By Ox Drover
I recently read The Socially Skilled Child Molester: Differentiating the Guilty from the Falsely Accused, by Carla van Dam, Ph.D.
Carla van Dam, Ph.D., is a clinical and forensic psychologist who has practiced in the U.S. and Canada, and taught in several universities. She is well known in the community of those who focus on primary prevention strategies to help end child sexual abuse. One of her previous books was Identifying Child Molesters: Preventing Child Sexual Abuse by Recognizing the Patterns of Offenders.
Several of the reviews of this book pretty well sum up my opinion of this well-written book.
“The Socially Skilled Child Molester provides a thorough description of common types of child molesters, most importantly, distinguishing between ”˜grabbers’ and ”˜groomers.’” Kelly Simonson, Ph.D.
“A provocative analysis of four types of smarter, richer, socially skilled and often litigious offenders as opposed to the cruder, more frequently captured types. Such offenders, whom the author calls ”˜groomers,’ usually spend more time cultivating the good graces of family members, neighborhoods, and whole communities rather than selecting and seducing their victims. These offenders are usually regarded as upstanding pillars of the community, and include businessmen, priests, judges, coaches, teachers and volunteers”¦” Thomas R. O’Connor, Ph.D.
“Carla van Dam carefully describes the various child molesters who sit next to us in our churches and synagogues, go to the theater, and eat in the same restaurants with us. They continue to harm children because they fool us into thinking that such nice guys couldn’t do such a terrible thing.” Lenore E. Walker, Ed.D. (Dr. Walker was a pioneer in the defense of women who faced criminal charges for attacking their long-time abusers. Her books include The Battered Woman, The Battered Woman Syndrome, Handbook of Child Sexual Abuse, and Abused Women and Survivor Therapy.)
Having personally been well acquainted for a number of years with one of the most prolific child abusers, totaling over 1500 victims, Charles “Jackie” Walls, III, who is currently serving life without parole in Arkansas Department of Corrections, I know how easy it is for these “socially skilled” child molesters to pass for “upstanding citizens” in the community for decades, all the while doing damage to so many. Though I never liked Jackie because he was an obvious narcissistic creep, it never dawned on me, I never had the faintest inkling, that he was living this dual life of upstanding family man and Boy Scout volunteer of the year during the daytime, and monster at night.
Dr. van Dam’s book gives a clear and precise directions for spotting the warning signs in a predator who is socially skilled and highly thought of in the community, who presents himself as the “too good to be true” businessman, priest, rabbi, physician, nurse, volunteer, etc., who is too helpful, too private, too attentive to children, too touchy with children, too involved with image management, too one-sided in relationships, always giving, never taking, too opportunistic, too superficial, too prone to violate boundaries of personal space and privacy, too aggressive when confronted, too quick to drop friendships when children grow older, too likely to disappear when contact with children is denied, altogether too charming . . . and, too good to be true.
Dr. van Dam divides her book into 10 chapters, as follows:
Chapter 1. “Understanding the Problem” focuses on the fact that the “groomers,” as she calls them, are well-socialized child molesters and behave as if they were addicted to sexual contact with children.
Chapter 2. “Child Molesters in Their Natural Habitat” familiarizes readers with the operating styles of the groomers and allows them to notice the often-predictable practices so that readers can more effectively prevent child sexual abuse.
Chapter 3. “Current Practices” provides the reader with information on the inadequacies of the way child sexual abuse is addressed by communities.
Chapter 4. “Not All Child Molesters Are Alike.” This chapter gives a closer focus on the vocabulary used to describe sexual misconduct. Child molesters do much damage to children by first carefully grooming adults in order to gain access to children.
Chapter 5. “Common Misperceptions.” This chapter focuses on groomers’ excuses and explanations when their conduct is challenged. These are hackneyed clichés that are often misconstrued as sincere. Everyone needs to know these well enough to recognize them when they occur.
Chapter 6. “Accurately Differentiating Danger.” This provides the framework to understand how the behaviors of groomers often vary from those whose conduct should not be worrisome. It points out that behavioral patterns of successful groomers vary significantly from those who are not child molesters.
Chapter 7. “A Framework for Understanding Child Sexual Abuse.” Using an iceberg as an analogy of the groomer’s behavior, this chapter gives information to the reader about how to expose the groomer’s operating strategies to protect children.
