By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
Psychopaths do a great deal of damage to their victims. The fact that there are people who are aware of what they are doing and choose to “look the other way” or to “sit on the fence and do nothing” enables the psychopaths to continue to abuse their victims. If the bystanders would stand up and assist the victims, even acknowledge that they are being victimized, the psychopaths might not be quite so successful.
One of the most famous of these enablers who chose to look the other way was a man named Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect in Jerusalem in AD 33. When Jesus was brought before him by the Jewish leaders, Pilate stated that he found “no fault” in Jesus, yet he gave Jesus over to the mob to be crucified.
To signify that he had no responsibility for the death of Jesus, Pilate had water and a basin brought and he literally “washed his hands” of what the mob intended to do. Yet, he did nothing to stop it.
The dictionary defines the word “minion” as “a servile follower or subordinate of a person in power.” These people also enable the psychopath to continue to victimize their prey by either helping the psychopath, or by simply “looking the other way” as Pilate did. Minions can also be very active participants with the psychopath in the victimization of the prey.
Examples of doing nothing
A famous case of people knowing a horrible crime was being committed and doing nothing was the murder of Kitty Genovese outside her Queens, NY, home in March, 1964. There were 38 witnesses who did nothing—not even call the cops when they heard her scream for nearly a half hour as she was repeatedly stabbed on that fateful night.
A more recent example of people doing nothing is the Penn State case of Jerry Sandusky’s pedophilia. The head coach and the president of the university knew what Sandusky was doing and chose to do nothing, which allowed Sandusky to continue to abuse young boys sexually for more several years.
Of course not all “enabling” of psychopaths are as “serious” as the crucifixion of Christ, the molestation of dozens of young boys, or the brutal murder of a young woman. But the help and support offered by others does enable psychopaths to “get away with” much more than they would otherwise.
Tattling and telling
We teach our kids not to be “tattle tales” and kids learn not to “snitch” on each other. When my kids were little, I tried to teach them the difference between “tattling” and “telling.” “Tattling” was saying “Johnny called me a doo doo,” but that “telling” was saying, “Johnny is playing with matches and setting fire to the curtains.”
I don’t support gossip or tattling in any way, but we must be aware that when we keep our mouths shut and allow evil to flourish, we are contributing to that evil.
My guess is that most of the people reading this on Lovefraud have experienced people being enablers (either actively or passively) to the psychopath that abused them. People either knew the truth and turned their backs, or actively participated in helping the psychopath accomplish their abuse.
Blame the victim
Psychopaths are also usually very good at the “smear campaign.” When the victim is finally trying to break free, they smear the name, sanity and reputation of the victim to everyone who will listen. Unfortunately, too many times the victim is blamed for their own victimization, or labeled crazy or vindictive for trying to protect themselves. “Yeah he hit her, but she was so mouthy, what can you expect?” Or “well if she’d been a better wife, he wouldn’t have needed to cheat.”
The hurt for the victim becomes double or treble when the enabler or fence sitter is someone the victim counted on for support, such as friend, neighbor, co-worker, relative or even the police and the courts. When someone you have counted on to believe you and validate you, instead turns their back on you, in addition to the trauma from the psychopath, the pain may be simply overwhelming, leaving the victim feeling totally abandoned.
No help
I can’t even imagine the horror that Kitty Genovese must have felt that night as she cried out in terror for someone to save her. Yet, I know that many victims of psychopaths have cried out to people that they expected would help them, would support them, only to find a total lack of concern.
The news reports today are filled with stories of people who “knew” and yet did nothing, or worse, helped the abusers. Whistle blowers are still persecuted relentlessly. Those are facts of life.
For what it is worth, though, even if no one else believes us, it doesn’t change the truth or the facts. While we would appreciate support and validation from others, we don’t always get it, even from those we hold most dear. Learning to validate our own knowledge of the truth may be the closest we come to receiving support.
In my own situation, essentially my entire family, immediate and extended, have either actively assisted my psychopathic son Patrick, stood by silently while he tried to harm me, or washed their hands and didn’t even bother to listen. It hurts when those we have depended on fail us, but it is not the end of the world. In most cases, and we can move on. We can learn to validate ourselves and what we know is the truth.
