“Stalking acts are engaged in by a perpetrator for different reasons: to initiate a relationship (i.e., Some call it stalking; [he or] she calls it courtship); to persuade/coerce a former partner to reconcile; to punish, frighten, or control the victim; to feel a sense of personal power; to feel a ‘connection’ to the victim; or some combination of all of the above. Stalking is a form of abuse, and most abusers ultimately want control over their victims. Therefore, stalking is about controlling a love object, a hate object, or a love/hate object. Both love and hate can inspire obsession.
“Abusive personalities and stalkers often lack or have selective empathy for their victims. In fact, a characteristic of stalking is that the stalker objectifies [his or] her victim. If you don’t see your victim as another human being with feelings, needs, and rights, it becomes very easy to perpetrate any number of cruel, crazy, malicious, spiteful, and sick behaviors upon him or her. What about stalkers who believe they’re in love with their victims? Again, this is about possession and control; not love. They want to possess and control you regardless of what you want.”
—Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, Psy.D.
Laws tend to define stalking as the exhibition of unwanted behaviors that alarm people.
What a broader yet nuanced definition of stalking like Dr. Palmatier’s reveals is that what makes someone a stalker isn’t how his or her target perceives him or her; it’s how s/he perceives his or her target: as an object (what stalking literally means is the stealthy pursuit of prey—that is, food).
Who perceives others as objects? The sociopath. Mention sociopath and restraining order in the same context, and the assumption will be that the victim of a coldblooded abuser will have sought the court’s protection from him or her.
The opposite, however, may as easily be the case.
Appreciate that stalking is about coercion, punishment, domination, and control of a target who’s viewed as an object, and it’s easy to see why the stalker in a relationship might be the petitioner of a restraining order, an instrument of coercion, punishment, domination, and control.
(“[T]o feel a sense of personal power,” furthermore, is a recognized reward motive for the commission of fraud. Pulling one over on other people, particularly those in authority, feels gooood.)
Appreciate, also, that a stalker’s motives for “courtship” (i.e., what s/he stands to gain from a relationship) may not be recognized by his or her target as abnormal at all. Nor, of course, will they be understood as abnormal by the stalker. What this means is, stalking isn’t always recognized as stalking (predator behavior), and correspondingly isn’t always repelled.
The Psychology of Stalking: Clinical and Forensic Perspectives notes that the majority of stalkers manifest Cluster B personality disorders, which I’ve talked about in the previous two posts, citing various authorities. People like this—borderlines, antisocials, narcissists, and histrionics—often pass as normal (“neurotypical”). They’re around us all the time…and invisible. Dr. Palmatier, a psychologist from whose writings the epigraph is drawn, has posited that Cluster B personality disorders “form a continuum” and “stem from sociopathy,” a trait of which is viewing others as objects, not subjects. Not only may others be unconscious of personality-disordered people’s motives; such people may be unconscious of their motives themselves.
(Out of respect for the author of the epigraph, I should note that my application of the word stalker in the context of this post departs from hers. The position of this post is that the person who pursues an objectified target and then displaces blame for aberrant behavior onto that target to “punish, frighten, or control” him or her is no less a stalker than the person who relentlessly seeks to possess his or her target. The topic of Dr. Palmatier’s exposition is attachment pathology of the latter sort.)
Contrary to the popular conception that stalkers are wallflower weirdos who obsessively trail dream lovers from a distance with the aid of telescopic lenses, stalkers may be socially aggressive and alluring—or at least sympathetic—and may exhibit no saliently weird qualities whatever.
Returning to Dr. Palmatier’s definition of stalking, what makes someone a stalker isn’t how s/he acts, per se, it’s why she acts the way s/he does. What makes an act an act of stalking is the motive of that act (the impulse behind it), which isn’t necessarily evident to a stalker’s quarry.
Placed in proper perspective, then, not all acts of stalkers are rejected or alarming, because their targets don’t perceive their motives as deviant or predatory. The overtures of stalkers, interpreted as normal courtship behaviors, may be invited or even welcomed by the unsuspecting.
The author of the blog Dating a Sociopath astutely limns the course of a relationship with a stalker (someone who views the other as a means, not an end with “feelings, needs, and rights”).
The sociopath wears a mask. But [s/he] will only wear that mask for as long as it is getting him [or her] what [s/he] wants. The sociopath is not emotionally connected, to you or anybody else. Whilst the sociopath might show connection, this would only be a disguise, to serve his [or her] own needs.
