Editor’s note: Joyce M. Short is the author of a soon to be released book, “Carnal Abusive Deceit When a Predator’s Lies Become Rape.” The book chronicles her life with a predator, the subsequent aftermath and her road to recovery. It also provides advice for victims and their supporters, and discusses the issues surrounding criminalization of rape-by-fraud. Joyce lives in New York City, where she’s a real estate broker, professional tennis instructor and a strong advocate for her community.
A Predator’s “Mark” Often Struggles to Overcome Rape-by-Fraud or Emotional Rape
By Joyce M. Short
I was hoodwinked by a charlatan. It was not until I found the appropriate terms to express what I’d experienced that I actually began to feel relief. He lied about everything ”¦ his age, his education, his marital status, military service and more. The man who seduced me, who I came to adore, was nothing but a charade.
Once I learned of his treachery, it took years to mend. It was complicated by the fact that we had a child together. As I struggled through his physical and financial abandonment, depression and the sense of defilement that resulted from his wrongdoing, I finally determined to write a book about it. Doing so enabled me to put the facts and his behavior into context. Beforehand, they were jarring memories loosely floating through my consciousness and disturbing my peace. While purposeless rumination and a sense of deprivation were eating me alive, he skipped along on his way to an affluent, secure life. My determination to write the book renewed my sense of power, which had been stripped away by his debasing actions.
Writing my story
Writing is a process, and writing about one’s painful past is fraught with starts, stops and detours. Facing the most painful memories can erode one’s spirit as we relive the actions that caused us so much grief. As I continued writing, I attempted to convey how “raped” I felt at his hands. I coined what I thought was my own invention for describing his impact, “emotionally raped.” I decided to take a look on the Internet and see if it was a term that was in common usage.
Before I completed typing all the letters, the words, “emotional rape” sprang up, denoting that the term actually existed in techno space. Before me lay several options to chose from. I was overwhelmed. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I had to take a few minutes to collect myself before I could continue. Just the validation alone that what I felt was an actual, identifiable occurrence that someone, somewhere in the universe knew about was mind blowing.
Rape-by-fraud
I’ve continued researching and writing since then. Today I understand that when someone pretends to be a person they are not in order to induce you to have sex with them, they are committing the crime of rape-by-fraud. When they deceive you about their character in order to cause you to feel a loving bond with them, they are committing emotional rape. They are defrauding you of your highest emotion, which is love.
Unfortunately, the crime of rape-by-fraud is only punishable in a number of states: California, Massachusetts and Tennessee. Emotional rape is not punishable anywhere.
If you felt raped at the hands of a predator who lied to you, but were not physically overcome, now you know why. Rape by duping someone is as much a means to circumvent your opposition as doping would be. Doping a victim to engage in sex is widely known as “date rape” and punishable by law. The act of sex does not have to hurt you physically in order to hurt you emotionally. The trauma and confusion to victims increases with the length of time that sex with the imposter continues.
Just as doctors can’t prescribe cures until the illness is known, victims of rape-by-fraud and emotional rape have a difficult time recovering from something they don’t recognize or understand. Once a person knows what they are dealing with, they can take the necessary steps to heal themselves.
Someone who has been brutally beaten, raped/sodomized, bruised, etc. and left for dead by someone might say that their true physical sexually violent rape is being minimized here. I would rather my abuse at the hands of a sociopath be minimized than have a rape victim feel minimized. I feel that would be very narcissistic of me to believe that my victimization could compare to a valid criminal attack like rape. Who would choose an actual rape over falling for a loser? I wouldn’t. I have lived with abuses off and on for many years and I would still rather be tricked by a sociopath/narcissistic/anti-social personality disordered person for years than to have been violently raped.
Being tricked and having fraud perpetrated on me has been very devastating. I have lost money, hopes and dreams, given my sexuality believing it was to be a “relationship” that would last until the end of time. I have been raged at, called horrific names, humiliated in front of others and when alone with the spaths. I have been manipulated and then told how stupid I am by the manipulator and my family. We all have our stories and they are all very similar and WE all may feel horrible, exhausted, sometimes suicidal, are in debt, and may be incapacitated beyond what we think we can take.
