A woman contacted Lovefraud seeking advice in dealing with an extremely disturbing situation. This woman, we'll call her Rosalyn, suspects her sister-in-law of child abuse. Rosalyn has been caring for the child regularly ever since she was small, and the girl is now starting school. The little girl if fine in Rosalyn's care, but when it's time for her go home, when Rosalyn says, “Mommy's coming to get you,” the child starts crying and carrying on. Several times Rosalyn has noticed that the child had bruises. “How did your hurt yourself?” she asked. The girl said she didn't remember. Other incidents also have Rosalyn concerned about her young niece's wellbeing. Rosalyn sees behavior in her …
TARGETED TEENS AND 20s: How do you handle a high school bully?
Lovefraud recently received a letter from a 17-year-old high school student--we'll call him Brandon. He wrote that another boy at school was using manipulation to bully him. When Brandon resisted, the bully asked what he had done wrong, and why Brandon was being so mean—I can almost hear the false concern and sincerity dripping from his voice. The bully told Brandon to apologize. What happened next was classic sociopathic behavior. Here's what Brandon wrote: When I moved away from him, he came and found me and was aggressive and wouldn't leave me alone. And kept getting other people involved by asking them to ask me why I wouldn't talk to him. He then punched me and blamed me for p …
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LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Do not expect the truth in an oral trial
Editor's Note: The Lovefraud reader who write as "Jofary" relates her experience with a sociopath in Canadian divorce court. I first participated on this site three years ago when I learned that my daughter, then only a toddler, was being sexually molested by her father (my ex). Up until that point, I was dealing with things in the typical way. I had caught my ex cheating on me and, when our son was only three months old, he immediately moved in with his mistress, who herself had extricated herself from her fifteen year stable marriage, believing my ex to be her “best friend and soul mate.” That was extremely distasteful in and of itself but, given my ex's contributions (or lack thereof) …
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BOOK REVIEW: A Dance With the Devil
Barbara Bentley was 35 years old and divorced back in 1981, when Admiral John Perry swept into her life. She met him at a dinner party hosted by a friend. The admiral dominated the conversation with his stories—he'd lied about his age to get into World War II and became one of the original Navy SEALs. He was a naval aviator during the Korean War, and flew with the Blue Angels. Then, during the Vietnam War, he commanded swift boats fighting on the rivers. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor for saving some of his men when their position was overrun by the enemy. Afterwards, he did clandestine work for the federal government, going places where it would be better if the American p …
Emotional and psychological abusers: Coping with chaos and losing your balance
By AlohaTraveler I work at a children's shelter. One day last summer, we were playing dodge ball with the children and it made me think about the Bad Man. When we play dodge ball, we divide the teams children against counselors. To play the game, we divide the basketball court in half with the mid line being the divide between territories and we use six balls. When the referee blows the whistle to start the game, balls begin flying in every direction, someone is “OUT!” and the heated arguments ensue (from the children of course, we adults keep our heads) about the rules and who threw what? Was their foot over the line? Was it before or after “TIME OUT” was called? Which player was “out” firs …
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Love, sex, your brain and sociopaths
Ever since the beginning of recorded history, humans have been trying to understand and explain the mysteries of love and sex. Over the past few decades, scientists started using specialized equipment to measure physical arousal by attaching devices to private parts. More recently, they've been observing the most important romantic organ in the human body—the brain. Forbes wrote about the research of Andreas Bartels, Ph.D., at the Imperial College of London. Bartels used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, which can capture images of brain activity, to pinpoint the areas of the brain that are activated by love. Bartles did a study of 17 people who were madly in l …
A guidebook for recovering from the devastation of a sociopath
I clearly remember the shock of realizing that everything my ex-husband, James Montgomery, had ever told me was a lie. I remember the devastation of discovering the truth: His entire purpose in marrying me was to get a free place to live, take advantage of my good reputation and defraud me of my assets. All the promises, all the assurances, were literally sweet nothings. They sounded good, and meant absolutely nothing. I remember being paralyzed by my new truth. How could I possibly plan a recovery for my life, when every day I was falling apart? Worse, no one seemed to have an explanation for what happened, or advice on how to handle it. It's been 10 years since I left my ex-husband. …
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Why I say “Bad Man”
By AlohaTraveler It took me a long time to clearly define that what the Bad Man was doing to me was... bad. Plain and simple, it was bad for me. Never mind if he was working through pain, never mind if he had suffered many losses or had an unfortunate childhood. Never mind. He's a grown man. He was treating me in a way that I can only define as very bad for me no matter what his issues were. Really, it was unacceptable but at the time, I did not have clear boundaries as to what kind of treatment I would accept for myself before I would draw a line in the sand and say, “No more!” There were lots of excuses he made up and to be honest, there were lots of excuses I made up to try to exp …
Drew Peterson: Suspect, fiance, puppeteer
Lovefraud could have written about Drew Peterson at any time since he was declared a suspect in disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, who vanished on Oct. 28, 2007. Drew Peterson, who at the time was a sergeant in the Bolingbrook, Illinois police department, didn't seem to be at all concerned about his wife's whereabouts, claiming that she probably left him for another man. He cheerfully talked to the media, despite sordid allegations about his past. After Stacy disappeared, Peterson became a suspect in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, who was found dead in a bathtub. While they were married, police were called to the home they shared 18 times for domestic …
The flaw in viewing sociopaths through normal eyes
Lovefraud recently received an e-mail from a young man, we'll call him Kyle, who has just broken up with a woman whom he now believes is a sociopath. Based on the behavior he described, I'd say the guy is right. The woman cheated on him, and when confronted, either downplayed her behavior, said it was none of his business, or verbally attacked him. She had no interest in resolving problems. "Her solution to everything was to run, wait awhile, and then pile on affection as if nothing ever happened," Kyle wrote. Kyle has been researching sociopathy to try to grasp what is really going on with this woman. Here's more of his e-mail, which I have reproduced with his permission: First of all, I …