When the sociopath realises that [s/he] can have better supply elsewhere, or if [s/he] feels that supply with you is coming to an end, [s/he] will leave you without warning. The sociopath would have sourced a new victim for supply, but this would have been done behind your back and without your knowledge.
To do so, it is likely that the sociopath needed to play victim to the new source. Often [s/he] would have made complaints about you to gain sympathy and win support. Again, this will be something that you have absolutely no knowledge of, until later.
Consider her conclusion that a sociopath may “play victim” to acquire new narcissistic supply, and you’ll perceive how perfectly lies to the police and/or the courts (donning a new mask) may assist him or her in realizing his or her pathological wishes.
The blog post from which this quoted material is drawn concerns being abruptly discarded by a sociopath, which the writer notes may leave the sociopath’s quarry feeling:
- Confused
- Bewildered
- Lost
- Desperate for answers
- A longing and neediness to understand
- Wanting back the honeymoon stage
- Unsure if the relationship is actually over or not?
- Self-blame
- Manipulated, conned, and deceived
Expressions of these feelings, whose motives are not those of stalkers but of normal people prompted by a need to understand the inexplicable, may take the form of telephone calls, emails, or attempts at direct confrontation—all of which lend themselves exquisitely to misrepresentation by stalkers as the behaviors of stalkers.
The personality-disordered answer primal urges, and among those urges is the will to blame others when their bizarre expectations aren’t satisfied—and they inevitably aren’t—or when others express natural expectations of their own that defy disordered personalities’ fantasized versions of how things are supposed to go.
The author of this blog, a formerly private man who had a restraining order petitioned against him characterizing him as a stalker (and who has been back to court three times since to respond to the same allegation, the least of several), has been monitored for eight years by a stranger he naïvely responded to whom he found standing outside of his house one day as he went to climb into his car.
I was a practicing writer for kids.
The first correspondent I had when I began this blog three years ago was a woman who’d been pursued and discarded by a pathological narcissist, who subsequently obtained a restraining order against her (by fraud), representing her as a stalker (cf. Dr. Palmatier’s “Presto, Change-o, DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender”).
She taught music to kids.
Last fall, I exchanged numerous emails with a woman who’d fallen for a man with borderline personality disorder, who abused her, including violently, then did the same thing after she sought a restraining order against him, which was denied.
She was a nurse who had three kids.
You’ll note that those labeled “stalkers” by the state in these cases—and they’re hardly exceptions—confound the popular stalker profile that’s promoted by restraining order advocates.
An irony of this already twisted business is that injuries done to people by their being misrepresented to the authorities and the 
courts by disordered personalities as stalkers ignite in them the need to clear their names, on which their livelihoods may depend (never mind their sanity); and their determination, which for obvious reasons may be obsessive, seemingly corroborates stalkers’ false allegations of stalking.
This in turn further feeds into the imperative of personality-disordered stalkers to divert blame from themselves and exert it on their targets. People like this fatten on drama and conflict, and legal abuses gratify their appetites like no other source, both because the residue of legal abuses never evaporates and because those abuses can be refreshed or repeated, setting off further chain reactions ad infinitum.
The agents of processes that were conceived to arrest social parasitism and check the conduct of stalkers are no less susceptible to believing the false faces and frauds of predatory people than their victims are.
Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com
TALKING BACK to restraining orders 
Plusor Minus
September 23, 2014
believe this or not: mine goes by the possibly fake? name, of producer Lindsay Show, says they used to be a friend of mine, lots of years ago, in some small town, that was part of the Seattle metropolitan area, by the name of Mountlake Terrace, and has been cyber harassing me, for lots of years now, believe it or not. this fruit loop claims, that they are my most best of friends, while we were both living in the suburb called Mountlake Terrace, which I guess is a suburb, of the Seattle metropolitan area, lots of years ago. this fruit loop, costs lots of time and money, to deal with, and they still won’t go away. I have run out of both money and time, dealing with this fruit loop. now all I do, is shack up, where I can, and run from place to place, all across the United States Of America, hoping to stay one step beyond my fruit loop cyber bully, who doesn’t care crap, about my suffering. I am tired of running place to place now, shacking up, where I can, just to stay one step beyond their fruit loop grasp. I am tired of watching over my shoulder, for this fruit loop, to possibly just show up, for me, at any moment. I don’t want to spend every moment of my life, looking over my shoulder, for this fruit loop, who supposedly knew me, in the Seattle metropolitan area, anymore. Dear producer Lindsay Show, I have had enough of U now, and I have turned in all of the random email, U sent to me, that I know about, anyways, and I like to see U locked away, if U haven’t already been locked away. this is no way to live, from a carry around bag, trying to find sanctuary, from a bully, who says they used to be your best friend, in another state, lots of years ago, no way to live at all, especially not from a carry around bag, always being on the run, when all I want, is a home to go to. I just want a sanctuary of a home, to live in too, like other people. don’t I deserve to live someplace safe? my bully doesn’t seem to think I deserve much of anything, in life, except to suffer, the way they could be suffering, too. are you suffering too, cyber bully? is that why you want me to suffer like you, because you’re suffering having no place to go to, in life?
