Last week, the Josh Powell story exploded in the media. Powell, of Graham, Washington, was supposed to have a supervised visit with his two young sons. Instead, he slammed the door in the face of the social worker, hacked the boys with a hatchet, and then blew up his house. Powell and the two sons died.
I watched three news shows about the tragedy—Dateline on MSNBC, 20/20 on ABC, and Dr. Drew on HLN (Headline News). All of the programs reflected shock, horror and outrage. Dr. Drew Pinsky did actually call Josh Powell a psychopath. But what struck me about the coverage was that this tragedy was almost predictable. All the warning signs were there, if anyone had a complete picture of what was going on, and if appropriate people had known what they were looking at.
The lessons boil down to three: Knowing how to recognize a sociopath, knowing what sociopaths are capable of doing, and acting on intuition.
Josh Powell, the sociopath
Josh Powell clearly exhibited sociopathic behavior. He first came into public view with the disappearance of his wife, Susan, on December 7, 2009. Josh Powell’s ludicrous story was that he left the family home at midnight to take his two sons, aged 2 and 4 at the time, camping in the freezing desert, and when he returned, Susan was gone. He assumed that she went off with another man.
Before then, however, Susan had confided in several friends and family members that Josh was controlling. He was psychologically and emotionally abusive. Susan was asked why she didn’t take the boys and leave. She was afraid to—Josh had threatened that she would have the boys “over my dead body.”
So where did Josh’s sociopathy come from? It appears to be the classic volatile mix of heredity and upbringing.
Last September, Steve Powell, Josh’s father, was arrested and charged with child pornography and voyeurism. Josh and his sons were living with Steve Powell at the time, which prompted the court to take the boys away from Josh and put them in the custody of Susan’s parents, Chuck and Judy Cox.
But that was just the latest, most apparent display of Steven Powell’s personality disorder. Court documents from the 1992 divorce case of Steven and Terrica Powell indicate that Steven Powell had always been a sexual pervert, and taught his sons to disrespect women.
The documents also reveal that at 16, Josh Powell was already heading down the same path. He threatened his mother with a butcher knife. He killed his sister’s pet gerbil. He attempted suicide. And as Josh grew bigger and stronger, even Steven Powell admitted that he didn’t know how to handle his son.
Read: Divorce documents shed light on Josh Powell’s troubles, on SLTrib.com.
Here’s the point: Based on both documentary evidence of the past, and the abusive behavior Susan Powell disclosed to friends and relatives, Josh Powell was clearly a sociopath. It doesn’t matter how he became a sociopath. All that matters is that he was one.
Sociopaths and custody battles
So what does it mean when one party in a child custody battle is a sociopath? Here’s what courts and child protective agencies should know:
• Despite their proclamations to the contrary, sociopaths do not love their children. They view children as possessions, and they feel entitled to do what they want with their possessions.
• Sociopaths are accomplished actors. They are capable of keeping up a charade of appropriate, even loving, behavior, as long as it suits their purpose.
• In child custody disputes, sociopaths are not interested in the welfare of the children. They are only interested in winning.
• If sociopaths have been violent in the past, chances are good that they will be violent in the future.
• Sociopaths do not want to submit to authority. Some sociopaths would rather lash out violently than submit. Therefore, it seems to me that one of the most dangerous times in a child custody case is when a sociopath loses in court.
Losing a round
I don’t know everything that went on in the custody dispute between Josh Powell and Chuck and Judy Cox, the parents of his missing wife. But from the media reports, I see two glaring problems.
First of all, Josh Powell had just lost a round in the custody battle for his sons.
In a status hearing on February 1, 2012, the court was told that a psychologist who completed an evaluation of Josh believed he had made improvements in his life, because he no longer lived in his father’s home and had been cooperative with visitation requirements. Still, the psychologist had become aware of disturbing information about Josh, and had recommended a psychosexual evaluation. The judge ruled that Josh’s sons would remain with the Coxes, and he was ordered to undergo the evaluation, which would include a polygraph test.
Read Josh Powell to undergo psychosexual evaluation; 2 boys will remain with grandparents, on DeseretNews.com.
Yet the court made no changes to the visitation arrangements. Initially, when the Coxes were first awarded custody, Josh had to see his children at a secure childcare facility. But apparently, because of the notoriety of the Powell case, his visits became disruptive to other families, so Josh was allowed to have supervised visits in his home.
And who was the supervisor? She appeared on 20/20. Although she may have been nice, dependable and competent, she was also a middle-aged, out-of shape woman who would have been no match for a young man if things got ugly. Even Chuck Cox worried about her, and stated on TV that perhaps she should have had extra security with her.
Reunification
The second glaring problem in this case: The court’s goal was to reunite the boys with their father.
The judge reaffirmed this goal in the last custody hearing. The case plan developed by Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) was geared towards reunification of Josh Powell and his sons.