Fortunately, there is Lovefraud, and the many bloggers here who do support and validate us in our healing journey. I hope that each person here will feel free to reach out to others for support when you need it, and that you will reach out to extend validation and support to others who need your support. That’s what it is all about.
God bless.
OxD & Eralyn, I’m sending the check back with a simple note that I can’t accept such a large check and that I’ll sort it out, myself.
I may feel “triggered” from a previous encounter with a female socipath who always “targeted” women who were in depserate straights and gifted them with everything from cash to vet bills and the recipients felt obligated to tolerate her bad behaviors.
In consideration of this check and possible motives of her sending it, this was my former boss who had the ability to assign instruction positions and pay levels to the teachers at the studio. During the summer, I was available to work as many hours as she had open, and I was pretty much given tidbits and lower salaries as per class enrollment. I also felt that my presence, as a contributing artist, was never acknowledged and that I was simply someone who could “cover” for other instructors who couldn’t man the studio because they were involved in sales events on campus, instead of me. It’s guilt money, and I don’t want it EVEN THOUGH I most certainly could use it.
To me, there’s a real difference in giving someone help in need when it’s from the heart. Sending someone a personal check in lieu of a simple phone call to talk – about ANY topic – is a subsitution for something that SHE is lacking, somewhere.
So, yeah…..I’m sending it back with a short note of appreciation, and that’s that.
Thanks for the input!
Eralyn has a good point. Many people who have a genuine desire to “help” someone who is down…whether it be a homeless man on the street or someone that they know is having a hard time financially will offer money because they don’t know any other way. We can NOT KNOW what this woman’s motives are in offering this check, but whether to accept the “gift” or send it back has to be made on the feelings of the one being offered the gift.
Now only the person being offered the gift knows how it makes them feel.
Does “excessive pride” make her want to send the money back?
Does not knowing this woman very well make her feel that there might be some ulterior motive, or even “pity” as a motive for the offering of the check?
If the motive IS “pity”–is that a valid reason to send the money back?
Does accepting the check make the person receiving the “pity” check feel bad? If so, is that enough reason to send it back?
There are 1,000 questions and only the person who received the check can know how it makes her feel and she should be the one to decide how VALID those feelings are and if that is enough reason to send the check back.
I do think that we can’t always help those who have helped us, and we have to “pay it forward” by helping someone else when we are able to do so.
Truthy we were posting over each other, and I see your point and I know what you are saying for sure. To take a check from someone who has treated you poorly in the past, and that you don’t really like or respect is a different thing. I’m glad that you have made a decision that YOU are comfortable with. That’s what really matters.
Oxy, thanks for this article and all of these insightful comments (You, and all of you!)
I concur about the fence sitters, and tolerance, and independence.
I just spent a milestone birthday weekend reflecting over past events, who is loyal to me and who is loyal to my ex-spath husband, and I decided that while this was not the *best* birthday because I ended up being with my family (out of habit and duty) rather than my friends who support and “get” me, at least I had time to reflect on this same theme:
getting older, you realize why waste your precious time being polite to people who do you wrong, or hanging around the fence-sitters.
I mean really — what’s the reward in any of that?
I agree with you that shunning or “icy” politeness is the correct response.
And I also realize that it is my fence-sitting, tolerant parents, all too willing to chat-up my ex-spath, who raised me to be tolerant and nice and polite, which made me not only a spath magnet, but why I had so much trouble leaving my ex.
So now I’m a very different person, struggling with still being in this very nice, tolerant, polite family when their response and attitude feels very traitorous to me. My ex-spath just lights up like a puppy dog when they are being so kind to him. They see this as “evidence” that I should be more kindhearted and forgiving towards him.
This IS enabling behavior to the spath. Who honestly KNOWS what goes on inside his head when he’s doing the happy puppy-dog dance in response to my family’s warm overtures, but I do know this: when I give him the icy politeness, he stays away from me and doesn’t bother me. I think he’s either afraid of me, or is put off by the change in me (I used to be so nice and forgiving, you see).
Well, this is only a fragment of what I’m thinking today. Basically, I wanted to say all of you are right on!!!
Truthspeak,
I agree. If I were you, I would pay attention to my gut feelings and send it back. You have made it very clear you don’t like the way this money makes you feel. That alone would make the whole thing ugly no matter how badly you need it.