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Moderator
September 23, 2014
What’s the nature of the emails that have led you to become a fugitive?
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Anonymous
April 12, 2014
I’m going to give some views on stalking laws. These views should be critically analyzed, because stalking law tends to be a subjective law. I’ve provided some sources to back up my arguments. For anyone afraid of stalking allegations, the person should make any attempt to communicate to the person that he or she is afraid of receiving stalking/harassment allegations from through an attorney and only an attorney (use an attorney as a medium and mediator). So, if there was a bad break-up, communication should only occur through an attorney. Otherwise, the person should let it be, walk away, and never look back.
This post will be lengthy, so a person might want to get a cup of coffee and something to eat. I’ve spent over two years thinking about stalking law and studying law related to it. I’ll write two parts where one part deals with the psychology of a stalker and the other laws related to “stalking.”
(1)
In reference to the psychology of a stalker, all of that is subjective. Psychologists have attempted to define characteristics of people that might make them “credible threat,” but that’s garbage. I’ve studied psychology for years and years. Just because someone is heart-broken and obsessed, that does not make a person a danger. I’ve mentioned the problem of induction on this website before. Television and news media may attempt to brainwash people into thinking there is an archetypal person with psychological attributes that is a danger to people. However, there is no such thing as a stalker. Stalking not a “term of art,” for what I’ve read of law. There is, however, such a thing as “harassment,” which is a law in many states in the United States of America. There is also trespassing law. Obsessed people who cannot control themselves might break strict liability aspects of harassment law. Furthermore, they might break trespassing law due to their obsession. It’s often the obsession that worries people, as it seems like a lack of free will or restraint. From that point, people who are worried and involved might seek a restraining order, such as a restraining order to prevent “stalking.”
(2)
Stalking laws tend to revolve around the concept of subjectivity. That’s because the stalking law is often written subjectively. I don’t believe any law maker will ever admit that, as they want the public to maintain faith in the government as though there is some “logic” to the stalking law: There isn’t. However, stalking laws have been judged as unconstitutional in the past in various states, such as Texas, Massachusetts, [1] and Illinois. Perhaps there was something political behind the issue, whereby a lawmaker ticked off a judge, thus a judge ended up nullifying a law by calling it unconstitutional: I don’t know what caused a judge to finally decide that a law was OBVIOUSLY unconstitutional and nullify it.
Furthermore, courts have written new stalking laws over old stalking laws without marking the previous ones as unconstitutional. As such, defendants under the old law become unable to appeal on the basis that the law was unconstitutional. In relation to this, I believe that the issue was that the former stalking law was unconstitutional, that the government did not want to admit the former stalking law was unconstitutional (thus say that it wrongfully prosecuted people), and rather keep people locked up than admitting that it did the wrong thing and letting them go.
From what I’ve read of various United States stalking laws around various states, they involve the concept of the “reasonable person” or some culpability requirement. For those who do not understand culpability, it’s generally about the state of mind, the internal monologue, of a defendant during alleged acts he/she is alleged to have committed. Now, some stalking laws involve a culpability requirement. What that means, is they require that you had a state of mind involved with your actions, such as holding the INTENT to cause fear or holding the BELIEF that your actions were causing someone fear. Otherwise, there can be a strict liability issue, whereby your actions (such as peering into someone’s windows for ten minutes straight) are illegal. Regardless of the truth of one’s state of mind, a jury could simply assume the defendant’s state of mind (such as assuming the defendant held the intent to cause fear): Jury members are not psychic.
Stalking laws that rely on a negligence culpability in the U.S. are ex post facto laws. So, stalking laws break a few constitutional aspects, such as the first amendment, article 1 – section 9 of the U.S. constitution, and the 8th amendment (no cruel an unusual punishment). It has been alleged that the government likes an ignorant people [2].
