Before the harassed women realized who was stalking them, years had passed. The man sent them insulting and sexist messages, slandered them and publicly defamed them from fake accounts on social media. He stole their photos. Using the stolen identities of the women, he opened dating-site accounts in their names and published advertisements in various groups, suggesting that the women were looking for casual sex. In turn, he extorted money from various men in exchange for sharing the stolen photos. He blackmailed some of the women, threatening to defame them to their families by sending false information about their intimate lives.
“At first I was very scared because I was only 14,” says Ania*. “I showed the messages to my parents, who were shocked that such filthy messages could be sent to a child. Over time, more and more girls received similar messages. My mother and the mothers of the other affected girls wanted to hire a private detective so that he could finally find the perpetrator, after the police had ignored them. Unfortunately, the costs were too much for them and they had to give up,” the girl says.
Seven years of stalking
In the autumn of 2025, one of the affected women published a post on her Facebook profile with a brief description of what the stalker had done to her. She asked how many other women had been harmed like her. More than twenty victims came forward—all affected by the same man.
Ten of them contacted the istotne.pl editorial office. Each had a story to tell about harassment, humiliation and attacks on her privacy online. Some of the women had been attacked for seven years.
Zofia was afraid to go on social media because the stalker insulted and slandered her; he also wrote filthy things about her to her sister and boyfriend. Nina learned late that her identity had been stolen. Her reputation was already ruined, and she lost business contacts because she worked in the modeling industry. Anna, whose statement we have already quoted, had been harassed since she was 14. He frightened her and threatened to come to her home. To this day, Anna is afraid to leave her apartment alone in the evening, even though she is now an adult. Dominika fought for a long time against the disgusting content the stalker posted from fake accounts on her business profile. He did the same on her partner’s profile.
Barbara, when the stalker began harassing her, was 17. She felt ashamed and for five years was convinced that the matter concerned only her. Beata had been harassed since 2020. She conducted the main investigation to discover who the stalker was.
Ola was the first woman to contact us. Her case is now being handled by the prosecutor’s office, but only after the woman practically handed the perpetrator to law enforcement. The investigation has been ongoing for three months. After a brief lull, the stalker attacked her again.
“I have no doubt that this is simply violence,” says Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar from the Feminoteka Foundation. “For me, this is not open to any interpretation or discussion. It can be called stalking, meaning a form of persecution of these women. This is an extremely invasive form of violence. We are dealing here with harassment, threats, identity theft, impersonation, insults, slander and the defamation of their image. There are truly a great many things this man has done, and he remains unpunished,” Gzyra-Iskandar adds.
A history of violence against women
Anna began receiving her first messages at the turn of 2019 and 2020. After stealing her identity, the perpetrator created several fake accounts, and there were—according to the woman—“millions” of messages harassing her. Over time, the inappropriate, defamatory texts about the girl turned into threats.
“After a long time of receiving endless messages, I finally got one that really frightened me,” says Anna. “I remember being afraid to leave the house, and to this day I do not go anywhere alone at night. In fact, I avoid going out at night even with someone. In that message, he wrote to me from a fake account that he would drive to my house in a black BMW and included all the information confirming that he knew where I lived. I was terrified and showed the message to my father,” Anna says.
Anna’s father decided to lie in wait for the aggressor. He told his daughter to set a date and time for a meeting. But the aggressor did not arrive at the appointed time. After that conversation, he stopped harassing her for a while, then resumed.
“When it began, I was 17,” says Barbara. “I felt ashamed, so at first I deleted all his messages. That continued until they began reaching my parents and relatives. My parents received messages saying that their teenage daughter was a ‘slut.’ I could not ask for help, and when I finally did and people tried to help me, nothing could be done because they said Facebook did not provide IP addresses. I hope that this person will finally face the consequences and learn how much harm he caused me,” the woman says.
Nina worked in modeling when the attacks began. “This person stole my photos, used them without my consent, impersonated me and extorted money from random men by promising to send them my photos and live materials featuring me,” says Nina. “While impersonating me, he posted insulting and disgusting comments under other people’s profiles. He also sent messages to photographers I worked with. In those messages, he slandered me by accusing me of behavior that could ruin me professionally,” she says of how the stalker tried to destroy her.
