Category Archives: Testimonials in English

Despite the fact that psychopaths devastate everyone in their path including the women and children who love them, why have clinicians not seen fit to study and write about the single most obvious source of insight into this issue: the survivors of intimate relationships with psychopaths? The study of any disease involves carefully collecting and examining its symptoms, and psychopathy is definitely a societal disease. Even our legal system gathers information about criminals by taking testimony from on-site, first hand witnesses. So again, I ask: why is there no clinical material about – much less interest in – the psychopath’s partner?

I think that one answer is: therapists don’t recognize her as a victim of psychopathy because they usually don’t recognize him as a psychopath! On the rare occasion when a psychopath’s victim is identified, she is lumped together with more typical domestic violence survivors; or labeled as codependent, a relationship/sex addict, and/or assumed to be suffering dependent personality-disorder. These inaccurate and often biased explanations of pathological love relationships have neither helped victims find specific treatment for their unique relationship dynamics and aftermath symptoms, nor have they contributed (as they could) to our knowledge of psychopathy itself. It’s a travesty within the clinical profession that the victims are not more readily identified or better understood and that this rich source of vital information has not been mined.

Sandra L. Brown, The Unexamined Victim: Women who Love Psychopaths

I’m not the sort of person who likes to expose her life on the Internet for everyone to read. I don’t feel the need to do that in order to know that I exist. What I’m about to write here is for the sole purpose of setting facts straight regarding my separation from a pathological man who, because he couldn’t accept his own responsibility in the utter failure of our relationship, has devoted himself to attacking my friends: Laura Knight-Jadczyk, her family and her life’s work, accusing them of being a cult who ‘took me away’ from him.

Bear in mind that this was not just an ‘informal accusation’. He went all the way to file an official complaint with the Police Judiciaire in Toulouse, who are now investigating Laura and her associates as if they were criminals, with NO proof at all. I will not get into all the details here, but you can read them [here].

All I want to say is that I am REALLY appalled at the fact that the authorities seem to have listened to my ex, taken false and defamatory ‘claims’ as facts, AND, have never even asked me – the alleged victim – what REALLY happened! They must think I am stupid, gullible and dumb! Well, for those who are interested, (the police would seem to not be interested in the truth), you can read what I really have to say here.

It’s perfectly logical for pathological people to react that way when they’re ‘dumped’. For them, people are not free-thinking, feeling human beings; they are property. They ignore the meaning of ‘freedom of association’, which includes the right to NOT associate with them. This kind of individual refuses you the simple right to NOT associate with them anymore, be it now or ever. This utter lack of consideration tells a lot about how they think about their partners and children: they are prey. For them, you’re just a piece of meat without any will of your own, without a brain, without existence apart from being under their control.

I am utterly shocked that the person who used to be my ‘partner’ is using other people – my friends, the Jadczyks and their work – to try to get me back by spreading his slander; to get me back or, if he can’t, to destroy me along with everybody else that I hold dear, including, and especially, my children. I’m outraged that he refuses me the legitimate right to lead my life without him, independently, and to befriend whomever I want.

I’m also writing this as an illustration of how pathology works within relationships. I hope this will serve as a warning to other women who are at risk – and most women are – of falling prey to this type of individual. (See Women Who Love Psychopaths by Sandra Brown, MA)

As human beings trying to survive in an often harsh world, we’re all wounded to one extent or another, all craving for affection and love – and that perfectly normal need is exploited by pathological individuals – most often psychopaths – to lure their victims into their web.

In order for people to understand how, and why, some women (and sometimes men) come to end up in pathological relationships with sick individuals, I need to give a bit of background on myself to provide some context.

I had an apparently normal childhood by current social standards – which means there wasn’t any apparent abuse or other developmental issues. I was not beaten up by my mother (who divorced when I was around 4), I didn’t have alcoholic parents, I was good at school, I had friends, my mother took care of me, my grandmother loved me and cared for me, and so on. Yes, I was often unsure of myself, sensitive, shy and introverted, which caused me at some point to be bullied by other kids. But, who isn’t bullied at some time or another during childhood? It’s something quite common and you learn to cope with it soon enough.

So, everything looked normal and nice enough in my family and in my life in general, except for one thing. When I was around 5 (my parents were already divorced), my father molested me. From what I remember, it happened only once, in my mother’s home; she was away, and we were waiting for her.

I suppose it strongly affected me (which child wouldn’t be affected at being betrayed and abused by the very person they are supposed to trust completely?) since it always stayed engraved in my mind. I never told my mother about it. After that, one day he came to pick me up for the weekend, and as I showed strong reluctance to go with him, he just walked out the door, and I never heard from him again. I’ve learned recently that he got into a big a argument with his parents years ago, and that he cut all contact with them. Seems to be his modus operandi. I actually don’t think it was the molestation that was the problem so much as it was the abandonment – or the two elements combined together.

Like many children who experience abandonment, I felt that it was my fault and I wasn’t worthy of love. Combined with the lack of a good father model, it affected me and was to run in the background for most of my life. I suspect this lack of a healthy father figure was the thing that would make me seek out unhealthy relationships with men when I’d grown up. But how many other women have similar stories to tell? A lot, I think.

My interactions with other members of the male sex were about par for the course among most women. What we now call abuse went on in my childhood – with a boy who forced me to kiss him (with the tongue) when I was around 5 or 6 as we ‘played’ together and he wanted to pretend to ‘make love’ (he was 3 years older than me) – it happened several times. Then, there was bullying at school because I was introverted, good at studies and ‘bad at sport’. When I was 15, when we were on holidays in Turkey, and we had some ‘massages’ in a Turkish bath, this ‘massagist’ virtually molested me in front of other people who probably didn’t notice it. And then, still in Turkey, an exhibitionist member of the hotel staff showed his penis to my friend and me – we ran, giggling, pretending he was coming after us. While we laughed at the time, it was a traumatizing first view of the adult male reproductive organ. Other girls might have fought back, maybe given him a slap in the face (I’m talking about the massagist) – I didn’t dare to react. I didn’t even comprehend what was happening to me.

Then, when I was a bit older, there were the ‘boyfriends’. The first one taught me love is not a fairy tale a la Romeo and Juliet. Instead, it was a continuous series of ‘small traumas’ (although I did not realize it was trauma nor abuse at the time), actually very common things that a lot of girls and women must endure every day. And all that time, I kept my mouth shut about these ‘small acts’ of sexual abuse. When you think about it, it’s kind of crazy – ‘How could she let them do that?’ ‘How come she didn’t react?’ Because I was taught not to react, not to make a fuss of anything. And I was ashamed. Ashamed that there was something about me that brought about these violations of my body and person. After all, the victim is taught that, in some way, she asked for it. That she must have ‘deserved’ it.