When psycho went to court to get his rights while never paying and actually threatening ME to never come for money for 11-12 years and not being on our (ugh) childs birth certificate, he fought to make her hate me, gain custody and take her from her happy life into his questionable one without regard. Thus I would have ended up paying him!!! Ultimate crime in my mind after all we had endured. But things didn’t go as psycho planned and she ended up hating him for his approach and the lack of love and care he showed which while it was attempted to be blamed on me, that also didn’t pan out so now he pays court ordered child support. I worked 2 and 3 jobs in that first dozen years when necessary to keep her safe and raise her well. I never went after child support as he didn’t care enough to ask about her in those years and I knew he doesn’t give without getting. While the courtcase cost me my business and much more, his child support, I feel is blood money! I can’t stand “needing it” and while I don’t know exactly what my employment will be in the future, my hope is to get that money into an account where I can put it toward whatever her needs may be. Most likely some counselling and hopefully college as we were planning previously for her future. It would be nice to use it to sue him for the damage he has done to HER life and that phony pastor/psychologist who wrote the fraudulent letter. Who knows. But I have beens sick that this is where my life has been taken for no good reason while the courts claim a child has a right to and needs a father at all cost, it damaged her mother right before her eyes, her rock, her security and created hatred for her father and took her innocense. It left fear in place of belief in God, law and adults in general she once had. She showed me as “buzz lightyear” to the reunification person but “buzzes” batteries have since run out.
Her Papa, my father, just showed his sociopathy with lack of caring or empathy in any way by chummin it up with the enemy after his granddaughter had expressed her anger towards and cried about the pain her father had caused to Papa and my daughter not only lost her trust in his family due to his shananigans who she previously loved, she is also feeling loss of my family who had been her only family she saw regularly.
I guess the lessons to future generations are coming earlier and clearer than my generation. No more sugar coating. The real stomach pain I have had for the past 3 days and the real shaking in my body internally when I heard of this betrayal are very real. I see more clearly through my daughters eyes than my own and the hurt of feeling like Papa doesn’t care about her and the shock and sadness in her eyes as she cried about all she had told papa is enough to put my sick programming aside and know this can’t be done to her. It is a betrayal and lack of loyalty and it does mess with self worth of the person who would NEVER do such things. My job is to help her know it is what it is and she is better than that.
The concensous has been when I have told a couple of people who know the daily hell we’ve lived is “Oh my God, I am so sorry”! Just complete shock and disgust and sorrow. My family can spin it however they want. This one is going in as concrete!!! No doubt. Traitors of the worst kind!
20 years,
It’s very difficult knowing psycho got off on that conversation with my sociopathic father. I do know, neither of them are on a feeling level so it goes down with them as a “WIN” which to me is revolting. I feel it has affected the integrity of my fight, credibility of my case but I know the two of them are standing their as pathetic cardboard cut outs acting human with no human emotion and I’ll hurt and cry to be me as they are pathetic in my eyes. I know they both know what each other is. Mind blowing to normal individuals.
Eralyn,
I know it hurts your daughter (and you) when someone you love is DISLOYAL to you and “chats up” the very person who abused you (her).
It is a PAINFUL LESSON for your daughter, but one that she will profit from in the future.
That’s the thing about all this is it IS A PAINFUL LESSON to be betrayed by people we loved and trusted (or wanted to trust) and then BLAM!!!! Either they abuse us or “chat up” the person who did.
Who in their “right mind” would think that being “polite and nice” to an abuser is the right way to be? That’s like saying “well, yea, I know that guy raped you, but he is so good to his dog he must be okay” DUHH???? or “just put that behind you, darling, I know he raped you but you just have to pretend it didn’t happen” DUH????
Nah, not gonna happen with me. I am done with “polite” to people who have abused me, stolen from me, lied to me, allowed others to abuse me and did nothing. I don’t need that kind of person in my life in ANY way. Relationships (even good ones) take time and effort, so why waste that time and effort on what you know is going to be a losing relationship?
