I’ve noticed something about myself and that is that I tend to come from scarcity when it comes to things of value such as money and love. I tend to ‘make do’ with whatever is available because I think that is all there is. I manifest this at work too. I take on too much all at once, volunteer for things that I really do not have time for and then allow other people’s priorities to overtake my own and make them more important than mine. I get ‘talked into’ things easily and say that I will do something even if I have never done it before and I know it will be difficult. I understand from what I have read that this is a typical characteristic of someone prone to being abused.

Take my business, for example, I have a set of terms and conditions which I give out to new clients most of whom don’t even bother to read them – let alone sign them! I don’t make a fuss, fearing that if I did perhaps they will take their business elsewhere and I will never get another client in my life and I will lose my house and…………………………….down I go on that ‘thought spiral’. 

The result of this is that many people in my life treat me badly. Because they are basically rude, selfish and ignorant and I don’t ‘check’ them for being so. I have always allowed them to get away with it. My clients, for example, never thank me for what I do for them – which often goes way beyond what I am being paid for. I always go the extra mile and I guess you could say that they do reward me by paying my bills and keeping on giving me business. But, you know, sometimes that’s just not enough. Sometimes, just sometimes, a kind word would mean so much. If I make a mistake or do something wrong you can bet your life they are extremely vocal but do something good, exceed their expectations and………….silence! 

I know I shouldn’t be complaining – that I should be feeling very lucky to have business in this ‘downturn’. I hardly ever complain to friends and acquaintances but when I do often the reaction typically is to shut up moaning, be thankful and enjoy spending the money!! But just recently I have begun to see that that is just one way to look at it. There are other ways. For example, would those people think it sensible to fill my life, and business hours, working for customers who are basically costing me money by keeping me busy doing work that is less profitable when I could be looking for work that is much more profitable? I believe there are customers out there who would respect my terms and conditions and indeed would see me as more professional for having them, be agreeable to adhering to them and thus making for a much smoothing ride towards a productive professional relationship whereby they get exactly what they want in the shortest time possible and as cost-effectively as possible and I get a proper, detailed and specific briefing to work to so that I don’t have to keep re-drafting everything because they cannot make up their minds what they want!! I think that is a sensible option – don’t you! 

It’s all about respect, being assertive and changing my responses to events from the past. That’s what one friend (one of the more supportive ones) said to me. She suggested I do an ‘assertiveness’ training course – but one that is business focussed (rather than personal development-led). She said this might help me to not be scared to assert my rights as a supplier and have my terms and conditions adhered to. She said that it would probably take a bit of getting used to for the clients I have so far, who have got used to the casual, ad-hoc way of working that I have allowed but that I must not worry if they cannot hack it and decide to go elsewhere because I would, in effect, be making room for more and better clients who would treat me more professionally – and better. 

I see it all the time. I see it in my personal life, how I pick up tiny crumbs of friendship, affection, attention and love because that is all there is and I might not get anymore. Well, there’s a sea-change a-commin! I’ve taken the first step: becoming aware of how much I give up and give in (actually, the first step was leaving my abusive partner!!). Now I am ready to take the next one. I want to manifest great things – great work, respectful and appreciative clients, great relationships, a full social life and………………….so much! Not sure how I will do it, but that doesn’t matter as I have taken the first step.

Check out Sam Vaknin (you can get there via melove54, top of the page – link to YouTube video – or go to YouTube), self-proclaimed narcissist. Jees! That’s my husband! Well, not literally – I was not married to Sam Vaknin but the characteristics of him and my abusive ex are identical: the portrayal of grandiosity beyond reality, need to come across as perfect, constant tetchiness about the immediate environment, focus on self – yikes! Painful to watch. Then we get to see his poor wife! OMG! That’s me! Having to always look up to him, make him the focus, do his deeds, pretend like you have a say in the matter when the reality is you don’t!

It got me thinking about my relationship and how difficult it was for me, when I began to realise I was trapped in an abusive relationship, to garner support from anyone within our circle of friends, acquaintances and family. The problem was, because he was so accomplished at putting on this play, this facade, creating a great self-image, no-one saw or experienced him as I did. What they saw was what he wanted them to see: this brave, courageous and charming persona – so when I started to complain, the response I got was less than supportive. Most of them tried to make out that there was something wrong with me – there must be; that I was complaining about this ‘great’ man whom I was “lucky” to be with (yes, believe me, some people even said that to me!!). I understand now that there is a vast difference between narcissism and self-confidence. Here’s my take on it: 

