Hybristophilia, or How Erik Menendez Got A Girl in Prison

A while back, I was sitting in the chow hall at the pen, talking with a young (early 20s) prisoner who was having relationship problems.  You see, he'd gotten involved with a woman through the mail.  A literal pen-pal.  Nice woman.  Little older than him, but still hot.  And she really liked him.  A month after their first face-to-face visit, she moved to the area so she could see him every week.  Two months later, and she wanted to get married.  Like in a couple of weeks.  He was really flattered, but he was also really kind of freaked out, because things were happening so fast, and what did I think?  I told him "DON'T DO IT!"  Then I brought in another of our outside volunteers, a father-figure to the guys, who heard the story and also said, "DON'T DO IT!"
Hybristophilia is defined as a sexual fixation on "a partner known to have committed an outrage, cheating, lying, known infidelities or crime, such as rape, murder, or armed robbery." All right, Wikipedia says its a sexual perversion, but you tell that to the people who are into it.  Plus, there's not a lot of actual sex involved.

(Maximum-security prisons don't allow conjugal visits.  Nor do federal prisons of any level.  And only four states - California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington allow conjugal visits in lesser-security prisons.)

And God knows there's not a lot of money involved, either.  If anything, money is generally going to flow from the outsider to the prisoner.  Money to help pay for the prisoner's phone time, stamps, commissary, odds and ends...  In fact, and forgive me for bursting anyone's bubble out there, but one of the main reasons that a lot of prisoners write to outsiders in a friendly to ever-increasing romantic vein is specifically to get money.  And they're often very successful.

BTW, prisoners also write attorneys, of course, to get help, and they send judges either bogus lawsuits or outright threats.  I remember at the courthouse, whenever something from the pen arrived for the judge, we'd all gather around - judge, court reporter, myself (circuit administrator), state's attorney, bailiff, etc. - and read the latest idiocy.  My favorite was a lawsuit demanding that the sheriff depose each and every officer of the court for high crimes and misdemeanors, listing everyone by name.  Except the judge. Finally, at the very end, there was a little handwritten note saying, "____, sorry I forgot you, asshole!"  You've got to be fairly stupid to send out stuff like that, not to mention "I'm going to take a shotgun to your head" to a judge, when your full name, prisoner number, and cell number is on the envelope...  

So, no sex, no money - why would someone get involved with a prisoner?  Why would someone write love letters to a total stranger?  Want to date them, through a glass/mesh screen?  Want to marry them in the visitors' room?  ???

Well, in some cases, there's the fame factor.  For those who write/wrote to Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, the Menendez brothers, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, part of the charm, apparently, is getting in on the modern obsession with celebrity.  No, it doesn't matter how horrendous the person is, or how heinous their acts, by God if they're famous, they're a celebrity, and by becoming their girlfriend/boyfriend, you become a celebrity, too!  You might get in on the media spotlight, get a book deal, a movie deal, or the body!

Charles Manson in 2014

• NOTE:  Not kidding about the body.  Did you know that, in 2015, at 80 years old, Charles Manson cancelled his upcoming penitentiary wedding to 27-year old Afton Elaine Burton, now known as Star, because he found out she was hoping that, after he died, she'd get his corpse, put it on display in a glass case in LA, and charge people to see it?  (Charles Manson has always been a little smarter and saner than he looks.)

• DOUBLE NOTE:  With regard to my last blog-post, Bullying 101, where I talked about Rush Limbaugh (and others) objecting to Michelle Carter being convicted of manslaughter for texting her boyfriend to suicide, saying that it's a violation of the First Amendment to "start penalizing people for things they say or things that they think, but don’t actually do":  Let's all remember that Charles Manson got life in prison without parole, for exactly what he said, and nothing that he did.  He was nowhere near either of the murder scenes.  So far, I haven't heard anyone objecting to his sentencing...

Anyway, back to reasons why people want to write to, date, have sex (or not) with, and/or marry prisoners.  According to Katherine Ramsland, professor of forensic psychology at DeSales University,

• "Some believe they can change a man as cruel and powerful as a serial killer."
• "Others 'see' the little boy that the killer once was and seek to nurture him."
• "Then there's the notion of the 'perfect boyfriend'. She knows where he is at all times and she knows he's thinking about her. While she can claim that someone loves her, she does not have to endure the day-to-day issues involved in most relationships. There’s no laundry to do, no cooking for him, and no accountability to him. She can keep the fantasy charged up for a long time."   (Wikipedia)

BTW, men also write to female prisoners.  I think many of them are also looking for the perfect girlfriend, who requires nothing (but a little money).  I also think that some of them are looking for a future drug mule or sex slave, and a female prison is a good place to recruit:  many female prisoners have already been so abandoned, abused, in every sense of the word, and so many of them have father issues, self-image issues, etc., that they are willing to do just about anything for anyone who seems to care for them.

