Drilling four bullet holes into his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, wasn’t sufficient to convict Oscar Pistorius, famous South African, double amputee and Olympic runner, for murder. His jail term on a manslaughter conviction, 5 years, meant spending only 12 months behind bars. He’ll serve the balance of his sentence under house arrest. Pistorius gets his Get Out of Jail (almost) Free card on October 20th.
Continue reading What do Monopoly and Oscar Pistorius have in common?
This morning, I was happy to see Donna Anderson at LoveFraud pick up on a position that I’ve advocated for quite some time, and focused on in my book. And I did so because when people understand the chemical mechanics of romantic addiction, it makes it easier to cut the chord.
How and why brain chemistry connects us
Mother nature provided us with brain chemistry to bond us to our lover. It enables us to create offspring and cohabit with the other parent in order to provide the nurture and protections needed for their development. Love, therefore, has to be a strong and binding glue because the children of homo sapiens are the slowest to develop on the entire planet. Oxytocin, a powerful neurotransmitter in the brain, that aids in trust, love and emotions, as well as other “love” chemicals, are what separates man from beasts.
Dr. Paul Zak describes the role of oxytocin in his book, The Moral Molecule. And Scientific American refers to it as love glue. Coupled together, with our brain’s additional chemistry, they serve us as both the bait and the hook. But when we enter a relationship with a character disordered person, instead of becoming fulfilled and loved, we become damaged and at risk. The chemicals we were provided fight with our conscious awareness to keep us embedded. They begin to function as a toxic glue.
And our code of morality, which evolves over many years, together with the influence of abundant experiences, also defines how we react in romantic situations. For many of us, we develop a code of commitment to a loved one, and we feel shame when we behave out of character with our own personal code, better known as values. A crafty emotional predator can use our own inherent value system to shame us into remaining.
Fear induced bonding
There is yet another strong chemically-related bond that forms in relationships where there is trauma. Misattribution Affect has been aptly described by Dr. Kristin McKinney. When people experience heightened fear, their adrenaline starts pumping. Going through a traumatic event makes us bond with people with whom we share this circumstance. For instance, riding the roller coaster at the County Fair sparked many a relationship. If the couple wasn’t holding hands when they embarked, they were likely to be when the ride ended. As we go through the roller coaster of a relationship with an offender, even though they have caused us harm, we can feel more bonded with them.
A toxic relationship provides the pain of a constant hook. It is damaging to live with, and excruciating to walk away from.
People will often settle for the relative peace and apologetic behavior that occurs between episodes of abuse. Marriages can take place as a result of a predator’s temporary contriteness between times of turbulence. The victim can easily confuse the offer of marriage, even when made by the offender as an attempt to curtail exposure, as a sincere commitment to reform. And it is easy for a victim to be persuaded when they fall within a calm portion of the cycle of harm.
There is no way to turn, in or out of the relationship with a predator, that is not painful. Victims must surmount their fear of the pain and loss, that they associate with walking away, in order to take that necessary step.
Breaking away!
Because of the terrible pain we feel at the loss, only through consistent and repeated harm, or the discard of the offender, do morally committed people sever a romantic relationship. In cases like Reeva Steenkamp, it’s likely that she died at the hands of her lover, Oscar Pistorius, before she reached the point at which she could free herself from her emotional bond. Pistotius’s cruelty spiraled out of control prior to her reconciling the discrepancy between her “feelings” and the reality of her predicament.
The need for No Contact
Often, even once a victim pulls away, what they feel as a deep-rooted emotional appeal, can draw them back again. They go through a period of turmoil, ruminating about their circumstance, emotionally heaping blame on themselves for not being more of this or less of that. Their brain plays the “if only I had” game as if something they did made the psychopath an aggressor. They can fall into deep depression and need to grieve their loss like grieving over the death of someone close to them. While the offender did not die, their relationship with them died. Having no contact, guards against recycling the predator’s pull and helps assure separation.
When we drink alcohol, it makes our brain feel a certain way. Abstention makes us crave the way we felt to an even stronger degree. Abstaining from a toxic relationship can produce a similar result. Unless people know the chemistry behind their craving, they are susceptible to relapse, which takes the form of forgiving.
