The Psychopath: A True Story(11)
Score: 2
Revocation of conditional release
One of the crimes Will Jordan was charged with in 2006 was not registering his address under the Sexual Offences Act. One of the hardest parts of this whole situation was coming to terms with the fact that Will Jordan was a convicted paedophile. He had pleaded guilty in 1997 to sexual offences against a girl under the age of thirteen and was given a fifteen-month sentence. He was released after seven months on good behaviour. (In the UK, offenders automatically serve half the time given and spend the rest ‘on licence’, bound to certain conditions or they go back to prison for the rest of the time.) On top of that, his condition of release was to register his address with the authorities as a sex offender for ten years. So the charges of not registering his address was literally a revocation of conditional release.
Score: 2
Criminal versatility
Criminal versatility is defined as a diversity of type of criminal offence, regardless of whether the person has been arrested or convicted for them. Looking at the history of what I know, Will Jordan has been convicted of cheque fraud (USA), fraud (USA), and sexual assault of a girl under the age of thirteen (UK). I have also been told he was convicted of impersonating a government official (Canada), and possessing banned weapons (possessing throwing stars in Canada). With the more recent additions in 2006 of bigamy, fraud, firearms (taser) and not registering his address under the Sexual Offences Act in the UK, Will Jordan is the very definition of ‘criminally versatile’.
Score: 2
Total
By my amateur calculation of the Psychopath Checklist (Revised), and from what I intimately know of my ex’s actions, Will Jordan easily scores 40 points out of an available 40 points.
By now, there was no doubt in my mind that he is a psychopath. Suddenly things started to make sense and why he did what he did to me came into sharp focus.
Knowing that Will Jordan is a psychopath changed everything for me. It was clear that his behaviour had nothing to do with me and there was nothing I had done to deserve the treatment he had inflicted. There was no amount of love I could have given him that would have ‘cured’ him, no amount of nurturing or support that would have made him a better man or father. I had promised to love him ‘in sickness and in health’ and had felt that I had broken that promise by leaving the relationship. But in truth he was not ‘sick’, it was just that the person he had pretended to be didn’t exist. I was freed from my bonds of matrimony and the promises that I had earnestly made in good faith. It meant I did not have to feel guilty for giving up on the relationship.
Now I knew what he was: a predator, an unemotional machine programmed for complete self-gratification with literally no empathy for any of his victims, including his children. He did not have the capacity to love, nor did he feel the remotest twinge of guilt for what he had done. Nothing of the man I used to love remained. I could now see that the man he had pretended to be was a fiction, invented to manipulate me into loving him. With that knowledge, my love for him evaporated like a dream, leaving only the realisation of the monster he truly was.
SHATTERING THE SILENCE
Knowing Will Jordan is a psychopath helped me feel grounded again. It gave me something to focus on and the language to both explain what had happened as well as to research further. I became fascinated and started to read everything I could about psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists. I devoured articles online and books written by experts and victims alike.
I thought long and hard about how to talk to the children about Will Jordan being a psychopath. I had already made the decision that they had been lied to enough and that I would never lie to them ever about anything. No matter what, I would be honest with them and honest with the world. Lies poison lives and I would have no part of them.
I had already told them that their dad had another family and that he was in prison on remand, awaiting trial. I had explained that when they did something bad, I made them sit on their beds and think about it, but a grown-up is supposed to already know right from wrong. When a grown-up breaks the law they are sent to court where a judge decides if they have done wrong, and how long to send the adult to jail for – to think about what they have done.
I was concerned that the children would blame themselves for Will Jordan’s absence and grow up thinking it was something to do with them that he was not home and being a loving father to them. I felt it was important that they grew up understanding the whole truth and that it was absolutely not their fault. Zach was still only a year old and too young to understand, so I left him having a nap and sat Robyn and Eilidh down to talk to them. I explained that Will Jordan had a personality disorder which meant that he didn’t have empathy, that he simply wasn’t able to feel guilt or regret, nor feel love for anybody at all. I said that if their father had been blind, they wouldn’t blame themselves that he couldn’t see them – a simple concept they could easily understand. I added that Will Jordan was incapable of love, even for his own children, so they shouldn’t blame themselves for the fact that he didn’t love them. He simply didn’t have the ability to do so.
Robyn and Eilidh seemed to understand and asked lots of questions, ones I was now able to answer in simple and uncomplicated terms. It was a remarkably unemotional conversation and one that was repeated whenever they asked something else.
My children have grown up confident that I will always tell them the truth, no matter what. They know that I respect them enough to do that. Sometimes that has meant having to answer awkward questions or being embarrassed, but there is a freedom in always telling the truth and there is nothing my children don’t know about me. There is nothing I have to fear ‘coming to light’ in the future.