During my teenage and early adulthood years, I got into the Goth culture, vampires and things like that. I even cut myself, like many teenagers (mostly girls, apparently) do nowadays – you just want to look good and be loved, but as you cannot be loved since you’re despicable to yourself, you wear a mask, create a false self in order to be accepted. Though that kind of behaviour might be seen as self-destructive – and in a sense, it is – I never was suicidal. I suppose I just wanted people to see me, notice me. Expressing myself in this way was a way to rebel and get out all the anger and self-loathing I’d accumulated in years, and punish myself for the flaws I felt must be a part of me. Extraverts seem to pour it all out in positive ways, introverts turn everything inside, and express their anger in a negative way. Very common amongst youngsters, I know now.

I persuaded myself that dark romanticism was a mode of artistic expression, a way to stand out. I had friends in the ‘beaux arts’ and saw myself as belonging to an alternative culture. I wanted to project the image of someone who hates everyone and everything so nothing could hurt me. It was a way to wear a mask and refuse to grow up. Among teenagers, it is a very puerile and common attitude even though some might express it in less controversial ways. This ‘dark behavior’ increased for a couple of months during a transition phase after I left university and discovered the Internet. Hidden behind my computer, I could play the rebel and troll anonymously; a very convenient ‘steam venting therapy’. I wrote many stupid things in newsgroups, pretending to adopt a philosophy a la Sade (from the Marquis de Sade). It’s embarrassing to read what I wrote back then now that I’m older, but the fact is, I was just a girl hungry for affection and wondering about her future, going about it in all the wrong ways. But I’ve grown up a lot since then.

As a true friend (Laura) recently wrote to me, after I talked about these experiences during that rather brief period of my life which mostly consisted of reading Goth books and trolling on the Internet, posting BS in newsgroups:

‘You have to understand that we all do the best we can with what we have and based on what we know at any given time. When you were doing all that stuff, you sincerely thought that it was the way love was (or the only love you deserved) and the way to get it. Okay, you know different now. I suspect you know different because of your children more than anything else. And you have put forth enormous efforts to pull out of that pit so that your children can have a wholesome life and be loved in a clean and positive way. You have dealt with some incredible obstacles and you should be patting yourself on the back for some of that, not beating yourself up over what a jerk you were when you were young. I used to do that a lot myself, so I know how it feels. There have been times when I thought about stuff from my past and just wanted to jump out the window. But someone always reminds me that those were programs that I learned – a false personality – that grew around me to protect me from pain.

Okay, so you had this false personality to protect you. You did things that – in their own way – helped you to survive. Why can’t you just love that girl for doing the best she could to survive in impossible conditions? And if that girl hadn’t done some of those things, you would not have survived. You DID survive, you are a GOOD person and a good mother and thank god you did survive.

So love her even in her ignorance and helplessness to do anything different.

If you want to be angry at anything, be angry at the system that rules our world and makes people’s lives like that. Be angry at the psychopaths that run the show on this planet. And stay determined to not let them beat you, because you are all those kids have to teach them how not to do the same.’

Of course I realize now that this self-sabotaging process was unconscious. Consciously, I wanted a harmonious relationship with a good guy, but unconsciously I picked up manipulative, abusive and ‘tortured’ men because they presented an image which resonated well with my own vision of how love should be: painful and with continual threat of abandonment. The fact that these men projected an image of protector, of a punishing and demanding father substitute also attracted me. I couldn’t imagine any other possibility.

Looking back now, I can see that this behaviour – including the fascination for ‘dark men and dark stuff’ was the result of childhood trauma and abandonment by my father, and I never realised up until recently that these internal states were very common among other women. I always felt guilty about it, that I was being bad and ‘dark’, and thus deserved to ‘suffer’. I didn’t realize that by picking up the wrong men – men I perceived as dark, tortured souls – I was in fact trying to save someone else who was as dark as possible as a means of redeeming myself. I also didn’t realize that I was not really dark. But I wanted myself to appear as such, because I thought that was what I was inside. How could it be otherwise? My father abused me, then left me, so I felt pretty worthless.

I met this man that this article is about – let’s call him ‘Jean’ – about 12 years ago, over the Internet. We started as friends, and would get together as a couple only 3 years later. He contacted me after he saw one of my posts on a Usenet forum. We started a correspondence by email. The fact that he was an older man responding to a post by an angst-ridden post-teenager should have been a big warning!

From the start, I found the way he expressed himself somewhat odd and off. Something didn’t feel exactly right about him, but I just thought he was an older, more experienced guy interested in Goth culture, with whom I could have exciting conversations. If you are also a victim of a pathological person like my ex, you probably know from your own experience how easy it is to ignore those intuitive ‘red flags’ about someone, when our lives are being ruled by our past wounds and fear.

During the course of our email exchanges, he quickly started to talk about his life, his first girlfriend (a relationship which, he claimed, had really ‘affected’ him. He was quite obsessed about it, often bringing it up – later I would realise that obsession was one of his main traits of character), and how he was unhappy with his current wife. He seemed to fit that image of the tortured guy that I somehow sought. He was older than me, which fitted my idea of a father figure, supposed to be more experienced, wiser, stronger, more trustworthy, more caring, etc.

At the beginning, I wasn’t attracted to him – I was too busy being in ‘love’ with another guy. But that relationship didn’t work out, and there was this man… He was always ‘there for me’, listening to me, sending me music tapes and books, inviting me to the restaurant (while still married), showing understanding, always willing to help. (Sounds too good to be true? Yes, it was.) We were friends (we communicated mostly by email or by phone), but I kind of knew he wanted more than a friendship, and he would never be satisfied with just being friends. I ended the interaction for some time, but contacted him again after I broke up with my then boyfriend. Bad decision, for sure, but I suppose I wanted to be reassured, comforted, that I needed to speak to someone – to a friend who would ‘understand me’. It was gratifying – though sometimes highly oppressive and disturbing – to receive so much attention from someone.

We’d often have arguments over the nature of our relationship. He wanted more, in such a possessive way that it made me want to withdraw, and we would play cat and mouse. Once, after an argument, he said he felt really bad, like he had reached a breaking point. He mentioned his dark past, how it had affected and prevented him from living a fulfilling emotional life and I was the key to unlocking his heart, giving him hope, blah blah. I fell into that pity trap.

Here was a man willing to bare his soul for me, who trusted me enough, or so I thought, to tell his darkest secrets to me. I felt I had to help him get it all out and heal. A lot of women are like that. I’m no exception. But what I was ignorant about at the time, was that I was filling in the blanks, like many other victims, for what he was NOT saying. Once again, ignorance of pathology is dangerous.

He told me about his childhood and young adulthood. Most of his confessions centered on his failure at relationships with women, and were very sexually loaded. Everything centered around sex. Some facts were really disturbing, but I explained it away by the fact that he had done what he had done because he suffered – that’s what he told me. The emphasis was on HIS suffering; not on the ones he had made to suffer. I couldn’t see it at the time, because I was still quite young, immature and inexperienced, and totally ignorant of pathology and how it expresses itself. Those realisations would come much later, through the reading of books and sharing of experience between other women (some from the Cassiopaea forum, some from other forums and websites on the Net who had lived through similar experiences).

