[Stalking: From "romantic pursuit" to sexual predation]

Deriving from the English verb "to stalk", stalking denotes an unwelcome, repetitive, and intrusive harassing and/or threatening behavior directed toward a specific individual, and can result in physical and/or sexual offending - even leading to homicide. French harassment legislation has evolved over the years, and the last law closest to the international anti-stalking laws had been promulgated in 2014. According to a review, up to 16% of women and 7% of men are stalked in their life, and 80% of the stalkers are known to their victims. Stalkers are a heterogeneous population, either seeking an intimate relationship with someone the stalker knows or with a celebrity, or being revenge-motivated, or tracking their victims with the aim of offending them. Stalkers threat their victims in about half of the cases, and physically offend them in a third of the cases, violence being more often directed against ex-intimates. Sexual offending would be the consequence of harassment behavior for some stalkers, and would be the initial aim of the stalking for others.