However, to compare all of those types of things with rape which is a sexually violent crime (whether your perp is known or unknown) actually minimizes the true definition of rape in my opinion.
I have never been violently raped by anyone. I KNOW if I had, I would consider all of the abuses and fraud by the sociopath a more tolerable victimization than having been violently raped and I am not going to compare any of the fraud perpetrated against me where I was not ever sexually assaulted a “rape.”
I believe that any true victim of a violent sex crime of rape would never believe that my happy time in a whirlwhind of lovebombing for a few months, and then slow unraveling of a fraud and a abuse for years, would compare to a real rape. It does not and I will state again that I consider it abusive to real rape victims to say that it compares. I was tricked and it sucks. I lost a lot. But, I was not raped. Rape is on a completely different level and I feel it is minimized by people who fell for a sociopath’s seduction wanting to call it rape. This title of this book and this article minimizes the horrifically violent act of rape. It is not important enough to me that people believe that my victimization by a sociopath is the ultimate and worst of all time by comparing to a rape. I know how bad it was. I know how bad it is. I am dealing with one right now. He just verbally attacked me a little while ago. I was able to walk away from him and get safely in my part of the house. I was not held down against my will, or by gun point, or physically stopped from walking away. I did not have a sexually violent attack perpetrated against me. I walked away feeling it is no use and how can I keep myself separated from him. It is not Rape. It is fraud and then a choice to put up with a sociopath. They do use mind control and multiple abuses to keep us from having the clarity to reverse that choice. But, I am making a choice for my own personal reasons to live next door to a sociopath who made me feel I was the love of his life for the umpteenth time and then reminded me what he really is yet again. It is not rape.
I don’t know if you can compare one person’s pain to another’s. The pain I experienced from the 3-month lovefraud left me suicidal and unable to get off the floor many times, so bad was the suffering. I truly felt like it was a sort of rape, and when I heard the term “emotional rape”, it really fit for me. I think the point of using that term is to validate those of us who have been through it (all of us here), and for those who are trying to be sympathetic, a reference point to understand the extent of the devastation. But it is called “emotional” rape as opposed to a physical rape in order to distinguish the nature of the violation. As far as the effects of one vs the other on the victim, I don’t know if you can compare or quantify pain. So much of it depends how the victim assigns meaning to the event and how quickly he/she is able to release the trauma from his/her body. This can depend on many factors such as what stage/age the person is in their life when the trauma happens and what resources they have to deal with it. To illustrate this point, I was violently beaten regularly for 9 years growing up. But the emotional abuse I suffered left much deeper scars once I cleared the physical trauma. For me, the only difference I see in a physically violent trauma and an emotional trauma is is the way the trauma is released from the body. However saying it is “worse” than an emotional/psychological trauma is just a judgment call. Children who are physically violated can survive into adulthood and even thrive with the right resources for healing. However, children who receive no touch or attention from their parents from birth can die from failure-to-thrive syndrome. So this makes me wonder what is the point of comparison?
Hope it’s okay to add a differing opinion here – with all due respect to other opinions. I found the discussion thought-provoking.
Stargazer – I think the most important thing you said is that we can’t compare one person’s pain to another. We were all devastated and traumatized. It upended out lives.
I once heard it said that pain is like gas – it fills the available container, which means our own hearts and lives.
Stargazer and Donna,
Your posts are appreciated!Star,I especially appreciated this point:” To illustrate this point, I was violently beaten regularly for 9 years growing up. But the emotional abuse I suffered left much deeper scars once I cleared the physical trauma.”
Point # 2 Not every rape victim is violently beaten
But naturally NOBODY asks or wants to be raped;even if they ever fantasized it in some way.My point throughout this discussion has not been to determine whose pain is worse.We all carry our pain and heal from our pain in different ways.Neither do I want to deliberately trigger someone’s pain.But if you join a blog like this you have to realize that at times subjects will be discussed that will serve as a trigger/s.