I still have in my possession a truly horrifying ‘confession’ he sent me years ago, where he presented himself as the victim in a series of the most revolting escapades you can imagine. I’m going to publish it separately so that the reader can have a very good idea of the mental landscape of this kind of person. He’s so good at manipulating that I think even women who are not wounded (though most of them are) but have a tender heart, would have fallen into the trap and taken pity on him, as I did after reading this truly awful revelation. Given my ignorance at the time and my youth, having no man in my family who could have warned me against him and no healthy role model to let me know how abnormal he really was, it’s easy to see how I was fooled.

But, this is how he works: he goes after lonely women. He goes after what he perceives as weak: girls, young women, children, single mothers (his ex-wife) – mainly women with soft hearts and strong needs for loving and being loved.

In retrospect, it becomes perfectly understandable why he has chosen to attack Laura and her family with such rage: he hates people – and he particularly hates strong and determined women. He perceives strong women as a threat to his manipulations, to his ‘power’ over others. He preys on ‘girls’ and children because he thinks they’re easy to manipulate. I was a girl, who turned into a woman, and that is what he could not tolerate because it put an end to his control over me. And he hates the people who helped me the most with all the fury of a spoiled child having a tantrum. He can’t stand that I don’t need him, that I have no feeling for him anymore, other than anger and disgust towards what he has done and what he is.

If it weren’t it for real men that I came to know through the Cassiopaea forum (where pathological types are ejected rather quickly) and who became friends, as well as others I meet every day and perceive with the eyes of an adult instead of a wounded child, I would have despaired of men, after my experience with him and all the deviants I met along my way to adulthood – to womanhood.

About his confession that I am also publishing, as mentioned already… it’s been really painful to go through that filth again, to think of all the victims he created on his destructive path through this world – like his ex-girlfriend, whom he met when she was still a teenager (and who was apparently already fragile), and who is now psychologically damaged… so damaged that her own mother doesn’t want anyone to talk to her about him ever again. According to a Private investigator’s report, this mother described Jean as a very dangerous man who had beaten her daughter up. During an incident, her daughter had run to her house to escape him, and Jean had run after her. There, he had thrown objects around, and begun to cut himself with glass.

And about his ex-wife, well, she threw him out. According to the information I have received, the police had to be called because he was not willing to go when asked. These types, once they have you in their web, won’t let you go that easily. If you’re alone, with no man in your family to protect you or a network of reliable, true friends to help you out, it’s even more difficult.

I wish I had had the knowledge and the courage to talk to these women – his other victims – before. But as you may know if you too are a victim, this type of man does everything to isolate you, to depict himself as the victim, and you are prevented from seeking out other women to talk about it. In the past, it was common for people to gather together and exchange observations and data. Nowadays, it is labeled as ‘gossip’. And hence, we go round and round, in isolation and fear, not really networking with anyone.

The purpose of this testimonial is to put an end to this. I want all the victims that have unfortunately crossed this individual’s path to know who he really is. And it is my hope that many other victims, potential victims and people who have suffered from pathologicals like him, will be able to learn from my mistakes and heal, as I am doing myself.

Looking deeply into the psychology of pathological individuals who prey on women is not easy. But I can assure you that it is extremely liberating. I want to warn readers, especially women, who are going to read his confession, that it’s disgusting and sickening. It’s not easy reading – it all focuses on sex and the objectification of women. It describes incest and sexual abuse. But you see, it’s so twisted and full of ‘hooks’ that if you’re young and have no direct – or even theoretical – experience of pathology, you fall for it, you end up empathizing with the monster because he presents himself as a victim, and does it oh so well. Women who have been the victims of such men will understand what I’m talking about. It’s all about pity, the most effective weapon the psychopath has in his arsenal.

As I said, I’m sharing this confession publicly, because I think it can help other women, potential or ex-victims of pathologicals, to learn, from the inside, how such predators operate. The confession written by ‘Jean’ – even if we suspect he lied a lot about the role he played in various dramas, or his level of responsibility, or even how far he really went in various situations – is invaluable material as it allows us to get a look inside the mind of a human predator.

I should also note that ‘Jean’s’ confession ended with a love declaration for me and how he had been so full of hatred, how he had hurt his own humanity and how now that he had met me, he wanted to do good. I fell for it. I really pitied him and thought he was so courageous to confess all that horrible stuff to me.

This is what I wrote him after reading it:

No, this is not expression, this is vomit: you vomit your bile, your hatred, your bitterness, etc. you spit out everything that you can’t stomach, which is smothering you. You take that weight off, everything that’s been piling up on you and which is polluting your soul. Now you’re lighter, you’ll be able to express yourself at last. Am I right here?

Something started to grow in me. The image of someone who had been on the ‘wild side’ but who wanted to redeem himself appeared to me as stimulating enough while safe at the same time, since after all, he had supposedly changed, and this was just stuff he had done a long time ago and now it was over. So there was no need to be concerned and afraid, right?

I really want to highlight the fact that he really got to me through my own need of a father. How many women are like that? And how many men take advantage of that need to be loved and supported, putting on the mask of the ‘good man’ – the caring, attentive, gentle, ‘I’ll be there for you’ one – listening to you, making you trust them, confide in them, tell them all your secret needs and fears? The more information they can get, the better to manipulate you. And you’re so young and eager for that father you never had, you’re so willing to trust… well, that is how they get you.

In turn, they will share how they, too, have been hurt by their past, how they’ve been manipulated and used by other woman to whom they gave their heart. And of course, all other women are worthless while you, alone, are The One.

I recently found out that, when his plans to get me weren’t working so well (after all, it took years), he was playing the same trick with other young women which he had contacted through some Goth newsgroups and starting to tell about his ‘past’ in the same way he was telling me!

Going through old files, I also recently found some disturbing email exchanges between ‘Jean’ and his friend/confident at the time (a woman whom he tricked into thinking he was a poor lonely heart wanting to help, and I was just a stupid jerk for daring to not succumb to his ‘charms’). These emails were written while I was in London. His friend was to visit me (I knew her a little, through emails and phone), but what I didn’t know then is that they secretly planned to come together. Reading this exchange makes my blood run cold:

‘Jean’s’ friend: if I phone her and ask her to wait at the station, she’s gonna suspect you’re here too.

‘Jean’: Make sure you both settle things together. I will pretend that I don’t know anything, and claim I learned about it ‘at the last minute’, as usual.

Friend: I can keep that good influence, but imagine if she tells me, ‘sorry I don’t want to see him’. What do I do?

‘Jean’: Nothing, or a slap in the face, but what you say below really gets on my nerves. I’d have her in front of me, I’d say: ‘Who do you think you are?’ (…)

‘Jean’: A mobile? She told me that she wanted to get one.

Friend: Yes, she has one, but confidential, you know.

‘Jean’: Yeah, she’s really a little jerk. Here I’m losing my temper, but I’ll pretend to stay calm. I really want to get her, yeah I can be vicious … for her to be a bit more aware, and to knock some sense into her. -shite-, this kind of dish is served coldly.’