In law, however, you could classify stalking law under negligence, thus turning it into a negligence law. Negligence law is something that started around the 1800s in American [3], and you could just as well say any negligence law is unconstitutional if you study the history of how negligence law came about in the United States [3].
Negligence law has to do with opinion rather than fact. Thus, a jury would generate an opinion on the morality of your actions (including state of mind), such as whether or not your actions were BAD and should be punished/fined/prosecuted/what-have-you. It’s like getting a bunch of people together in a circle and saying, “With all the evidence presented, do all of you think he did a no-no and should be punished?”
It seems really primitive, trivial, and reminiscent of early civilizations in America on the East coast of America when America was being populated from people coming over from the East (Europe, Spain, etc..). However, I don’t believe most Americans understand that. Actually, with negligence, I’ve considered that maybe it’s best to blame both parties, drop the case, and walk away from the issue: All parties involved were being ignorant and no one was the better. This was the situation throughout history and instead many actions by people were considered under strict liability laws rather than negligence laws [3]. As I mentioned above, strict liability tends to make the acts more definable as illegal rather than entering a level of subjectivity to them.
Although a person might make an argument for cognitive empathy in relation to stalking law. You can’t KNOW if you’re causing someone fear for his or her safety or causing that person to suffer other emotional distress. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle (often encountered in high school chemistry courses when attempting to understand atomic orbitals) prevents a person from doing that: You can’t know with absolute certainty the position and velocity of an electron. And with that, you cannot know with absolute certainty the position and velocity of electrons in neurons. And with that, you cannot know with absolute certainty, the conscious thoughts of an individual arising from the brain. You can attempt to generate some framework, but you cannot know. Because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, you can’t know the future. With the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, you can’t predict with absolute certainty how something is going to turn out and you can’t know that you’re causing someone fear or that your actions will cause someone fear: It’s science.
If the case doesn’t have a negligence mens rea, the case may fall into recklessness or some higher culpability area, where a state of mind other than ignorance was involved. With negligence law, I do not know why people do not blame the alleged victim for not attempting to stop the situation, let his/her fear or problem with the actions be known, thus generating a “personalization” of the issues to be known as a perceived violation of his/her “person,” which one might argue making the foundation of prosecuting someone in relation to a stalking law into personalized law.
What I mean by that is when a person starts to say, “Don’t follow me, communicate to me, visit me, or be 100 feet around me, or else I’m going to be in fear of my safety,” then law has become personalized. The alleged victim might say that he or she said that to the alleged defendant. However, the defendant could just as well deny that ever occurred if there is no evidence. And if a judge acts against a defendant, a defendant could just as well hire an attorney and appeal. Perhaps it’s best to act as a defendant one’s self during restraining order hearing and hire an attorney to appeal if the judge places in an order.
That’s what some Peoria, Illinois officer did while attempting to show the whole stalking law to be unconstitutional in Nicholson v. Wilson [4]. However, the appeal funds were cut as people were getting into the nitty-gritty of the stalking law: The negligence or “reasonable person” aspect. The “reasonable person” is actually a subjective measure, regardless of what any judge will tell you. It could be defined as “community opinion,” which is subjective on its own [3]. However, since juries are often not offered in restraining order cases (I believe in Federal cases they are), the idea of “community opinion” or having people say someone did a “no-no” is stripped away from the respondent and instead replaced with a judge who can make any basis he or she wants without legal consequence against the judge.
It might be expected that a person be ignorant of the law when the law involves a “reasonable person” or negligence aspect to it. Otherwise, that person is psychic, God, has developed a better system of physics and mathematics enabling them to violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, is engaging in some form of magic (crystal ball, perhaps), or some other reason. It has to do with community opinion. The unfortunate aspect is that judges are often there judging the respondent or defendant without the presence of a jury. The judges do not always represent the community in which the law is relevant: The judges are not always voted in by the public. The judges may be voted in by other judges. And there are other issues. For instance, if it’s a state law, but the case is being heard in a county court, the county judge may not be representative of the state population’s opinion on that law. What I’m saying, for those who may be lost from what I’ve said in this paragraph, is that the interpretation of the facts of the case and how the law is applied is extremely biased due to the lack of people (who have nothing to do with the case unlike the judge) to hear the facts of the case, consider the how the law applies to the case, and make a decision about the relationship between the parties. However, even if there was a jury, it’s possible that the jury is capitalistic and wants to take members out of society: Thus, it could be argued that one should fear ever acting at all.