Chapter 8. “Interviewing Child Molesters.” This shows the reader that though groomers are incredibly successful liars, the lies they tell can be identified, and are often predictable. This allows the reader to be less gullible and better protect their children.
Chapter 9. “Predicting Risk.” This chapter deals with differentiating convicted offenders from the less to the more dangerous.
Chapter 10. “Incorporating Corroborating Evidence.” This chapter brings all the information together for both professionals and for families in ways to network in the community to protect our children from predators.
This book, in my opinion, is a must-have for anyone who wants to protect children, in their own home and in the community. While Dr. van Dam does not think that all pedophiles qualify as psychopaths, she does say that they “lack empathy, and experience no real remorse as shown by their actual behaviors.”
Although this book focuses on child molesters, many of the practices that the groomers use are familiar to some of us who have met sociopaths who looked like such “good people” and turned out to be such bad nightmares. The book may also be interesting to people who want to understand more about how a bad person can hide in plain sight.
To purchase the book, go to Amazon.com:
The Socially Skilled Child Molester: Differentiating the Guilty from the Falsely Accused.
Right Rosa – no with HAVING COMMITTED CRIMES! It’s a flaw in the checklist, and could be at least partially addressed by talking to people who knew the person over their lifetimes. Usually someone knows SOMETHING.
Yes, that is also addressed in this book.
It is crucial to conduct a FULL INVESTIGATION of child molesters, to get the full scope of what they are doing, and how they are doing it.
This is done by interviewing family members, friends, co-workers, etc.
“Groomers” go to great lengths for “image management”, to make themselves look like good, upstanding citizens. That means manipulating those who are in contact with the children, in order to GAIN ACCESS to the children.
Unfortunately, there are not enough resources in law enforcement and social services to conduct such thorough investigations for every case that is brought forward. A lot of valuable information either gets lost or falls through the cracks. Not to mention the false allegations.
The system is broken.
That’s why we all need to do our own investigations and documentation, because no one else is going to do it for us, unfortunately.
After reading this book, I am seriously considering hiring a private investigator for a limited period of time, to find some information that I cannot do myself.
I believe in building my own case without the police or child protective services (at least for now), until I can come up with hard evidence and a solid case for what I want to accomplish….or until someone makes a really big mistake.
Rosa – more and more PATIENCE makes sense in this mess. I was so reactive, living with all the drama and trauma of someone constantly ‘dyyyying’ and surgeries, and the blah blah of the story.
I was on chemical and hormonal overload ALL the time. And it felt somewhat ‘normal’ – oh THAT’S a sign of unfinished business if there ever was one for me.
so, now I see I have a number of challenges and ALL of the require great patience. I am by nature or nurture, an anxious person. And I opften ‘go with my gut’ on whatever is bothering me, ’cause i just have to limit the amount of things causing my anxiety to peak. But i have to unlearn this. i have to practice patience and non reactivity. and waiting. for the mistakes and the right resources. timing.
May 2010 be the year of the gift – of big mistakes!
I probably have never mentioned it here, but the information might be useful so I’ll jump in. Of the many wonderful and not-so-wonderful men I’ve dated in my life, one of them was a child molester. I didn’t know at the time we were living together. I found out by accident. I found a psychiatrist note stashed away in his closet stating that at the age of 19 he had turned himself in for fondling two young children in the home of his friends. He received 4 years of psychiatric treatment for it. He was 31 when I met him.
During the year we were together, I knew there was something “not quite right” about him. He was on the narcissistic side and got his tempered flared easily but didn’t seem to know how to stand up for himself in obvious situations. He had a steady job as a bill collector and moonlighted as a very talented musician at night. He was very spontaneous and childlike in his demeanor and I probably had more fun with him than most guys I’d dated. But I knew I would never marry him because something was amiss. He seemed very self-centered, especially if he’d had a few drinks, but could alway apologize afterward. In some ways he was like a typical guy, so I thought.
His behaviors toward children: We didn’t have kids around much in our lives, so I only got to witness his behaviors around them twice. One time I was mentoring a 10-y.o. girl from the neighborhood who’d had a hard life. I invited her over with her mom’s permission to make cookies and hang out. He and I had just had an argument, but I set it aside to hang out with the girl. To my amazement, he was telling the girl our problems as if she were a trusted adult! It was really inappropriate, and I asked him to stop. I never invited the girl over again.
