The Caliphettes

What were they thinking?

We ask this question of criminals, dumb and otherwise. Eve raised this query just days ago when she delved into guards who have sex with prisoners. She was ahead of the curve: a day later, ABC News featured their own article on the subject.

Hybristophilia

Richard Ramirez

It’s too simplistic to lump all prison workers who fall for inmates into a single category, but one type is so common, the condition has its own name, hybristophilia, popularly called Bonnie and Clyde syndrome. Think of it as women who love the most extreme bad boys. If you believe it's strictly the inmates seeking sex, then reconsider.

Hybristophilia is defined as “a paraphilia of the predatory type in which sexual arousal, facilitation, and attainment of orgasm are responsive to and contingent upon being with a partner known to have committed an outrage, cheating, lying, known infidelities or crime, such as rape, murder, or armed robbery.” The lexical roots of hybristophilia are the Greek words ὕβρις or ‘hubris’ and φιλία or philo, meaning ‘love of’.

Take No Prisoners

I once knew a prison sociologist, psychologist and teacher, an alumna of my university. ‘Dawn’ (not her real name) observed that some women are drawn to prisons as hunting grounds for a fantasy husband or at least a relationship. On the surface, these warders or support personnel tell themselves that such companionship is safe and confined if sometimes chaste, like a tiger on a leash only they can tame. Unsurprisingly, their real motives run much deeper and darker.

Jeffrey Dahmer

I’d like to trust my acquaintance never engaged in unlawful sex behind bars, but Dawn twice married prisoners, one on death row. In one marriage, she was allowed conjugal visits; in the other, she wasn’t.

This woman– bright, attractive, vibrant– earned her doctorate and a couple of masters degrees that assisted her career but not her personal life. She came to realize she wanted a normal relationship with a normal man– one not behind bars. But this lady’s view of herself was anything but the norm. Dawn felt her purpose was to be used– her word, not mine. Her need went beyond serving, beyond servile, beyond slavish; she felt she had no worth unless she was being deployed and destroyed like an object, an artifact of someone else’s existence.

Yet she was well-regarded in the prison system, her secret well hidden.

In describing her, I fear tainting the image of other women, of other prison professionals who toil in an unending, thankless, Sisyphean job. I fear giving the impression of an overly educated dilettante who became a victim of over-thinking or over-feeling. It’s difficult to gauge how much the job affected her. At core, Dawn was simply human, possibly someone who’d lost her way. Although the less educated appear to be more vulnerable, ultimately intelligence is no sure defense. To my knowledge and to her credit, prisoners were never at risk, only she. In trying to save and serve others, she sacrificed herself until little was left but an empty husk.

The Caliphettes

In regard to jihadi brides, psychologist Phyllis Chesler calls this ‘unfreedom’, the choosing of bondage over a surfeit of freedoms and decisions in their home countries. In other words, once a girl makes that final choice, she need make no more– all further decisions are made for her. Some see that as a sort of freedom in itself.

At present, the baddest of the bad are truly evil– the Caliphate of Daish or ISIS, combatants capable of any atrocity, terrorists who know no bounds. These men exert an attraction for vulnerable girls that goes beyond mere hybristophilia. Yet at root is the same empty vessel, the vulnerable unfilled desire into which a dangerous, dastardly man can pour sweet words and powerful images, making his target feel special, that she’s found happiness in a man the rest of the world misunderstands.

Jihadi Runaway Brides

Sometimes called ‘caliphettes’, these young women typically range from early teens into their twenties. If they’re already Muslim, they’re told family and friends aren’t truly Islamic. If not Muslim, they’re urged to convert, which can take surprisingly little persuasion.

Their on-line ‘lovers’ become their handlers who direct them to not stand out. They’re instructed to appear normal in every way until they’re ready to run, often to an innocent European destination, then a way station like Turkey, a jumping-off point for Syria and more treacherous places in the Middle East. Jihadis who successfully seduce girls to make the journey receive admiration from their peers.

One of the most shocking cases involves somewhat older women, three sisters in their thirties. They deceived and abandoned their husbands and parents in the UK, took their young children (nine in total), and slipped into Syria to join ISIS.

The Reality

The family that slays together…

We might imagine how these hijrah work out– naïve girls emigrating to a sharia country, in this case the newly risen Daish caliphate. You might remember a young Australian boy holding up the severed head of a slaughtered ‘enemy of ISIS’. With the male parent presumed dead, the child’s mother is now begging a cautious Australia to let her and the children return. While girls who make the journey are probably allotted to a jihadist husband as one of his wives, that's not guaranteed. Indeed, some believe girls may be shunted into rôles as battlefield sex slaves, assigned to service dozens of militants.

A valiant French journalist ‘Anna Erelle’ (again, not her real name) had been studying why European teenagers were attracted to Islamic extremism. She’d created an on-line, 19-year-old persona dubbed ‘Mélodie’ and investigated jihadist web sites. In her explorations, she attracted the attention of an ISIS fighter who said he’d take care of her. He quickly invited her to Syria to become one of his wives, or as he put it, ‘a queen’ (among four, of course). Following Erelle’s exposé, she now lives with police protection, a lonely existence since her presence might endanger family and friends. She’s a brave woman; read her story.

All is not lost. Britain is successfully practicing the Aarhus model of de-radicalization, a Danish program of salvaging young male recruits before they make that fateful journey. With luck, they might be able to extend a similar program to jihadi brides as well. In the meantime, ISIS poses a formidable lure that we might underestimate at our peril.