Editor's note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud's statement on Spiritual Recovery. It's Christmas Eve and I am full of gratitude today. I witnessed evil first hand as my father, a sociopath, murdered at least four (4) people and destroyed countless lives. It almost doesn't make sense that I could be so happy and peaceful today, but it is a fact for me. I do not ask or need others to believe what I believe; I only share my personal experience. It is Faith that changed my life. I came to a place, a way of thinking, that was just too painful to live with so I made a decision to try something different. I prayed for help, for truth and …
Life’s Lessons 101: The Knowledge of Good and Evil
Editor's note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud's statement on Spiritual Recovery. By OxDrover In the Bible the story of Adam and Eve living in the Garden of Eden, in perfect paradise, is a story familiar to most children who have gone to Bible school at one point or another in their lives. If you take that same story, though, and look at it through adult eyes, you can see that there is a great moral to this tale, whether you believe it as a “creation” story or not. Before the “fall,” Adam and Eve had only dealt with a loving God/Creator who had given them a wonderful place to live in peace and plenty. They were naked and innocent in this para …
What was Bernie Madoff thinking?
“It takes an extraordinarily heartless conman to swindle a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Nobel Peace Prize winner out of all his charitable funds.” Wrote James Bone in the Times Online. “Yet that is exactly what Bernard “Bernie” Madoff is alleged to have done to Elie Wiesel, the author of the Holocaust classic Night and a friend from the Jewish community in south Florida. According to the Times Online article, "The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity now admits that it invested $15.2 million (£10.1 million) with Mr Madoff that represented “substantially all of the foundation's assets.” The charity of the Nobel laureate, in New York, will have to raise new funds if it is to main …
Radar not for the sociopath, but for the wrong people
Most of the people who will be bad for us are not sociopaths, and so we want our radar to be sharp, not specifically for sociopaths, but for wrong, bad people of every stripe. True, sociopaths will be terrible people with whom to enter relationships; in the end, though, they will represent a small fraction of a much greater majority of very wrong people for us. As I suggested in a prior post, there are two keys to protecting ourselves from Mr. or Mrs. WRONG: The first is developing intelligent radar; the second is acting wisely on that radar. After all, good radar, no less than good CIA intelligence, is useless if it's ignored or devalued. Now, are there cases of sociopaths (and the lot …
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Unreasonable Requests from my Father, the Sociopath
I believed my father was a successful “investor” when I was growing up. At least that's what I told myself. He made a great deal of money, we lived in expensive homes and he always had plenty of cash. He spent money like water. But in my early twenties, suddenly things didn't look so good. We had started to have money problems. I came home from college because of money “to wait until his next deal came through”. That is when FBI agents began showing up at the house looking for Dad. My father was in trouble, but he kept telling us kids it would be alright. “The Feds were after him”, he said, but he would beat them, “they had the wrong guy.” That was his standard response when something w …
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Bernie Madoff: The accomplishment of an entrepreneur or a psychopath?
Last night was the final night of a course in social gerontology I taught at the University of Bridgeport. I left the class feeling optimistic about humans. While walking to my car I reflected on an interview of Dr. Charlotte Perry, Medical Anthropologist at UCSF. When asked about the needs of aging African Americans she said, “I did a study in the Southeastern part of the United States of a large group of widows living in subsidized housing. The widows who were "weller" (for lack of a better term) were in fact taking care of those in the housing complex that weren't as well. The housing complex management took no responsibility for making assessments on health status beyond the initial a …
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LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Criminal defense attorney falls for a sociopath
Editor's note: Lovefraud received the following letter from a reader, who we'll call Matt. I am a gay man and a criminal defense attorney. After 22 years in my business I though I had seen it all, heard it all, and knew it all when it came to the bad side of human nature. That was until 15 months ago when I became romantically involved with a sociopath. Hook, Line and Sinker July. I met “S” when I was facing 50, flying solo and fearing my own mortality — I had just come from signing my will. I walked into a bar and S homed in on me like a heat-seeking missile. He had a beautiful smile, but I remember how it never reached his eyes — they were laser intense, but flat and unblinking. A few d …
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Something’s Not Right Here…
Have you experienced something that felt all wrong, but you couldn't quite put your finger on it so you dismissed it? It could be a small detail, but feels important, really important, and your mind is telling you that it just doesn't add up or make sense so the best thing to do is let it go. Whatever the conflict, our common sense is not able to reconcile the problem or rationalize what it means. Often times, the reason is, what we are seeing is so frightening that we don't want to know the truth. This was my experience with my father and it happened a lot. His behavior was raising flags, big ones that I can see now, but at the time, I didn't want to believe what I was seeing or …
After the sociopath, learning to trust again
A Lovefraud reader posted the following comment awhile back: I just have one question for everyone here. Does anyone trust people after these sick people did what they did to us? Unfortunately for me, I have run across a few of these sickos but NONE like my ex. Whoever I meet now I'm thinking to myself, who is this person really? Do they have a secret life like the Scott Petersons and Ted Bundys of this world? I don't let my children out of my sight and I'm already training my kids and they all know the signs of a sociopath especially my girls. I feel like I'm in a prison sometimes in my mind as I try so hard but just can't trust anyone. Yes, it is possible to trust again. Remember, …
Risk Assessment for Violence, Playing the Odds
By Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired) I recently bought a book, Violence Risk and Threat Assessment: A Practical Guide for Mental Health and Criminal Justice Professionals, by J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D. I actually bought it to give some “credence” to the statistics I put into my letter to the parole board protesting the release on parole of the Trojan Horse-Psychopath that attacked our family, Of course this book is directed, as the title says, to professionals, and to assess risk of violence. But since we are dealing with psychopaths, it is, I think, a good idea for us to be able also to look at the assessment for possible violence in our own psychopaths when we thwart their desires, or kick the …