• Narcissism is all about self. Self-confidence is inclusive. 
• Narcissism is about being better than………..Self-confidence is about being as good as you can possibly be and/or as good as everyone else.
• Narcissists want recognition and attention. Self-confident people want to do what they love and do it well.
• Narcissism is about entitlement. Self-confidence is about celebrating achievement.
• Narcissism is about projecting a false image. Self-confidence is about taking pride in what I know, what I have learned/studied and what I know I am good at.
• Narcissists lie. Self-confident people are goal-oriented and want to win but make no false promises. 
• Narcissists repress their emotions/feelings. Self-confident people possess freedom of expression.
• Narcissists are manipulative. Self-confident people are persuasive.
• Narcissists are motivated by power and control. Self-confident people are motivated by achievement.
• Narcissists are obsessed about appearance. Self-confident people care more about their abilities.
• Narcissists care little for human values. Self-confident people value being human.
• Narcissists value material possessions. Self-confident people value experience.
• Narcissists value notoriety. Self-confident people value dignity. 

 

Michael Jackson 1958-2009

God bless you Michael. May you rest in peace and may your music live on. You were five years older than me and when you were at your height (1978-87) I wasn’t paying much attention. Wish I had. Interestingly, the music I was paying attention to has all but disappeared (except U2 – my all time favourite band) but yours has endured. I love Earth Song. It’s true, the Earth has a cancer – it’s called the Human Race! 

I had a dream about you once: we were both trying to help each other escape. I’ll never forget. I’m not done here yet but when I am, I hope you’ll be waiting.

 

I want to talk about forgiveness, again. But I’ll do that in a later post. Reason I mention it is that it is relevant to what happened to me this morning and what this post is about and it is also relevant to what is going on with me in general. I am reading this great book (which a very good friend lent me after it screamed at me out of 600 other books on her well-stocked shelves): Radical Forgiveness by Colin Tipping. It states on the back cover: this book will change your life – yeah right! They all say that don’t they! Wow! Hey – I’m only halfway through, and sceptical as I was, believe me – it’s true. More about that later. Back to today and what happened this morning:

Well, I took the dog for a walk as usual, through a field of sheep – so I kept him on the leash (as I do) until we reached the other side and went safely through the gate. Fine. On the way back, he was a few yards in front of me (nothing unusual in that) and I was day-dreaming and I didn’t notice that some of the little sheep had gotten through a hole in the hedge and were in the field the dog and I were in. Well, he sees them and starts giving chase (because that’s what dogs do). There was no aggression, he just thought they were to play with. Most of them squeezed back through the hole except one and he jumps up at it and brings it to the floor (no teeth just 100lb of Labrador was enough to floor it). Hearing the ‘ruckus’ brings me out of my day-dream and I shout at him to “COME” and he comes straight away and I put him on the lead. The sheep stays on the floor where it fell. Oh jesus! He’s killed it! I moved closer but didn’t want to go up to it with him on the lead for fear of scaring it even more (if it was still alive). I could see that it’s eyes were open and it was breathing but no other movement. There were no teeth marks, no blood. He hadn’t actually attacked it, just played rough like he does with other dogs.

I felt terrible, guilty, panicked, sad, 1) because I love animals – all animals and I hate it when they get injured – especially when I feel responsible and 2) Especially as I had not been paying attention and had been day-dreaming. I was convinced the sheep was dying. It looked in a bad way. I started having a chaotic conversation with myself in my head. What should I do? One option was to leave it there in the hope it would be okay and pretend like nothing happened but I couldn’t do that. It felt like a bad thing. The other option was to run across the field to the farmer’s house and tell him what had happened. From where I was, I could see his wife in the garden hanging up washing. She was too far away to have seen what happened but she was close enough to do something about it. I started to run towards her. Then the thought in my head said but what if the farmer reports you? They might insist the dog is put down!! What if it gets round the village that the new girl, with the golden Labrador, let it kill one of farmer x’s sheep?! But I couldn’t do nothing. I couldn’t let the animal die in pain – just couldn’t. I just had to trust that what I was doing would work out okay.

I got to where the wife was, out of breath and hot. I started to tell her what had happened. It came out in a muddled mess of pieces of the story: my dog………. jumped on the sheep…………… lying down in a bad way……………….I’ll run home and get my car…………….take it to the vets.

To my surprise she didn’t look too concerned, except that she made me feel even worse when she said oh yes, those are my pet lambs. Oh jesus! Make me feel really bad!! I then said, I’ll take him home (meaning the dog) and I’ll come back. Okay, she said and then added nonchalantly actually, I’ve got to go out now for about 20 minutes but I’ll be back later. Blimey, I thought. She’s not bothered.

