How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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Like most of the United States, all of us at Lovefraud were horrified by the sordid story of child sexual abuse that emerged from Penn State University last week. Unlike most of the United States, we probably weren’t surprised.

That’s because all of us at Lovefraud have learned a very difficult lesson that millions of other people have not learned. This is the lesson: Evil exists.

For most of us, however, there was a time before the lesson. At that time we didn’t know evil existed—let alone what it looked like or what to do about it. So at that time, we were vulnerable to the sociopaths.

The sociopaths came into our lives, showering us with affection and maybe gifts, asking about our dreams and promising to make them come true. Kind of like the way Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach, treated some of the young boys from his Second Mile organization for disadvantaged youths.

Then, after a period of time, we glimpsed inappropriate or immoral behavior from the sociopath. Perhaps it was directed towards someone else. Perhaps it was directed toward us. In any event, we were shocked.

Did we really see what we thought we saw? Did that person, who we always thought was so wonderful, who had been treating us like gold, really do that? It’s so out of character. It can’t be true.

Kind of like the reaction many people probably had towards allegedly seeing or hearing about Jerry Sandusky abusing young boys.

Complicated issue

Many people at Penn State failed to take appropriate action to stop Sandusky from preying on young boys. All of the following people have been criticized:

  • Janitors who knew of an assault
  • Mike McQueary, the graduate assistant football coach who witnessed an attack
  • The Penn State athletic director and senior vice president, who failed to contact police
  • Penn State University President Graham Spanier, himself a family therapist
  • The legendary football coach Joe Paterno

But the issue is complicated. I am not making excuses for anyone, but experts say that any decision about what to do in this situation would have been fraught with psychological issues and societal pressures. An excellent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette raised the following points:

  • Did the officials who failed to report feel allegiance to a friend? Did they feel allegiance to Penn State football, or to the university?
  • What about the phenomenon of “diffusion of responsibility”? Did everyone think reporting was someone else’s responsibility?
  • What about the human brain, which is “remarkably adept at believing what it wants to believe—”and not believing what it doesn’t want to believe?

Read Penn State: Why doing the right thing isn’t as easy as it seems, on Post-Gazette.com.

Teachable moment

So how do we correct the problem? How can people be prepared to respond appropriately when they come face to face with evil? We need awareness, education and training:

  • Awareness: Evil exists.
  • Education: Evil is not always obvious. Sometimes, it masquerades as goodness.
  • Training: When we discover evil, what do we do?

Quite frankly, I think many of the people who could have reported the behavior of Jerry Sandusky were shocked into inaction. They saw or learned something unbelievable. They didn’t know what they saw or learned was possible. Then, with no guidance about what to do in such a situation, they decided there was less personal risk in doing nothing, or doing the minimal, or soft peddling what they learned, in case they were wrong.

Make no mistake: Doing the right thing in this situation involved enormous personal risk. It was the individual’s word against that of a scion of Penn State football. It was like going up against the church.

Perhaps, in the end, good will come out of this tragedy. What happened at Penn State has provided a teachable moment on a grand scale.

The child sexual abuse scandal has forever tarnished the legacy of the legendary Joe Paterno and the storied Penn State football team. It is a lesson of what can happen when people fail to do the right thing. The sudden and drastic downfall may be just what is needed to help people faced with similar situations in the future take the personal risk and go to the right authorities.

Doing nothing may be safe in the short term, but perilous in the long term. If Joe Paterno can be ruined by not doing enough, anyone can be ruined.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Louise

    This isn’t about the Penn State case, but have you all heard that it is now thought that Robert Wagner was responsible for Natalie Wood’s death? Not a total surprise, but it’s been 30 years. The Captain of the boat they were on has come out and said Wagner is responsible. Hmmmmm.

  2. Ox Drover

    Here’s another child molestation accusation.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063092/Second-university-sex-scandal-ball-boys-college-basketball-team-say-abused-coach.html

    Here’s one more:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063205/Hollywood-child-actor-casting-agent-spent-years-jail-kidnapping-molesting-year-old-boy.html

    Here’s a comment by a former victim of a coach when she was a kid.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062848/It-haunt-living-days-High-school-investigates-coach-accused-TV-journalist-sexual-abuse-1984.html

    Research shows that the AVERAGE number of crimes committed by “first offender” sex offenders is between 110 and 300! There is absolutely no telling what percentage of children are actually molested before they are 18. My guess is that Sandusky has HUNDREDS of victims that he has molested THOUSANDS OF TIMES over his entire adult life.

