This week the Connecticut Medical Examining Board restored me to the full practice of medicine. Due to the fact that my ex-husband Barry Lichtenthal impersonated a physician and examined female patients in a clinic that I directed, my license was restricted. I am not going to retell the full story today but I am going to comment on some things I have kept silent about. For more details of the story you can read Barry Lichtenthal: Sexual predator ruins the career of Dr. Liane Leedom. Donna Andersen is an excellent journalist and did her own investigation in order to report the story. She uncovered details even I was unaware of.
I want to address the question of whether or not I was Barry’s “accomplice” and the question of what I was aware of in terms of the goings on. The precise answer to the question is that I was an unwitting accomplice. I knew that he told people he was a retired doctor and that he called himself “Dr. Taylor.”
This behavior on his part began shortly after the clinic opened. The first I was aware of it was when I was negotiating a contract with an insurance company. He got on the other line and started schmoozing with the executive. I do not remember exactly what he said but he told the man he was a retired doctor and proceeded to tell funny and entertaining stories. Although I laughed, I was disgusted at this because it seemed infantile on his part and a waste of time. I did not understand this was his “foot in the door” with me and these stories.
I correctly recognized these stories as being pathological lies (pseudologica fantastica). However, I did not understand that all people who are pathological liars are predators. I am now sure that this is the case, though if you read the Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley, he says that not all pathological liars are psychopaths.
I thought Barry told these stories because he has an ego problem and was threatened by his wife’s status. Again that interpretation was correct, but again I missed the significance of it. I let it go because I thought his pathological lies were harmless entertaining stories that no one really believed any way. Several patients indicated to me they were aware that the stories were entertaining fabrications.
I never told anyone Barry was a doctor. In fact I told every patient I was the only physician at the practice. I realize now this must have been very upsetting and confusing for some people who were being told one thing by me and another thing by Barry. Since he is a professional con artist who do you think was believed?
Because of this terrible judgment on my part, I deserved all the punishment that I received. Since I was part of other people’s victimization, I sought to do everything I could to make amends. The victims were compensated by my malpractice insurance carrier after I provided hours of truthful testimony regarding what happened. The officials of the insurance company believed my explanation that I never intended any fraudulent or criminal activity. I made the wrong decision regarding coping with my husband’s story telling.
Shortly after Barry’s arrest, I had the good fortune to speak with Annie Mcguire from fraudaid.com. It was she who made me aware of Donna Andersen. She and I also had a discussion of the unwitting accomplices of psychopaths. She said this is very common and pointed out that psychopaths could not do what they do without witting and unwitting accomplices. She has written step by step instructions for what to do if you are the unwitting accomplice to financial fraud.
I am speaking out about the fact that I was an unwitting accomplice to fraud to help to bring attention to this phenomenon. Psychopaths con and manipulate people into helping them do their dirty work and sometimes also into doing their dirty work for them. If we can raise public awareness of psychopathy and stop non-psychopaths from helping psychopaths we will be able to do a great deal of prevention. Do not ever help a psychopath in any way or you will be tricked into becoming an accomplice.
Now that gets me to telling the rest of the story. You might be wondering, “What ever happened to Barry Lichtenthal?” It is no surprise that he went to Connecticut State prison where he continued to tell his pathological lies. Prison staff members became his unwitting accomplices when they too did not prevent him from calling himself “doctor” or “doc.”
A law enforcement official told me that it was not illegal for Barry to call himself “doctor” in prison. He said this after I verbally reprimanded him for allowing this to go on. I told him I believe prisoners like Barry need to have a special designation “psychologically dangerous” so that prison staff will not be psychologically harmed by them. It seems odd that if a prisoner is more physically dangerous than average, staff members are warned, but there is no appreciation of the concept of psychological dangerousness.
Now enter another set of accomplices, family members. Even after they knew that Barry is what he is because I told them while also fully explaining the concept of psychopathy; and even after they witnessed his destruction of my life, members of his family participated in his seduction of his next woman. They sent her flowers on his behalf while he was incarcerated. They also did nothing to warn her even though I begged them to.
I was told by inside sources that the prison nurse who married Barry at one point believed he was a doctor. But I have not spoken with her myself to verify this. Donna and I have known about Barry’s new relationship because we both received letters from him while he was incarcerated, and the letters were not all stamped with the prison stamp. I received several letters addressed in a woman’s handwriting and postmarked “Hartford, CT.” Upon seeing the letters I knew that he had yet another person manipulated. I did my own investigation and found out he married a nurse who worked in the prison.
