The Psychopath: A True Story(31)
Robyn finally got over her separation anxiety when she went to school camp aged twelve. Having gone away somewhere herself I think she suddenly realised that I didn’t just disappear. After that she was much more settled and less anxious for a while.
Robyn’s father, Ross, didn’t write to her or call her from Japan. He didn’t even send her birthday or Christmas cards. He came back to Scotland in 2012 for a holiday, and announced it on Facebook to all his friends but didn’t even contact me or his now thirteen-year-old daughter Robyn to arrange a visit. Robyn was ‘friends’ with him on Facebook so saw it all unfold. He finally got in contact – eight days into his two-week visit – to ask if he could see her. I tried to be supportive and asked Robyn what she wanted me to do about it. Did she want me to ignore it and just agree to a visit, or write to him saying what I thought of his behaviour? She said we should write. So I did. I told him that he would lose her if he didn’t start showing her some interest. I said he had not supported her financially, physically or emotionally and was now being detrimental to her self-esteem by making her feel that she really didn’t matter. I wanted to shock him into taking action, but it didn’t work. Unsurprisingly, he responded aggressively by saying that he might be absent but I was far worse of a parent because I had let a paedophile into the house. He took the worst thing that had happened to me and tried to weaponise it against me.
I didn’t reply to him, but I did write to his wife and his mother saying that I would not be talking to him ever again, and that if he wanted to discuss anything to do with Robyn he would have to do it through them. I have never spoken to him since.
Robyn met up with her father but shortly after that she decided to cut ties with Ross as well. It always had to be her decision and I’m glad she had the confidence to make it without having any negative emotions associated with it.
The children and I had such a good relationship. We were a loving and supportive family of four, plus Honey our dog. We had our spats (every family does) but usually we all got along and looked after each other. The media attention in my book had not waned and there were several documentary companies interested in filming with us. Each time the TV company would ask that the children speak to a psychologist beforehand to ensure there would be no fallback on them for any distress caused in the filming. Every time these calls were made, the psychologist would speak to them on the phone and then come back to me to tell me what they thought. To my delight, they were always surprised that my children were so stable and settled after their experience. In one case the psychologist said she had never come across children who were so ‘together’ and that we were clearly a very solid and secure family. It meant everything to me because it validated my philosophy of how to raise my young brood and meant that they were OK. No matter how strongly I felt about being honest and truthful and open with my children, it was good to be told by professionals that I had got it right.
DID HE EVER LOVE ME?
In 2012, I got a message from Dr Liane Leedom (author of Just Like His Father?, which I had read in 2006, and an expert in genetic connection to psychopathy and antisocial personality disorders). With two colleagues, Emily Geslien and Linda Hartoonian Almas, she was doing a study and wanted to use The Bigamist in a research report called Did he ever love me? A qualitative study of life with a psychopathic husband. I felt honoured and readily agreed.
The study was published in a journal, Family & Intimate Partner Violence Quarterly, in September 2012. I found it fascinating. It was the first in-depth study of the influence of psychopathy on the intimate behaviour of men. They used the published memoirs of ten women (including mine) who had been in long-term relationships with psychopathic men and analysed news articles, video interviews and author feedback to back them up. They did this against the backdrop of Dr Hare’s PCL-R checklist. Interestingly, the report only looks at books written by women because they couldn’t find any books written by men about their long-term relationships with a psychopathic wife. All of the victims in the study had been conned, manipulated or coerced during phases of their relationships and all of them had been exploited by their psychopathic partners.
They mentioned Dr Reid Meloy – another leading expert, and board-certified forensic psychologist and author, and a consultant on criminal and civil cases through the USA and Europe as well as for the FBI. In his book, The Psychopathic Mind, he suggested a continuum of scores to assess the PCL-R. He set a scale for those scoring 0 to 9 points being classed as ‘non-psychopathic’, those scoring 10 to 19 points as being ‘mildly psychopathic’, those scoring 20 to 29 points as being ‘moderately psychopathic’, and those scoring 30 to 40 points as being ‘highly psychopathic’.
So even a score of 10 or above puts the participant on the psychopathic scale, and indeed we don’t just have psychopaths and non-psychopaths but there is a whole sliding spectrum of psychopathic ‘disturbance’, as Dr Meloy calls it. All this means that when in a toxic relationship, rather than asking the question ‘Is my partner a psychopath?’, you should really ask the question ‘How much psychopathic disturbance does my partner have?’ It is estimated that around 1% of the general population is severely psychopathic but this figure may be misleading. Donna Anderson of LoveFraud estimates that around 10% of the general population would score 12 or more on the PCL-R and therefore fit into the diagnosis of psychopathy. That would mean that one in ten people are on the spectrum – a very frightening thought.