It seems obvious that sociopaths make lousy parents and step parents. But the courts have not always seen it that way. One father trying to protect his daughter from a sociopathic mother was asked by a mental health professional, “So she’s a liar does that make her a bad mother?” Furthermore, the texbook I use to teach forensic psychology says that professionals who evaluate parents in custody disputes “should avoid diagnostic labels” and “accentate the postitives.”
There seems to be a lack of clarity as to what makes an adequate parent, a good parent and a bad parent. The court also does not recognize that the biologic children of sociopaths may have special developmental needs if they have inhereted genes that predispose them to sociopathy, addiction and ADHD. So why should evaluators avoid diagnostic labels and accentuate the positives, I really want to know.
I have come to the conclusion that the only people who are in the position to help change the system are adults whose parents and step parents are sociopaths. These adults know what it is like to grow up with a sociopath.
I spoke with a woman in her 30’s last night. She is just coming to the realization that her mother is a sociopath. She told me that for many years, she blamed herself. The woman said of her mother, “She was the queen of manipulation. She knew how to turn things around and make me feel like I did something wrong.” Sociopaths make psychological mince meat of the adults in their lives, how are children supposed to deal with them?
There is a recent news story out of the UK I would like you to consider. The story illustrates the fact that behind most every fraud there are children. The children are always affected even if they are not drawn in.
Mohammed Rashid is a garage owner in the UK who is accused of large scale insurance fraud. He allegedly faked accidents and filed bogus insurance claims.
According to an article in the Telegraph and Argus, ” Porsche-driving Rashid, known as Mojo, was appointed a state-registered accident claims manager, prosecutor Andrew Kershaw said. He operated from his body repair garage, Autotransform in Spearhead Way, Keighley.”
Mojo had a lady friend, “In the dock with Rashid is Sarah Lowther, 37, of Bradford Road, Keighley, described in court as his partner.” The most disturbing part of the story is that Sarah and Mojo are accused of drawing her three children into the scam. “Mr Kershaw has alleged that she allowed her three children to be schooled into telling a pack of lies about fictitious injuries to a doctor as part of the scam.”
Mojo’s fraud ring also involved other adults, four of whom have already pled guilty.
Now, I don’t know the degree of sociopathy present in Sarah and Mojo, however, the fact is that three children have been drawn into this mess.
I am collecting and documenting stories like this in order to help future parents involved in custody disputes. If you have information about the case of Mojo and Sarah or any other similar case please email me. If you are the adult child of a sociopath we want to hear your story. All information you give us is kept private.
If you are a mother or father whose choice of a sociopath as a step parent for your child was a mistake, forgive yourself. Work hard at healing so you can be the best parent you can be. You can regain the respect of your children and others if you acknowledge your mistakes and make a new life for yourself.
Dear Litterbox,
Do you have a brother or other person who you can trust to “adopt” the child in place of the “father?” I hadn’t thought of that eventuality. OUCH.
Dear Rune. Thank you for your comment. I also thought that this Sam Vaknin is not a VERY reliable source as he lacks proper education, but I found myself described to the last detail in the “Inverted narcissist”. Realizing that I was an enabling partner in this wicked game our family played for ages, with my sister being the “rebel”, and my brother the “golden child”, and the dog being played against all of us by my mother when nothing else helped (I got very jealous at the DOG as a child! Mother always claimed the dog was her “best child”) Being able to “give a name” to the condition took me out of my own fog I have created for myself. That I have to work on MY tenedencies to act narcissistic by taking ALL THE BLAME ANYBODY COULD POSSIBLY THINK OF, PRESUMED BLAME, ANTICIPATED BLAME, oh I am a great master in taking any kind of blame, very narcissistic indeed. I even felt responsible for the weather (there is a saying that it will be bad weather when a child is not eating everything, when the plate is not “clean”). The inverted narcissist oscillates between devastation and o.K. at best, seldom good. That was me! I was blame-driven, blame-seeking, even if it was not MY blame, I claimed it anyway. It was such a great relief being able at looking at my misery from this until now unknown perspective and that THAT THIS IS NOT HEALTHY AND THAT I MUST NOT DO THIS AND THAT IT IS IN MY OWN and ONLY POWER TO STOP IT. I stopped it on sunday, and since then I feel wonderful. No more questioning why the others don’t talk to me (“Where’s the blame? Not my problem any more!”), no more accepting inappropriate comments from my boss (“The blame is all your’s if I may think so your pestilence”). I do hope this wonderful feeling is lasting a little longer. I am hopeful. I wish you a very pleasant evening!