Donna and I did not write about our investigation of Barry and his marriage to the prison nurse because although I have all the documentation of the events that went on in the prison, we have no proof Barry and the nurse were actually married. Donna is a very good journalist and you can trust that she will not tell a story without possessing proof. For more information regarding Barry’s recent activities see Probation department wants access to sex offender’s computer
I pray every day that Barry, now in his 60s has mellowed and become less predatory. I believe that the best person to deal with him is an experienced prison nurse so I hope that situation is going well. I also pray there will be no more victims and no more accomplices.
Dr. Leedom,
I feel your pain quite a bit. My husband physically abused me until all of our children were taken into foster care. On the one hand, I am responsible for not taking the measures to remove him from our life. But on the other hand, he made life so miserable if I tried to get away that after so many attempts, I was numb to any sort of reasonable ideas. I could not tell up from down, and although I knew right from wrong, I overlooked much of what I knew to be wrong in the hopes of sparing us any further pain. I have our youngest back in my personal care again, but the rest of our children were not mine biologically so I have “no rights to them” and that is very hard. Even though I have made obvious strides in his absence to right the wrongs, there is so much shame to live down everyday. Just when I begin to forget the lies that have been attached to me, I run into an old acquaintance that remembers the old way of looking at things. That’s rough. It’s very hard to explain to people who have skewed stories from HIS twisted perspective in their memory banks that that was all BS, especially when these old acquaintances retain such a glowing view of my sociopath husband. It makes me sick.
i realized this morning that i will get over what the spath did to me – how she damaged my trust of other people. i will get over it, i should try to get over it (that’s called ‘hope’ folks!), and i can get over it!
Dear BeAware
Welcome to Lovefraud—and I am so sorry that you have endured what you have at the hands of an abuser to bring you here. But now that you are here, there is support and knowledge and knowledge = power and strength!
Yes, it is painful when we run into people who believe the smear campaign that they spread about us, but YOU know the truth, and ultimately what YOU think about YOU is the most important thing. I’m glad that you have your child back, and I know it must be painful not to have the others, but at maybe right now one child gives you a chance to focus on taking care of that child AND to focusing on taking care of YOURSELF.
Read and learn, post and heal…there’s great support here. Again, Welcome. and God bless.
Dear Bellabell,
Welcome to lovefraud. While it may not seem like you “won” when he leaves you for another woman, but actually you did! YOU WON! He is no longer there to torture you. You are FREE now, to heal and to grow. I’m sorry for your pain but the pain will pass, I promise you it will if you learn and grow. You will emerge on the other side of the pain a better and stronger person, happier!~
You need him like you need a large boil on the bottom of your foot!
Again, welcome! and God bless.
Hi Eden and Roses,
posted on this thread as the thread – cutting ourselves some slack, is getting too long and the file is not opening easily,at least at my end.
have been reading your posts and Eden thanks once again for the timely advice few days ago when it was late at night in your part of the world.
Meeting the wife and ex’s and getting validation does help us in healing, I have also thought that it can give us huge relief that it was them, their nonsense, their game and we were duped.
Eden you knew the guy for 9.5 months and me for one year. I think we saw the red flags soon enough and I spoke to Oxy and came to this site and we were saved and should consider ourselves blessed.
Mine is an N, told to him by his therapist, though he thinks there is nothing wrong with him. I remember when he told me he had cheated 6 times in the past on the wife, he said it with such a blank look on his face, there was no remorse, regret, guilt, shame and I thought he did not want to dwell much into it and gave it a pass. He did not say that I feel so bad, that I did this to my wife and family, nothing of that sort, instead he kept saying, I don’t know what happened to me, I cannot recognise that part of me, I do not want to see that part of me again, more like he was saying it was a mistaken identity or that he was posssessed rather than accepting that he was impulsive and did not care for his family and jumped into bed with the women when he was overseas at meetings and then went home and was the lovely husband and father as if nothing had happened. this went on for few years, and as Oxy said one can cheat once as a mistake or wrong decision, but 6 times !!, there has to be something intrinsically wrong there.
to think that this guy is such a renowned specialist in a world famous medical centre in the USA and behind that medical profession is a man whose moral values are non-existent.
Oxy has drilled it into my head and she is 100% right, that rule no 1 is : honesty from the man, if he does not fit into rule #1, all other attributes are meaningless.
