The stalking was coming from inside the marriage.

This past summer, a 31-year-old Japanese woman living in the town of Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, found herself in what must have been an immensely frustrating, and equally baffling, situation. On July 10, she started receiving calls on her phone in which the person on the other end would stay completely silent until she hung up. That seems like the sort of thing you could put a stop to by blocking the number, but the calls were coming from a number that couldn’t be displayed on the woman’s phone, which apparently prevented her from blocking it. This went on for weeks, with the woman receiving as many as 100 calls in a single day but without any clues as to the identity of who was behind this harassment.

Thankfully, though, the calls weren’t constant. As frequent as they were, she wasn’t getting any in the middle of the night, so she was at least able to get some sleep. Thankfully, the phone stalker never called while she was playing smartphone games, either, so she at least got to take her mind off the dilemma while indulging in that hobby.

But as July turned to August and the calls continued, something dawned on the woman about those two situations in which the calls stopped. When the woman was sleeping, her husband was asleep too, and when she was playing mobile games, she was borrowing his smartphone to play them.

In other words, she wasn’t getting any of the calls when her husband didn’t have access to his phone.

With her suspicions growing, the woman went to the police to ask for assistance, and following an investigation, the cops have caught the stalker. On September 4, the Hyogo Prefectural Police said they have arrested a 38-year-old man, who’s also a resident of Amagasaki, for violating Japan’s anti-stalking law. The stalker living in Amagasaki isn’t a coincidence, because he’s the woman’s husband.

In Japan, it’s not incredibly uncommon for a husband and wife to live in different homes if the husband is transferred to another part of the country for work but is likely to be transferred back later on, especially if the couple has children and doesn’t want to make them switch schools. That wasn’t the case for this couple, however. The husband was phone stalking his wife while the two were living together.

When questioned by investigators, the man admitted to making the calls between July 10 and August 4, having configured his phone to hide his number when making the calls. The whole thing gets even weirder when you factor in that the couple doesn’t appear to have had any pre-existing marital strife, and that when asked about his motives, the man said “I love my wife, and made phone calls to her without saying anything.” Really, the only thing that’s not surprising is that the police say this is the first time they’ve arrested a man for stalking his wife while they’re still living together.

Ordinarily, it’s admirably romantic for someone to regularly take time and make the effort to tell their spouse that they’re still very much in love with them. It’s important, though, to do it in a way that’s not creepy, and especially important to do it in a way that’s not illegal.

Source: Kobe Shimbun Next via Jin
Top image: Pakutaso
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