With rare exceptions, people are responsible for what they do.

I do think a lot of sexual violence stems from experiences in childhood or at puberty. Some people become sadistic after suffering early abuse at the hands of parents, relatives or friends. But for others, the seed is planted in the formative years by the conflation of images of violence with those of sexual arousal. Magazines, TV shows and, especially, slasher movies are masters at doing this.

One of the few times I'm hit emotionally is when I listen to the tapes sadists make of torturing their victims. There the person is currently suffering, you can hear them suffer, and that calls out for an empathic response. But when they're dead, when they're no longer suffering, when it's over, it's hard to feel empathetic for the corpse.

One of the problems with studies that examine the effects of violent imagery is that they typically use mentally healthy psychology students. If you want to do a meaningful study, show movies like Body Double and Copycat to a group of sexual psychopaths the day before you release them.

Only the individual can decide what level of risk she can tolerate and what level of freedom she's willing to sacrifice for the sake of safety.

Celebrity stalkers also are not necessarily fixated on one person as the public thinks. Rather, they tend to switch targets, going from, say, an athlete to an actor to a politician.

Counter to the public's thinking, the celebrities who attract the largest number of stalkers - and typically it's not "if" a celebrity has a stalker, it's "how many" - are neither the most glamorous nor obnoxious, but rather the ones who seem the sweetest and most wholesome. They appear approachable.