The Globe and Mail
9.3.15 | Zosia Bielski

For 11 years, Julie Lalonde had no choice but to carry a moss-green “evidence folder” with her every time she moved. Inside it, the disturbing artifacts of an ex who had been stalking her relentlessly for more than a decade: menacing handwritten notes, sexually explicit e-mails and photographs.

“I will always love you, you have no choice,” read one message illustrated with a heart and scrawled on cardboard in ballpoint pen. The ex left it at Lalonde’s new apartment to let her know he was still watching her.

The two, who had once been best friends, began dating at 17; the sexually and psychologically abusive relationship escalated after Lalonde broke up with the man at age 20.

For years as he trailed her, Lalonde kept that growing folder for the times she had to call police. The ex’s last threatening note came four days before he died in a car accident this summer.

Today, as manager of Draw-the-line.ca, a by-stander intervention campaign aimed at curbing sexual violence, Lalonde speaks frankly with Canadian students from Grade 6 through university about unsafe and abusive relationships. She wishes someone had taught her abuser that when someone breaks up with you, “they don’t owe you anything.”

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