Track down the whisperer

On Saturday, August 13, 2005, at 4:30 a.m., the ring of my red phone woke me in Eliot House. I didn’t know who the caller was, but he told me to guess. I threw out a name, and he confirmed it. We talked for a few minutes, then I excused myself and went back to bed.

He called the night after. And the two nights after that. I dialed Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) once the conversation veered into phone sex. I haven’t picked up a red phone since.

Who did I know who would call—even drunkenly—at 4:30 in the morning? No one. So I know I’m an idiot for not hanging up at the start. Nor am I comforted by the fact that my report is one of dozens made to HUPD over the past six years, including at least one last week. There’s a reason people say victim blaming is unproductive—no one blames the victim more than the victim herself.

I was stupid, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something sick about a man who repeatedly calls young girls at hours when he thinks they will be disoriented, pretends to be someone they know, and then asks intimate, invasive questions (“What are you wearing? Where are you? Where is your hand?”). At the least, it’s a cry for help; it’s also deceit, an invasion of privacy, and some form of sexual harassment. It’s for these reasons that in some states, including California, prank calling is considered a misdemeanor.

The police should track down the “whisperer” to enforce the law, to get the guy help, and to acknowledge the violation of another person’s privacy and dignity. In 2001, HUPD successfully traced the calls to South Florida and issued a warning. The calls abated, evidence that stopping the problem—for a little while, at least—is possible without undue effort. Obviously no one can promise absolute protection against the world’s creeps, but there’s certainly no harm done in trying.

Natalie I. Sherman ’08, a Crimson news executive, is a social studies concentrator in Lowell House.