I have come to the conclusion that the only people who are in the position to help change the system are adults whose parents and step parents are sociopaths. These adults know what it is like to grow up with a sociopath.
Hello Dr. Leedom,
Can you explain a bit more what you mean by “help change the system”?
“If you are the adult child of a sociopath we want to hear your story.”
Are you still looking to hear stories, and are you looking for information specifically on custody disputes?
When my parents separated I was already out of the house and my brothers were in their late teens so there was no custody issue per se. However, my parents separation was like “War of the Roses”, but weirder.
I’m embarassed to say it but my P mother managed to pull off a version of parental alienation against my father, even though we were all older, and all in the same house. Amazing how she could set everything in motion to fall in on itself (on top of everyone in the family), and yet still come off looking like the victim. As a result I eventually separated from my entire family – NC for approx. 20 years.
Just in the past year I started wondering why my father stayed so long and the only thing I can come up with is that he had enough integrity to wait until we were all old enough to be out of the house. I never saw him again after I became estranged from everyone, but now that I’ve discovered he’s dead I regret so much. He didn’t do anything to actively protect us (particularly me) or interfere with our mother, but at least he stuck around, even though she’d poisoned us all against him by then. If he hadn’t stayed god knows what would have happened to us. I cut him off with everyone else because I couldn’t identify where the poison was really coming from.
I hope that you’re getting somewhere in your research, because this is sorely needed. I hope it will be broad enough to cover child abuse cases as well as custody disputes. It pains me that even today a child suffering the same type of abuse as I did would never be helped because no-one knows how to recognize severely abusive/psychopathic/sadistic mothers, particularly when they are medical professionals and know how to hide/explain signs.
Annie…
“Just in the past year I started wondering why my father stayed so long”
Probably a mix of reasons. If he wasn’t disordered, he was probably deep in the FOG of living with disorder. Stocholm Syndrome…betrayal bond…mythical thinking….
The devaluing and smear campaign for me began at least a few years before the break-up and divorce…I thought I could last 10 more years until my youngest was old enough to be on her own…but my ex-tox just upped the ante…started an affair with a married coworker. Lied and denied when caught.
That was my limit after nearly 24 years.
Only looking back…and 18 months out…did I finally figure it out. Rumination, reading, good therapist, Lovefraud…it took a long time.
My 24 year old, already out of the house…visited while the divorce had been filed and we were still in the same house (two months). She walked up the back walk, I was on the porch….and said: I bet you’ll be glad to get out of this hellhole!” That daughter was polite to her mother, but distanced herself from her. A few months later, my daughter, who I didn’t see frequently, said: “You know Dad, I never had the chance to get to know you…now I have, and I like you.”
Annie…sorry you didn’t have a chance to know your father without your mother. He might have been a better man than you knew.
But, you had to do what you did for you. If he was a good man, he understood.
Your story is always welcome here.
Dear Annie and Jim,
I look at relationships where one partner “stays” with a P for various reasons—and what the results are—-my paternal grandmother was probably either a very high quality Narcissist or a psychopath. She was dead before I was born, but she was o ne of those people who was almost universally hated by everyone who knew her and the stories about her antics (though actually she was quite bright) and the cruel things that she did were “unreal.” She was my grandfather’s second wife, after his first wife had died in child birth leaving him with two small children. My GM came into town and literally “swooped him off his feet and married him in a matter of a few days” (sound familiar?) He was a small town physician and had little time to “look for” a wife.
The family story is (and I believe it) was that after three days he offered her half of everything he owned for a divorce. In those days divorce was almost impossible to obtain against a woman unless she was an open strumpet.
