Sociopaths do not change. As living proof, consider the case of Theodore Sypnier. Sypnier is a convicted child molester. He is 100 years old. He is about to be paroled, and the city of Buffalo, New York, is on edge. According to an article by the Associated Press: "Whether he's 100 or 101 or 105, the same person that was committing these crimes 10, 25, 30 years ago still exists today and has an unrepentant heart," said the Rev. Terry King, director of Grace House, which has twice taken Sypnier in from prison. "He is someone that we as parents, as members of the community, any community, really need to fear." The incident that landed him in jail took place in 1999, when Sypnier was 90 …
Thanksgiving–count your blessings
By Ox Drover I'm sure we have all heard the old saying, “I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet.” This “old saying” is true, though I think it is made up to inspire some guilt in us for complaining about the small things we lack and make us aware that we are fortunate to have the many blessings that we do have, which many others are not fortunate enough to have. Another one I remember is, “Eat your vegetables; there are children starving in China.” I always wondered why I couldn't just send the hated vegetables there instead of eating them. It would solve two problems: I wouldn't have to eat them, and the kids in China would be grateful for them. My son D has turne …
BOOK REVIEW: Perfect Prey
Lovefraud first heard from Liz Cole, author of Perfect Prey—Surviving a Cyber Shark's Romantic Fraud, back in 2007, shortly after she realized that the guy she met on the Internet was a sociopath. The guy called himself John Hill, although that wasn't his real name. Liz wrote: In my case, John presented himself as: an Irish born gentleman, well groomed, graduate degreed, retired from the Royal Marines where he performed his tour of duty in the Falkland Islands, a dutiful and tireless single parent to one daughter, aged 25 completing Medical School in Dublin, an accomplished chef and restaurateur, an accomplished sailor, multi-lingual, affectionate, old-school about e …
Recovering from a sociopath: acceptance and focusing on now
Lovefraud has heard from a woman who we'll call “Sally.” Sally is dealing with a sociopathic man who threatened to kill her, sabotage her daughter's career and injure other family members. She says law enforcement either doesn't believe her or doesn't care. Sally has been in touch with another of the sociopath's victims, and they've helped each other through the nightmare. Still, people in regular support groups don't believe them, and friends and family members have backed away. A lawyer and a therapist have backed away. Sally recently sent Lovefraud the following e-mail: You just can't imagine this, because I can't either. The person that was me is gone ”¦ and no one has taken her place. …
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Your reality is what you see
By Ox Drover My best friend has been visiting me and, as usual, when we get together we re-share “old stories” of “remember the time when so-and-so did such-and-such and how we laughed?” One of those stories was a funny one about a small quarrel I had with my late husband. After relating the story, I had one of those “ah ha!” moments that applies to a lot of things in life. My husband had a partial plate that was almost impossible for the dentist to get seated so that it did not “flop” and my husband used some of that pink goop that you put under a dental plate to keep it glued down. Every evening when he would get ready for bed, he would go into our bathroom, take the plate out, scrape th …
D.C. Sniper killing spree was a plot to win child custody
John Allen Muhammad, the D.C. Sniper, will die by lethal injection tomorrow. John Allen Muhammad and his teenaged accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, terrorized the Washington, D.C. area for three weeks in October 2002. In the end, 10 people were dead and three were wounded. The victims, selected at random, were shot while doing mundane chores like pumping gas and loading Halloween decorations into a car. I'm sure you remember the terror of the killings. But you may not realize that the killing spree was an escalation of a child custody battle. Psychological abuse Mildred Muhammad, the ex-wife of John Allen Muhammad, spoke at the Battered Mothers Custody Conference in Albany last January. Her …
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Believing the unbelievable sets us free
By Ox Drover There are some things in life that we accept as “truths” whether we understand just why they are true or not. We accept that the world is essentially round, that it revolves around the sun, that light is white and the absence of light is dark. We don't have to truly understand exactly how these things work or why they are true, we just accept that they are true, and when we lie down to sleep at night and the sky is dark, we trust that in the morning the sun will be shining again. That is just the truth. That is just the way things are. Sometimes we are told by people we love to believe the unbelievable. We don't want to believe it any more than we want to believe that the sun m …
Evil exists, and it does not want to be discovered
Evil exists. If you need proof, just look at the horrific case of little Charleeni Ferreira. Charleeni, age 10, of Philadelphia, Pa., died on October 21, 2009. Her father, Domingo Ferreira, 53, and stepmother Margarita Garabito, 43, were charged with murder and endangering the welfare of a child. So how bad was the abuse? The police called it “torture.” Charleeni actually died from an infection that resulted from broken ribs that were not treated. She had a host of new and old injuries, including a fractured pelvis and a 7-inch gash on her head that had been stuffed with gauze and covered with a hair weave. For more details, read Signs of Charleeni's “torture” were hidden, in the Phila …
Regrets–we all have them
By Ox Drover “The Road Not Taken” is always out there beckoning to us. I should, I could ”¦ Why did I do that? Why didn't I do that? Regrets! Having been involved with a psychopath, and reeling from the devastation in the wake of the relationship, leads us to ask ourselves what might have happened if we had made other choices. I question myself—if I had chosen differently, would the relationship have been a success? If I had dated John or Frank instead of the psychopath, would I now be happily married in a solid relationship? If I had just done things differently, like I started to, would it have been better? If I had just gotten out of the relationship sooner, or later, would I now be b …
Finding meaning in the betrayal by the sociopath
When we realize that we've been involved with a sociopath, and that person has callously betrayed us, we inevitably ask, “Why? Why did this happen to me?” To help find the answer, one of the books that Lovefraud recommends is The Betrayal Bond—Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships, by Patrick J. Carnes, Ph.D. The book explains the deep psychological wounds caused by trauma, and offers a way for us to identify and overcome abusive relationships that we may have experienced. When I read the book, I was struck by what Carnes wrote on page 68: My experience with survivors of trauma is that every journey of recovery depends on the survivor coming to a point where all that person has gon …