How to know we need to go….
Once we recognize that the person is devoid of emotional empathy, getting away from them is the only way to regain our life and equilibrium. Emotional empathy is the knee-jerk reaction we have to other people’s pain or circumstance. Without it, we can’t develop a conscience. A psychopath will not change. They are wired that way. And putting oneself back onto their pathway only puts us in harm’s way.
What happens if the relationship produced a child?
Unfortunately, victims who parent with miscreants will have a lifetime of toxic behaviors to deal with. Victims must do everything possible to build the oxytocin receptors in their children’s brains, early-on, because they are especially at-risk for developing without emotional empathy. They have a pre-disposition to a genetic flaw. Modern mental health professionals tell us that approximately 4% of the world’s population is comprised of psychopaths. Not everyone who is the child of a psychopath will become one. But they are seriously at-risk of doing so. Dr. Liane Leedom constructs a pathway toward character development for children in her book, Just Like His Father.
If you are experiencing raising a child with someone you suspect of psychopathy, minimizing your own personal interaction with the other parent should be done to the greatest extent possible. Be cognizant of the chemical pulls that could cause you to feel drawn back toward their appeal. Be sure to retain sight of the harm you were dealt and live in reality. While they can exude the charm that attracted you initially, they are toxic at their core. And when they recognize you are no longer fooled by them, they can and will try everything possible to undermine you, including alienating your children. Stay smart. Seek professional guidance.
Seems like an over abundance of swamp water drowns out the need to protect victims in Louisiana. The Bayou State has several statutes on rape, but none measure up on rape by fraud! There is aggravated rape, forcible rape, and simple rape. The construct that comes closest to rape by fraud, in Louisiana’s negligent criminal code, is simple rape, 43(a)(1).
In statute 43(a)(1), one example of simple rape is defined as sexual intercourse without the lawful consent of the victim when the victim is incapable of resisting or of understanding the nature of the act by reason of a stupor or abnormal condition of mind produced by an intoxicating agent or any cause and the offender knew or should have known of the victim’s incapacity.
The argument that could support a rape by fraud claim under this statute is that the victim was as unaware of the nature of the act as an intoxicated or drugged victim would be. Their consent, in any of the related cases, would not be freely given and knowing consent, because the offender duped them, (any cause,) into the act, and knew they were doing so at the time.
The ambiguity of this law could be cleared up by simply inserting the words “or duplicity” after “intoxicating agent.”
Protecting Wives Against Rape by Fraud
Louisiana’s statutes do contain one specific act of rape by fraud; (in the inducement,) that of impersonating the husband of the victim.
By having implemented this law, Louisiana clearly shows that the use of fraud in seduction breaches knowing consent, but reserves their remedy solely for married women. This concept comes from the notion that a wife is a husband’s property. Defiling her is punishable because it is an offense against the husband. Unmarried women, therefore, are unprotected. Idaho case tested the practice for single women If a man posed as a boyfriend or fiancee, the charge would not apply. In a 2011 case in Idaho, against Zachary McGraw, the case was in fact dismissed because the victim was unmarried. The Judge on the case, the Hon. Cheri Copsey, found the disparity in the law “despicable”, but never-the-less, it still stands in Idaho and Louisiana. (Refer to pg. 184 of Carnal Abuse by Deceit.)§43.3 When the female victim submits under the belief that the person committing the act is her husband and such belief is intentionally induced by any artifice, pretense, or concealment practiced by the offender.
Louisiana’s statute on fraud as it relates to Theft, is crystal clear!
Theft is the misappropriation or taking of anything of value which belongs to another, either without the consent of the other to the misappropriation or taking, or by means of fraudulent conduct, practices, or representations.
The degrees of damage under this statute vary according to the monetary value of the loss. It appears that losing your most precious asset, your sexual sanctity, does not measure up to consideration since it has no quantifiable monetary value. Take a man’s money, off to jail you go. Defile a woman, (or anybody for that matter,) no problem!