The police washed their hands and allowed the stalker to operate for years
Several women reported the online harassment to the police. And here the state failed the women completely. Every case was discontinued. The reason: failure to identify the perpetrator.
“The police in Chojnów washed their hands of it,” says Gosia. “I reported harassment and identity theft in 2021, and they said they would do nothing,” the woman adds.
Barbara reported the case in 2024 at the police station in Kruszyn. “The officer who took my report decided that no harassment had occurred because the messages were not sent every day and referred me to the station in Bolesławiec,” says Barbara. “At the Bolesławiec station, I handed over the evidence and was summoned for questioning in October 2024. After giving my statement, I received no confirmation that the report had been accepted, no case number and no information about the further course of the proceedings,” Barbara explains.
Only after the istotne.pl editorial office sent an inquiry to the police spokesperson at the end of 2025 asking what had happened with Barbara’s report did the police contact the woman.
“I left most of the screenshots of the messages sent to me by the stalker at the station. The case was closed,” Dominika, who also reported the matter to the police in 2024, tells us.
Beata, who was still being harassed by the man—although, she says, less intensely than what he did with the identities of the other girls—also sought help from the police.
“I cope by restricting access to my social-media profiles,” says Beata. “I reported the matter to the police in Kruszyn in April 2023. The Bolesławiec prosecutor’s office took it up, but after some time I received a decision discontinuing the case because the perpetrator had not been identified,” Beata adds.
Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar believes that these discontinuations did a great deal of harm, and that the helplessness of law enforcement was another level of violence against women, known as institutional violence.
“It is clear that law enforcement has the ability to track down such a person, but here they show a kind of ineptitude,” says Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar, a women’s-rights activist. “It is as if they were saying to these women: ‘You are not important to us. Your safety is not important to us. It is not important to us that you are afraid, that you are losing contacts, that you are trying to pay for a detective and search for this aggressor on your own.’ Even though the prosecutor’s office and police have all the tools needed to track down such a person,” Gzyra-Iskandar adds.
Katarzyna shows us the justification for the Bolesławiec police discontinuing her report concerning an unidentified perpetrator impersonating her and unlawfully using her first name, surname and photos. The December 2024 discontinuation decision states:
(...) In the course of the activities carried out, a report of a crime was accepted (...) and telecommunications data were established, enabling a request to be sent to the administrator of the Meta platform for data and information concerning the fictitious profile. (...) After the materials were forwarded, the prosecutor’s office launched an investigation. (...)
In the course of the investigation, the prosecutor issued a decision releasing a Meta representative from the obligation to maintain confidentiality in order to obtain data that could constitute evidence in the case and help identify the perpetrator of the incident. (...)
By the date the decision to discontinue the investigation was issued, no data enabling the perpetrator of the act in question to be identified had been obtained. In view of the above considerations and the factual findings made in the case, the proceedings had to be discontinued (...) because the perpetrator of the crime had not been identified.
Attorney Marcin Pawelec-Jakowiecki, who specializes in representing people in proceedings concerning defamation, insult and protection of personal rights, emphasizes that law enforcement could have sought assistance from the Central Bureau for Combating Cybercrime or one of its regional units.
“Law enforcement can obtain the perpetrator’s data from Meta’s branch in Ireland; if necessary, another option is to use the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, the so-called ‘Budapest Convention,’ a 2001 legal instrument ratified by the United States,” says Marcin Pawelec-Jakowiecki. “Under this convention, requests can be sent to entities in the United States to provide login data, IP addresses or other information that makes it possible to identify a potential perpetrator of a prohibited act,” the lawyer explains.
In Marcin Pawelec-Jakowiecki’s assessment, there are many ways to track down the perpetrator, although it is not an easy task.
“There is a specialized police unit dealing with such prohibited acts committed via the Internet,” the lawyer explains. “Specialized male and female officers work there and have much better, expert knowledge of obtaining such data. Establishing the identity of a perpetrator of a prohibited act committed through mass media is indeed difficult. In the 21st century, online anonymity is, contrary to appearances, extremely easy to achieve. Social-media platforms also support this approach by allowing users to create fake profiles. As a rule, the victim does not have the tools to identify the perpetrator of an online crime independently. Law enforcement has the greatest capabilities in this area,” the attorney adds.