The question is: Why?
Josh Powell was the only “person of interest” in the disappearance of Susan Powell. Rumors were flying that he would soon be arrested for her murder. Josh was known to be abusive. Police in Utah had found disturbing information about him that caused them concern about the welfare of the children. The man was likely dangerous.
DSHS representatives were interviewed by Dori Monson of KIRO-FM radio in Seattle, Washington. They defended their actions and procedures. The bottom line? They were following court orders. Listen to the interview:
[mp3j track=”http://icestream.bonnint.net/seattle/kiro/2012/02/02092012141232_1.mp3″]The main problem, at least in this case, appears to be that judges don’t comprehend how dangerous sociopaths can be, and how court decisions can turn deadly.
Intuition
Many warnings were available in this case, but were not recognized and acted upon. Perhaps the biggest warnings were the gut feelings, the sense of dread, the intuitive fear, experienced by many, many people.
In the TV interviews, several friends and relatives of Susan Powell described being creeped out about Josh Powell. And both Judy and Chuck Cox, the grandparents, said that they had “bad feelings” before that last fateful visitation. Chuck wondered that perhaps the visit should be skipped. Judy felt the same way, but was worried that they’d “get in trouble” if they didn’t send the boys to their father.
Even the two boys didn’t want to see their father on February 5, 2012. But the grandparents did what they thought they should do. The boys went to see their father, and we all know what happened next.
I am not blaming the grandparents at all. They are heartbroken. But perhaps they should have risked “getting in trouble” and kept the boys home. I’m sure they wish they did.
Here’s what we all need to know: Our intuition is designed to protect us. Fear is our friend, and it is based on intuition. If we ever have a really bad feeling about anyone or anything, we should trust ourselves and take appropriate action to get away.
If the court really knew what sociopaths were capable of, and if many people had listened to their instincts, those boys might still be alive.
More about the case
Watch:
A family’s story on Dateline NBC
Steve Downing, the lawyer for Chuck and Judy Cox, talked to local media about his impressions of Josh Powell. He is obviously describing a sociopath.
[youtube_sc url=http://youtu.be/FQhz_aVTnow] [youtube_sc url=http://youtu.be/lSOP4hOXPb4]
How in the name can you “accidentally” discipline a child to death, unless you abuse the child?
My parents swatted me a few times when I grew up: but that was a one intentional slap on my buttocks: one, short and hard. And I remember my mom slapping me one time in the face with her flat hand.
It was discipline enough… no need to accidentally kill me in the process.
I’m not entirely astounded at Alina Powell’s pitiful attempts to defend her dead brother. Of course she’s deeply in denial; there isn’t a shred of doubt about that. But I’ve got to remember her background! Like Josh himself, she was raised in that same crazy family where all kinds of abuse must have gone on. So heaven only knows what might have happened to her in that family with Steve Powell as her father. Even if it didn’t, heaven only knows what might have been going on around her as a child that she found it necessary to practice being in denial about!
On that topic alone, several significant revelations emerged from that Dateline program titled A Family’s Story. One came from Jennifer, the more realistic of the sisters. At 3:56 in segment 1, Jennifer remarked that “I was about fourteen when I kinda woke up and realized that my dad is whacko! He was on a different trajectory, and not a good one!”
The other revelation emerged when Chuck Cox was researching documents describing the elder Powells’ divorce. This is at 1:48 in segment 5. After discovering that Josh had attempted to hang himself as a teenager, besides threatening his mother with a butcher knife, Cox related how Josh had also killed little Alina’s hamster by smashing it against the side of the cage. Their mother was naturally outraged by this, but their father’s response, according to the documents, was to remark, quote: “She just does not understand teenage humor.”
Teenage “humor”? Unbelievable! But this reflects on all four of the people involved. The mother’s response was normal of course, in stark contrast to the father, who sounds just as “whacko” as his elder daughter Jennifer said he was. What it says about Josh hardly needs comment, except (as Cox himself remarked, more or less) that sadistic brutality toward animals in youth is a well known precursor to the later behavior of serial killers.
But I also have to wonder what poor little Alina “got out of” this ugly incident, which must have been all the more devastating to her because of her age. I think she was probably between five and seven years old at the time—no more than seven, anyway—while Josh would have been between fourteen and sixteen. If Alina is in denial about Josh’s glaringly obvious guilt for disposing of his wife, it looks as if she’s also in denial, and has been ever since she was quite a little girl, about Josh’s capacity for cruelty and violence, even destroying a pet that Alina must have loved.
Being the youngest of the Powells’ children, Alina could also have been the most impressionable. Her experience growing up in that family must have been quite different from Jennifer’s.
