A Louisiana woman is facing legal repercussions after being charged with one count of cyberstalking after authorities say she sent dozens of threatening emails to a local news station in less than a week.
Caroline Kain, 57, was booked Friday, May 21, on charges of sending 81 hateful emails to not only the news station but also one on-air journalist in particular, whose name has been left out of reports to protect her privacy.
The racist emails, sent between May 5 and May 11, referred to Black station employees as the N-word and verbally attacked the unnamed reporter’s appearance, demanded the station fire her, and “baselessly accused her of criminal conduct ‘punishable by death’.”
In response to Kain’s emails, the station hired additional security and reported the incident to the New Orleans Police Department on May 7. Kain, who was arrested on May 21, apparently didn’t make tracking her down too difficult for the police. According to court records obtained by The Times-Picayune, the address she used to send the emails contained her first initial, last name, and the year she was born. Police definitively made the link after securing a judge’s permission to search records related to the Google account that sent the alarming messages.
Per Louisiana Law, cyberstalking includes the use of email or other electronic communications to send, “repeatedly, whether or not conversation ensues, for the purpose of threatening, terrifying, or harassing any person.”
According to LawandCrime.com, “Kain does not appear to have any extant criminally charged offenses in Orleans Parish,” so she could be looking at “a maximum sentence of one year in prison, a $2,000 fine, or both.”
If there turns out to be a history of cyberstalking she could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and, in addition, “the state seizing and impounding the ‘electronic communication device under the person’s control’ that was used to accomplish the cyberstalking offense in question.”
Following her arrest, Kain was released from police custody on a $2,500 bond, and her next court appearance is scheduled for June 6.