PS Lovebombing must be a nice memory;even though you know why it was done.I didn’t even have that benefit…or if I did it was so shortlived I can’t recall it! 🙂
Anyway,truly wishing everyone the best of happiness! 🙂
Blossom, you made the point (I think) that people here need to take responsibility when they are triggered, rather than expecting others to avoid saying things that will trigger them. We really don’t know which exact words will be triggers for someone else, and speaking for myself, I don’t want to walk on eggshells – not that I would say something to deliberately hurt someone. Quantifying and comparing pain in my opinion is a set-up for pushing people away rather than bringing them closer through sharing our experience.
Believe it or not, I actually know a few people who were physically raped in their adult lives and were relatively untraumatized by the experiences or who got over it quickly. It had a lot to do with their beliefs and the meaning they assigned to these events. I also know some people who are very sensitive who have had seemingly benign things happen to them but were deeply scarred by those events. So the actual word “rape” itself does not have the same meaning or carry the same power for everyone.
Incredulously, I remember seeing a news story of a woman who was violently raped repeatedly, stabbed multiple times and left in a gutter to die. The assault left her paralyzed on one side of her body. Yet when she was interviewed, she emanated a deep spiritual joy and even laughed a joked a lot. When asked how she could be so happy, her response was, “That man took 12 hours of my life. I don’t intend to give him one more second of it.” Very powerful statement that illustrates how subjective experience is.
Stargazer,
I am so GLAD you understand what I have been trying to say!
I can speak from a personal perspective.My grandmother was a victim of date rape.My mother was conceived at that time.I think my mother had a harder time living with that situation than did my grandmother.My grandmother later married her rapist.Then when I was 6 yrs old he molested me.
Thank you, Stargazer. I think that is the point I’ve been trying to make…and may not too well. I don’t want to trigger victims by use of this word in a place where they might not be prepared for it. However, I sure wish this article would rotate out and then we wouldn’t have to worry about anyone seeing it at all.
Fight, I find myself wondering if there is someone in particular you are thinking about? (Meant most respectfully, since you can’t read my tone). I’ve seen the phrase come up here before and have never personally witnessed this reaction to it. I don’t know if it is possible or why it would even be desirable to avoid people’s imagined/anticipated triggers on here. There are some people who are okay with being triggered as part of their healing and who know if they come here regularly, it is going to happen, because so many of us have had similar experiences. For some, the word “abuse” may be a trigger. For others, the word “beating” may be a trigger. And for someone else, the word “love” may even be a trigger. For others, just the presence of another spath victim may trigger them. I don’t see how we can escape/avoid these triggers or why we would want to try, when simply describing our experiences. I guess I’m trying to understand the motivation besides the desire to protect others from their pain/healing.
There are probably thousands of testemonies on LF of terrible abuse. Child abductions, domestic violence, stalking, threats against lives, thefts which have left posters homeless and destitute. Posters are often willing to share harrowing details of these abuses in lengthy descriptions. The act of sharing these experiences must be, one would hope it is, of therapeutic value to the victim. What strikes me after I joined this discussion ( as an adult who is responsible for my decisions, and who has plenty of copistrategies in the event I am triggered by this or any other article on LF) is how few references to rape there are. Given that the act of rape ( the desire for humiliation and control and to inflict pain in many cases) correlates with the principal drives of the sadist and the psychopath, it would appear to stand to reason that the majority of rapes are perpetrated by the personality disordered. Given the endemic levels of rape in the US the majority of which are not reported and a fraction of which are prosecuted it seems to me that there must be many victims of rape amongst the LF community who chose not to discuss their experience of rape. I can and have discussed in detail pretty much every aspect of my abuse other than the rapes. The feeling I have is that most rape victims here do the same. I would like to read articles shining a light on why it may be that victims of rape would not want to discuss or even state anonymously on here that the disordered person raped them. Peace and love all.
This is getting tiresome…as tiresome as explaining empathy to the Sociopath.