(…) No, we organise (the trip), she is only incidental. And it’s a good occasion, I’ve never been to England

Friend: Well, I don’t find the way you talk about her very nice, can I defend her? because I wouldn’t like it if someone thought the same thing about me. (…)

‘Jean’: (…) All I wish is to have teeth sharp enough to bite her, argh, i’d like to inject a poison into her, so that she will beg me after. Seriously, she’s far more moronic than I thought. The absolute trap would be: we plan to visit her together, and then you bail out.

Friend: No worries for me, but you can’t do that twice, she’s not stupid

‘Jean’: Yes she, she is very stupid. As naive as she is, she’ll never think that we’re talking about her, and that we plan things behind her back… In her mind, when people chat together it must mean they’re flirting, so (…) she doesn’t think straight, remember.

Another exchange, concerning his ex-gf (underage at the time):

‘Jean’: her 17, I 25

Friend: Here you go, and corruption of a minor to boot…

‘Jean’: well, she’s the one who asked for it, she insisted heavily, believe me, (…) But I really hadn’t asked for anything, but I learned everything from her. Etc.

Another more recent example concerns my daughter: she witnessed his behaviour at home, his extreme outbursts, his yelling and sometimes physical violence, for several years before I finally had the guts to tell him to leave. How do you think this has affected her?

She has occasional fits of anger where she screams and wants to break things.

Last year, he physically assaulted someone in front of the children.

See the relation?

He doesn’t. He’s blaming me for it, claiming that the separation is traumatizing the children and causing anger problems in my child.

This is the kind of logic I’m subjected to. Any rational discussion is virtually impossible with such people. Their ‘logic’ is so twisted that you end up banging your head against the wall. They’re masters at twisting your mind, making you believe it’s all your fault, acting all innocent and ‘I don’t understand what you mean, why are you refusing to talk to me?’ (while you tried to talk to them for ages when you were together, and they wouldn’t listen, which is precisely why you left them). The aim of their behaviour is to provoke you into anger, so that they can tell the world: ‘See? See how rational I am, and how crazy she sounds? Man, she’s really lost it with that crazy cult, hasn’t she?’

Clever ploy, isn’t it? Very much used among the manipulators and psychopaths, or ‘pervers narcissiques’, as psychologist Marie-France Hirigoyen calls them in her book Harcèlement moral.

After years of totally dismissing me and my feelings, and the children’s well-being, he now acts ‘concerned’ and wants to ‘talk’. Talk in his own terms, of course, which translates as: ‘I’m right, you’re wrong. You’re in a cult, I’m going to educate you so that you can finally admit that I’m right, you’ll get back to me, I’ll have you under my thumb again, and everything will be alright.’ Very much like what he wrote about me in that exchange with his friend above: ‘All I wish is to have teeth sharp enough to bite her, argh, i’d like to inject a poison into her, so that she will beg me after.’

The only way to deal with these manipulators is to NOT engage them. Otherwise you’ll end up drained, confused and upset.

Anyway, getting back to the story. I entered into a relationship with him, hoping somewhat to fix him and be fixed by him, and share the love which he seemed to want so badly to give me! Even though I had doubts and reservations, how could I not learn to love someone who pretended to love me so much?

Unsurprisingly, there were signs of dysfunctional and unhealthy dynamics from the start, but due to my previous disastrous relationships, I assumed these were the normal glitches of any relationship. Still affected by my former, quite negative relationships and my own weaknesses due to childhood trauma, I tried to fit an image that he wanted me to be, but failed every time (that’s what they do to you: no matter how hard you try, you are never good enough). This would trigger arguments between us, which would generally end up with him shouting verbal abuse. But then, we would make up, and I was ‘in love’, so I quickly learned to shove these episodes under the rug. I stayed in this unhappy relationship because of my own wounds that gave me a twisted idea of love, and because I didn’t know any better. I also thought that maybe starting a family (something he had mentioned at the beginning of our relationship) would somehow fix things and make it better, clean and heal the past wounds of both of us.

When I became pregnant, he was enthusiastic and happy, and so was I, though I was – of course – nervous.

Since I was working so hard to be what he wanted, to act the way he wanted, to do what he wanted me to do, much of the time it was alright and he was nice and he left me some breathing space, some semblance of freedom in order to ensure that I’d stay. As long as I didn’t get too close to someone else (friends), or that I wasn’t socializing too much, it was OK. But when I’d try to set boundaries, that’s where he’d start to show his control, managing to make me feel guilty for daring to question his controlling behaviour and showing signs of independence. After getting you through pity, they play the guilt trick. But the guilt is only good for you. He, on the other hand, didn’t see a problem with continuing to surf very dubious dating websites and trying to contact an old ‘feminine acquaintance’ while I was pregnant with our first child. When I found out, he explained to me that, well, I had been quite distant these past few weeks, and that it was normal for him to act that way. After all, it was my fault, right? I should have attended to his needs! A woman has to do that, it doesn’t matter if she’s pregnant and she’s the one in need of support, if she wants to keep a man.

But still, I had to continue to believe I loved him, and much of the time, things went well enough between us – with plenty of ‘emotions’ and thrill – so why be worried? Is any relationship perfect?

When our daughter was born, that’s when I began to change. I slowly began to realise some things about myself, about love, about my assumptions. This was the first time in my life I felt I was able to give complete and unconditional love to someone, in my own way, as myself, without fear of being rejected or judged. Through motherhood, I learned I didn’t need to fit someone else’s ideal, I could be myself with this child. I could give all the love I had inside me, unrestrained. This was like a breath of fresh air. It made me somehow start to reflect about my own childhood, my own past behaviour, and my current relationship.

But my joy in motherhood was spoiled by repeated instances of controlling and abusive behaviour from ‘Jean’. For example, when our child was a few days old, he once prevented me from nursing her, because she was screaming too much according to him, and thus he held her and told her to just stop, like he was trying to reason with an older child. I pleaded with him to just give her to me (I was in bed) so that she could feed – she was hungry – but he declared that he was the one who’d decide WHEN to give her to me. In the end, after torturing me with this drama for what seemed to be an interminable length of time, he gave me the poor crying, starving baby. I was both relieved as I held my child, and appalled at his behaviour. But I pushed it under the rug because ‘he could be so nice’ and seemed to love his child so much at other times. But the seed of awakening had been planted in that moment.

Such behaviour was really a red flag, but I didn’t want to see anything. Immersed in motherhood, bathed with ‘hormones’ (I was breastfeeding), I devoted myself completely to my daughter, and pushed his behavior under the rug. I don’t see how I could have done otherwise at the time, given the circumstances. And I still ‘loved’ him enough to excuse his behaviour, to take pity on him. After all, he too had suffered, and things were so tight, financially.

So I still wanted to hold on, to make nice, to fix things, despite his outbursts and his controlling, irrational behaviour. ‘Jean’ had an ability to switch from terrible anger where he’d swear at everyone and everything, to an apparently calm and nice attitude, as if nothing had happened at all. This baffled and concerned me, but again, I pushed it under the rug, because he could be ‘so nice and normal’ much of the time, as long as I (or anyone else) didn’t do anything to set him off.