After I’d left and moved into my own condo, there was a young girl who hung out with her grandparents next door. He father had been shot to death, and her grandparents were ill and couldn’t spend much time with her. She loved to come over to visit. I would take her out for ice cream or to the park and we’d roll down the hill together. Or we’d dress up in some of my costume jewelry and vintage clothes and dance in the living room. One morning she dropped by in her nightgown, and my ex came over for some reason. He stared really closely at her nightgown and mentioned he liked the cartoon character on the front of it. It seemed odd and made me uncomfortable, though he himself dressed flamboyantly with cartoon characters on his tie-dyed outfits.
Boundaries with others: Several times we hung out with groups of other people. He seemed to hug people he didn’t know inappropriately or just act a little too familiar. He loved being the center of attention. I remember once we were sitting at the Botanic Gardens having lunch with a couple of women. He was stroking my arm in a very sensual way (as we often did when we were alone together). But he was doing that and looking this other woman in the eye. It was very strange and made me uncomfortable. It made me feel as though I couldn’t trust him around other women. We’d met at an open mike session in a bar and performed together with some of his band members. We were inseperable from that point on. The attraction was instantaneous. But even though I was instantly attracted, I remember in the weeks that followed, I was very put off by his loud, opinionated and boorish personality. I almost broke it off in the first few weeks. But after we passed that point, I tolerated his quirks for a year afterward. We mostly had a lot of fun together, and that’s what I remember the most. He actually supported me by allowing me to live in his house that he owned and trade painting/remodeling for rent. It was a good trade because I’d lived in a tiny ghetto apartment before.
Our sex life was completely normal (barring that he was a little on the selfish side, but I’d had selfish lovers before). We were very attracted to each other, and I was 3 years older than he was. We were both very sensual people, and this was a healthy part of our relationship.
When I found out about the girls he’d fondled when he was 19, we were still living together. I was a mess and had nowhere to go. I saw a counselor and asked if she thought he may have “outgrown” his problem. She said it was possible, that perhaps when he was 19, he had the emotional age of an 8 year old. But I just couldn’t trust him. I knew then I could never marry him.
He talked very loudly and had a voice that carried. It could be annoying, and my cats hid from him. Because of this, he wanted his own cat. So we adopted a tiny tabby just for him, but she was afraid of him too. One day he got angry with her and picked her up and threw her across the room onto my bed. That was the last straw for me. I had no money and nowhere to go. So I became a stripper for a short time, just until I could save up enough money to get out, which I did. The job bought me my freedom and was the first stepping stone to my financial stability.
We stayed in touch, and he visited occasionally but I never trusted or respected him after the revelation of his past foibles. He eventually asked me to marry him. I declined, and he moved up to Seattle where he was from. One day he called me and told me he’d been “accused” of fondling a 10 y.o. girl while her parents were in the other room. My heart sank. He wouldn’t even admit to me that he’d done it without a lot of cajoling. I lost contact with him after that. In spite of his obviously dark side, I still cared about him in a sisterly way. I didn’t understand. I was confused about how/why he could do this. And both times he did it in such a way that he’d get caught.
Many years later (about 12), I decided to google my exes just for the fun of it. When I googled his name, guess what came up? His official sex offender record. It said that under a lie detector test, he admitted to molesting 25 kids between certain years. One of those years was the year we’d lived together!!! I couldn’t believe it. I was so shocked. My first thought was, “when did he find the time?” He worked two jobs and was with me the rest of the time.
It took a little detective work but I tracked him down in Seattle. I wanted to ask him if he molested 25 kids while we were dating, and who they were, and when he found the time!!! He told me his attorney had instructed him not to talk about it. He told me he’d been in prison for a few years and then had to wear one of those electronic ankle bracelets and wasn’t allowed near children. He had gone through some treatment program for sex offenders and told me he had turned his life around. He admitted he’d also been abusing prescription meds and alcohol while we were together (I am so naive, I didn’t know). He told me he was “seeing someone” and had gone back to school for computers and was doing well. I hoped in my heart that this was true and that someone like this could be rehabilitated. The next day I received a very angry phone call from his WIFE asking me who I was and telling me never to contact her husband again. I couldn’t believe he didn’t even tell me he’d married! (it wasn’t as if I’d ever date him again anyway!). The whole thing was so bizarre, and I never spoke to him again, thankfully. I began to see the character of someone who was deceitful and self-serving, in spite of his sweetness.
