Lovefraud recently received the following e-mail from a reader:
My psychologist referred me to this web site. It’s terrific save one section: How can running away from these people be the only solution? Granted, it’s a stop-gap solution to protect yourself from future abuses; however, it’s not a solution for full/final resolution.
Allowing [them] to perpetuate their endeavors and perpetrate them on others only permits proliferation. Please tell me that there is some constructive, legal way to be proactive and preventative in a more communal fashion. I have visions of: 20 years from now they rule the world. It won’t be survival of the fittest. It will have become survival of the sickest.
To have to swallow this reality would be a further devastating blow to my slowly recovering resiliency.
There simply must be constructive ways to deal with these [people].
We all know this reader’s frustration. It seems like sociopaths are able to lie, cheat, steal, abuse, damage and injure with impunity. How can this be? Isn’t there anything we can do?
Running away
Let’s first address the issue of running away. This is the best thing to do if you are observant enough to see the signs of sociopathic behavior before you become entangled. If you know what to look for and see the red flags, or if your instincts tell you that someone is trouble, get out. You should not knowingly allow a sociopath into your life if it can be at all avoided.
Many of our readers, however, are already caught in the sociopath’s web of deceit. You have fallen in love, married the sociopath, had children with him or her, or given the person money. Or, the sociopath is a family member. Somehow, the predator already has a piece of you.
You may have been emotionally, physically or financially abused for a long time. You’ve been criticized, denigrated and told that you have mental problems. You’ve lost your confidence and your sense of self. You wonder if you are, in fact, going crazy.
At this point, you must break away from the sociopath to begin restoring your mental health. You must take yourself out of the sociopath’s game. Any time you see, talk to or exchange e-mail with a sociopath, you are opening yourself to further manipulation. He or she knows exactly how to pull you in again, and will do it.
You may call it running away; Lovefraud calls it No Contact. It’s the best way to begin healing.
Criminal prosecution
But how can you take action against the sociopath? How can the sociopath be held accountable? How can he or she be prevented from devastating someone else?
Unfortunately, it is not illegal to be a sociopath. Therefore, action can only be taken based on what a sociopath does, and many typical sociopathic behaviors are legal.
- It is legal to cheat on a spouse or intimate partner.
- It is legal to lie, except under oath and on some official documents (which never stopped a sociopath).
- It is legal for a sociopath to talk someone into giving him or her money.
Many sociopaths know exactly where the legal lines are, and manage to stay in the gray area without crossing over them. Their actions are unethical, but not illegal.
Criminal prosecution only becomes possible when a sociopath violates the law—which many of them do. Prisons are full of sociopaths.
So prosecution is possible when a law is violated, but whether it actually happens depends on the seriousness of the crime. Most murder cases get investigated. Most fraud cases don’t, especially if it’s a sweetheart scam.
Lovefraud usually recommends reporting a sociopath’s crime, even if it is not likely to be investigated. If a sociopath is doing something illegal to you, he or she is probably also doing it to someone else. Maybe if a pattern develops, authorities will take action.
Civil lawsuits
The other option is civil court—suing the sociopath. Unfortunately this will cost you money that you may not have if the sociopath has wiped you out. Then, even if you file a lawsuit, win your case and get a judgment, it may be difficult or impossible to actually get your money. Sociopaths are notorious for blowing through money; there may be nothing left for you to collect.
The whole process of taking a sociopath to court will financially and emotionally drain you. The sociopath, however, looks at a court battle as a game—a game that he or she is determined to win. And they’re good at the game. They bend the rules to suit their purposes. They put on a great show for the judge, even as they perjure themselves. They find attorneys who are equally cold-hearted, or who are so dazzled that they believe the sociopath’s lies.
Many judges, in the meantime, are as ignorant about sociopaths as you were. They hear the sociopath say, “I’m only concerned about the welfare of our children,” or, “I never meant any harm,” and believe the hollow words.
Exposing the sociopath
If you can’t take legal action, you may want to at least expose the sociopath to save someone else from being victimized. You may post the sociopath on Don’t Date Him Girl or other websites that name cheaters. You may get away with it. Or, if the sociopath you expose has resources and likes the lawsuit game (see above), you may find yourself in court, accused of libel or invasion of privacy.
Here’s another complication: There are no legal guidelines for when or how it is permissible to say someone is a sociopath. Media lawyers frequently do not allow the publications or TV shows they represent to call someone a sociopath. This may be the case even if the person making the statement is an expert. When his show about Ed Hicks was taped, Dr. Phil referred to Hicks as a sociopath. Dr. Phil certainly knows a sociopath when he sees one, but the show’s lawyers cut the term “sociopath” from the broadcast.
