QLD Sue Upstairs Unit Owner, Property Manager, Body Corp Committee for Enabling & Aiding Stalking

[CalmPanic]

So Myself my partner and our child have been stalked by our upstairs neighbours daily for 7 months now.
We are owners and female and male late 20s upstairs are renting.
I am primary target and am followed relentlessly in our unit by strange female tenant as there is a lot of noise transfer through the floor. We have all been greatly affected though as they both love to stomp, tap and drop things purposely on the floor. They will always make noise close to where you are and it is rare to go longer than 20 minutes without them letting you know they are there... Definitely a mental health issue, the devotion and obsessive need to do this regularly for 7 months is crazy. We didn't know them before this and we never had interactions before.

The females follows and listens to me tirelessly, this includes in the toilet.
This also includes nightly where the female will wait until we are asleep to purposely wake us up... We contacted owner about the noises & their behaviour and his property manager "allegedly"

 

[Rob Legat - SBPL]

I’m not a criminal nor a litigation lawyer, but that doesn’t sound like ‘stalking’ to me. If anything, you might have an action for nuisance but this is likely to be difficult to prove. The hardest part is likely to be establishing that exactly what they are doing is both intentional and aimed at you.

Have you considered there may be more to the situation? For example, given the suspected pattern of behaviour, is there a possibility that the tenant suffers from some some of condition which she is unable to control? I say this because you’ve raised ‘mental health’.

Another possibility is that they’re just as annoyed by your noise as you are by theirs. In their minds you may be the perpetrator and their actions are a frustrated reaction.

In terms of the property manager and body corporate, you would need to establish they owed you a duty of care in regards to situation and that they breached that duty of care.

 

[Scruff]

Just to state the obvious, if they are following your movements with the precision you say they are, then there can't be any doubt that they can clearly hear noise from your apartment as well, otherwise they wouldn't be able to do that. I therefore agree with Rob's suggestion that this could be frustration, either because you're making too much noise to begin with, or simply because the "walls are too thin" so to speak.

If the construction is even half decent, then under normal circumstances, they shouldn't be able to hear your every move and you shouldn't be able to hear theirs. So logic dictates that there's more to this than meets the eye - or in this case, the ears.

 

[CalmPanic]

I’m not a criminal nor a litigation lawyer, but that doesn’t sound like ‘stalking’ to me. If anything, you might have an action for nuisance but this is likely to be difficult to prove. The hardest part is likely to be establishing that exactly what they are doing is both intentional and aimed at you.

Have you considered there may be more to the situation? For example, given the suspected pattern of behaviour, is there a possibility that the tenant suffers from some some of condition which she is unable to control? I say this because you’ve raised ‘mental health’.

Another possibility is that they’re just as annoyed by your noise as you are by theirs. In their minds you may be the perpetrator and their actions are a frustrated reaction.

In terms of the property manager and body corporate, you would need to establish they owed you a duty of care in regards to situation and that they breached that duty of care.

 

[CalmPanic]

Stalking Queensland is defined as a person intentionally directing their attention to you, and in our case it is definitely unwanted attention. 7 months the behaviour is so obsessive and definitely not normal which is why I knew there is some kind of mental illness.
We have hundreds of videos of her knocking on the floor at us. If I go quiet and she does not know where I am for a prolonged period of time it is highly irritating for her. We have gone well out of our way to kept quiet for them but they keep stomping etc on floor.
We spoke to them concerning this and female claims she hasn't heard anything and male says it's water pipes or echos?
She doesn't work and never leaves the unit, we recently found her social media and she has a video of herself channeling aliens. We have screenshots of her claiming to have conversations with Mary Magdalene, The creator of the universe, and the tree outside our units.

So effectively you are saying that the property manager and Body Corporate committee can intentionally lie about us to ensure their friends tenants can stay?
They don't care that they are stalking us or if they breach bylaw.
They won't action owner to update roll effectively concealing their identities.

And property manager doesn't care about their tenancy agreement and let's them stay in violation of their lease not to be a nuisance or interfere with our peaceful enjoyment? And has lied for them to stay on even though she knows of our claims of stalking plus we have a minor?

