Court: Stealing husband’s emails not domestic violence

September 13, 2012 Filed under FLORIDA Posted by admin

NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

A woman who used her husband’s email password to read all his emails and then changed the password so he couldn’t get into his account isn’t guilty of cyberstalking or domestic violence, a state appeals court said Tuesday.

A court issued a domestic violence injunction against Cheryl Young of Alachua County and the lower court judge in the case suggested her actions amounted to cyberstalking.

Young not only read her husband, Michael Young’s emails, but also used substantial information from those emails in a divorce proceeding. The 1st District Court of Appeal, in reversing the injunction on Tuesday, noted that cyberstalking is defined in law as communication of “words, images, or language by or through the use of electronic mail or electronic communication, directed at a specific person, causing substantial emotional distress to that person and serving no legitimate purpose.”

The court found that Young’s acts were “improper” but didn’t constitute domestic violence by stalking, “because they were not electronic communications by her of ‘words, images, or language . . . directed at’ Mr. Young.”