“Damn, you’re a hot little bitch”
We review dozens of screenshots of the stalker’s insulting posts addressed to women. Sometimes the man’s texts are incomprehensible, as though he wrote them under the influence of alcohol or drugs. They are always obsessively fixated on sexuality, and the woman is always portrayed as a whore. The comments are written carelessly, without punctuation, with typos and a limited vocabulary. Every comment contains words such as ass, tits, fucking and whoring. Below are several comments (original spelling).
“you fucking hot bitch i’d load those big fat tits and your fat ass in bed i’d fuck you hard do you like it bitch”
“You like getting fucked by two guys like the last whore”
“I want to fuck, especially Zosia”
“(…) you said you fuck for money”
“(…) you licked her pussy, you whore”
“my fucking bitch do you have any weed because I’m dying or send 20 zlotys by Blik”
“you’re single i see you got good tits so you probably need some good fucking if you have my number call me (…) said you like good fucking for money”
“did you hear how many fucked her lately (…) four of them fucked her like a whore”
“does her husband know what she does inside? she ran away? (…) i’m checking you but damn i don’t know not just one for money there are recordings”
The man whom the women identify as their abuser (their investigation is described below) is said to live in a village 17 kilometers from Bolesławiec. This is how one of his acquaintances describes him, unaware of what the man is suspected of.
“Generally, I can only say that he is a rather unusual person,” the stalker’s acquaintance explains. “Very emotionally unstable. A man who is here today and somewhere else tomorrow. Very withdrawn, perhaps insecure. I think he may be more open on the Internet than in real life. He is probably a lonely man. In a village, you can see when a man walks with his wife or when his child has been born, right? This is a man who can, for example, talk to someone one day and then drive past the next day pretending not to see him,” our interviewee adds.
Catching the stalker
After the prosecutor’s office discontinued their investigations, the women, left to fend for themselves, decided to conduct their own investigation. Beata began. She transcribed the stalker’s messages from all the accounts he used to write from. She focused on finding as many facts and details as possible that could help describe and identify the man harassing her.
The woman noted that the stalker mentioned her partners by surname and nickname—her former and current partners, as well as her ex-boyfriend’s partner by first name. This indicated that he must have known them and therefore belonged to the woman’s circle of acquaintances.
Eventually, after analyzing a dozen of the stalker’s accounts, Beata found one from which he wrote that had previously belonged to a resident of Raciborowice known to her. In subsequent posts by the stalker that she found, there were topographical details and a surname known in Raciborowice. In an insulting comment to a woman, the stalker wrote: “at Kamionka W (surname here—editor) you sucked cock”. The Kamionka bathing area in Raciborowice Górne is a small lake visited by residents of the municipality and passersby, and the surname beginning with “W” belongs to a family well known in the same village.
“Hawaiian Shirts Cooperative Bank”
This was not the only indication that the stalker might come from Raciborowice. A dozen or so of the victims whom he harassed and whose identities he stole came from Raciborowice and nearby villages. Beata concluded that these girls had been acquaintances of the man identified in her investigation. Her belief that she had discovered the stalker’s identity was reinforced by a situation on Snapchat.
“I posted a photo of myself on Snapchat visible only to my friends,” Beata explains. “When someone takes a screenshot of such a story, I automatically receive a notification of who did it. While reviewing the people who had viewed my photo, I noticed a screenshot notification showing that the man I had previously identified had taken it. I wrote to him and asked why he had taken a screenshot of my image. He reacted aggressively, as if he had been certain he was anonymous and suddenly realized that I had caught him. First he insulted and threatened me, then blocked me on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and Snapchat,” the woman adds. She was convinced that the man had wanted to steal her photo and had been caught doing so.
After this preliminary investigation, other women also began looking more closely at the man they had identified (for convenience, let us call him Jaś). Olga and Katarzyna joined Beata’s investigation. The women found a Facebook account called “Hawaiian Shirts Cooperative Bank” (the account no longer exists). The account had previously belonged to Jaś and, despite the avatar and name being changed, his details were still displayed on the account: the schools he had attended and the organizations in which he had been active.
From the “Hawaiian Shirts Cooperative Bank” account, the stalker informed an acquaintance how he tricked unknown men out of money by showing them photos he had stolen from women:
“F***, on this Facebook I have two accounts, other idiots sent different Blik payments totaling probably 300 zlotys in a week, they thought they were writing to a girl, there’s no shortage of morons,” the stalker boasted in a message obtained by the women.