They have all seen our texts to each other and video so they know what's going on.

Excuse my ignorance thisthas always confused me, isn't duty of care built into their code of conduct and conditions of lease, enforcement of bylaws? I even thought it might be aiding and abetting a crime or knowledge that a minor is being exposed to criminal act and they are covering it up?

 

[CalmPanic]

Yeah the floor is 3 years old and we are sure there is no insulation. We have had 2 other tenants in there without issue though and we must be quite tolerant as we never noticed excessive noise before especially considering we are underneath.

Even if they were affected by our noise this would be the worst way of dealing with it. They deny making the noises and are habitual liars. Plus when they are not banging at us they intently listen to us...

I ask you this though. Could a floor create a stalker? Or was the susceptibility already ingrained? What came first? The floor or the stalker?

 

[Rob Legat - SBPL]

Stalking Queensland is defined as a person intentionally directing their attention to you, and in our case it is definitely unwanted attention.

No, it’s not. See CRIMINAL CODE 1899 - SECT 359B What is unlawful stalking for what the offence of stalking constitutes. Note that it must satisfy one of the elements in (d). I doubt that the annoyance you are experiencing constitutes detriment.

So effectively you are saying that the property manager and Body Corporate committee can intentionally lie about us to ensure their friends tenants can stay?

No. I’m not saying that at all.

They won't action owner to update roll effectively concealing their identities.

This is an issue. The body corporate must ensure an up to date roll of information. You can make an application to the body corporate commissioner adjudicator if it isn’t - Adjudication for body corporate disputes | Your rights, crime and the law | Queensland Government

See information about accessing the roll here: Accessing your body corporate's records | Your rights, crime and the law | Queensland Government

And property manager doesn't care about their tenancy agreement and let's them stay in violation of their lease not to be a nuisance or interfere with our peaceful enjoyment?

It’s harder to kick a tenant out than most people think. You’ll probably find they have more rights as tenants than you have as owners. Sure, they may be breaching a bylaw but apart from the body corporate jumping up and down there not actually a lot that can be practically done to enforce the requirement.

And has lied for them to stay on even though she knows of our claims of stalking plus we have a minor?

They will likely ignore your claim of stalking as it is just that – a claim.

Excuse my ignorance thisthas always confused me, isn't duty of care built into their code of conduct and conditions of lease, enforcement of bylaws? I even thought it might be aiding and abetting a crime or knowledge that a minor is being exposed to criminal act and they are covering it up?

Duty of care is inherent in many relationships. The questions are – what is the standard owed, and has this been breached?

I don’t think you’re going to get anywhere claiming they’re aiding and abetting, that’s even less likely than stalking. As for ‘covering it up’, I don’t see anywhere in what you’ve stated which indicates they’re covering anything up. They might be denying the claims, but that’s not covering it up.


Ultimately, the only way you can take action if you think it is stalking is to make a complaint to the Queensland Police and let them deal with it.[/quote]

 

[CalmPanic]

Thank you for your reply mate honestly.
I originally thought the knocking tapping etc would not affect me but soon realized the reality. The knocking, tapping , dropping things etc are ultra frequent. On average every 20 - 30 mins, every day and any hour. I can not be free of them.
Even if something takes my attention it wont be long until they remind me that not only are they there, they are thinking about me. I'm not able to ignore them or block their phone number, make my account private on social media etc.

Most of my stress is because I worry about my wife and son getting woken or them tapping at him in his room. I can't even sleep when I can hear them lurking above me, intently listening to see if im still awake. They are more tentative when I am awake but she will always try to wake the wife a couple times between 12 & 2am then again around 5-6 am ,she usually will be happy enough to lightly tap above me in the lounge all night though.

I have no privacy in my own home, the feelings I have had when I am in the lounge and I hear her above our bedroom stomping trying to wake my wife... this would usually lead me to turn of tv etc and sit silently trying to get a recording.

