Just Like His Father? Is nearly four years old now and my own son is nearly eight. At the time the book was released, scientists were still engaged in the genetics versus environment debate regarding the development of antisocial behavior. That debate is now over and every authority accepts that antisocial behavior and antisocial personality traits develop due to a gene-environment interaction. I am working on revising the book because now some specific genes have been identified.
Thankfully, I have not had to cope with the toxic environment a sociopath/psychopath creates for their offspring. Just Like His Father? doesn’t really grapple with that issue other than to encourage people to consider that the child may be better off with only one parent. At time the book was written, my thinking was based on two false premises. The first falsehood, I was taught in residency, “antisocial individuals abandon their young” has turned out to be perhaps the biggest problem at-risk children face. Antisocial individuals do not necessarily abandon their young, but they do abuse them and use them as pawns to damage other people and they also use them in their cons.
Four years ago, I naively believed that the family courts would naturally dictate that sociopaths/ psychopaths should be kept from harming their children. This second premise has also turned out to be false and is the basis for the nightmare many people I now count as friends are living.
It follows that in addition to teaching the material in the book and workbook, to save at-risk children we also have to take on the system-hopefully by working together. The system is composed of mental health professionals who really do not understand antisocial personality disorder let alone the meaning of psychopathic personality traits to parenting. It is also composed of Judges who want to make the tough decisions easy by giving themselves judicial sound bites to go by. Here is the official mantra of the state of New York Family Court:
“Visitation by a noncustodial parent is presumed to be in the child’s best interest and should be denied only in exceptional situations, such as where substantial evidence reveals that visitation would be detrimental to the welfare of the child.”
The important words there are “substantial evidence.” Just what constitutes substantial evidence? I am working on researching the answer to that question and have access to an extensive online law library through the university where I teach.
I am preparing a generic document that people can use as a resource regarding the harmful effects of parenting by antisocial individuals and emotional and verbal abuse on children. Some recent research shows that the developmental damage done by emotional and verbal abuse is as severe as that due to physical and sexual abuse.
But we really have to change the legal mantra. Given what we know of genetic risk, we have to not only protect at-risk children from abuse, we have to provide them with an enriching, nurturing environment to prevent the intergenerational spread of disorder. The new mantra should be:
“In cases where one parent has antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy) the child deserves the best upbringing the least disordered parent can provide.”
AND
“The least disordered parent has a right to live life free of the sociopath/psychopath they were conned by.”
Setting the least disordered parent free facilitates his/her mental health and contributes to the well-being of the child.
Here is what you can do to join this effort:
- If you went through a custody/visitation battle and your children are old enough for you to comment on how the battle and the sociopath affected them please write me. I am especially interested in talking with offspring over 18 about their perspectives.
- If you have an ongoing situation you are willing to share please write. Recently, people from Alabama and New York asked me for help so I compiled the case law for those states. The goal is to compile the case law for every state then make the info available on the web.
- If you want to volunteer to read the case law and help me organize it, I’ll put you to work right away.
- If you are an attorney or legal assistant who wants to help please let me know.
- If you have political connections, we need you.
I am looking to form a committee of workers committed to this cause.
Last but not least, I regret the title of my book because it suggests gender. The title merely reflects my own personal experience. This is NOT about gender or fatherhood versus motherhood. Normal men love and nurture their children and I do not dispute that children need that love and nurturing. This is about a psychiatric disorder for which there is no proven treatment, antisocial personality disorder/ psychopathy.
We are working to save the most vulnerable of all children from abuse, neglect and disorder. We are advocating for those children who carry genetic risk for antisocial personality disorder and who have a mother or father who is not capable of loving and nurturing them.
Contact Dr. Liane Leedom at drleedom@lovefraud.com.
After years of navigating around my spath ex, my 3 children are nearly grown, and I feel incredibly lucky – my ex remarried another spath. Like two cobras entwining. Lucky for us, she is so insecure that she has destroyed an already degraded relationship between my ex and our 3 kids. Now my children have disowned their father and we are so enjoying the serenity! (Serenity is expensive though, I’ve had to enlist the services of my attorneys each month nearly for the past 10 years.) Freedom isn’t free, but if you hang in long enough, miracles do happen. I’m so glad those two vipers have each other.
Dear new posters,
I’m glad that you guys are here, and it sounds like your roads have been rocky and long! It is a shame that you have all apparently had to sacrifice so much just ot keep your kids safe. It impresses me that you have all done so well (and sound so SANE!) LOL
Thank you for your input.
Tria, I also have a P kid (an adult now, a criminal and in prison) and there are others here who have P offspring and it is very painful.
FAD: You are not going to see signs at that young age, at that age, they are ALL little narcissistic nay sayers at that age, so just love him in spite of it, it is a phase….and he will pass.