OxD,
I have struggled for so many years with my FOO issues. I always said I was treated less than thieves, criminals etc that I knew by my family. I was an overachiever but still felt the weight of “what’s wrong with me that they would treat me this way?” I am the only one in my family who has ever sought “help”. My mother constantly led me to believe she “knew I was bi-polar, needing medication” or overreacting to this or that or hormonal or “taking it in too deep”!!!! Holy crap. Through my daughter the pieces have all finally come together. I have taken MMPI tests (forgot about that), I have spent years in counseling trying to balance out my life while running my own business, owning my own home, having a social life etc. I was never diagnosed by anyone with a disorder. As I said in another post, the licensed psychologist I see currently I saw in the past weekly for 5 years. I met him as he actually helped an employee of mine and I was impressed. I went to him so he knew of me from employee/employer perspective and I went to couples counselling for 2 years with him together and separate so he knew from that angle, he’s met my mom and a few friends have gone to him for different periods of time. If I had some major disorder, I think he would’ve figured it out by now. Am I perfect? Heck no. He knows I am always looking to grow in a positive direction though.
I want to see his face when I tell him of the knife which was turned in my already stabbed heart when my cardboard cutout of a father chatted it up with the other fake human who fathered my child. Seeing the hurt in my daughters eyes and hearing her telling me how she “knew my parents didn’t like me very much (family scapegoat and yeah that hurt a little/lot :)) but she was sure they loved her”, then she proceeded to tell me how she shared her hatred of her own father and for what reasons, my heart broke. These are her own feelings. They are not mine and if I was not sure of this. No MORE!!! Sacrifice me. Fine that’s done! Sacrifice your granddaughter who you have no excuse to use of anything she could’ve done for betraying her like that! She is sitting there authentic and raw.
It must’ve needed to happen is all I can think because there isn’t a soul who cares about us who could look at my daughters father; not a neighbor, friend, court personnel, parts of his own family who would understand my parents not having seething anger at the very least toward this guy. I am not even sure how my father recognized him or he recognized my father as they have only seen each other maybe 3 times in 13-14 years! My mother covers for his actions. Problem is she uses me and my daughter. We are this or that or making it too big an issue. I really believe nobody would agree! I hope I am correct.
I realize people make mistakes and I realize nobody can feel anothers pain but I also know the symptoms of a sociopath/psychopath now and lacking empathy or any ability to know the affect your actions have on another person are indicators of the “duck”. They are not indicators of bi-polar disorder! lol in the guy next to you or the person you harm.
When Skyar and stronger 2011 talk about not finding in the scriptures where God instructs us to trust ourselves or others and we are told to trust him. It also says that God is the truth and the light. So it’s the truth and reality that we should trust which comes back to trusting no man but trusting ourselves. I think it means the closer we are to reality the better we feel and the further away we are from reality the worse we feel and that’s what we are supposed to trust.
I haven’t read much scripture but when Jesus healed the blind man, didnt he tell him to wash the muck out of his eyes and then he would see. Perhaps he meant spiritual blindness, that he couldn’ see the truth and isnt that what spychopathy is all about. They are only dangerous when their lies are believed.
Eralyn,
I think you have just had one of those “turning point moments” or “AHA” moments when you realized that your FOO is SICK to the CORE and that the dysfunction is not going to change.
Who is the family “bad person” at any one point in time will change from time to time, but usually the person who is objecting to the bad behavior of some other family member is chosen as the SCAPE GOAT OF THE MOMENT.
That role will continue and there is nothing you can do except ESCAPE and get te heck as far away from these people as you possibly can.
The lesson is very painful. I suggest for an “over view” of these “family games” and “family drama” and “family scripts” that you read an old psych book called “Games People Play” by Dr. Eric Berne, it explains a LOT and I think you and your daughter (she is old enoug to read it) may get a LOT of good information out of it relating to the “games” your parents play with you and your daughter and the bad man.
In the end, though, once you have worked it through, both you and your daughter will be smarter and stronger and better able to quit being a part of this “game plan” and you can OPT OUT of playiing in the family drama. The script is only pain and will never change.
Maree, that is an acute observation on the blind man’s healing. It is an excellent analogy and I think that WE, as “blind” people, have to wash the muck out of our own eyes in order to SEE.
WE also have to have the FAITH that we can heal, that we can survive.
Good observation, thanks.