Confrontation: How do I tell someone to leave me alone?

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Here's the backstory:

There was this internet guy who was an acquaintance on livejournal. We had a few things in common just like I have a few things in common with many other people. Not a big deal. One day, he starts this very dramatic decline on the coherency and rational side of discussion. He's trolling, attacking people, being an ass. I ask him, "Hey what's up? We're concerned about you." and then he just focused all his rage on me from that point on.

He's in seminary to be a Roman Catholic priest, by the way. They think he's the bees knees. I guess they don't background check deep enough to find livejournal.

So, I remove him from my friends list on livejournal (and my facebook) and the moderators of our shared communities tell him not to say another word to me. This works for a few months. Then he messages me through livejournal. He apologized for his behavio when I was such a [bleepity bleep bleep] to him. Yeah, not really an apology in the strictest sense. I don't answer. I tell mutual friends to pass on that I don't want him to contact me. Five months go by and he contacts me again. This time with an apology about his other apology. I don't answer. It's been six months and he's contacted me again with yet another stupid apology and wants to reconcile. Reconcile what? I haven't been speaking to him in over a year. I've ignored all his messages and we were only acquaintences to begin with.

Mutual friends have taken the effort to explain to him that I'm a grown woman with a husband and kids. I have a life and am not that invested in livejournal. I've all but left it at this point. I'm on no communities and just check in with close friends who still post to their livejournals. His flip out didn't bother me all that much because he's not an important person to me and, what's more, I don't even think about him until he sends me one of those stupid messages. They recommended the time before last that I tell him directly to leave me alone.

I hate confrontation. I suck at it. I'm not sure I'll say the right things to communicate exactly what I want him to do on no uncertain terms. I'm also concerned that he's an attention whore who just wants to get any kind of reaction out of me and will then take it as positive reinforcement to continue to contact me. He's unstable and I'd like him to just go away.

So how do I tell this person to leave me alone without adding fuel to the fire?
Will the obvious do it because my friends did that for me before and it didn't work?

I've got a similar issue with someone who just randomly will appear electronically, requesting an audience and giving an apology. It's been going on for a decade now. I don't know what you should do but I just ignore my guy. He appears again every year or so and then goes away again. It's a mild annoyance but totally ignoring him seems to have worked well enough. I don't believe that telling him to leave me alone would help.

Well it's just a computer screen and text. People come up with these words like troll and harasser and so on. Sometimes I suppose it's for a constructive purpose. Ultimately I think of the internet as very much different then offline. If you don't like a text from some identity just ignore it. There are plenty of other text identities to bug.

this guy contacts you again, it might be interesting to visit your local police station and speak with the chief. Don't tell him you want a restraining order or anything like that, just explain what's going on and you've handled it thus far (which is beautifully). Police chiefs in different towns talk to each other all the time. There's lots that happen without paperwork traded back and forth. Let's say your chief calls that dude's town's police chief and the other chief says that he's not surprised, this is 4th or 5th woman to complain, you never know. And if your chief learns anything out of the ordinary, he'll come visit with you. At the very least, what would happen is that you got it on an official record that this man will not leave you alone, though you've requested that several times. Through official record, lots of people develop a written history of their behavior. I'm not necessarily advising you to do any of that. You're handling this really well! Not sure I could've resisted an impulse to reply.

I don't know how it works online, but if there's any way to block him, I'd suggest that. If you'd like, tell him "please, do not e-mail me anymore," that usually works for me because it's a nice way (and it's easy to understand just in case they're a moron) to let someone know to leave you alone. If he keeps on messaging you, ignore it and block it if you can-- because you made it clear to him to stop, and he's harassing you at that point. Hope this helps.

Yeah, the best way to tell him is to not say anything at all. He will eventually get the hint. If things get to the point where he won't stop contacting you, well, you know what to do then. The line there is pretty clearly drawn, and you shouldn't have to ask yourself if its gone too far.

Yeah, I suggest just not talking to him. He's obviously a little messed up in the head and is way more obsessed about you than he should be, especially if you haven't contacted him in long while.

If you do end up writing anything to him, it could put a fan to the flame again. If you think the guy is dangerous or might be doing this to someone other than you, then you may want to report it to the authorities. You never know what good might come out of it.