Don’t keep “looking for” signs or bad behavior that indicate anything yet….read Dr. Leedom’s book and get on her web link, and RELAX. You are a good mommie and raising a BRIGHT kid is a challenge but you’re gonna do fine. ((((Hugs)))))
I have been looking at this website for some time now without commenting, partly because I am working so hard to move past and away from dwelling on anything to do with the person who has terrorized my sense of well-being for so many years. This particular post, however, strikes a deep chord with me.
One of the things I find so frustrating about the “justice system” is that there is no justice being served when it comes to protecting innocent people from sociopath predators. There’s a huge gaping hole in the system that sociopaths take full advantage of at every opportunity. If there was actually anything in place to protect people from being hunted and tormented by a sociopath, my child would not have to endure the emotional and mental abuse his disordered father subjects him to each and every time they interact. And either would I, my husband, or the rest of my family. And either would you, or your kids.
The extent of my ex’s capability to manipulate, lie, con, calculate, plan and execute his plans while staying under the radar – and while appearing totally sane and even charming to any scrutinizing eyes – is absolutely appalling.
The capacity he has for keeping track of his multitude of lies, for calculating behaviors years in advance to achieve a certain outcome, is just mind-boggling. Part of me can’t accept that people even exist who are able to do this – who are able to think so far ahead that they can begin planting seeds in fertile minds, and continue to water them for years upon years to achieve a desired result. The focused, lasting patience of a person who often exhibits less patience than a two-year-old in the throes of a tantrum, is hard to accept as a reality.
Yet it is, and this person can appear calm, cool and collected and push your buttons to make YOU appear unstable in a fraction of a second. There is something maddening about that- it’s like being drugged against your will, and then being accused of voluntarily doing drugs. The unfairness of it is literally maddening, which only feeds the fact that YOU appear to be the loopy one. He wins, he wins, he wins.
What’s worse is that when dealing with CPS, the FBI, cops, CSS, attorneys and even some psychologists and psychiatrists, I have come to realize that our entire system is set up not only to allow sociopaths to get away with murder, but actually supports their efforts – they are given a free pass to quietly, craftily ruin people’s lives however they see fit. As long as they know how far they can go without any legal repercussions, they will push it to the limit.
Whereas we have a moral compass that steers us from pushing the limits of the law, or seeking out loopholes in order to commit immoral acts against others, they don’t. They just see an opportunity and take it. And I think they take some sort of sick pride in believing they are so clever that they outsmarted the system, and feel powerful and invincible. And, sadly in many ways they are. It’s a scary realization. I feel helpless a lot of the time, because I am.
My son’s father, now that I understand what motivates him, what kind of monster he truly is, is obviously a disordered person. The problem is, he fooled me. He fooled me for 16 years. Yeah, I knew he was a liar. But I did not know he was a cold-blooded calculating, brainwashing/heartwashing monster. Because he is very good at hiding that. He still has many people fooled. And the law says he can lie all he wants. To his kids, to his ex-wives, to the people who do business with him. He can say whatever he wants to get what he wants, as long as his words don’t cause physical evidence. If he says things to a child in order to cause that child to think a certain way, there’s nothing to stop him from doing that. Are we the only ones who see what a huge problem that is? Sadly, YES.
I often wonder WHY did this happen to me? Why is this man allowed to treat me this way, to mess with my life like this? Perhaps I got dealt a crappy hand so that I can rise up and help others exchange their cards for better ones. Maybe we can all help deal a better hand to future prey.
We are not just angry exes, who want to bitch about our jerk former spouses – which is the treatment I get from every place I seek help and understanding. We are in a completely different category. We were not in “bad relationships.” We have had crimes committed against us over and over again – crimes that are being committed legally! We have been forced to live in fear. We have been tormented emotionally, mentally, financially and have seen our kids subjected to the same abuse.
I have said a million times that I would have rather been physically beaten and raped and left for dead by this guy. The continual and constant mental and emotional rape is so much harder to endure. Physical pain heals. When a person is made to continually come into contact with his/her rapist over and over and over again, to hand their children over to the person who raped them because there is no physical evidence to prove any damage, it’s simply insane! Give me a bruise, motherf’er! I’ll get you tossed in jail! But that’s the thing- they know how to bruise you and hurt you and rape you in a way that doesn’t show, in a way the courts will continue to ignore until something changes.
Something absolutely, positively must be done to change this. My life, at the moment, is in massive financial crisis due to my son’s father punishing me for taking my son’s cellphone (read: brainwashing device) away. He stopped paying child support in January, knowing that my husband and I have a home in foreclosure and my husband had just moved across the country after a year apart from us trying to sell that damned house. and hadn’t found a job yet. The sociopath knew we were counting on that $1200 to help us survive, and he stopped paying, thinking that I would give my son his cellphone back in order to get the money. What he doesn’t know is that I’ve been doing my homework on sociopaths and I understand his motivations now. And there’s no amount of money on God’s green earth that I would exchange for my son’s mental and emotional well-being and right to not be brainwashed/heartwashed. (Perhaps I’ll share the recent string of emails he wrote to my son at some point. They are AMAZING.)