Then I set off to run home, feeling like the shittiest person on the planet, the same as I felt the time I ran over someone’s dog that was not on a lead and had followed its owner across the road but at the last minute turned back and came straight under my car. And the time a couple of years ago when I was walking the dog into town next to the main road to get him used to the traffic noise (he was a puppy then) and as I approached a level crossing a little boy who was standing next to me just decided to run out in front of the traffic. He was hit by a car, thrown ten feet in the air and landed on his head. I was convinced he was dead but miraculously he survived. The fact that it happened right in front of me made me feel somehow responsible. Maybe it was because I came and stood next to him with the dog and got him over excited. Anyway, I blamed myself. Or the time when I was a kid and got blamed for hiding a knife in a gym mat at school (which I did not do) or pushing Rosemary Fluker over in the yard (which I also didn’t do). Or the many millions of times I felt responsible for my father’s depression and alcoholism. I was right there again this morning, like a child again – being blamed. All this was going on in my head as I was running home. But at the same time, something else was going on. Another voice, much older, more grown up. This one was saying now you have an opportunity here to do the right thing but at the same time don’t allow yourself to be undermined or blamed or taken advantage of or treated unfairly. Offer to pay any vets fees or (God forbid) reimburse them for the lamb if that is the outcome but don’t allow them to treat you like a second-class citizen who is irresponsible and did it on purpose. Remember, the sheep had strayed out of its field and the farmer had not made necessary repairs to his fence to contain his animals. So, s/he is just as responsible.

I got the dog inside the house. He was quite shaken up, could sense my tension and was upset but couldn’t really understand what he had done. I was gentle but decided the lamb was more in need than the dog right now. I ran back to the field and could see that the farmer’s son was at the gate where the incident took place. It looked like he was pacing up and down on the other side of the hedge. This does not look good I told myself. Please god, please, I kept praying. Please let the lamb be okay. As I approached, he looked across at me and instead of being angry (as I’d expected) he was actually quite pleasant. Where did you say it was when you last saw it? He enquired. Just down there I said pointing to an empty patch of brown earth in a gap in the crop. It was lying there, I said, half dead. It looked in a bad way. Well it’s not there now, he said. Must have got up and walked away because all the lambs are there. I’ve counted. There are fourteen and that’s how many we had yesterday. My heart sang. I could feel the relief like it was a healing robe being placed over my head and pulled down over the rest of me. Thank you God. Thank you God for answering my prayers. I said how sorry I was, that if there were any repercussions I would happily pay any vets bills but I also, very gently, pointed out the hole in the fence which he promised to repair.

As I walked back toward home I really felt like something marvellously healing had occurred. It felt like the whole event had happened on purpose, that each ‘being’ (human and animal) had played a willing (but unconscious) part in the whole process of me getting to heal the wounds of my past in terms of feeling that anything bad that happens is my fault. It really felt like I had handled this differently. I had faced up to what had happened and had not run away from my responsibilities (which would have been so easy) and yet I had also done it in a grown-up, responsible way. It felt good – feels good. I shall hold on to this forever.

It was most especially healing at this time because of what went on in my abusive marriage whereby my partner always made out that everything that went wrong and every bad mood he was in was my fault. No matter what I did, I got the blame. He would take a course of action based on a poor decision, I would gently point out that I did not agree with his course of action (like invoicing clients for work we had not actually done) and he would retort by saying he was doing it in the best interests of the business, trying to get us out of financial difficulties, that I NEVER supported him and I was putting him under INTENSE pressure because of that. So, I would shut up and go along with it. Then, when it all went wrong and blew up in our faces he would blame me for that saying it was the way I dealt with clients and allowed them to take advantage that was at fault and it was my fault we were in dept. I had four years of this and after four years I guess it becomes engrained. Today has been a great opportunity for me to change the energy around that forever. I bless the poor lamb for what it put itself through to enable me to do this. And my dog for being willing to play his part. And myself, of course, for acknowledging what was happening and dealing with it.

Today, I want to write about what it’s like to be the victim in an abusive relationship being accused of being a perpetrator of violence against one’s own perpetrator, about the guilty feelings and how that, in itself, silences any idea of complaining – to the authorities – to anyone! It has taken me a while to come to terms with my own violence in my abusive relationship but over time (being out of the situation) I have developed a healthy understanding and I feel ready to disclose without fear of accusation or retribution.

The guilt I felt about the anger and violence I discharged on my husband during our three-year marriage was a major cause of concern for me. I felt guilty for a long time and he knew it. He knew just how to make me react like a scared puppy whose owner arrives home to a littered house. The dog hasn’t done anything wrong (wasn’t his fault he was left too long) but because it can smell the irritation on its owner and interpret the angry facial expression, it adopts a guilty stance. That was me; every time he spat: “but you hit me too” I adopted that guilty puppy stance – because he was right – I had! But what I was too traumatised to acknowledge (and he wouldn’t admit) was the difference between the reason I did it and the reason he did it, which made the accusation of me being a perpetrator completely wrong and unjustified.

