It’s one of the many reasons why we’re as unalike as snowflakes in the wide expanse of humanity. Our DNA, brain chemistry, and the impacts of early childhood development, Continue reading Not Just Warm Flesh and Body Fluids→
Some people can look you straight in the eye and lie to you.
How can anyone expect to know the truth when the lies are so ordinary?
A fifty five year old widower meets an attractive New Jersey woman on OKCupid. His wife of thirty years died of an illness and after five years of grieving, and occasional dates, he’s ready to get on with his life. She was his greatest love. They were unable to have children.
He’s a college grad with a steady job, nothing flamboyant or unusual. A family man, his aging mother lives with him in the home he owns.
He notices a single woman with long dark hair and a pretty smile on the e-dating site. She’s financially self-sufficient, also a home owner, with several entrepreneurial interests and teaches music lessons. She’s had relationships with men, and a marriage that ended in divorce.
So who’s defrauding who? Both stories are perfectly plausible, but only one is telling the truth….
The man is a life-long bachelor who strings multiple women along at a time. He’s never been married and lives in his mother’s home. And oh, that college degree, it never happened.
They dated, “monogamously” for several months. When he took a week off from his job without any explanation, our heroine caught onto his penchant for simultaneously juggling multiple “relationships.”
Should she have known?
We’re often told that victims “should know”… Something should seem “off,” or that their personal vulnerabilities made them targets.
Often therapists provide months and months of therapy to unravel the mystery of why someone “chose” to become a victim, as if they fooled themselves instead of getting punked by a despicable liar who targeted and caught them in a web of deceit.
And is it a crime?
The woman had no expectations other than finding a loving person with whom she could share time and experiences. And from wanting to be loved, she became defiled.
The more mundane the lies, the more sinister the erosion of trust for the victim, because they can’t point to anything that could have signaled reality. The violation they feel can have a long reaching affect on the rest of their lives.
While the offender skips along to some new unsuspecting victim, the current one is left with heartache, a pervasive sense of deep-rooted defilement, and life-long trust issues.
Where is justice for these victims?
Hopefully, it lies in New Jersey’s legislation #3908. If you have yet to sign the change.org petition to support this law, please do so today!
Mischele Lewis, who suffered sexual assault by fraud at the hands of William Allen Jordan, (the story that caught the interest of Assemblyman Troy Singleton, and began his journey to introduce legislation,) is far from New Jersey’s only victim of this insidious crime. This law is for all victims. If you’ve suffered SexFraud in NJ, or anywhere for that matter, please let me know. We need examples of this crime for legislative hearings in the Assembly and the Senate.
Facebook Response
Thought you might like to see how some folks respond to this defiling crime. This comment was posted on my Facebook page:
I don’t get the story. I was waiting for something more sinister and climactic, like emptying out her bank account or something along those lines. Dating a lying loser is unfortunate but you cannot lock up people for things like that. Life doesn’t come with a warning label.
I found it ironic that Mr. Masi could relate to the theft of the victim’ money, as if that were a major breach, but not the defilement of her sexual sanctity. I responded that some people think sex is nothing more than warm flesh and body fluids. They don’t grasp that a person’s sexual organs are a gateway to their soul. He’s far from alone in his beliefs.
No matter how sexual assault takes place, the victim will suffer a permanent loss.
Being sexually violated, in any form, will have a profound impact on your sense of self. Whether you were violently assaulted, or whether you were violated through the insidious, manipulative breach of your self determination by lies, you will need to grieve your loss in order to recover.
We can never go back in time to reclaim our un-raped self, but we can advance through the stages of grief and loss to achieve emotional stability once again.
The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network provides an informative post that explains the stages of recovery from sexual assault. It’s important for victims of sexual assault by fraud to understand that the same characteristics of recovery apply to them as well.
Victims can go through denial and attempt to repress their sense of loss.
They could endlessly ruminate, becoming obsessed with the harm they suffered.
They could try to ameliorate the problem by moving away or changing jobs.
They could have interrupted sleep patterns, weight gain or loss, and deep depression.
Seek help!
Not all family and friends of rape by fraud sufferers understand the devastation in this crime. Hopefully, society has begun to speak about and recognize it. But even your normal support system may not be enough to pick you up from deep depression and help you stop ruminating.
When you find your life impaired by helplessness, anger, anxiety, rumination, trust issues, or other related affects, seek the aid of a professional who has experience with sociopathic behavior and recovery for sexual assault victims