My rose-colored glasses are so rosy that I still to this day cannot reconcile the quirky but lovable man I dated for a year with the child molesting monster he turned out to be. I still scratch my head when I think about it. He was not an unlovable person, just a little unbalanced perhaps. I did care for him very much at the time, but knew he was unsafe for me.
I’m writing this to tell you that all child molesters don’t seem like monsters. They seem like normal, quirky, multi-faceted people with their weaknesses and vulnerabilities. In my case, I knew something was wrong but couldn’t put my finger on it. Listen to your gut feeling. My gut feeling turned my relationship with him into something that served me more than damaged me. Can you imagine if I’d married him and had kids?
I’m glad this thread was brought up again. I went through it and reread each and every post in it. Also, Rosa, glad you read the book, and your point is well taken about the PCL-R developed by Hare has (as I see it) a flaw in that it gives such a rating to convicted criminals, and you are right that probably 3 out of 4 psychopaths are actually free of criminal convictions, at least serious ones.
The different comments, and the memories they brought back of a few bloggers who are no longer here (or rarely so anyway) and looking at “where I was” last summer in terms of how I was doing in my own healing process and here I am tonight, mourning the “loss” of my trust in my son C (and having told him to leave my house because he lied to me). I picked a quote out about boundaries from one of my previous posts.
QUOTE OXDROVER:
Learning to set boundaries is a good thing. … anyone who DOES CARE FOR YOU will respect your boundaries, but people who don’t respect your boundaries are NOT people you want in your life.
QUOTE OXDROVER:
Any time you set a boundary though, you must be willing to FOLLOW through with it and realize that the relationship may not survive if the other person is not willing to respect your boundaries. But at the same time, why would you want a relationship with someone who won’t respect your boundaries?
I looked at these quotes from myself and looked at applying them to the sitaution last night and today with my son C. He is in most respects a good man, but I set the boundary about the lies, and he knew this and chose to viiolate that boundary, knowing full well, that it would destroy my trust in him. Without trust, there can’t be a relationship until and IF that trust is ever reestablished and in my opinion, it is not for the one whose trust has been betrayed to “beg” the other person to let them trust them, it is up to the offender to make the move and the ACTION to re-establish trust. I wish it were so, but I don’t expect it.
Star, LISTENING TO OUR GUTS is the BEST defenses we have, and setting boundaries is also the next thing, but we must DEFEND reasonable boundaries and enforce them, and if that makes the relationship falter or die, that is the chance we take. Too often we “give in” and allow people to violate our boundaries and do not defend them, and they keep on pushing until they over run us.
Listen to your gut, Chickie! It will protect you but you must listen and respect it. We are smarter and more intuitive than we give ourselves credit for sometimes (most times?) and if something doesn’t “seem right” I am not going to quit looking for what is going on (if the relationship is important enough to waste the time on) In my son’s case, it was, and I’m sorry that I found he had lied, actualy I’m sorry that he lied, but glad I found out he lied, as much as it hurt, I’d rather know the truth.
The truth will set you free, but first it will pith you off.
Star – i have been thinking about the dominatrix thing – LOL! The spath could get free service. But someone would have to pull me off, cause I’d probably beat her to a pulp.
When I was 19 I moved thousands of miles from home. And within the first few months I answered an add for a photographer. He was young – don’t remember how old now.
He took some very nice draped and semi draped photos of me, which i got copies of. did two sessions with him. never saw him again. Fast forward 7 years and I see a report on the news about him. Child Molester. and photog. not a good combo. ugh!
(god, just had a flashback – TOTTALY forgot about the 2nd session – his brothers fiance was there and he was tkaing some photos of her for him and i seem to remember him trying to get us to do something….eek!)
Sometime within the year after I saw the newscast (and had unsuccessfully tried, though a friend to get the negatives of my photos) I saw him in a mall where i worked – walking with a pregnant woman and carrying a little girl on his shoulders. UGH!
I don;t think he recognized, I don’t know – I had gained a lot of weight – but i walked up to her and said, ‘ do you know who and what he is? AND SHE F*CKING SAID, ‘YES’!
OY VEY!
Lots of what you said about this guy reminds me of the ‘sweet boy’ character i loved – and the spath that pulled the strings of htat puppet is OBSESSED with child molestaion – she brought into her scam of me in a REALLY big way and in the scam of one of her other dupes.
there is something there…..
Oh my….
The S was a ‘grooomer’. He groomed everyone, but especially young kids…..
His ego depends on everyone liking him…..if a kid liked him, a parent loved him.