In reflection, any individual who petitions for a restraining order with stalking allegations is doing some serious lawyering. However, ignorance is no excuse for the law. So, that means the petitioner should be aware that you’re not given a jury, that the stalking law is subjective, that the judge can pretty much do what he or she wants barring criminal activity, and that it’s all about a piece of paper that does not necessitate safety (as the granted order does not necessitate someone being thrown in jail nor a conviction). In general, someone filing allegations of stalking may as well be harassing you in the court of law, which is criminal. My legal opinion, and I’m not an attorney or lawyer, is that an individual should ALWAYS appeal whenever there are stalking allegations involved, because when there is subjectivity involved, then it ALWAYS enables an argument to be made in the appeal to say the judge misinterpreted or incorrectly applied the law.
You could attempt to file a federal suit against the county, claim the judge violated your rights as a U.S. Citizen, and make a storm about it: But the federal court and/or state court might also shut you down and prevent you from doing that. However, it does tend to become a pain for the courts when people are able to keep filing suit against the county’s court system and/or members. I don’t know how to develop a federal suit against a county, but I don’t consider that it’s impossible. It would become a nuisance for the federal court and possibly inspire the federal court to get on the states about their stalking laws. In that, it could be seen as non-violent resistance by the public against those who violate their rights. Or it could potentially bring in money for the courts and attorneys, so the whole idea might backfire.
1) Strengthening Antistalking Statutes, Legal Series Bulletin #1. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2014, from https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/bulletins/legalseries/bulletin1/2.html
2) Chomsky, N. Chomsky: An Ignorant Public Is the Real Kind of Security Our Govt. Is After | Alternet. Chomsky: An Ignorant Public Is the Real Kind of Security Our Govt. Is After (2014). at
3) Winfield, P. H. (1926). The History of Negligence in the Law of Torts. Law Quarterly Review, 42. Retrieved from http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/lqr42&div=20&id=&page=
4) Peoria police officer’s attorneys claim stalking law is unconstitutional – News – Journal Star – Peoria, IL. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2014, from http://www.pjstar.com/x853685398/Officer-challenges-stalking-law
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Moderator
April 13, 2014
Some of the psychological perspectives you object to essentially agree with your rational ones. The orientation of the psychologist I’ve quoted is toward reconsidering rhetoric that’s been principally used to abuse men for many years now. Application of the word stalking is basically an act of necromancy; it summons a specter that puts everyone on alert (“DANGER!”). The ominousness of the word has rhetorical value, which has political utility. Pointing out that women also “stalk” corrupts the paradigm.
Something I was just writing about is that the terms stalking, bullying, and harassment are porous. Stalking identifies harassment of a certain variety. Like you’ve basically said, though, its use in law is sinister, because it’s highly prejudicial. It denotes mental deviancy and connotes the criminal intent to injure or even kill. Certainly obsession may lead to violence, but stalking is now applied to text messaging and repeat views of someone’s Facebook page. And the presence of the concept in social consciousness makes implications arise from courtroom testimony that wouldn’t otherwise.
A person, for example, can claim that s/he was “unexpectedly” contacted or call a contact “unsolicited” or whatever, and the implication that some horrible torment was undergone immediately looms. Brows knit. Suspicion vaults to the forefront!
A visit from the Avon lady or a Jehovah’s witness is “unsolicited.” The specter invoked by familiarity with the word stalking may both predispose a neurotic to interpret an unexpected contact as a justifiable claim for apprehension or serve a malicious accuser who knows that with a little rhetorical spin, any contact s/he implicitly claims is “untoward” or “strange” will be construed as malevolent.
(The person who was last night “peering into someone’s window” can tomorrow claim stalking when that someone demands to know what s/he was doing peering in his or her window!)
It’s not for nothing that more than one male respondent to this blog has said he was made to feel like a sex offender in court. The implications that emerge from the word stalking—which doesn’t even have to be explicitly used in court, so prominent has it become in our collective consciousness—make even vague allegations of apprehension suddenly on a par with attempted rape or the intent to commit rape or some other violent trespass. It authorizes anyone (but especially women) to be “afraid” of anything. And an allegation of fear is all a civil judge needs to run with.