He told me once that he should have given her everything and walked out. As it turned out, he stayed with her about 20 years until her death, and they had two children together. She wanted to go to medical school, and he financed this. I think he would have bought her a “ticket to anywhere” to get her out of the house for years at a time. He had a lovely older woman that worked for him before he married my GM to raise the children and she did.
However, by the time my sperm donor (the P in the two children of my GM) was 8 or 9 he was completely out of control. A typical kid that today would be labeled “conduct disorder” but in those days was just seen as a kid who need his pants busted. Even for those days, though, my sperm donor was over the top. At age 10 he hitch hiked from Oklahoma to Oregon where his uncles lived. Stayed around there for a while, then stole his cousin’s bicycle to sell for cash, then hopped on out of there for other places. I know that sounds impossible for a kid that young to be doing stuff like that, but he was very precocious and the times were a bit different than today.
Plus, my grandfather would always send him a train or bus ticket home if things got bad and he needed or wanted to be bailed out.
I realized that my grandfather, in retrospect, wished he had left my grandmother, but he stayed because of the pressure of the times about divorce. He “rationalized” it by staying for the kids, but he realized it wasn’t to the benefit of my sperm donor (not that anything would have been) but I think all of us here at least can look back and see that we have rationalized staying with the P for some period of time for X-reason which in retrospect turned out to be bogus or at best a bad choice.
The psychopathic parent usually somehow manages to spoil the relationship with the NON-P parent if they can. In fact, I don’t think it is limited to the Non-P parent, psychopaths just spoil our relationships with ANY one that they can. They want TOTAL CONTROL, total ownership of us and our souls.
I just found this site, and it is the biggest breath of fresh air I’ve felt in a long time.
I only recently learned what mom was – it sounds so disturbing to call your own mother a sociopath, but it wraps up her 73 years of behavior, and my 40 years of being alive as her daughter.
Because I only lived with her from age 13 -16, I watched as a horrified spectator, her manipulation, lying, deceitfulness, and blatant disregard for others. She HATED EVERYONE. She spewed so much hatred about people in our church, on TV, my friends – forget it, I could not bring anyone in the house.
She chased me with a butcher knife, shredded a teddy bear with a knife over me while I was in the bathtub, saying this is what she would do to me if I ever disobeyed her again (I talked to a boy at school she didn’t like, he wrote me a note and told me he loved me and wished he could take me away from my home life).
She called the school and accused the boy of raping me. The police, school administrators, etc. got involved, it was an absolute nightmare. The boy’s mother was blown away by my mom. Mom waved a gun and told me I BETTER stick to the “story” – that he raped me. I went to the school and told the truth, that he never even touched me!!!
Until I was 13, I had lived with grandma, in a peaceful, loving, calm, stable home, in a different state, that I now at 40 years old thank God for every single day, because it is what saved me. I’ve wanted to write about mom for years, but never felt I had a platform.
She called me the day of my wedding to tell me I had ruined her life and she wished I was never born.
She raged. And raged. I am still married to the same man 20 years later.
The 3 years I lived with mom, my “aunt” – whom I later found out was mom’s girlfriend, and that mom was a lesbian, despite marrying 5 different men for money. 2 she married, took everything they had, and ran out of state.
So my “aunt” cooked, cleaned, took care of us, took us to school, hugged us, told us not to worry, that she would take care of us. She never left mom. She took black eyes and bloody noses for us. She kept mom from stabbing me with a knife once.
But she also never called the police, contacted any authorities, or got us any outside help. I don’t hold it against her, knowing now what a victim she was of mom’s.
Mom would rage “I am NOT a lesbian”!!! in the other room, though no one had said ONE thing about her being one. Mom being a lesbian was not the problem, I am SO grateful for the “aunt”. Mom’s behavior was THE problem.