Yes, I was upset that ‘Jean’ didn’t really want to listen to me when I wanted to talk about my feelings. He even rebuked me once when he wanted to have sex with me and I said I didn’t feel like it, because I was upset from remembering the issue with my father and how it still affected me sometimes. He tossed my feelings aside and rebuked me, saying that I shouldn’t be concerned about it, that it was no big deal at all, and basically that I was a wet blanket and annoying him with my issues.

This hurt me deeply, but I didn’t say anything. I just saw that a chasm was forming between us, growing wider and wider by the day. But I didn’t dare to admit it to myself: I desperately wanted to pretend everything was OK. I wanted to fulfill my own self-image of a woman who had succeeded in her emotional life, who hadn’t repeated the failures of her mother. I would even say to myself: OK, my grandma lost her husband because of cancer, my mother’s brother died of a brain tumor, making my aunt a widow, my mom got divorced, but I’m going be different, I’m not going to be alone like they were, I’m not going to end up like them, be it through death, abandonment or divorce.

So I stuck with it. And I soon became pregnant again, though we’d been rather distant sexually for some time. I discovered I was pregnant when I was already 2 months along – I had done a blood test before, suspecting I might be pregnant, but it had given a false negative. What was odd was that, despite the fact that he had talked more than once about how it would be nice to have another child, when he learned that I was again pregnant, he blamed me for getting pregnant and not taking the necessary measures to avoid that – whereas he KNEW I couldn’t take the pill due to medical concerns and though I was considering another means of contraception, I was still a bit reluctant about it (still for medical reasons/concerns). Of course, it’s always the woman’s job to take care of those things, right?

He reacted violently when I told him that I intended to keep this child. In one ugly fight, he even said he might just leave and let me deal with it on my own. I was very upset, but determined to have the baby (I just couldn’t picture myself getting an abortion at 2 months pregnant after having an echography and hearing this baby’s heart beating!). After the ‘crisis was over’, he calmed down and appeared to accept it. But the chasm had widened even more.

Though the pregnancy went well physiologically speaking, it was a rough ride psychologically. Towards the end of the term, I was becoming increasingly anxious. I had to have check-ups every two days at the hospital to make sure the baby was alright. ‘Jean’ harangued me constantly and blamed me for not delivering the baby in due time, for causing him trouble, and for basically being such a burden to him. It was not a good atmosphere to be looking forward to the birth of a child.

The labour finally started naturally, 12 days after the due date. I’m not going to go over the details here, but I just want to say that having this second child was the 2nd most beautiful day of my life (the 1st was the birth my first child). It made me realise that love can be pure, and that I didn’t need sex to get love or give love – that it could be natural and feel right, warm and caring, that I could be loved without the pressure of feeling sexually desirable.

I was all the more attached to this child because his father showed almost total indifference to him at his birth. It hurt me so much. I felt so bad for this little baby boy who I wanted so much to have a loving father, a stable home and family.

The baby’s arrival didn’t improve things at home, to say the least. After coming back from the maternity hospital following a 1-week stay (I had a C-section), he even yelled at me that it was all my fault, that THIS (referring to both me, my children, the financial situation we were in at the time, which was not great) was MY shit and I’d better take care of it. It sounded like the children and I were a total burden to him, were preventing him from ‘getting things done’ (whatever those things were). Years later, I’d learn from my mother that while I was at the hospital, after the birth, he said to her that it’d be best for everyone if he just left me and the children, that he just couldn’t deal with it, that we’d be better off without him. Looking back, I wish to god that he had done that. But it was probably another pity ploy.

I was at a complete loss, I couldn’t understand how he could appear so ‘normal’ and nice and then at the other times be so horrible and abusive. Often, after one of these outbursts (usually about nothing significant, no deep issue, since talking about how one feels is not part of what is significant for him), I would feel like I was in a madhouse. Once, after one such insane outburst in the middle of the night, I even said to myself that one day he might just lose it all completely and kill me and the children in our sleep. I actually began to live in a constant state of low-level fear running in the background of my life.

This was like living and walking constantly on sinking sands. You never know what’s going to happen next, when and if you’re going to be swallowed into this utter madness that manifested in this totally crazy behaviour.

I would keep count of his outbursts, feeling relief and hope when I experienced 1 month of consecutive days of relative calm – ‘wow! Just hold your breath and maybe it will last’, I would say to myself. And of course, I was exhausting myself trying to do whatever I could to stave off the outbursts.

Looking back, I’m amazed at how I was able to endure this for so long. The thing is I mostly felt stuck, with 2 young children, in a rural area, with family far away. I also think my previous experiences made me quite capable of enduring abuse, of accepting it, in a way – the way my granny accepted the abuse of her alcoholic brother (who lived in her house for nearly all his life because he never managed to get a life of his own) for years and years, till he sent her to the grave.

Getting back to my children, my love for them made me realize certain things. Now that I was a mother, I needed to grow out of childish behaviour and expectations, for the sake of my children. I needed to say goodbye to the need to find the father I had never had. This was never going to happen, because it is not how it works. It was this need which had made me seek bad and abusive men all along. These realisations were still fuzzy and confused in my mind, but slowly the ideal of a healthy relationship began to grow in me. I would look at my past and see all the errors, the weaknesses, the lies to the self and the false assumptions. I was also slowly realising how I was really alone in this relationship, how there were only superficial interactions. There were no deep bonds, no understanding, no empathy, no true intimacy, no respect; in short, no love.

Several months after our second child was born, while comforting myself and finding fulfillment in motherhood, I began to seek a way out of the social isolation we were subjected to due to his antisocial tendencies (which made some of our friends cut all contact with us because of his behaviour). I began to explore reading Internet forums and books. That’s how I came upon the Cassiopaea forum, among other forums and websites dealing with topics ranging from literature and cinema, to UFOs and psychology. I was curious about the topics discussed on Cassiopaea, as I’ve always been open-minded AND critical. I love intellectual challenge, and I was not disappointed! History, hard science, psychology, spirituality, the paranormal, … all these subjects discussed in a totally scientific way. It was refreshing. But I also joined the forum partly because I saw it as one of the only ways I could have normal human contact without him interfering and destroying it.

I didn’t expect to find what I found on this forum though: a network of intelligent, interesting, fun, honest and caring people from all over the world, who, like me, were interested in sharing information and data, exchange ideas, etc. The environment was really stimulating, the atmosphere was very convivial and fun, and most of all, it was family oriented: cleanness, decency, respect for others, honest love and caring were all emphasized; they didn’t even tolerate filthy language or anything that you wouldn’t want to expose your beloved children to! At the same time, it was not restrictive in any intellectual way; it was just that people were expected to meet standards of normal and decent human behavior that is so lacking in our world today. I felt such a relief at finally being able to have normal human interactions, in the midst of all this madness at home. Most of all, this participation on the forum opened new perspectives for me. I could delve into subjects and authors I’d never thought I’d be interested in, especially in the psychology, politics and history fields.

