Harassing phone calls are generally criminal. If they involve interstate transmission, they are federal crimes. If they do not, it depends on whether the single State involved has criminalized harassing phone calls, which most States have.
But this:
Crackpot wrote:Again all thats really happened is a facebook friend request (along with a long drawn ot explination on how he found her by accident) and a bunch of calls from his work (apparently) of which she only answered one (she didn't know the previous were him until looking up the history) and gave him a quick blowoff.
suggests to me that proving any sort of harassment would be extremely difficult at this point.
What have we got? One internet contact. Unless there is something specifically criminal in that contact --
e.g., a threat -- contacting someone once is hardly harassment, especially when the contact is made through a social-networking site. After all, it is a social-networking site: It's reason for existence is to facilitate contacts, and by putting oneself on it, one is inviting contact.
Then there are the phone calls. It appears that your wife answered only the most recent of those calls. (At least, that is what I understand from "she only answered one (she didn't know the previous were him until looking up the history)".) So the guy called several times, got the answering machine (or whatever) or got nothing at all, and then made a call which your wife answered.
Your wife apparently let him know in that most recent call that she does not wish to hear from him ("gave him a quick blowoff"). But it is hard to see how the phone calls, including the most recent one, are harassment. If I call someone and get no answer (or get sent to voice mail or whatever), I do not interpret that as meaning that the person does not wish to hear from me. I interpret that as meaning that the person is not home, or the person's cell phone is off, or the person is otherwise occupied, etc.
In a nutshell, I do not see from your description that this guy has made contact with your wife
after being informed that she does not want any contact with him. How can a person be harassing someone via phone calls or facebooking or whatever until that person knows that that someone does not want the contact?
As
bigskygal has observed: "If you've made it clear [that] you wish no contact, you can probably seek a restraining/protection/harassment order." Conversely, if he has not made contact after your wife has made it clear that she wishes no contact, I don't see the basis for any such order.
But then there is this:
THat is sort of the point we're at (well my wife really) is how exactly to tell him to move his creepy ass along with out seting this guy off into full on stalker mode. (he didn't take the gentle way the last time though it did buy us a few years)
A previous episode of stalking/harassment could change the whole equation. It could make the facebook contact an instance of harassment, it could make the phone calls which your wife did not know were from him instances of attempted harassment, and it could make the phone call which your wife did answer an instance of harassment.
All of that depends, however, on what went on "a few years" ago. And that I do not know.
I agree with what others have said about keeping track of the phone calls, facebook contact, etc. And I agree that reasonable measures of self-protection -- pepper spray, etc. -- are a good idea. (As to firearms, check your local laws carefully. The last thing you want is for your wife to be charged with unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon while the creepy guy is not charged with anything at all.) And even filing a police report may be a good idea.
But based on what you have told us about the situation, I don't think that you should expect to get any sort of restraining order. Again, where is the evidence that the creepy guy initiated contact with your wife after having been told by her that such contact was unwanted?
But also again, maybe such evidence can be found in whatever went on a few years ago. Without knowing what that was, I cannot say. But if you want a protective order, you should be prepared to produce evidence that the creepy guy continued to contact (or attempt to contact) her after she told him to go away.