I feel so fatigued by the whole experience, there were so many red flags even quite at the start and I thought it was just his way of expressing his love, when it was all fake. I once wrote to friend in Canada about him and showed her one of his emails to me, and she said ”“ Gosh, he sure can write well for a guy, looks like his words are right out of a novel” she was right, they were from a novel, the novel named “Narcisssists play book”. often when we were close he would say the words ” I am yours, you are mine”, the first time I thought it came spontaneously, however, later, it was as if the words were pre-programmed, everytime we were cosy with each other ”“ the same words were said.
I was so stupid, how I got fooled.
Roses and Eden, I think we are at about the same stage in healing, I think we are making decent progress.
you both and others here have been so helpful, it would have been very difficult to come out of the fog, without your help.
thanks again
petite
Petitie,
I understand what you’re saying here and I appreciate every word of it. you’ve really come a long way though.
I want to share something with you after having read a lot of articles last night along with the comments and coming to a very powerful realization INSIDE myself.. and yet another this morning while turning this issue over and over with the O for Umbrella issue with Questy via email.
You’re a very intelligent woman. Self made and successful and so is your ex.
I come from a background of massively intelligent people. largely SPATH. They are also “wealthy”.
The O for Umbrella article awhile back really got me to thinking about how the spaths do what they do and the concepts of evil. Quest and I don’t agree on some things, while I think we do on others. It’s interesting to delve into the mechanisms behind the Spaths machinations. HOW they twist and tie the knots in our heads.
Those emails as well as this blog, have been a major blessing for me (along with therapy and support of friends, etc).
So anyway, I was responding to one of Questy’s emails and while responding, something VERY profound dawned on me. Now this goes to the argument that spaths are logical and are gifted at the art of philosophical gymnastics. That isn’t verbatim, however, that is how Questy sees it. And that is TRUE….but while responding to that, what came to mind were events from childhood and my massively intelligent spathy fam and their endless debates that would go on for HOURS at a time at times.
Philosophical gymnastics, VERBAL gymnastics. I rarely participated in these debates but observed them. It occurred to me that while the beginning of these debates SOUNDED REASONABLE AND LOGICAL….as it went ON, it became ridiculous …..now why is that? Because the logic was forfeited BY THE NEED TO WIN!!!! WHY did I not see this with my spaths who were also extremely intelligent and gifted at verbal and philosophical gymnastics? Because I was EMOTIONALLY INVESTED……….I had emotional distance during my observations. I was NEVER intimate with my spath fam. It also occurred to me that if I had been able to get past the INITIAL VERBAL GYMNASTICS (at the beginning of the relationshit), it would have been EASY to see that the NEED TO WIN (on whatever level) replaced logic and served up a huge plate of emotional ineptitude. I allowed my emotions to part ways with my logical side. I approached my relationshits in a DREAM LIKE STATE. I was NOT in my right mind to OBSERVE what was happening and to see that eventually the “debate” turned from logical reasoning to the NEED TO WIN…..well this goes for the emotional side too.
It is from THIS perspective that has opened up a whole new way of looking at what happened to me. It is also a piece DIRECTLY from childhood that could have spared me spathdom had I been OBSERVING the separation between logic and the need to WIN. Even into adulthood, these debates were inevitably ruinous, ridiculous, and even grossly amusing. Not for what they were, but for what they were NOT. On this level a spath gives himself/herself away almost IMMEDIATELY when viewed from a LOGICAL perspective. How many red flags were waving in the wind with that first WTF moment out of spaths mouth? Almost from the BEGINNING.
This is a HUGE HUGE HUGE enlightenment for me! (Questy THANK YOU FOR YOUR WILLINGNESS TO BANTER!).
There IS something to be said for keeping your emotions out of an initial encounter with anyone and it is a SAFETY precaution when viewed from an OBSERVERS PERSPECTIVE AND WITH ONE’S LOGICAL SIDE IN FULL GEAR!!!!
When observing these debates with spathy fam, it was so easy to see how ludicrous their need to win was. RIGHT AWAY.
I could also look at this from an emotional level as well. My last spath did not move in for “win” right away. He was an extremely intelligent, very STEALTH, PATIENT spath. A LOT of them are. This added another dimension for the “need to win”. It’s more like playing chess for him, rather than being a runner attempting to win an olympic race. He was EXACTLY like my spath bio father and sister and brother, BUT had I been paying attention to this, it would have been GLARINGLY OBVIOUS within the first initial contact or two, how LUDICROUS his intellectual patience and attempts to lure REALLY WERE. In hindsight, and in a flood of memories from initial contact with spath, it was EXACTLY like those debates from bio fam. Those wtf moments were ALMOST IMMEDIATE!!!!! As was the way he ABUSED ME because my defenses were down, logic was GONE, as was my ability to OBSERVE what was happening.