Jaś caught through Blik
When the stalker once again began advertising that he would sell girls’ photos in exchange for Blik payments, the women came up with an idea.
“I saw that a certain man had ‘Hawaiian Shirts Cooperative Bank’ among his Facebook friends, so I asked him to obtain the phone number by deception. Katarzyna, an affected friend, created a fake male profile on Instagram to obtain the stalker’s number as well. She wrote to him as a man. We managed to obtain the number and confirm that it was Jaś’s number from Raciborowice because the acquaintance had it in his contacts,” Olga says.
After this discovery and with all the evidence they had gathered, Olga reported the matter to the authorities again.
“A report of suspected crimes involving persistent harassment, impersonation and theft of photos for financial gain, as well as infringement of personal rights, was filed with the District Prosecutor’s Office in Jelenia Góra,” says Ewa Węglarowicz-Makowska, the prosecutor’s office spokesperson. “The perpetrator of these acts is reportedly an identified man personally known to the reporting woman. The reporting woman was questioned as a witness, and her oral crime report was accepted. During this activity, it was established that the District Prosecutor’s Office in Złotoryja had opened an investigation following a report from another woman, which is connected both personally and substantively with the proceedings of the District Prosecutor’s Office in Jelenia Góra,” the spokesperson adds.
The case is ongoing. The prosecutor obtained an IT expert opinion, which is being analyzed, and witnesses are being questioned. However, no one has yet been charged in the case.
“The rule is that victims are questioned first so that their circle can be established,” Marcin Pawelec-Jakowiecki explains. “This also affects the appropriate legal classification of the prohibited act that may be alleged against the suspect, and only then, as a final step, is the person questioned in the capacity of a suspect,” the lawyer adds.
According to the lawyer, there are many possible legal classifications in this case. “In addition to persistent harassment, we also have impersonation, use of someone’s image, and causing financial or personal harm,” the lawyer says. “We have insults and, as I understand it, potential defamation. Let us assume that in some cases there may also be copyright infringement,” the attorney informs us.
How to protect yourself from an online stalker
Attorney Marcin Pawelec-Janowiecki advises on how to secure evidence to present to law enforcement.
“The most important thing on our side is securing evidence,” the attorney says. “In many cases, there is a risk that online content violating legally protected rights will disappear. For example, we may be dealing with a defamatory post on social media. Take a screenshot of the post and the profile from which it appeared. This is a very good start. I would add one thing: screenshots of such posts, which may constitute criminal acts, should be made in a way that enables law enforcement or the court to establish the date on which the potential prohibited act occurred. Technically, it is a good idea to record the screen with the date and time when the post appeared visible, as well as the recording itself. This recording must then be secured, preferably in several places (discs, external drives, the cloud), and later submitted to the appropriate authorities together with a written or oral report of a justified suspicion that a crime has been committed. Evidence can also be secured through a notary (a protocol documenting the opening of the website), although this may involve additional costs,” the lawyer advises.
An activist who helps women in such situations emphasizes the importance of ensuring the victim’s safety and obtaining psychological support.
“In Poland, a victim of cyberviolence can contact the National Research Institute NASK,” Gzyra-Iskandar says. “It is a state agency that operates Dyżurnet.pl. Qualified staff are on duty and can be notified, for example, when material has appeared online against our will or violates the law in some way. They can intervene and may try to take down such a website, although this does not apply to social media. Later, the very fact that we report something to NASK and they respond may serve as an argument if we take legal action. Of course, we can block such a person—for example, each subsequent number or social-media account they use,” the specialist explains.
It is also important for a victim of violence to be able to speak with a loved one, psychologist or psychotherapist.
“At Feminoteka, such support is also available because these are very difficult experiences,” says Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar. “These are terrifying events that cause fear and anxiety and make normal life impossible. Reading about a woman who is afraid to go out alone at night after stalker attacks, I want to remind readers about the free SafeYou app, which Feminoteka introduced to Poland. With the app, in an emergency we can send an SOS alert by SMS to previously selected numbers, stating that we are in danger and including our location. The app also automatically starts recording, which can later be presented as evidence in court,” the specialist adds.
Useful links:
* All the women’s names have been changed to protect them.