Jennifer was the eldest. She was eighteen when their parents divorced. So she’d experienced her parents’ marriage in its earlier stages, when it, and her father’s behavior, might have appeared more normal. As time went on, her brothers were born and started to grow up, I’m sure things got steadily worse, her father grew more negative and more abusive, Josh’s behavior in particular was a problem, there was all the business with porn and heaven knows what other craziness going on in that home. As unpleasant as it must have been, Jennifer did have the advantage of seeing all this, and her younger siblings as well, including Josh, from a somewhat more “mature” perspective. Indeed, it could have been partly because she had seen her family functioning better in her early years that Jennifer at fourteen was able to see the deterioration and realize that her father was, in her own words, “whacko.”
Since Alina was the youngest—she’s about eleven years younger than Jennifer—whatever craziness was happening in that family was well under way by the time she was born. She would never have seen anything different. From her viewpoint as a child, she would have seen all this nuttiness as “normal,” even though it wasn’t! On top of that, Josh was her eldest brother and there’s a good chance she “looked up” to him in a way that Jennifer never did, regardless of his faults. So I’m not surprised if Alina came out of this family situation with a very skewed perspective, in a way that the more clearheaded Jennifer did not. I’m tempted to think of Jennifer and Alina as “Sense and Sensibility.”
I feel sorry for Alina. I’d be interested to know what kind of boyfriends she’s been finding for herself, because with her overly forgiving outlook I have a bad feeling she’s just the kind of person to end up with abusive partners.
Star~ I can honestly say I have been through the same range of feelings and attitudes as you. I’m Aries, dog sign but my mom is Scorpio, rat and we’re extremely close. My beloved Italian grandmother read coffee grounds, very accurately, and when I was a toddler she and my mom had me “read” a cup of coffee grounds that had been sitting upside down. I told them what I saw in the cup (I don’t remember that part), but it came true and they never read coffee or tea cups again. My mom still won’t tell me, but being devoutly Catholic she says we shouldn’t be doing stuff like that anyway.
I cant help believing I have a sixth sense. My grandmother has come to me several times throughout my life from the afterlife. I think having this link or bond to the spiritual mysteries has been a driving force in my life and directed me down the paths I’ve chosen. Why did that crap with a spath happen to me? It taught me A LOT! I can learn so much about myself now and grow. I do believe my disordered personality traits served me well in leaving the spath, just like in your situation.
I got a restraining order and he fought it. But I demanded to go through with it and the judge thankfully agreed. I’m sure his long criminal record and prior charges of stalking and other restraining orders helped, otherwise I think his pity ploy to the judge might have worked in his favor. He played the suicide card almost DAILY!! When the judge was looking at me the spath was glaring at him and then glaring at me intensely, his face beet red. I was so surprised to see his face red, I felt it was a sign of shame or guilt or embarrassment on his part. I had never seen that depth of emotion from him before, I was convinced he couldn’t feel shame or embarrassment (and yet I had no clue he was a sociopath). My God, all the signs were there but I just didn’t know what a sociopath was until 2 years later. The restraining order was for a year and except for a few attempts by him to be spotted by me driving around I have completely been indifferent and uninterested. He got his other victims to drop their defenses by coming around after the break up or protective order and they always fell for it, like as if nothing ever happened. I was determined not to follow the same example as these other victims. I acted like I couldn’t care less to see the spath driving around where I was, and it worked. It was a touch of gray rock (which I had already been doing unknowingly before the restraining order) and a touch giving him a taste of his own medicine (cold disconnected, sociopathic indifference).
I say do what ever it takes to get away from them even if it means employing THEIR techniques, becoming or showing our spath sides. Yes, it served me well.
BTW, about his face turning red. I figured out it was not shame or embarrassment, it was pure rage. The courtroom was packed with other people getting restraining orders and everyone roared with laughter when I told the judge he had given me an STD. Now I broke down crying at the shameful reaction of these people but when I looked up, the spath no longer had a red face. He looked exonerated, as if the people were siding with him and I was the one on trial since I was being judged harshly. Thank goodness the judge shut everyone up and told the spath what he did to me was not funny but tragic. He turned red with rage again.
I went through deep depression, confusion, rage, you name it after it was all over. I have had to face a lot of unpleasant truths about others and myself. I believe we have to go through our ordeals with sociopaths so that we can see ourselves for what we are and do what we need to better ourselves. I do feel stronger and it helps that I have this community to guide me through so many realizations. I can actually feel myself liking me more. 🙂
Ugh, sorry I went on so long!
Stargazer: thank you for your sympathies.
It was just a horrible time in the lives of my family.
You are right about the ‘sociopathic discard’ in reverse.
Disconnect and put your energy elsewhere. Yes.
Foolmeonce: Thank you, also for your sympathies…
you are right, even when you are taught about ppaths/spaths, the journey can be quite a daunting one, to say the least. We will never be able to understand the ‘un-understandable’ so the best thing to do is focus on ourselves and our own health and own lives. INDIFFERENCE has served me very well in the past few months.