For this reason, Lovefraud is extremely careful with naming names. According to our terms of service, readers may not post the names of the sociopaths they have experienced in comments to this blog. And when Lovefraud does a case study in which we do identify a con artist, every single statement made about the subject of the story is documented with evidence.
Lovefraud does believe, however, that exposing sociopaths is the only thing that really works. In the future, we hope to offer a Con Artist Database to help our readers. But this is a project with many technical and legal challenges (see above). We look forward to the day when we can tackle them.
What should you do?
So what’s the bottom line? If you’ve been victimized by a sociopath, what should you do?
First, take care of yourself. Extricate yourself from the predator’s grip. That’s what No Contact is all about—escape and recovery.
Then you have to evaluate your situation to determine if further action is possible and worth the trouble. Every case is different. What did the sociopath do? Was it illegal? Do you have evidence or documentation? Do you have the money to pursue action? Do you have the emotional stamina?
If you have a good case, and the resources, by all means take action. Or, if you can’t do it now, maybe you can do it later, after you are healed.
As the saying goes, “revenge is a dish best served cold.” It took me five years, but I finally exposed my ex-husband, James Montgomery. He was fired from his job and forced into bankruptcy.
I will admit—it was satisfying.
I’m so glad the question was raised about being silent in the face of devastating cruelty.
I struggled silently for several decades after being raped-by-fraud. And the emotional entanglements that existed between the predator and myself made it impossible to simply break free when I learned of his treachery.
I struggled to raise his child as he danced around the legal system, dodging responsibility and gouging his child’s support from my pockets.
The final blow, being abandoned by my child-of-rape so that he could sit at the table of his ubber wealthy father, threw me into an horrific tailspin.
I was at the very bottom of endurance. I could barely breathe let alone lead a productive life. Fighting the tears and depression took every ounce of my strength. What turned the tide for me was the recognition that I’d been defiled and like all rape victims, needed to face the bastard in order to empower myself.
Violent rape victims are encouraged to speak out. Rape-by-fraud vicitms should also be encouraged to speak out. It gives you your power back, regardless of the outcome. While justice may not come your way, you will be able to live with yourself once more.
I attempted to get my ex and my son into family therapy. That was a joke. It was all too easy for them to live their separate lives without facing the truth and simply gas light me. I didn’t even receive the courtesy of a response.
Once I sat down to write my book, I began to feel like a human being again. It’s taken almost 2 years and a tremendous amount of soul searching, and I’m almost ready to release it.
The other concept that occurred to me is that there should be a database folks can refer to when they meet a new love interest in order to get correct biographical information. If there is a way that one can check, it is more difficult to defraud someone in order to seduce them.
The database I’ve created does not require the donor to identify themself. It simply calls for correct biographical information of individuals, nothing more. It does not speak to anyone’s guilt, innocence or misdeeds.
Registering information can be done by Googling CAD Alert Blog.
Mincheff Joyce-
Kudos to you and your project! I have often thought that something good will come out of my experience with the sociopath, something that will help other people. Now that I have met another victim, who knows what will happen.
The silence is the worst. I found it easier to be silent because nobody believed me anyways, even when I had solid tangible proof.
I moved on. You can call it escape, i call it : there is no one to fight against. I’ve seen victims fight for years in court. I don’t even hope for revenge. She just doesn’t exist in my expierience and i can be myself again. So why fight. I’d rather spend money on therapy, on people that can help me get trough process of understanding that what happened wasn’t real. I’m happy i can sometimes help people who just ended their relationships with sociopaths. To tell them what to do because it’s a nasty game especially when it’s just over. I wish everyone who sruggles here a lot of luck , peace of mind and love. There is a way out but it’s with a stream and not against it.
