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 presence wasn’t known.
Barbara Bentley relates the story of meeting Admiral John Perry in the beginning of her book, A Dance With the Devil—A True Story of Marriage to a Psychopath, which was published last year. I felt like I was reading part of my own story.
Different psychopath, same story
I, too, heard the tales of fighting in Vietnam from my psychopathic ex-husband, James Montgomery. He claimed to have been awarded the Victoria Cross, which is Australia’s equivalent to the Congressional Medal of Honor. In fact, he sent me a copy of the “mention in dispatches” account of his heroism:
In heavy contact with the enemy, forward of the company in which Captain Montgomery was moving, the commander of the Mobile strike battalion was killed and an Australian Warrant Officer and several indigenous soldiers were wounded ”¦ Without hesitation, Captain Montgomery joined a small group under the command of a further Australian Warrant Officer, who was a company commander in the battalion, and went forward to the area of contact. While the remainder of the group were extricating the casualties ”¦ Captain Montgomery cut and prepared the casualty evacuation point on his own and under enemy fire. The helicopter attempted to extract the serious casualties but was forced away by heavy fire. Captain Montgomery, with complete disregard for his own safety, then, single handed, cleared the enemy from the close proximity of the evacuation point using hand grenades and small arms fire.
It was, of course, a complete fabrication, as were the stories of Admiral John Perry.
Marriage was a nightmare
But like me, Barbara Bentley didn’t know anything about psychopaths. All she knew was that this man who was so charismatic, so larger-than-life, was saying that he was smitten with her. He pursued her. He proposed to her. And even though he was 20 years her senior, she accepted.
The marriage, of course, was a nightmare, although Barbara couldn’t figure out why. John loved to live the rich life, even when he wasn’t working, and their finances were a catastrophe. He always had a plan though ”¦ his new job would pay better ”¦ he was going to sell some property ”¦ his inheritance was coming through ”¦ financial stability was always just around the corner.
But when Barbara finally started asking serious questions, John Perry attempted to murder her.
Then, the legal abuse
The guy was in jail when Barbara tried to divorce him, and he refused to cooperate. Even though he’d attempted to murder his wife, according to California’s no-fault divorce law, he was entitled to part of his wife’s assets, and he was going to get them.
Barbara was so outraged by the legal abuse—the law demanded that she pay the man who attempted to murder her—that she embarked on a crusade to get the law changed. And she did it.
A Dance With the Devil, by Barbara Bentley, is an excellent account of how psychopaths manipulate their victims. Reading it, I saw my own story, over and over. You probably will too.
This book is also the story of escape and recovery. And, it’s the story of a woman who turned near-tragedy into something positive. Now, in California, psychopaths who try to murder their spouses are not entitled to their assets as well.
So, whose idea was “no-fault divorce”, anyway? Makes me wonder….”Now, in California, psychopaths who try to murder their spouses are not entitled to their assets as well.” Well, there’s progress…I guess.
Jim:
It’s a catch-22. I went through a divorce in a fault state. The nastiness involved is astonishing. One of you hits the other with the complaint with a laundry list of everything your spouse did. Spouse comes back with a counter-complaint citing everything the other person did. Now an amended complaint comes through to you, upping the ante higher. And on it goes, the lawyers bills skyrocketing while the marital estate decreases.
No fault is supposed to make things more sane by starting from the premise that by the time a marriage is in divorce court, the marriages are already irretrievably broken — hence “irreconciliable differences” are cited in the petition, and the divorce can move forward. The harm to the children from begin exposed to a prolonged divorce battle between their parents is theoretically minimized.
Most states do have some carve-outs in the law — if your spouse is serving a prison sentence, attempted murder, bigamy, things like that.
It is, as I said, a catch-22.
Welcome to my world………….
Matt…yeah…I’ve heard the rationalization. Reading here, and elsewhwere, it has much improved society and the lives of children…or not.
keeping_faith…it’s not a fun experience. You’ll make it through…sorry you’re here, but glad we all have somewhere to go…keep faith.