What women who object to what they perceive as overtones of women-bashing from criticism of the restraining order process don’t get is that it’s a lot easier for a woman to claim “fear” than it is for a man. Hence it’s a lot easier for legal process to be abused by women. That’s in part thanks to the word stalking. One of Dr. Palmatier’s expositions is titled, “Female Stalkers, Part 1: What is Stalking and Can Men Be Stalked by Women?” Its object isn’t so much to promote the concept of stalking but to show that the behaviors called “stalking” aren’t exclusive to men. Among its objectives, in other words, is equity (and banishment of the specter).
What people like Dr. Palmatier and the clinical researchers Denise Hines and Emily Douglas endeavor to change is the conditioned gender bias (reflex) that obtains today, which injures men to extremes that are invisible to most people (including the agents of the justice system who ultimately exert the injuries).
If the word stalking is neutered of its potential to arouse hysterical reaction (“Men are dangerous!”), it can be hoped that arguments like yours toward revision of legal perspectives and statutory rhetoric will be given the attendance they deserve.
Something I tried to get at in this post is that there are people whose basic “romantic” motives and m.o.’s are predatory. My application of the word stalker, though psychological in significance, is mainly literal rather than metaphoric or “aesthetic.”
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positivagirl
April 7, 2014
Being stalked is scary. There is little you can do to stop it. If you call police they will lie to police and accuse you of what they are guilty of doing themselves.
It’s relentless. I get emails from people trapped in horrific situations. If they go to legal they will be accused. Their own honesty used against them.
That description where someone is just stood next to your car, or peering through your window. Or you get threatening calls as they have hacked your email/social networking then comes the ruining and smear campaigns that’s scary stuff. Like a psychological thriller and a nightmare you dont know how to normalize, as there is no normality and trying to leave or establish nocontact will only escalate things further . Great blog .
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Moderator
April 9, 2014
Thanks.
You’ve said a lot. Honesty is so impotent against pathological liars who abuse legal process. I’ve read police surveys that say officers assume that three out of four accused people they question are lying to them. Judges ass+u+me most people who make complaints to them are legitimately concerned for their safety. Just the act of pointing a finger arouses the worst suspicions of those in authority. If stalkers or other abusers catch on to this, they can put over frauds easily by acting first and representing their victims as the offenders. Or, like you point out, sociopaths, especially ones with good credentials, are excellent at spin (blame-shifting) even when they’re accused first, which doesn’t affect them as it does normal people (no conscience).
In some cases, this lets stalkers act with impunity, because the law is on their side. Or they can use false allegations to stalk. Or they can just let the menace loom, because once false allegations have been made—or a restraining order is in place—their victims live in a state of constant insecurity. Abusers don’t have to do anything. The anxiety they’ve instilled in the falsely accused does all the work for them. And they know this and may relish the fact—besides gloat over pulling a fast one on the system.
Encounters with these people can be so implausible and difficult to explain to normal people, because the motives of sociopaths aren’t normal motives. People ask, “But what would someone get out of doing something like that? It doesn’t make sense.” Yeah, what nourishes people like this doesn’t make sense.
When motives derive from mental disorders, even the FBI can be snookered.
The other thing a lot of people don’t get is what it can mean just to be accused. Even vague accusations end up being equated in the minds of third parties as sex offenses (some falsely accused men report being made to feel like rapists; some falsely accused women report feeling like they’ve been raped). It’s painful even to talk about it. A couple hundred people on average are brought here every day (and a decent chunk of them, to gauge from search terms, are victims of false allegations), but few comment or contribute to petitions to inspire change, because they’re demoralized, afraid of further exposure, and maybe unsure how to even express what they’ve been through (plus they may still be preoccupied with it). They’ve been made to feel small and trivial and vulnerable.
I don’t even know what to tell the person or couple who emails his, her, or their horror story to me. Maybe they just want someone else to know about it.
It’s funny. I come from people who, if I’d told them what I was put through at the time it began, would have confronted and put the fear of god into the perpetrators (and that’s putting it tenderly). Even today, I’m the moral wall protecting people who’ve stolen years from me and everything I might have accomplished with that time, which losses have of course damaged and continue to damage others. All you can do is try to maintain your ethical resolve.
If you meditate on these things long enough, though, and read stories like the ones people share with you (I get them, too), you can’t avoid the conclusion that other people’s playing by the rules is what abusers count on.
(Where does the bank robber want to retire with his swag? To the place with the lowest incidence of crime.)
I’ll be sad if I reach the point when I think abusers should be denied the security of ethical conduct from their marks…but not nearly as sad as I once would have been. I used to be a student of philosophy and literature; today what little reading I do is mostly about sociopaths.
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