Of course, there's also the occasional female serial killer, like Aileen Wuornos, who would be perfect for the man who wanted to tell himself that he can nurture the little girl she once was, and/or wants to see if he can change the serial killer the way James Bond changed Pussy Galore on the last page of "Goldfinger". (Even at twelve years old, I knew that was nothing but Ian Fleming's fantasy...)

Meanwhile, I talk to guys up here in South Dakota who are in their 20s and already have anywhere from two to nine children by two or three or four different women, and now have a girlfriend they met while in the pen.  They don't even begin to grasp how much trouble they're in even before they get out.  I understand why they keep having sex whenever they can - it's fun, free, and so far isn't illegal - but why won't they use condoms?  How are they going to support all those children?  How are they going to pay child support, make court-ordered restitution, and pay bills when they'll be lucky to get a minimum-wage job?  Sigh...

Not that our hybristophiliacs necessarily have any idea of the prior commitments their new prison romance has.  After all, it's the rare prisoner who's going to cough up things like ex-wives, current wives, children, and any other financial obligations or debts.  Or their personality flaws.  Or the truth about their crime(s)...   Hybristophilia is somewhere between kinky romance and lion-taming.  Either way, it's dangerous.  Either way, it's unreal.  (You don't really know someone until you've actually lived with them, and even then it helps if you've been together through a bad vacation complete with rain, food poisoning, broken-down car, and a fleabag motel with no heat.)  Yes, there are exceptions, where two people genuinely connect through letters and visits; where the prisoner eventually gets out, and they do marry/live together and it all works out.  Two points:  (1) These are very rare.  (2) None of these have been with serial killers.

But the fantasy lives on.

Bullying 101

DISCLAIMER: Almost 40 years ago, a dear friend of mine
committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in his running vehicle.
I claim no objectivity in what follows.

Earlier this week, Leigh Lundin posted The Wickedest Woman in the World, a great blog post about the Michelle Carter case. A lot of us chimed in. During the discussions, I agreed that an article about Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome would be valuable, along with a little thing on hybristophilia, but later, later, later… And I will. But after I listened, briefly, to Rush Limbaugh (I try to keep an ear on what the self-proclaimed Doctor of Democracy is up to) and got ticked off, I've decided that the REAL description of Ms. Carter's behavior is bullying.

You see, Rush was defending Michelle Carter, saying that the case against her is nothing but liberal BS, because liberals don't believe in free speech (oh, Rush, if you only knew!). He said, "this woman, Michelle Carter, she may be just downright mean. She may have no heart. She may just be brutal, getting on the phone and telling this guy to kill himself, ’cause he said he was going to, and if he doesn’t now he’s a coward and whatever. But she didn’t kill him. And yet so many people are coming along thinking he didn’t do, he’s a victim, she did it. This is 180 degrees out of phase. If we’re gonna start penalizing people for things they say or things that they think, but don’t actually do — now, I know what some of you think. “But, Rush, you just got through saying that the Democrats turned this Hodgkinson guy into a lunatic.” I do believe that. But..." (See full Transcript for more of the typical Rush twist on how it's different when…)

Well, first off, sorry, Rush, but we already penalize people for things they say. We have freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences of said speech. But more on that later.

Secondly, what Rush presented was the standard bully's defense:

• "I didn't MAKE them do anything."
• "It's THEIR fault if they can't take a joke."
• "Can I help it if they're a loser?"
• "I didn't do anything wrong."
• "Hey, 'sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me'. So what's the problem?"

Okay, show of hands, how many people out there have ever been bullied? How many felt helpless? How many felt afraid?

Scut Farkus

Let's use Scut Farkus (of "A Christmas Story") as an example: Scut had all the neighborhood boys terrorized to the point that, when he came up and yelled at them "Come here!" they came. No, he didn't lasso them or hold a gun, he just yelled and they did it. And there's at least one scene where a boy turns around and gives him his arm to twist. They were thoroughly cowed.

But it can get infinitely worse than that.