  3. Louise

    Oxy:

    Thanks for the articles.

    I just heard that Joe Paterno has lung cancer. They say it’s treatable…hmmmm. From what I have seen with lung cancer in my own family, it normally is not treatable. Only 15% of lung cancers are caught early enough to treat. And he’s pretty old. I will be surprised if he survives this…interesting.

  4. Stargazer

    I hope this case will at least help other victims and prevent others from becoming victims. It’s tragic how widespread this is and how many victims there are. It’s very upsetting. Reading all of this has made me take a look at the pedophile I once dated for a year and really see him for who he was. I was just dumbfounded when I looked him up years after we broke up and I found his prison record stating that he admitted under lie detector to molesting 24 kids. I just couldn’t believe it. I don’t think I ever integrated this in my mind with the sweet, ungrounded, narcissistic, creative, but “lovable” person I knew. I never would have thought him a sociopath or a child molester. But since this has come up, I’m taking another look. It’s amazing how well they hide it. Had I not googled him one day out of boredom, I would have never known the extent of his sickness. This guy had a very narcissistic side that would come out especially if he was drinking. This is why I left him and didn’t marry him when he proposed to me. I just knew there was something wrong with him. But I didn’t know the extent. I’m trying to make sense out of this now, many years after the fact. It’s like putting the pieces of a puzzle together. It’s easy to see how anyone can be so mistrustful of people. These spaths are everywhere! They hold normal jobs, have normal relationships (relatively speaking) and are often contributing members of society. I just feel sick reading all these stories about more victims coming out.

  5. Stargazer

    Looking back at my relationship with this guy, the child molester, there was only one thing he did that was unforgivable. In one of his narcissistic fits, he got mad that the cat we adopted for him didn’t like him (should have been a sign). He picked her up and threw her across the room. That was the day I devised my plan to leave him. Prior to that, there was no violence, no abuse. But I just felt that he wasn’t all there, that he was wrapped up in himself and didn’t realize the selfish things he would do. For instance, he went to visit his folks in Seattle. He called me and told me how he had bought me the perfect gift that I would like so much. It turned out he had bought me a Joe Montana puzzle. I was an old 49ers fan, but a puzzle for a 33-y.o. woman seemed like a juvenile gift. However, he had bought a very expensive silk tie for his boss. This was very upsetting to me. On my birthday, he gave me a card and my name was spelled wrong. It was little things like this. I felt deep down like I deserved better. But in other ways he was very kind to me, and we had a lot of fun right up till the end. I was somewhat financially dependent on him, though, living in his house and paying very little rent. So he helped me economically get on my feet. It was kind of a mixed bag. All in all, I view that relationship in a positive light as a learning experience. I didn’t feel extremely traumatized by him. He never treated me horribly. He just wasn’t capable of the type of love I felt I deserved.

    Never in a million years, though, would I have known about the child molestation. We had a normal sex life. I would have never guessed. The whole thing just shakes up my reality.

  8. Louise

    KatyDid:

    That’s because I posted here immediately after hearing the INITIAL news report where the Captain of the boat they were on was saying that Wagner was responsible. After that, the report you are hearing came out. Even if Wagner wasn’t responsible, the investigators think there is something there…enough to reopen the case.

    http://www.firstcoastnews.com/life/entertainment/article/227174/19/Local-Boat-Capt-I-Lied-about-Night-Natalie-Wood-Drownedare

  9. Ox Drover

    I just read where Sandusky’s charity is disbanding and passing its assets on to other charitable groups….and also Paterno has cancer and has a short time ago sold his share of their mutual home to his wife for $1—does this mean that when the victims sue the charity, Paterno, Sandusky etc. that there will be nothing left to pay them with? Looks like it to me.

    On NPR tonight there was an interview with a woman from Penn State and she was talking about how all these “GOOD MEN” had failed and the interviewer asked her if she STILL thought they were “good men” after what they did. She sort of fumbled a bit but said “Yes.” Except for Sandusky of course.

    They also mentioned that the football program brings in a NET PROFIT of $53 MILLION which supports all the other sports activities of the college, which has 44,000 students. There was an interview with the president of the college asking about the drinking at the games and the tail gate parties (which is apparently knee-walking) by the big donors and he had come to the college with an ANTI-DRINKING message, but had “shut up” about it after the big donors didn’t like his preaching against the open drinking at the games and in the “sky boxes”

    Apparently some big survey of colleges listed Penn State as one of the top TEN schools (one year THE TOP) “party harty” schools with the majority of kids being ” REGULAR binge drinkers.”

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