When mom found the note from the boy at school that she had forbid me to see, she tortured me for 3 days. She chopped off all my hair like in Mommie Dearest. She destroyed every single solitary thing in my room, as if the Tazmanian Devil had ripped through there destroying everything in its path. Cassette tapes had every ribbon ripped out of them, all costume jewelry was broken one by one while she raged. All makeup was broken and spattered all over the room. She tried to rip up clothes but instead pulled them all out of the closet, just like Faye Dunaway. She did not let me sleep, she screamed about how horrible I was. She locked herself in her room and said she had a gun and was going to kill herself because nobody treated her right. Then we’d scream and cry thinking mom was going to die.
Still, we were all too scared to call anyone. It was unthinkable to let any outside person know what she was like.
What I never could understand is why SHE didn’t go to sleep for more than 2-3 hours for those 3 days. Drugs, I learned, later. Lots of different prescription meds. When she finally crashed, so did I. Why didn’t I run away?? I have no idea. Scared out of my mind, and pretty innocent to run the streets. Again, sheltered life with grandma until age 13. I had never seen anything like her.
I started working at 15 and gave mom my paychecks, she didn’t let me go back to school. She MADE me call the school and tell them that I was “dropping out”. I begged her not to do this, that this was my future, that I did not want to be a high school dropout – she LAUGHED, a sadistick, evil laugh with a scoff on her face, and yelled “well that’s just too damn bad, idn’t it!!!”
I truly thought she would kill me, and I probably would have let her to put me out of my misery.
At age 16, a caseworker came by after the cops had come out from a neighbor’s call during one of mom’s rages. They interviewed mom, she told them I was on drugs, snuck out of the house at night, was failing at school, and that she was a single mom and didn’t know what to do with me. Caseworker saw through mom because of the condition of the house and caught her in lies. She put me in a wonderful Baptist group home where I was taken care of.
This post is way long enough, so I’ll stop there. Unfortunately, the only solution is to get AWAY from these kinds of people.
Survivortx –
OMG – what a terrible story. I am so glad that you found Lovefraud. I am also thankful that you were able to live with your grandmother for the first 13 years. And I’m thankful for the “aunt.”
I hope you can find a lot of healing here at Lovefraud.
WOW survivortx!
That sounds like an absolute nightmare. My father was a similar character, so I can relate to some of your stories. I was thankful when a caseworker saw through him once too.
Have you read “Sybil”? It’s a very disturbing book about a mother who is a sociopath…among many other very sick things. This horrible mother really messes up her daughter. I don’t think your mom did as much as the mom in this book, but your story still reminds me of that book because your mom’s temperament sounds a bit similar: that high-strung type of mania and evil.
So glad you found LF. I hope you find some healing here. I’m one of the very new members, and this site was a saving grace for me. It’s a really safe place and the people here are very supportive. I hope you’ll stick around if you ever feel like you could use some good company.
There are lots of articles in the blog section, too. You might want to look through the “female sociopaths” section and definitely get into the “healing after a sociopath” area.
Take care and welcome to LF!
Survivortx;
Welcome to LF! I’m sorry that you experienced all that you have in your life.
I’m glad you found LF…..we ‘get it’. We all have our own experiences with a toxic personality(s)……but we can come together here and share and learn and offload some of the burdons.
I look forward to reading more from you. I have found writing about my experience has been a cathartic excercise in healing.
I trust you will too.
Again…..welcome, welcome!
XXOO
EB
Dear Survivortx,
Welcome to Love Fraud and I am so sorry that you had such a horrible situation with your DNA donor. I won’t say “mother’ because she did not earn that title by BEING a mother to you. I am glad that you were able to at least escape and get your life back on track.
Your mother does sound like a psychopath, and I do imagine that you and your “aunt” were trauma bonded to her, which is common with abused partners and children. I’m glad you are here though now and can learn and grow and heal those old wounds. It sounds like your life is at least more stable now, being with your husband 20 years. I hope he treats you as well as you deserve.
Knowledge is power, and though we may be adults now (in fact I am a “senior adult”) it still takes working through some of those old wounds to understand them and why we endured what we did at the hands of our parents.
There are lots of good books recommended here and some great articles as well. Knowledge IS power, so welcome to our “learning center.” God bless.