Thanks Jim…..it really sucks butall of you and this site has kept me from “jumping off bridges”. I’m not kidding. It’s a support system that TRULY we all can relate unfortunately, to the kind of emotional pain inflicted by these idiots. Others don’t get it.
Barbara Bentley’s ex-husband demanding his share of the marital estate after trying to kill her does have shades of the kid who killed his parents asking the court for pity “because he is an orphan.”
No Fault-
Divorce is messy. What I’ve seen is that “no fault” leads to legal abuse when a truly grievous fault exists.
On the other hand, establishing fault can have people playing the blame game indefinitely.
I think we should have two different marriage contracts available. One should be for those who simply want to play house. The other should be for people who want to be married.
The first kind of marriage should require little more than jumping over a broom at the county courthouse. The second kind should require extensive joint counseling and even a formal course of study.
The first kind should be dissolved “no fault”, the second kind should only be dissolved for serious cause.
In each of the cases of the cluster Bs I’ve known, they would have selected the easy kind of marriage.
I say this because marriage has come to mean very different things to different people. Why not acknowledge this up front, and save a lot of headaches.
When I was first married, I used to have trouble doing business at the credit union. The tellers were always expecting me to clean out our joint account and head off for parts unknown. Apparently a lot of women do this. My husband on the other hand, they treated with respect. It got so ridiculous that I couldn’t cash his tiny little GI bill checks, but he could cash my paychecks, which were what we lived on at the time.
We both signed every document known to man at the Credit Union in order to establish that our account was fully joint, but couldn’t get them to treat us equally. Finally we switched institutions, but only after doing some research and talking to various bank managers.
Some of our relatives did not take our marriage seriously either. They seemed to feel that it was temporary, and if they treated the “in law” badly enough, the marriage would dissolve. Now that we’ve been together for nearly 30 years, and married for over 26, I think some of them are beginning to realize we actually meant it!
Any how, it’s long been evident that marriage means different things to different people. It’s time we had at least two different types of marriage contracts, if only to cut through some of the drama.
Elizabeth Conley:
Louisiana has tried that with “Covenant Marriage.” A friend of mine who is a judge down there says it has been a nightmare.
He says that people sign up for it thinking they are getting a “de-luxe version of marriage (emphasive the DE)”. Problem is, when things fall apart, they discover there are only certain narrow grounds they can use to obtain a divorce — which of course don’t exist in most cases.
So, everybody comes into court lying through their teeth, ministers on down. So, now you have the courts being made party to a fraud.
Or then you have the situation which existed in Spain and Latin America for many years when divorce was outlawed. What happened? Couples split, started new families with new partners. Then when someone died, now you had the whole inheritance nightmare.
Sad fact of the matter is you can’t keep people in a marriage they don’t want to be in.
“covenant marriage” is a problem because the term comes with extreme religious baggage from a historically daffy segmant of Christian Fundamentalism. On of the problems with Louisiana’s Covenant Marriage is that both parties must want to divorce in order for the divorce case to be heard. This effectively negates the three reasonable grounds for divorce. That is ridiculous. Even the Bible does not set this standard. Only the nutbars who call themselves “Christian Fundamentalists” hold people to this unreasonable type of contract, when even the Bible they claim to believe in does not.
I’m not advocating keeping people in a marriage they don’t want to be in. I’m advocating making it prohibitively difficult and time consuming for people to enter into a contract they don’t understand or appreciate.
Make traditional marriage harder to get into than to get out of.
Elizabeth Conley:
Some sociologist, name escapes me now, said marriage should be a renewable contract — it runs for 7 years, at the end of it, if you don’t want to re-up, contract runs out.
Instead of making marriage and divorce more difficult, I’m more for making child-bearing more diffcult. Any moron can have a child. When I look at the carnage caused by people who are called parents by virtue of a biological act, it makes me sick. The actress Celeste Holm once said it should be licensed. I agree.