Imagine receiving dozens of daily messages from your stalker, unsolicited emails from adult dating websites, rape threats, death threats, and everything in between.

Imagine putting up with it for 10 years.

That's what two Tauranga sisters have had to endure, all from one man in the United States who simply can't handle rejection.

Alice and Harriet Campbell might be familiar to locals as the friendly faces at the Falls Café in McLaren Falls Park. Few people would be aware, however, of the online harassment they've had to endure for a decade.

It began when Harriet was 14 years old. She started an account on deviantART, an online platform for artists to share their work, and comment on the work of others. That's where she first encountered Eric Purnell.

He started commenting on her work, before asking more personal questions – like whether she had a boyfriend. It made her uncomfortable, so she stopped talking to him.

And that's when he began spamming her account relentlessly with all manner of comments, eventually forcing her to delete her old account and start a new one. But he soon found that too.

'I pretty much had to quit social media after that,” says Harriet.

But Eric didn't give up. He soon found Alice, Harriet's sister, and began harassing her, begging for Harriet to resume contact with him.

'I would just ignore him and tell him to go away. But it didn't seem to have any effect,” says Alice.

He used Alice's name and email to make complaints against local businesses in Tauranga.

He's taken photos from social media and signed the girls up to adult dating websites, and published the full names, addresses and phone numbers of them and their family members online. He's set up automated calls to Alice and Harriet's parents' house at 3am in the morning.

Under another alias – ‘The Hacker' – he's also sent rape and death threats to the women.

It's relentless.

THE FALLS CAFE

Six years ago the girls started the Falls Café – a family business in which their parents also work. And that's when the abuse started to have more of an impact.

Every café these days needs an online presence. The Falls Café has a Facebook page, filled with posts about what's on the menu, or what events are coming up. But visitors to the page may have noticed strange, incoherent comments popping up from time to time from different accounts, begging for a second chance or claiming to have been ‘screwed over'.

That's Eric Purnell, spamming the page. Day in and day out.

'It's been like that since we opened the café. We've done everything we can to try and stop it,” says Harriet.

'We try to keep on top of it so no one sees it, but it's hard when you're working at the same time.”

Unable to disable comments, Alice has resorted to blocking all comments with a list of banned words so generic it affects every visitor to the page. ‘The', ‘and', ‘my', and ‘you' are just some of the basic words banned to stop Eric's comments coming through. It works, to a degree, but it means Alice has to manually unblock all of the positive comments the page receives. And sadly, there are ways even around this, such as placing spaces between letters, which means Eric's vitriol can still slip through.

He's created hundreds of fake accounts that have been blocked from the Falls Café Facebook page. But nothing seems to deter him.

TAKING ACTION

Around three or four years ago, the sisters went to the New Zealand Police about the matter.

'They were really good and tried to get in touch with police in the United States,” says Alice.

'But the police there only considered it a misdemeanour, and didn't bother doing anything.”

Alice and Harriet could possibly bring a case against Eric, but they would have to travel to the United States to do it – at their own cost. And there's no guarantee they would win, or that it would stop the abuse.

'The only way he'll ever stop is if he can't have access to a computer anymore,” says Alice.

They know where Eric lives – the little city of Salisbury, Maryland. It's a state that went to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, but, perhaps tellingly, the county in which Salisbury sits – Wicomico – was won by prolific online troll Donald Trump.

Eric works at the local Best Buy, part of a multinational consumer electronics corporation. Alice has tried contacting his employer, as well as the company's corporate headquarters, about their employee's behaviour. But they don't seem too concerned – in fact, Eric's messaged the girls telling them his boss ‘doesn't care what he does outside of work'.

Recently, Alice and Harriet have taken to different online forums, such as reddit, to share their story and try and find someone who can help them. Although there's been some support, they've also copped more abuse from people blaming them, or labelling them childish for calling out Eric's behaviour.

NO END IN SIGHT

Sharing their story on reddit caught the attention of a Sunday Star Times reporter, who interviewed the sisters about their experience and published their story. Since then, they've received some nice messages from supporters on Facebook. One regular customer even brought in a pot plant for them.

'It's nice to hear from people who have been through a similar experience,” says Harriet. 'It makes you feel less alone.”

A common suggestion is to stay off social media completely. But the sisters already do that as much as possible – it's the business they need it for. And of course, Eric also harasses them via email, a piece of digital technology essential to the running of our day to day lives.

As it stands, the abuse looks set to continue. As recently as October 23, Harriet had another email in her inbox from an adult dating website she had been signed up to by her stalker.

'We feel exhausted. But we're also used to the fact it will never stop.”