As part of this, I started to read again psychology books, especially books about childhood trauma, and it really drove the point home regarding my own childhood’s wounds. As I began to take a deeper look at these traumas thanks to these books and the discussions with group and forum members who also discussed and shared about their own traumas, all in a safe environment, I wanted to share my enthusiasm with my partner – I thought reading those books could help him in dealing with his own stuff too. But he didn’t seem interested so I didn’t push it.

When he was in his ‘normal mood’, we would talk about politics, and we seemed to have the same views – though he appeared more radical than me, (and more radical than the forum members), because he admired and advocated violent modes of dissent and anarchy. This somewhat worried me, though it perfectly fit with his tendency to have violent outbursts and to blame everyone (external ‘enemies’).

The fact that I made friends within this forum and shared things with them about topics he was not interested in – because when I tried to bring it up, he would ignore it like he was annoyed – made me realise how wide the gap between us was getting; too wide to be bridged. How I desperately needed something deeper in a relationship.

On top of that, he blamed me for being a stay-at-home mom taking care of the children while he was ‘supporting’ the family – which he actually mostly didn’t do: not only did I help him with his business (contacting customers, giving Internet lessons, doing translations for his websites, etc), he also profited a lot from my mother’s generous financial help and sometimes his parents’ help, though he never had a word of gratitude for the latter and couldn’t stand them, calling them jerks. This has changed now, by the way, since he had to depend on them when I broke up with him, so he’s now the most loving son ever. This ability to wear and change his mask whenever needed never ceases to amaze me.

Anyway, on the discussion forum I made many friends. I wanted to give back help because I had received so much for free. I proposed to help with translation projects; I have a passion for translation, and thought it would be great to make more material available to French readers, and to gain experience in order to get a job – something he obviously dreaded, as he hated the idea of me gaining any independence whatsoever, never mind that he abused me constantly about not having a job! (By the way, when, a couple of years later, I told him about my wish to break up with him and said that I wanted to manage my life on my own, he told me: ‘You won’t last 3 days.’) I began to feel a little more confidence, and after some time, I began to discuss my relationship problems with a few members who had been through similar experiences. I told them about his abusive behavior that I was unable to either change or tolerate no matter what I did. I described his frequent outbursts of anger at home, and also in front of his family. I also discussed the fact that he behaved in irrational ways that were scary. I described how he could appear completely normal most of the time. Only sometimes he felt ‘provoked’ and acted irrationally, with a violence that was out of proportion to what, according to him, had ‘provoked’ him. This irrational, unpredictable behaviour is what was worrying me the most.

I had finally found true friends in the only way I could, being so isolated from friends and family by ‘Jean’. And I would suggest that if you are alone and suffering under the dominance and control of this type of individual, you should also find friends, people who can think, who can share experiences, and who can support you. The pathologicals hate that!

As I said, I described all of these things to a few women members of the forum that I trusted, some of whom are trained psychological experts. These friends encouraged me to try to work it out with many helpful suggestions, which I did for a couple of years with their support. The truth is, the relationship actually lasted 2 years longer than it would have if these people had not been there to support me and try to help me make things work between ‘Jean’ and me.

Finally, when I determined that – for the 11 years I’d known him – nothing I did was going to change anything and the relationship had deteriorated beyond repair, I decided that I was, after all, a worthwhile human being and did not deserve to be living in a loveless, abusive relationship. I realised finally (it’s never too late, I suppose) that I had had enough of this madness and sick behaviour, and that leaving him was the only way to be healthy myself for the sake of the children. I made the decision that this relationship must end. Notice that I made the decision. Absolutely nobody made it for me, like he so visciously claims. I am far too stubborn to let someone tell me what to do when it comes to my children. Even if they had tried – which couldn’t be further from the truth – I would still have always had the last decision. But he cannot accept this, because it means that he would have to take responsibility for his failure in our relationship, something he has shown himself incapable of.

One of the breaking points for taking the decision to leave was that he made a sexual remark in front of the children. He commented that my son loved to have his behind wiped by his mom, saying that the 3-year-old child actually enjoyed it sexually! This really made me sick to my stomach. It brought up all the things about his past that he confessed to me and that I thought were over now, and I became really scared that one day he’d go as far as abusing the children sexually. When I say abuse, don’t get me wrong: sexual abuse is not just forcing intercourse on a child. It can be unhealthy behaviour in front of them which creates a sick atmosphere. Knowing how he was with me, sexually, how he had been with other women and men and children in his past, and now, hearing him make this totally sick remark, just set off warning bells inside me. I knew, without any doubt – call it a mother’s intuition – that I needed to get my children out of this sick dynamic.

I want to ask the reader: do you think this kind of comment is healthy and normal? If you do, I suggest you read Caricature of Love by psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley. You’d be surprised at the extent to which normal sexuality has been perverted over the centuries, and how many really abnormal and perverted behaviours appear normal in today’s society.

As a side note, this visible deterioration in our relationship didn’t seem to affect him the way it affected me. It’s like the more I wanted to pull away, the more he was determined that I would not. He affected a super-normal attitude and made it clear that he wanted to stick with me no matter what, despite his sexual frustration (years of abuse had made me grow sexually distant) and his veiled sarcasm about women (like women who frowned at the idea of meeting the sexual urges of their husbands and of having a lot of children were just douche bags, possibly crazy feminist extremists), he became more determined than ever to keep me under his control.

I talked about my decision to leave him to some of the women members of the forum, and – having shared with them the additional details that I was concerned about ‘Jean’ sexually abusing the children, though I still had not shared my full knowledge of his perversities with them – they supported me in this, and offered advice about how to do it safely considering the potential violence that I had described him to be capable of.

But once I made the decision, I didn’t know how to break it to him. For years, I had felt stuck in this relationship. I didn’t know how to proceed. I was worried about his reaction. I suspected ‘Jean’ would NOT let me go that easily. When he wanted to leave me when he learned I was pregnant, it was fine: it was HIS decision. But now, it was MY decision, and I suspected that if the separation idea came from me, it was out of the question for ‘Jean’.

I brought my concerns up to him several times in the course of the months preceding the separation, but he didn’t want to hear about it. He gave me no option: he told me that if I left, I would have to leave alone, abandon the children. Full stop. He even commented once that he would really be annoyed if he had to leave the house to find a job in another town, because he’d then have to go to see prostitutes, and that would be inconvenient! I suppose that’s how he sees women, objects who are there to fulfill his needs (not only sexual, but also material, financial, etc., as I was doing. He was never able to support us or to keep a job or make a business work.)

I pondered for literally months over it, and finally took a firm decision: instead of trying diplomacy, as I had tried in vain for several months, I just plainly told him to leave the house or I would take an appointment with a social worker and force him to leave. Perhaps the possibility of being humiliated is what persuaded him since he did agree to leave the house. I suppose he didn’t expect me to act so radically, to be so firm, and that might have destabilized him for a moment.

Thing is, I took it all too lightly. I thought “he’s left, so it means he’s accepted the separation and it’ll just be a matter of working things out together in the interest of the children.” Despite having read books about pathological relationships, I didn’t want to see that it precisely applied to him, I didn’t want to see the truth about him. I was thinking I could get away from him that easily, that we could behave in a civilized way if only for the sake of the children. Pity and guilt, once again, had the best of me. I was feeling bad for telling him to leave, and wanted to make it easy on him. I’d soon learn that he had already planned his ‘revenge’.