What a MONUMENTAL discovery for me!!!
I wonder, Petitie, given as intelligent as you are and your spath is……..does any of this resonate with you at all? I think this element of ludicrousness comes into play in EVERY facet of their lives, no matter HOW good they are at what they do , nor HOW much money they make. My bio father was a higher up in a government agency for over forty five years, but in TRUTH his talents were LIMITED by his inability to insert emotional intelligence with any genuineness whatsoever. He was able to MANIPULATE those who were NOT merely observing the way my bio father did business from an intellectual perspective. He preyed upon the innocent who could NEVER have been onto him without some sort of understanding about his psychological dynamics, which adds another critical element into why it’s so important in what Donna and so many others are attempting to do in educating the public about sociopaths.
My father, as far as I know, is VERY WELL respected STILL in the governmental arena to which he served, but just as equally, there are those who HATE my father with a murderous passion. The ONE time he attempted to leave the government (massive grandiosity and entitlement issues), to start a private business doing what he did in his position with the government, lasted only SIX MONTHS because of MASSIVE improprieties and allegations of sexual harassment. Kind of makes ya wonder about the government, whom I believe still abides the by the “good ole boy” system. Was my father really that good in his job, or was his ass covered at every level. Probably a bit of both.
I’m rambling now, but I am curious as to whether or not any of this resonates with you.
This is a critical element of understanding the evil machinations behind how spaths do what they do and in my healing.
Roses
one/joy/hope/step at a time – tow wander….~! see all it took was standing on your head ~!
Petite,
You are so very welcome. Whether you know it or not, you have helped me as well. I am so glad that I was there for you at a time you needed it most. I was able to see that the red flags were in fact just that, once I was out of the relationship. I questioned things at the moment they had occurred or come about, but the speed and acuracy within his amazingly convincing explanations of things, or the way I may have “misunderstood” what he was putting across, was very affective in causing me to believe in him and to let it go and not give it another thought.
We cannot let ourselves believe that we were weak or ignorant. If you are like me, this is not a common occurance in our lives. For me, as far as I know, it had been my first experience, with a Psychopath. Or at least, in depth enough for me to be affected by it and in turn, recognize that it was in fact just that.
I remember a while back, Roses had been curious about the differences in victims/survivors who had, and had not had a history of/with P/S/ N’s within their lives. I was thinking about this the other day. I think it could come down to this: We either don’t recognize it at first because we do not have past experience with it, or we do not recognize it right away because we are conditioned to it from our past. Does this make any sense. I don’t think we should put to much thought into this aspect of it, as that can just keep us stuck, but I do believe that it is very important to learn skills and to keep in mind what to look for or be aware of from this point forward, so that we may protect ourselvels from future evil occurrences. Please forgive my spelling.
Eden
Roses,
Thank you for sharing the introspections between you and Quest. You sure delve deep into certain areas.
Eden
Eden,
I like your thoughts about why we didn’t recognize it.
In my case my parents were narcissists and they raised 2 of my siblings to be sociopaths. So I was used to it and the behavior didn’t seem so offensive. Add to that, I was raised to put others before myself (specifically my spath bro and spath sis), so my perception of love is kind of messed up. I thought that people who love you try to control you, as my parents did. And that people who love you depend on you to rescue them constantly as my sis and bro did. So yes, being raised in a spathy family just makes you feel like this is how life is and you have no other expectations.
But I wonder about people who were NOT raised with N’s and P’s. When they notice the spath behavior it would seem foreign to them and they would naturally recoil from it.
So what could make them stay? I’m thinking it is that some spaths are very keenly aware of how different they are and they put on a very good facade. When the spath behavior shows up, they are quick to have an excuse for it.
My own spath described himself as “eccentric” and “unique”. By using these words, which are certainly more acceptable than “sociopathic”, they can lull us into accepting that they are just human beings with flaws or differences. Add to that, the Christian commandment, “judge not lest ye be judged” and we’re left in a confused state. Lastly, if we have never been taught that there are these creatures out there, then we don’t have a prayer at escaping them. They have all the advantages. That’s why they call us sheep.
So it seems that there are two ways to protect the next generation from spaths. One, is through correct emotional upbringing (get them used to and liking healthy relationships). The other is through educating them so that they can recognize a healthy relationship vs. a spath-relationship.