the state of Missouri and our local municipality have done right by keepers at all times.

Our situation with internet harassment turned out ok but only because extreme measures were taken to keep us safe.  The only reason keepers had the courage to take our harassment to the local police was that our has shown support of our ministry here at KK and because we have lived in this community for well over thirty years without our ever having crossed the law.  Besides, we had absolutely nothing to lose by going to the police since JM and keepers are on our own in every way.  And, keepers were smart enough to listen carefully to all we were told and to follow the directions we were given on how to keep ourselves safe.  Still, we saw it as a major thing to have to take emails sent to KK to the police and leave them there for further investigation.  However, I can truly say that keepers are so very glad we took that risk.

Keepers see internet harassment as a serious and frightening problem.  Someone can claim to be a boyfriend doing the harassing when it is in actuality someone completely different.  Someone can claim to be a daughter saying unbelievably cruel things when in truth the harasser is, once again, someone completely different.  So, on the net, one never really knows who is pretending to be who and how far an attacker will go to cause harm.  And it is difficult for people who live in multiplicity to deal with such situations without falling completely apart which keepers did do for a while.

We at KEEPERSKORNER really want to thank the City of Florissant for passing a law making internet harassment a crime.  We know that this is just the first step because such laws need to be widespread to protect people from such experiences.  But our City was among the first to take action in protecting its citizens while on the internet.  Thank you City of Florissant.  You make your citizens, like us, very proud to be a part of this community.

peace and blessings,

keepers