To my face, he pretended to accept the decision, but behind my back (something I was to learn later), he planned to emotionally blackmail me, to try to force me into going back to him by threatening and defaming Laura and the forum (with whom, though not being interested in some of the topics discussed on the forum, he NEVER had a problem before), calling them a cult and claiming that the only reason I wanted to leave him was because I was brainwashed by them!

Taking advantage of my willingness to make nice and my blindness regarding his pathology at the time, ‘Jean’ came to my house one weekend, after moving out, and stole all the data from my hard drive with all my private correspondence, including emails between Laura, other friends and me, where I asked advice about how to leave him. He then went to see the nanny who sometimes looked after the children, and ‘announced’ to her that I had joined a cult (I’d learn all of this later). He also called my mother and literally overwhelmed her with emails he had stolen and taken totally out of context, documents he had written defaming Laura and the Cass forum, the SOTT website, the meditation programme – pages and pages of lies and distortions.

But it was not enough. After he had stunned my mother with his ‘revelations’, he then proceeded to tell her that I had been abused by my father when I was a child (something I had confessed to him a long time ago, but that I never told my mother because I never wanted to make a fuss out of it. Besides, how do you announce that to your mom? It’s shameful enough as it is). However, the icing on the cake was that he said to my mother that this abuse might not be true, that it might have been a false memory planted in my mind by the ‘cult’ through hypnosis! Never mind the fact that I’d told him about it before I even became involved in the group and that I have emails – dated from 2001 – to prove it.

We see here that he was using the same tactics he had applied when we were together: trying to isolate me from others so that I’d have nowhere and nobody to turn to, so that he could better corner me and make me go back to him, or if he couldn’t, just basically take revenge by destroying everything and everyone around me.

Fortunately, my mother, who knew him well enough, for having been subjected to his verbal abuse many times and for having been taken advantage of financially by him (she helped him more than once when his ‘personal business’ was going down), didn’t believe him for a minute. She called me to tell me everything – that’s how I learned about what he had done, the HD theft, the cult accusations, everything.

Having failed at manipulating my mother, he then proceeded to tell his whole family that I was in a cult, so that I never got a chance to talk to them and explain what was really going on and that I had no intention of having bad relations with them just because I was not going to stay together with their son. They believed him.

As a parenthesis, he also told my mother NOT to tell me that they both ‘knew’ about the ‘cult’, because if I learned that they knew, I might resort to extreme behaviour, like I was going to escape with the children or something. I find that rather ironic, on the part of someone who has quite a heavy record in terms of ‘extreme behaviour’. Can we say projection? I think he actually projects what HE is inside and his own insane behaviour onto others. I think he uses the cult accusations partly as a way of diverting attention from himself, thinking that by having everyone around me focus on me being in a ‘cult’ (which is the most outrageous lie anyone ever told about me), no one will notice how crazy and insane he is, no one will ask him about his failures as a partner and a father.

Thing is, someone did notice: the family counselor I met with him after I broke up commented to me once that he suspected my ex of having some sort of pathology, which, according to him, didn’t bode well for the future. Unfortunately, this man was prohibited from testifying in court, because the decision to see him was mine, and wasn’t ordered by the judge. So he couldn’t be party to the custody matter.

Anyway, I clung to the hope (wishful thinking) that despite his past behaviour of abuse and controlling issues, his accusations were just due to anger for being dumped – blaming others (family, friends) when you’re dumped is not uncommon – and that soon, the anger would fade away, he would stop his lies about me, about my friends, about Laura and the forum, and we could reach some semblance of cordial relations – for the sake of the children.

But it didn’t fade away.

Last summer, I went to pick up the children, who had spent the holidays with him and his parents (and also his sister and brother-in-law, who are over 50, unemployed, and live with his parents). A friend of mine accompanied me. While there, ‘Jean’s’ mother tried to physically restrain me in a closed room so that she and my ex could both force me to listen to their BS, treating me like a child who needed to be ‘reset’ on the right path. (How’s that for ‘cultish’ behaviour?) My friend heard me call out and came into the room to help me, and he attacked her physically – tackled her like a football player. She required medical attention, and filed a complaint against him… which didn’t lead anywhere because lo and behold, it was totally dismissed because of the cult accusations!

Keep in mind this is the same man who’s accusing me of potentially resorting to ‘extreme behaviour’! Blaming the victim, anyone?

This incident resulted in a court hearing and a summary judgement where he presented his lies and defamatory documents about Laura and her family to the court (among this false evidence were the e-mails he had stolen from my hard drive, badly translated and taken out of context, as well as a ‘synthesis’ of his own distorted interpretation of the work done by Laura and her team. His lies were so blatantly ridiculous and easily deniable by FACTS, that I was surprised to hear that the authorities even cared to read them). He had his lawyer send the documents to my lawyer on a Friday night, two days before the hearing, so that I wouldn’t know about them or have the opportunity to prepare a proper defence with my lawyer.

Following the hearing, a psychological assessment was ordered for him, me and the children. The report of this assessment states that ‘Jean’s’ conclusions about me being in a ‘cult’ are rigid and inaccurate, and that he has a very obsessive personality that can’t stand rejection, and that leads him to research compulsively about cults in order to reassure himself, and conjure up his fears and his feelings of rejection caused by the separation.

The assessment underlines the fact that I put great efforts into freeing myself from his “control”. That despite my “vulnerability” and the fact that I’m not “self-assured”, Jean is making a wrong assessment of my interests. Here, I’d like to make a few comments:

Sure, one can say that I used to be vulnerable, as far as MEN were concerned (how rare for a woman!) – and I explained above where it came from. However, I’d like to point out that when one has suffered abuse for years, and is undergoing a psychological assessment following defamatory claims by a deviant who’s been harassing, spying on and threatening one for months, one indeed feels “vulnerable”. All the more so that the law believes the manipulator and ignores you, refusing you the victim status. In such cases, how could one NOT feel “fragilized” and have one’s self-assurance completely destoyed? Having doubts about oneself – in the sense of: questioning oneself in order to know oneself, so as to grow – seems to me to be a human, healthy quality, contrary to the psychopath who NEVER questions himself. But in a world taken over by pathology, the psychopath’s values are praised as the norm to adopt. It also seems to me that the psychological expert was influenced and manipulated by Jean: the report states that during his own assessment, Jean remained focused on me – a trick to divert attention from his own “psychological issues” and his abnormal behaviour.

For me, this is worrying enough. Obsession is precisely one of his modes – obsessions with sex, with some ideal of women that exists only in his twisted mind, obsession with ‘getting things done’, with ‘not having the time to get things done’ and so on. That sounds crazy enough for me. Obsession can lead to abnormal, pathological behaviour. He sure is obsessive in his harassment of anybody who has ever been a friend to me or has supported me. He can’t stand me having friends – friends that I chose on my own, not friends whom he chooses for me and who get his seal of approval by virtue of the fact that he controls them.

