Phoenixville Man Fears for Safety After Anti-Semitic Vandalism

A Phoenixville man says he’s concerned for his safety after four months of harassment and anti-Semitic taunts culminated in the vandalism of his car last week.

The man, a 28-year-old resident of a gated community on the outskirts of the borough who asked that his name be withheld for fear that it would further inflame his aggressors, told Phoenixville Patch that he awoke the morning of October 18 to see his car had several swastikas and the words “natzi” and Jew scrawled into it. The victim is Jewish.

Upper Providence Police filed a report that afternoon and are investigating the case. While police estimated the damage to the vehicle at $2,000, the man said his auto body shop, after finding an additional slur keyed into the glass of his sunroof, put it closer to $6,000.

The victim believes the harassment and the damage to his vehicle are the work of a romantic rival.

The man told Patch the trouble began in June when he started a relationship with a local woman. Two or three weeks into this relationship he said a man who identified himself as the ex-boyfriend of the woman began calling. Though the relationship, by the reckoning of the woman, had ended a year earlier, the man was soon receiving “about 75 calls and text messages a day” from the ex-boyfriend and friends of his.

After a month of this harassment, which he said was often anti-Semitic in nature, the man said his mother—who’s since passed away from a bone marrow disorder—received a threatening call telling her to “tell her k---- son to stay out of Collegeville or we’ll kill him.”

The man explained that this was one of several occasions in which his life was threatened by the ex-boyfriend. The woman he had been dating—they broke up shortly after the harassment began—was also harassed by the ex-boyfriend on several occasions as well, including one occasion where the ex told her “tell ____ when I find him I’m going to f------ kill him.”

The man contacted Upper Providence Police, who opened a harassment investigation and advised the man to change his number, which he did, despite his concerns about their “nonchalance” on the matter.

The harassment stopped though until October 18, when he awoke to find his car vandalized. Now the man fears that, with his aggressor stripped of indirect outlets through which to contact him, the harassment will escalate and become increasingly personal.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” the man told Patch over the phone on Thursday. “At the end of the day I want to know this is being taken seriously.”

The man has reported the incidents to the FBI and the Anti-Defamation League, in additional to Upper Providence Police. The investigation is ongoing.