I watched most all parents ‘fall in love’ with the S. If we were at a dinner party, he would move to the kids…..get on the floor, roll around….pay all attention to the kids….
Of course, because the parents could give a rats ass about the kids at that point, and they were in a ‘home’ environment, it gave them a licence to trust the S…..Oh, he’s okay, he must be to be welcome in this home. So and so knows him….yada yada….
he was a built in ‘babysitter’, person to keep the kids occupied so they don’t bug the parents…..he would sit with kids on his lap during dinner, feeding them…..
I was watching something on TV the other day, about a mother feeding her baby in a high chair……and it jolted a memory…..our first born in a high chair…..and him CHEWING THE FOOD and balling it up in his fingers and finger feeding the baby…..
He would CHEW the food for our child…..WTF????
The last few years with us…..I referred to him as the ‘food cop’ . He watched everyone eat their dinner….and all the kids have different styles, but they are all good eaters….
One child eats everything separately…..like….all the vegies at once, then the meat, then the starch…..he doesn’t mix them up.
So inevitable the last ‘portion’ whatever that may be….the food cop would say…..DON”T YA LIKE THE xxxx ……. or ….Arn’t ya gonna eat the xxxx. The kid would look up ans say, i’m not done…..
He ‘grew’ into doing this to everyone…..dinner guests and all.
How embarrasing……
I still am haunted by the letters I found in his desk, after he moved out.
They were from a 11-12 year old girl, when he was coaching little league…..one boys kid sister…..about 8 years ago.
They were very graphic about calling him his ‘lover’, had ‘pet names’, referred to him as her ‘fiance’ etc…..let’s make your wife jelouse…..I just want you to hold me…..
But the weirdest thing to me was….WHY DID HE KEEP THEM?
He showed me one, after practice one day…..years ago….I said to him, you need to talk to the girl father and DO NOT encourage this sort of behavior….it’s inappropriate.
This was not the reaction he was looking for….I think he wanted me to be jelouse???? ARE YOU KIDDING? She’s a baby……
To some extent it’s natural for a young girl to have a ‘crush’ on a ‘coach’……but the way these letters read, the names she used for him…..there was way too much familiarity in them….and the fact he kept them…..
It’s not like he kept cards or letters from anyone else….he wasn’t centimental (are any of them?)…..and they were not in a place that they had ‘gotten lost’ deep in the drawer.
AND He left them when he moved out?
For me to ‘find’?????
What a freak!!!!!
Then to be told he was selling cocain to 13 year old girls from my rental cabin…..the cabin was a vacation rental, so didn’t have a full time occupant. What a perfect place to sell dope from…..and rendesvous with little girls…..and all without me knowing!!!
THEN…..to realize I WAS 13 when I met him!!!!
Okay…..picture painted…..I get it now!
He groomed me…..he even told me he was going to ‘mold’ me into what he wanted……
I was so enamored at 13 by this statement…..it was my idea of LOVE!!!!
Holy shit!
RED FLAGS….and GUT!!!
GO WITH IT!!!!
I just realised a longtime male friend of mine is an N and was a predator from day one. A man in his 30s, after grooming me at 16, making me feel special to him and then testing me with bad behaviour to see if I was a little girl who would play by the rules or not. I was sensible and did so he discarded me mercilessly and then found a little girl of 16 who was more rebellious,tarty & what he was looking for leaving me devastated that this wonderful person had turned on me. I’d have expected respect from him you see…. Nothing ever actually happened – it was all emotional grooming.
Fast forward to now, I myself am in my early 30s and, still manipulated by that early grooming and persona he presented to me, I thought it was just a good friendship that had lost its way so I got back in touch, but after months of crazymaking and gaslighting, in short a friendship that caused me alot of stress and was not healthy, he has discarded me completely, believing me to be a problem in HIS life!
I’m done…..I’m upset…..but I’m done….. He actually believes I’m in love with him – pot kettle? He set up this unhealthy dynamic in the first place. It’s amazing what these crazy folk drive sane rational ones to do. The more they dangle us and pull away the more a healthy person who believes in resolving issues/communication will try to be in touch, moreso than usual, coming across intensely in their understandable distress. All the time receiving no communication or exlpanation as to where they stand but just lef tto ‘figure it out’. Then the N or S/P accuses them practically of harassment and tells them never to contact them again. They create the narcissistic supply situation (haha I’m going to keep you dangling, desperate, treat you like you’re inferior to me and make you look like a stalker) and then blame the victim ‘She just wouldn’t stop contacting me!’ Everything I did then and recently he believed was about him eg becoming friends with people he knew would be so I could get close to him and he was paranoid and envious to extremes, simultaneously elevating me and then devaluing me. It chills me to the bone to think that he was so good a manipulator when I was 16 it influenced my behaviour as a grown woman in her 30s.