Stargazer: I don’t think I will be able to explain my high level of empathy and disdain for the misuse of this word. Someone keeps trying to explain and gets ignored. Just as there is a large spectrum of sociopaths’ behaviors and personality disorders, I believe there is a wide spectrum of victims of love fraud from some empathy to a great deal of empathy. I am someone who has a lot of intuition and a great deal of empathy. I have so much empathy, I find it strange that I would be asked to explain it by a victim of a sociopath.
TeaLight: I have been very lucky never to have been raped – a violent sex crime as you have described. I use the word lucky because it is only luck. So, I can’t answer your question from my lucky perspective. I can only answer from a place of empathy and understanding of human nature and a lot of other things. I believe most of the victims of actual sexual violation, the true definition of rape, would not feel very comfortable with sharing about a real rape when people here want to melodramatically describe being fooled and abused in every other way as rape.
Tea Light, I also thank you from the bottom of my heart for your sharing and standing up for yourself and many other victims of real rape. Many new people will be completely repelled by this article minimizing real rape by equating it with any other abuse. There is not a person here who would say they would rather be raped than to have been fooled by a sociopath. Not a single one.
Donna, maybe you might be able to post an article about real rape so the true victims of real rape can share if they feel it would be helpful to them. Honestly, I am finding it ridiculous that people would equate real rape to anything else a sociopath has done to them. I, too, have been hit, slapped, knocked down, had one spit in my face, been told one was a Viet Nam Vet when he wasn’t, had money stolen, faced actual TERRORISTS who threatened me on a daily bais and had to blow the whistle on people taking money from them to keep them in the country illegally, lost my health, lost my career, been called every name in the book, and more and more and more to my story, and I will never, ever equate any of that to actual rape. I feel very deeply that it is WRONG and ABUSIVE to do so. It makes me want to cry.
If my empathy is off the charts HIGH to others, that is quite all right with me. I refuse to call any of the horrific, life threatening, things I have gone through with real rape. I refuse to let others minimize rape here and no one is going to talk me into it. So, maybe if Donna can find an article that tells more about what it is like to have been an actual victim of rape, people will stop acting like being tricked out of money, being followed by, divorcing, etc. compare in any way, shape or form to rape. I do not know anyone whom has been raped. I simply have strong empathy and I KNOW when an attention grabbing crime word is being used to sell books and I don’t like it. Listen to your hearts. What is your heart telling you?
If your friend wrote the book, I’m sorry. She used the wrong word to describe being tricked by a sociopath, being abused in any way by a sociopath…unless one was truly raped by a sociopath. I am unwilling to compromise on my empathy for true rape victims on this, so I truly wish the majority here would stop trying. The ONLY thing that equates to a rape is another rape. Nothing else.
Fight,
While I can hear and respect that you feel very strongly about the use of the word “rape” being applied to anything other than physical rape, I want to say that I feel as strongly that my experience with the spath was as rape and murder of my soul. Prior to my experience with the spath, I was physically raped on 2 different occasions one rape was physically more terrifying , the other in which I was drugged and essentially held captive and psychologically tortured with the physical rape only being a minor part was overall a more terrifying experience. Still while both certainly harmed me, they were both by people who were essentially strangers and as such did not come close to the damage done by the spath. However, the closest I can come in describing my 8 year relationship with the spath was as if the rape by the rapist who drugged me had been extended over the 8 years. So I feel very strongly that the word “rape” is appropriate for that experience as well. Even more similar to the history of physical rape is the victim blaming that occurs when trying to explain what was done to me in this relationship.
philomela,
Welcome to Lovefraud! And thank you so much for your experience and comparing the forms of rape.It makes it more validating than trying to explain.
Stargazer and Tea Light,
You both make a point;that it is difficult for people to sometimes talk about rape.In an above post I finally admit how I was affected.But it took me this long and THIS DISCUSSION going on for me to bring it out.So sometimes,even when we find a discussion to be uncomfortable we need to join in,not avoid it~~~because that could be our road to further healing!