When we first moved up to South Dakota, I subbed at the high school for a while, and a student there committed suicide because of the constant, non-stop bullying that he received. That was before internet and cellphones. Google bullying and suicide and see the number of hits you come up with. And cyber-bullying, with teens and adolescents, is pushing the number of suicides up.

According to PEW research on teens and cellphones, one in three teens sends 100 text messages a day. 15% send 200 text messages a day. And a certain percentage of that is cyber-bullying. And a certain percentage of that leads to suicides. Michelle Carter exchanged over 1000 text messages with Conrad Roy, encouraging him, telling him, badgering him to commit suicide. What makes it worse is that she knew that he had attempted suicide already, back in 2012, and that he was battling anxiety and depression. After learning that he was planning to kill himself she repeatedly discouraged him from committing suicide in 2012 and 2014 and encouraged him to "get professional help". But then her attitude changed and in July 2014, she started thinking that it would be a "good thing to help him die" (Wikipedia) Thus the 1000 text messages. That's cyber-bullying, and it worked. She even admitted it, in an infamous text to a friend - “I was on the phone with him and he got out of the [truck] because it was working and he got scared and I f***ing told him to get back in."

And why did Michelle Carter want Conrad Roy dead? Because she wanted to receive the sympathy of her classmates as the grieving girlfriend, who only wanted the best for her boyfriend, and the best was that he die.

Michelle Carter - from CNN,
"Text Messages Michelle Carter Used

How many of you have been or have known the victim of domestic abuse? There's often more verbal than physical, because it's all about control. Here are some of the many signs of domestic abuse, a/k/a bullying (from the Domestic Violence and Abuse Checklist.):

Does the abuser:

• humiliate or yell at you?
• criticize you and put you down?
• treat you so badly that you’re embarrassed for your friends or family to see?
• ignore or put down your opinions or accomplishments?
• blame you for their own abusive behavior?
• see you as property or a sex object, rather than as a person?
• act excessively jealous and possessive?
• control where you go or what you do?
• keep you from seeing your friends or family?
• limit your access to money, the phone, or the car?
• constantly check up on you?

Notice that I did not include any physically violent act. All of the above are verbal, emotional abuse; and they're enough to leave the victim answering "yes" to, Do you:

Ingrid Bergman in "Gaslight"

• feel afraid of your partner much of the time?
• avoid certain topics out of fear of angering your partner?
• feel that you can’t do anything right for your partner?
• believe that you deserve to be hurt or mistreated?
• wonder if you’re the one who is crazy?
• feel emotionally numb or helpless?

Domestic abuse is bullying, carried on into adulthood. There's a direct link between bullying in childhood and domestic abuse in adulthood (Psychiatry Online): "Men who had bullied schoolmates once in a while were twice as likely to have engaged in violence against a female partner within the previous year as were men who said they had never bullied their school peers. And men who had admitted bullying frequently in school were four times as likely to have done so as were men who had never bullied in school."

On top of that, there's a direct link between domestic abuse and mass shootings (see here and here, too.) Because bullying is all about control and fear. Domestic abuse is all about control and fear. Mass shooting is all about control and fear.

Okay, that was quite a long and winding road. And not every bully, cyber-bully, or just narcissist is going to end up a mass shooter. But I noticed this in the Wikipedia article cited above: This decision "could set legal precedent for whether it's a crime to tell someone to commit suicide." My response?

I CERTAINLY HOPE SO.

Why wouldn't it be a crime to tell someone to kill themselves? Why wouldn't it be a crime to gaslight a person? Why wouldn't it be a crime to do your best to INCREASE someone's mental illness? Or to use their mental illness to your advantage?

Here's the deal, Rush and followers: I believe 100% in free speech. You can say anything you please, anywhere, any time. But I also believe that free speech has consequences. After all,

• If you yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, you're liable for the results.
• If you threaten the President's life, you're going to get a visit from the Secret Service.

So why, if you badger someone who's battling depression and mental illness with over 1000 texts telling them to kill themselves, and they do it, why wouldn't you be culpable?

Of course, the bullies would totally disagree: to a bully, all the consequences flow one way, onto the victim, who is solely responsible for what happens to her/him. And so we have Michelle Carter, new icon of free speech, who told her boyfriend to "get back in the f*****g truck" so that she could go cry about his death to her friends.

Next time, Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome and hybristophilia, or why Erik Menendez has a wife.

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.