I applaud Dr. Leedom’s efforts, and encourage everyone who is able in any way to get on board with what she’s working to achieve. This work she’s doing, in my eyes, is among the most important work that can be done. A legal platform on which we and our children can stand and be protected – it’s exactly what’s missing, bigtime. The hole in the legal system is so vast that even sociopaths who threaten to kill their children have no trouble swaggering right on through, and then killing their babies just as they said they would! It’s hard to believe that nobody in the legal system has put the pieces together to see what a huge problem this is. It’s infuriating that there isn’t a test that must be administered to suspected sociopaths to confirm that they are dangerous.
Someone must come up with a way to stop this kind of torture. Dr. Leedom, I want to be part of this team. I can’t commit to anything until my financial life is stable – our family of four has literally been eating one meal a day for the past two months – I’m hungry, my babies are hungry, and feeding them comes first. But it is clear to me that if I, if *we* don’t take action, don’t raise our voices, our pens, our minds, our hearts until we are heard, the system is not going to change, and innocent people will continue to experience what we have all been subjected to.
Please keep me in the loop. Send emails to me, I will read them, and as soon as I am capable I will join the cause and do whatever I can to see it through.
I can see that this is a supportive community. It would be a shame to think that some of us aren’t brave enough to get involved in finding a real solution to protect innocent people from these predators. That it might be easier for us to just chit chat online, share woe-is-me stories and play the expert on all things sociopath while doling out well-intentioned support and cyber hugs on a case by case basis to members of this site.
Imagine if we were to redirect a portion of those energies toward a single common goal. If we stand together and work together, shout together, we will help a lot more people than just the few who come here seeking solace and validation. Think of Whoville! I know there are many many people suffering out there that have never heard of this website, and won’t. We have the power to help them- shouldn’t we?
I bought a book when I was going through the nightmare of court with the sociopath. It was a book about how to handle a sociopath in court and what your lawyer needs to know.
If all Judges would know the signs… divorces with sociopaths last forever… sociopaths never follow any orders ect… it would help.
WhoamI
What book was that?
I fear many judges are Spaths.
I think it would be a good idea to start with educating the Attorneys and Judges of tomorrow; the ones who are in college now. I don’t know how or where to start, but they should take a couple psychology courses which include an in-depth study of Sociopaths/psychopaths and how they behave in court and out of court during a suit.
Castle, great post. Thanks for sharing with us part of your story. We all know how infuriating they are. It’s always amazed me how they can put so much negative energy into doing evil, instead of doing good.
Peace to your heart and soul, and your son’s as you all heal from this monster.
FightAnotherDay
I will try to find the book.
It helped me. I beat the sociopath at his own game. My child has not seen the sociopath father for 6 years now. I never had my son in court.. I did it by playing the same game the sociopath did to me for years. He never saw it coming.
Buttons, thank you for your insight and for sharing your experiences. I value them both.
Interesting discussion. I’ve never been one to subscribe to labels much, and many people with personality disorders I’ve come in contact with could probably be classified as “borderline.”
I think the extreme cases, with ongoing histories of abherrent behaviors should be dealt with in the harshest way. They are after all, easy to spot.
But it’s those sneaky, devious, selfish individuals who are able to charm their way through life, without the least concern of being held accountable for their actions, that are the truly dangerous ones, in my opinion.
Well, that was a long and poorly constructed sentence…hope there are no grammar nazis here!
Thanks again to all for sharing.
Dear Castle, & FAD
Castle, I am so glad that you are here, and glad that you are surviving in spite of what the monster is doing to you and your child. God bless you. I wish I had some words of wisdom to share with you, but unfortunately it seems that you know what you need to know and are doing the best you can with what you have to work with. I will keep you and your family in my prayers. ((((Hugs)))))
FAD: the book in LF store “legal abuse syndrome” is good too.
I am complete agreement with this blog, but what happens when the grandparents want to be involved and are sometimes almost as toxic? My children’s grandparents adore my kids. My kids are their only grandchildren and they’ve been on constant contact since my kids were born. The grandfather makes regular calls to the kids and stops by as often as he can, usually 4-5 x’s a month, (it’s a hour and a half drive). My kids also spend a lot of the time in the summer and on school vacations at their home. My problems with his son is have never came between his visitation with the kids. The grandmother on the hand is another story. I recently filed a police report for a violation of a peaceful contact order and his probation officer has recommended he be reprimanded in court this week. His mother blames me and makes her son out to be the victim. I don’t want to cut them out of their lives but his mother can’t seem to separate her time with the kids from what going on with her son and I.