They know someone went into the toilet as they hear the door close, one of the few doors in our unit that does get closed... Thing is they don't know who went in there... what I feel when my son goes to the toilet and I hear one of them immediately get up and walk in there to listen...

I constantly get up and do random decoy closing of the toilet door to throw them off when one of us does need to use the toilet. We have a stereo playing 24/7 in there now though so I dont have to do it as much.

Or when I am falling off to sleep then BANG she just stomped or dropped something heavy directly above our bed...

The feeling that I can't even protect my son from this... It has been hard to control myself from not hurting them...
Our relationship with each other has suffered, we can't be the parents we want to be when we are consumed by this and how we can stop it. We had a totally different life before this. We both stopped working full time jobs, my son hates it here etc.
We can definitely prove detriment but I did want to ask about court if you could help us one last time.

We feel we have evidence the body Corp manager and the 4 committee members and the owner were in collusion, one of the committee members is new and she told the owner she hears the tenants banging at us all hours as she lives next door to them. We did not know her.

The owner didn't know she had just joined the committee. He called us and said that the other neighbour told him she hears them too.
Knowing this the Mrs slid her phone number under her door asking if they could talk concerning the neighbours.

They became friendly and would talk about the neighbours and weird things they do. She sent us a text saying that the committee were discussing that if we send video evidence they were going to request that someone would need to spend time in our unit and hear it for themselves as a second opinion...

We still have that text, we never sent video either.

Soon after we suspect the owner had talked to her as she now denies she hears anything...

Her and the Mrs have talked at length about the stalking and we believe her texts we have will show she knew about this all along.

The committee and BC manager claim in meeting minutes that since they have no idea what the noises sound like they think it is normal unit living. BCM also claimed committee had informed us it would be a good idea if one of the tenants come into our unit to hear noises for themselves but we refused to cooperate. (Blatant lie, the tenant asked if he could come in, never said committee had directed him. Of course we told him no) They claim no other neighbours hear it and claim the on site manager had been told to keep close scrutiny on the units. They finish with saying it has been fully investigated.

We immediately went to onsite manager as we had asked him a few week's earlier to listen for her stomping whenever he is around our units.
We asked if Body Corp had told him about the situation and he said no, he wasn't even aware of any problem until we talked to him.

Just the way the body Corp manager wrote that he had been told to keep "close scrutiny" on the situation as if those were the exact words she used when telling him...

Everything they wrote is lies, we don't even know BCM or any committee member but as I said the owner upstairs knows them all personally.

We accused owner of collusion then owner claims he hasn't had any contact wwith them in over a year. They must not of discussed this as we have 3 emails where BCM claimed she contacted him.

We have an email where owner is asking my Mrs if she resides here permanently as he was aware she has been away for a couple weeks...
Only way he knows this us his tenants telling him.

When we sent him videos of noises guess what his response was? Yep he would need to enter our unit to hear them for himself, the exact same thing BC had planned for us. We sent him the text from committee member informing us that they had planned this for us too. Weird especially when you haven't talked to anyone here yet have the exact same BS remedy to offer us.

A remedy designed to never catch his tenants as they would know when he is here.

Honestly there is so much more little things we have that prove they planned to portray us as liars and protect these tenants. We have been here 18 years, residing in unit for 15 of them no complaints made or received.

What I wanted to ask though is

If we get police to charge tenants with stalking. Can we then start our own civil litigation against owner and BC manager and Committee members?
Or must we do both at the same time?
We are a bit uncertain we thought we had to include everything in one case and may not be able to do another one separately as it ultimately connected and is about about the same crime?

We kind of don't trust police prosecutor with the aid and abet as it is such an unbelievable convoluted story.

Thank you so much if you got through and understood this wall of text my man, thank you for replying.

 

[Scruff]

We have hundreds of videos of her knocking on the floor at us.

Your claiming they're stalking you - yet this statement suggests that you're doing something just as bad.

 

[Rob Legat - SBPL]

I still don't think you'll get a stalking charge to stick, even if the police are willing to take on the complaint in the first place. My guess, and this is really not my area, is that you'd be better off looking at a private nuisance suit.