For some reason, I was compelled to save every bit of correspondence between us from June 2014 until present, The hardest part for me to see in all of this was the pathological liar, as I live in CA and because she meets every given trait of cluster b pathology, by my estimation, and from what I’ve witessed, she has no conscience, ability to feel empathy, compassion, remorse, shame, guilt, or regret. She is and has always been incredibly promiscuous, and since I found all this out, I’ve gone back to people who’ve known her since grade school, and found out by the time she was in middle school, she was a master manipulator. I am a very mellow person, and in fact up to the day before she discarded me, she consistently referred to me as “great guy” “nice guy”, etc. I’ve prayed about this for the last 10 months and 2 weeks. The major concern I have is this; they say if one is a genuinely nice guy, empathetic, just real, this makes them even more of a target, as the goal is to destroy, and I will say, I’ve felt pretty destroyed for the last 11 months. I don’t think this person should be allowed to get certified in anything having to do with counseling, as I gave her full access to me, divulging my fears, failures, and weaknesses, and after putting me on a pedestal for 18 months, she systematically dismantled me, exploited ever fear I’d confided, undermined any area I felt strong, perpetuated a complete con, and did it all under the guise of Christianity. When this person first contacted me, it was via facebook. I didn’t know it at the time, but they had been stalking me for a week or 2 on average, and after a little banter in a Christian singles group, she and I became friends, but I didn’t message her. A few weeks later, she messaged me, saying the Holy Spirit drew her to me. The fact is, she used God’s name and His Word to manipulate me for 22 months, and I finally saw it, during the discard, as part of the “love fraud” is to “undo everything they create in this illusion of love”
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Towards the end, after spending 18 months telling me God said I’m the one for her, but as another trademark of these cluster b types is to NEVER allow full security in the relationship, so she would say God says you’re the one, then a few days later, God says you’re not the one. The science behind all of this seemingly chaotic behavior is remarkable, as the whole thing is agenda driven, working with oxytocin levels, saratonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, all of them, as well as creating “false” emotions, cognitive dissonance, and much more. Here’s the thing, she kept claiming to have received “rhema” word from God, but as we all know the rhema from God is NEVER going to contradict the logos “written Word”, but everything she was saying God spoke to her was in diametric opposition to what was actually written in His Word. She knew this, as it was designed to be the final blow before the discard, and after spending almost 50 years sickness free, the zeal with which I worked to convince her she wasn’t hearing from God, coupled with what I didn’t realize the level of stress and what it had been doing to me on a physiological level, as well as cognitive, ultimately raised my heart rate, which in turn raised my blood pressure to an unhealthy level, and as of this writing I am under dr’s care for possible congestive heart failure, and severe edema in both upper and lower extremities, hands up to forearms, and my feet and ankles which has made it hard for me to keep my business running. This was her plan, and because she knew at the time she was saying “God said” that she was making it up, this is blatant intentional heresy, and makes her an actual blasphemer. As I said; I have documentation for everything, not to mention the fact she’s sent no less than 40 videos of herself masturbating and explaining her fantasies, usually comprised of us, and the domination of at least one other woman. In some she speaks of 5 women. What really concerns me though, is upon researching the ASPD/NPD disorder I had to cheat my mind some in order or her to NOT fit every point mentioned as “traits”, and one of those traits is the stories they tell are actually true, except where they’ve taken the hero or victim role, they are actually the predator/perpetrator, and some of what she’s told me involve her “abusive” ex, and his smear campaign included molesting at least one of the children, and since the discard I actually found him, and have learned an awful lot. Most people from her past don’t want to talk about her, and it seems some are scared, while others don’t want to relive “her” I guess, obviously something like this I can only speculate, but there are quite a few who I message wtih, and though they don’t say much, it’s clear they support my efforts for whatever reason. In any case, research has also shown the cluster b personality types who DO for some reason or another have a job (most apparently don’t) ad she like the others also receives the monthly almost 1k disability for what she says is schizophrenia and bipolar, which other research says is an often false diagnoses for what is actually comorbid narcissistic sociopath, but that’s not for me to say. I know this and it takes no degree, she is treacherous, as I did NOTHING but love, encourage, cheer on, support, this woman in every way, not once ever raising my voice much less my hand, and I just don’t its not me, but I’m telling u, she’s made many attempts to get me to, and I’m sure I know why, but it’s never been a consideration, fleeting even. The fact is though, if she manages to get the certs, knowing that unsolicited a few months before discard, I said in conversation, “You know, there are some people I just don’t like”. Her response, “I don’t like anyone.” Sound like counselor material. See screen shot. here….
If you have no trespass signs, they can be charged with misdemeaner or felony trespass.
I think about this all the time. I wish I had held my ex accountable in the divorce for his lying cheating stealing and manipulating.
But at the time of the divorce I was still so trauma bonded that I thought I had to be loyal to him. Plus I was afraid of triggering his rage by crossing him in any way.
I thought at the time it was best to just walk away. But now I see that leaves unfinished business and prevents closure. It is empowering to stand up to your abuser and hold him accountable. I did not do so and now many years later I am still emotionally stuck and unable to move on. Every day I replay the memories and wish I had made the choice to stand up to him.