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Brief explanation of cease and desist letter for harassment

One option when someone is being harassed could be to get a lawyer to write a “cease and desist” letter. A cease and desist letter is a letter that describes the unwanted behavior, instructs the person to stop, and warns that there could be additional legal consequences if it does not stop, such as a civil lawsuit for money damages. Sometimes a person may choose this option if the harassment doesn’t rise to the level of a crime or the harassment doesn’t qualify them for a protection order. Sometimes a cease and desist letter is enough to get the person to stop the unwanted behavior, but sometimes the person might ignore it, or even escalate the behavior. Therefore, it’s important to consider safety planning. Safety planning is thinking of what you can do to keep yourself as safe as possible. We have some tips to get you started on our Safety Planning page. For legal referrals, you can go to our Finding a Lawyer page. [HYPERLINK]

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