And yes, there IS pure evil alive, breathing and walking among us. We may even have something evil sleeping in our beds at night, next to us…although that could make someone very suspect of EVERYONE, to a certain extent, once you have become ‘learned’ in the ways of the ppath/spath, you can see those red flags so easily! It’s THOSE PEOPLE we need to exclude from our lives, right from the very beginning. It’s the case where ‘hindsight’ becomes ‘foresight’.
Keep that ‘foresight’ upper in your mind but don’t let it overtake you so that THAT CAUTION overtakes your life as well. There is a thin line to walk in these situations.
A news reporter called my home, at about 4 am, one morning, just prior to the trial of this ‘monster’ who murdered my Grandson…asking me this question: “How do you feel?” Hmm…I said: “How would YOU feel? And you call me at 4 am to ask me this question, with no consideration for my family at all. THIS will not happen again: you leave my family ALONE or I will MAKE YOU LEAVE THEM ALONE. Next, there exists pure evilness in this world and this creep is just that. Who can murder a small child and throw it away like a bag of garbage? Only pure evil can do that. So don’t call me anymore. Your intrusion in our lives is almost as evil as what has happened.”
From that point on, they did leave us alone to our grief in private. I just think the ‘sensationalism’ that media puts forth is absolutely un necessary and promulgating that evilness by giving it so much attention. They need to stop reporting some of these horrid, ugly, in humane things and start focusing on real things, that would actually help people find different thoughts. Don’t we, as a society, have a responsibility to make sure we aren’t ‘growing evilness?
Have a good day you all…
I was deeply moved by the story you shared with us about yuor grandson, Duped. I’m so sorry. It’s a loss I think you’ll Never (edited for typo) get over.
darwinsmom: thanks so much.
no, it’s a loss you never get over but the pain ‘deadens’ with the passage of time….somewhat…it becomes ‘tolerable’ although it never goes away….
And my point STILL IS: This ppath in my world actually THINKS he can run his vile game ON ME?! Nope…not happening. Not anymore….to me, “ITS” actions are no different that the ‘entity’ that murdered my Grandson…the spathness only has come out in different ways…
Happy Day darwinsmom…xxoo
Dupey – It was hard to read about your grandson. I have never felt that kind of pain..I have no words of comfort. I know that was difficult for you to share, but a burden shared is a burden lightened…..hug.
hens: you sweet, dear person…
thank you for the ((hug)) this morning…
there are no words to describe that kind of pain.
the pain quickly turns to indifference because that is the only way to deal with it, hence: PTSD and MDD; right? Although, I must say, over the past month, my burdens have been ‘lightened’ somewhat. it’s amazing how things start to fall in place once you avail yourself of the well of knowledge we have at our disposals; hm?
Happy day to you hens…
thank you so much for always being here.
Dupey
xxoo
Dupey ~ I can not begin to imagine the pain that you and your daughter live with. I lived with the fear that something like that could happen to my Grandson, and that fear was crippling. You are such a strong woman, I admire you so much.
I know you have spoken about how proud you are of your dear daughter and how much you would like to visit with her. I am going to pray a special prayer that you will be able to do that soon.
((MiLo)) Thanks for the hug and prayers today. They are so appreciated. Thanks for the ‘admiration’…sometimes I don’t feel very strong but I have always had to ‘keep it together’ for the kids; know what I mean?
I took that bad and ugly situation and made something different from it. In the state where this happened, I started a program that went all through the school system in that particular state. It was called “The Purple Ribbon Campaign” and it was dedicated to the memory of my Grandson, Christopher.
I was asked to speak in front of the statewide PTA, which I did. I was never so nervous in my life! There were over 3,000 people in attendance! I spoke to them about the evilness our children face everyday. And, how to educate them and make them more safer by awareness.
So, in that particular state, there is now a program in place, which teaches young children how to better protect themselves. It is in place for grades K-high school.
When my Grandson was murdered, my family and I had the love and attention and graciousness of so many people…so many supporters…the entire city was draped in purple ribbons…every street post; every lamp…even all the sheriff and city police had purple ribbons on their cars and circled the courthouse, while waiting for the verdict. Then, the police department took up a collection and bought Christopher the ‘prime spot’ underneath the American flag at the city cemetery, and provided the headstone, that states: “One Child is too Many”. And it has his photo on it, hugging his teddy bear. There was not any purple ribbon to be found ANYWHERE in that city, for a long time – it’s because all the purple ribbons in the whole city were out hanging on the street, somewhere…!
Yes, I need to visit my family. I have to ask my doctors about traveling…it is so very far away and such a long journey…
Thanks for the prayers, MiLo: your support means a lot to me. You have mine as well.
I am very proud of my daughter and in fact, SHE is the strongest person I know! I derive immense strength from HER!
Love, Dupey xxoo