I feel free and happy that he is now out of my life for good but I also keep blaming myself. The pattern was there of him being a sexual predator and his personality is highly narcissistic, with that boyish childlike aspect to it so many have mentioned. He’s also extremely accomplished, intelligent, high achieving and has that strange magnetic charismatic quality about him even though he is not exceptionally beautiful looking. He’s pretty amazing… Demonic almost….
Yet somehow there is a part of me that thinks I’m just denying my own guilt in the situation and I deserve the way he has discarded me. I feel inferior, ugly and like I have a sad worthless life compared to him and his terrific one (not true in reality, I’m quite accomplished myself!) All the evidence is pointing towards me having dealt with a sexual predator and N, even other people think the same, but I still have a tiny part of me that beats on me and says ‘Come on, you know you are a crazy woman and he was right to get rid of you’
Anyone else felt like this despite overwhelming logical evidence to the contrary?
Dear Genevieve,
AH, YES!@.......!!!! But get over the kicking yourself about it….it is a blessing from God when they discard us and don’t try to come back.
You’ve had your time to feel guilty, now I am declaring it OVER! Laugh! Seriously though, it does take some time, but we need to use a combination of logic and emotion to get rid of those feelings.
RECOGNIZING them is the FIRST STEP—now you can take the rest of the steps necessary! You are on your way, he is still what he is—-NOTHING IMPORTANT! (((Hugs))))
hi all – i think i have made some real progress reclaiming my head space in the last few weeks. i see it especially in the last few days, when i have gone hours at work with real concentration and few spath thoughts.
now the other side of this is that i am seeing the affects of the spath. sigh. i don’t trust people or myself.
and i am still not ‘all there’. what part of that is ptsd and what part is the cognitive damage i can’t tell. i feel overwhelmed 90% of the time with this new job – not ‘swamped’, but fearing that i will mess it up big time. today i realize that i have messed something up and i don’t know if i can fix it. this week there was some serious IT problems that cost me 3 days and then we had a crisis related to something beyond my control, but completely affecting my timelines. i am tired and brain weary. don’t have the extra to push. on the bright side – such an odd phrase in this situaion – i talked to one of the board members, and told her that their expectations are out of line to what the organizational capacity is. so, one step taking charge in this way is positive. i have been doing this since i started and i do see that there is some change. they have changed my reporting structure…..
thing is…i can’t get out from behind the 8 ball yet. and i don’t have the mind power to ‘spin’ it or even ‘handle’ the situation. god, i am just whipped.
i met with a business mentor who i haven’t talke dwith in awhile. i really liked this guy. only known him about 9 months. he used to be a financial planner. i asked to meet with mhim to go over my finances, etc. and two things happened that were difficult. the first is he wanted me to do some visioning about ’10 years down the road’…for a person who hasn’t been able to see the next day for over a year, it was very painful and brought up a lot of anxiety. a LOT of anxiety. good thing – seemed to work through it a bit. came out of it with some value – but am completely exhausted. have been laying here for 3 hours just stunned. the other thing that was really mind blowing was that he kept looking at my chest. oh fer f*** sake. the last time i saw him he sat kinda close to me and i remember marking his behaviour in my mind as rather odd. i had always felt comfortable with him, but the last two times he sat rather close…the first time it seemed fine…the 2nd time a bit odd, and today i was so uncomfortable, my brain was screaming. i collapsed inward into myself…man, i haven’t been that uncomfortable in…well, i don’t know…decades? My director at work stares at my legs at times. it’s really weird. i actually get the idea he doesn’t know what he is doing…i talk with my hands and he stares at them too. i had thought maybe he is just easily distracted by movement…but the next time he does it i am going to stare hard at him. i thought this other guy was a good guy. today i felt physically cornered and he didn’t read any of my body language that said i was uncomfortable. none of it. i am quite self-conscious of my curves…not used to having any. don’t think anyone has ‘stared’ at my boobs in 30 years. if i had had a business jacket with me i would have put it on immediately. predator? dunno. weirded out and boundary crossed? definitely.