Elgin High student headlines Justice Dept. event
Months ago, Hannah Perryman was staring out of her bedroom window, afraid to go outside, afraid she’d encounter the neighborhood teen who assaulted when she was 11 and then stalked her for more than five years by pacing on the sidewalk in front of the family’s Streamwood home for hours at a time, calling Hannah names and making threats.
Flash forward, and Tuesday morning, Hannah found herself flanked by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Susan Carbon, director of the Office of Violence Against Women, blinking at the bright flash of media cameras, following a Department of Justice news conference in Washington, D.C.
After hearing Hannah’s story — which was told for the first time in a three-day series in the Daily Herald in November and prompted Gov. Pat Quinn to declare January Stalking Awareness Month in Illinois — the Justice Department flew her and mom, Deb, along with the Streamwood detective and social worker on her case, to tell their story as part of its observance of National Stalking Awareness Month.
It all seemed surreal, Hannah, a junior at Elgin High, recalled as she was waiting to board a flight back to O’Hare International Airport Tuesday afternoon.
“It was scary at first, but then it was relieving and awesome to get it out there, get it out.” she said.
For years, Hannah and her family were forced to keep silent about all they were going through, as a lengthy case, peppered with continuances, dragged on in Cook County juvenile court.
While the family was bound by juvenile privacy laws, they worked to help stalking victims in other ways.
Last year, Hannah successfully pushed to strengthen state stalking laws after finding she could not get a court order to keep the teen from coming near her, despite crying out for help again and again.
Because of Hannah’s law, sponsored by state Rep. Fred Crespo and Sen. Michael Noland, judges now have more discretion to issue orders of protection to individuals who don’t know their stalkers well.
The penalty for breaking an order of protection was increased heavily.
The legislation also retooled the definition of stalking, with descriptions of the course of conduct fitting much of Hannah’s story.
At Tuesday’s news conference in the Department of Justice’s Great Hall, Holder thanked Hannah and her family for “providing a model for how a potential tragedy can be turned into opportunity.”
President Barack Obama’s administration, he said, is in the process of developing a more comprehensive strategy to improve efforts to “empower victims and to hold perpetrators accountable and to bring them to justice.” Hannah and her mother talked to a member of Vice President Joe Biden’s policy staff at length about her experience of being stalked as a juvenile, and the difficulty they encountered with the juvenile court system.
Hannah’s work is by no means finished. She said she’s been invited to share her story with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on Friday, and Rebecca Dreke of the National Center for Victims of Crime told the family that Hannah will be asked to speak at several events coming up.
“We feel that we are helping people now,” Deb Perryman said. “That there’s a path. Listening to people saying she’s making a difference ... she is beaming.”