It was astonishing that he tried to get back with me after the hearing – wanting to arrange a meeting with me, alone of course, so we could ‘talk’ (translation: so that he could mind-manipulate me into going back to him), but it didn’t work, so he upped the ante. He began to stalk me on the Cass forum. Then he joined the godlikeproductions forum and started to post his lies and defamation there.

I learned from his posts on GLP that he even created a defamation website of his own, copy-pasting all the lies being spewed in the GLP nonsense thread.

This not only proves his obsession and insanity, but also his fanaticism. I mean, doesn’t he have anything else better to do with his life? (Like going to work so he can pay support for his children?) Is he so pathological that he’s willing to spend all his days defaming people who have done nothing wrong to him at all except being my friends and giving me support when I told them about the abuse I was subjected to by him? Is he so full of hatred and vindictive rage that he’s willing to destroy other people, including his own children, whom he obviously doesn’t care about since he’s just using them to get what he wants (my destruction and the destruction of everybody even remotely close to me)?

What kind of man would join forces with another, similar man who has been relentlessly defaming Laura for years, put her family in danger, is into black magic, was once admitted to a mental hospital, and who is friends with the cult guru Eric Pepin, once sued for pedophilia?

It’s not enough that, before I left him, he didn’t care one bit about the children and considered them as a ‘burden’ that he’d be too happy to leave behind, that he yelled at them, and put their life in danger on several occasions? Now this man’s new buddies are Satanists and sexual deviants. Would you hand over your own children to this kind of person with a ‘light heart’? Knowing you don’t have the choice, because the law couldn’t take a measure of his insanity?

It’s a very distressing situation, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

This is the pathology that Laura, her family and now myself, are faced with, must deal with – these individuals stab you in the back, always act in the dark, are sly and devious, and very good manipulators; they can trick people into believing that THEY are the victims.

What is so ironic and crazy-making is this is a man who’s now talking about morals and who’s calling my friends ‘abnormal, frauds, financial profiteers, stealers of souls, manipulators, controlling freaks and cyberstalkers.’ Blaming the victim again? Projecting what is actually inside him?

He claims I’ve been ‘controlled’ so as to make me leave him. This is clearly false, as anyone who knows the facts (and not just the rumours and lies spread by him about me) can see: the fact is that I asked for advice about my decision to leave him, and when my friends advised me to be very cautious and take any measure to protect myself and the children, I didn’t listen to any of this advice, I didn’t take it seriously. But the consequence of my ignoring that advice was the mess I found myself in. He behaved exactly in the way that they had warned me he would! The sad and ironic thing – destroying any claim that I was ‘influenced’ – is that had I applied the advice, offered from women who spoke from their own experience with similar situations, it might – just might – not have led to such a mess.

Only after he stole my hard-drive, quoted emails poorly translated and taken out of context in court, twisted every fact regarding myself, the children and Mrs. Jadczyk, did I realize how they were right to warn me about the danger I was about to throw myself in if I didn’t take these concerns seriously. Only after he had made me suffer lies, stress, defamation and threats did I realize how utterly twisted he is, which led me to revisit all my past with him, all he told me, his confession, etc., and clearly see that, yeah, that’s what he is, he’s always been that way.

Only it took this separation to realize it.

More recently, there has been a judgement regarding the custody of the children, and I find it very weird and shocking that this judgement not only reproduces the very emails he had stolen, badly translated and without context, and which had been produced during the temporary hearing for the temporary judgement. These emails were pointed out as STOLEN and FORGED, and yet the judge reproduced them as evidence? Whereas all my claims – which are documented by facts – along with the psychologist’s report stating plainly that he has an OBSESSIVE personality and is making a WRONG interpretation of my interests, based on his own INSECURITY and ‘fears’ – which compel him to find ‘information about cults in order to comfort himself’ – are missing? False claims produced by a man who can’t stand being dumped and lashes out in a vindictive manner are taken as evidence, whereas an expert assessment was totally dismissed?

Something’s amiss here. I thought we were in the 21st century, where women were (more or less) equals with men. All I see is that the system has been treating me like a child, or a mindless, stupid woman, who’s been taken over by a ‘cult’. They believe him, and they don’t hear me. This is just an example of how many women are still treated these days – and I’m not a ‘feminist’. I’m just a human being, who happens to be a woman, and I want to be heard and taken seriously. It seems the law – police and all – is believing his lies so easily without checking anything that you’re bound to think that something is up here. Or is it just old patriarchal values showing up?

A decent man – a real man – would have behaved decently, even if hurt by the separation. He would have said in court that he loves his children and wants to be a good father, and wants to talk and dialogue together to make the best life possible for them.

A decent man – a real man – doesn’t go around spreading lies, manipulating and using his children’s safety as a pretext to get his revenge. What kind of man does this? Not a man who loves his children. Proof is he hasn’t given one penny to help, to buy them anything. He has taken them on holidays for a weekend to show how much of a good father he is. But hold on, that was before the judgement. Now that the judgement is settled, he doesn’t even have 1 euro to buy them a pen. Classic, isn’t it?

Clearly and plainly: I want him to leave me alone. I never want to see him again, I never want to hear his voice, I want to try to erase from my mind and body everything that reminds me of him. You can’t understand unless you leave how draining and upsetting it is to have someone constantly spying on you, about you, about your friends and your activities, still trying to manipulate you into going back to him after you’ve told him plainly that you WANT to be left alone, that you have no feeling for him anymore and you don’t want him. I don’t want him to send me crazy emails with ‘links to cults’ so he can ‘educate’ me. I want him to leave me alone. I’ve been screaming in the desert for too long, and I’m utterly fed up with it. I can’t go along with my life because he is there in the background. I want him to stop! I want him to disappear from my life!

I’ve no hope to be heard by him, given the type I’m dealing with, but it feels liberating to say it publicly.

This guy who’s been saying all along that I’ve been taken over by a cult, well, you know, this is the same guy who once practiced magic in order to get me… how is it called? Oh yeah, ‘love spell’, where you get to write the name of the object of your ‘attention’, and pronounce some ‘magic formula’, and there you go. That very man who accuses innocent people of being gurus, fits exactly the profile of a fake guru himself! He is doing all this because he has lost his best ‘follower’, me.

I just hope that, in some small way, the words I have written here will partly explain how this horrible situation came to pass and will stand as a warning to other women who, like me, think that they can save men like this: you can’t. There is no real man inside to save; there’s nothing inside such a man but a twisted, rabid animal who, as Sandra Brown put it, devastates everyone in his path, including the women and children who love him.

‘We can’t prevent what we don’t identify, we can’t treat what we don’t diagnose. And we can’t teach how to spot them unless we understand pathology ourselves.’

One thing is sure, the best way to protect anyone – partners, friends, family, children, associates – from such a pathological deviant is to expose him for everyone to see. To reveal the utter sickness behind the mask of sanity. That’s one of the objectives of this testimonial, which will be updated as new data comes up, and backed up with all the documents and proof available.