My husband claims I have attacked him numerous times during our marriage; that I subjected him to extreme violence and aggression, that I beat him, threw things at him, yelled and screamed abuse at him and so on. I have given him cause to make those accusations, but I have never attacked him.

He has subjected me to a sustained campaign of abuse, intimidation, manipulation, bullying, violence, aggression and so on. The first time I reported him to the Police, the officer asked me “have you hit him?” to which I replied “yes” because I had. He said that as far as the Police were concerned it would be very difficult, in that case, to ‘prove’ any crime against me by my husband because it would be his word against mine. He predicted a counter claim.

Firstly, please bear in mind that by this stage I had endured dozens of attacks, violence, bullying (and all the other aforementioned) from my husband before I even went to the Police in the first place. I do not say that to justify my actions but to paint a true picture of the situation. Also, whereas I hit my husband with open hands (and I am not a fighter nor trained in any form of combat, martial arts or self-defence), my husband used a weapon against me, a walking stick mostly. Does that make me any less guilty than him? Well, yes, I believe it does – and here’s why:

I didn’t ‘attack’ my husband as he claims. I did not use violence against him in a premeditated, intentionally harmful manner. I, either, used violence to defend myself against his violence towards me or in response to his intimidation, bullying, anger, manipulation etc., etc. There is a huge difference and it’s what makes one person the perpetrator and the other the victim, in my view. My husband’s actions (whatever motivation lay behind them) were designed to ‘do me in’, belittle me, undermine me, hurt me, control me, manipulate me, and so on. My actions were intended to stop the situation, stop him doing all those things to me, end the violence, stop the abuse. It was never about doing those things to him. I can honestly say, hand-on-heart, that I never attacked him with the sole intention of hurting him or harming him in any way. Therefore, I believe, I have never attacked him – full stop! I have got angry and yelled and screamed in the hope that it would show him that he could not treat me that way and shut him up but I have never actually set out to ‘do him in’ – even when it could have been called justifiable ‘revenge’. Even now, going through the divorce and separation of the business interests (during which, as you can imagine, he is still employing his tactics) none of my actions is motivated by any need, want or desire to do him in. All of my actions are designed, intentionally, to show him (and everyone else involved) that I will not be bullied, manipulated, undermined and so on and so forth. They are also intended to limit the damage that could be caused to both of us through his negligent pig-headedness.

I often wondered, when he had driven me almost to breaking point and I was standing in front of him, fists clenched, purple in the face from screaming, two inches away from his face, why he never showed any fear.

I would have, and I did when he did it to me – I tried to get away from him as quickly as I could. But he didn’t once try and run away from me. He told his parents that I scared him, but it didn’t make sense because you don’t hang around people who scare you – and he did. He’d stay right there and keep pushing – push, push, push, hoping that I’d really lose it and run him through with a knife or something so he would have something really serious he could accuse me of but I never did. He knew I never would and that’s why he wasn’t scared. He had nothing to be scared of because I wasn’t out to do him in – unlike him.

I have mentioned this before but the most predominant emotion I felt throughout the whole of my marriage was anger. I used to feel angry 90% of the time (the other 10% I felt depressed, which is the same – anger turned inwards, I have since read). He accused me of being out of control, said I was a thug and told his parents that I got angry with him and hit him. His father told me I had a problem with anger and should go and seek anger management counselling – so I did! So desperate was I to make our marriage work that I believed him. I was prepared, at the time, to do anything to make it work and so I arranged to go for counselling (even though I was of the view that it was my husband who had the anger problem).

I disclosed everything to the counsellor. I told him about our marriage and the problems we were having. I told him about my husband and myself and told him how much I loved him and wanted to make it work and that I hadn’t even realised I had a problem with anger until my father-in-law had mentioned it, whereupon I’d thought maybe he had a point.

Having listened to me talk about all this for a whole hour, the counsellor (who was standing to make around £600 out of me if I took the course), turned to me and said: “I don’t think you have an anger problem. From what you have told me, I think your anger is a justifiable response to unreasonable behaviour from your husband and that for the most part you have it under control.”

It was then I began to realise that if I wanted to move away from anger and violence, I had to move away from our marriage.

Having been separated from my husband for almost a year, I now know this to be true. I cannot think of one single time I have been angry or felt prolonged outrage since (except once or twice when I have had to deal with him).

When is violence justified?

I also do not feel guilty anymore about defending myself against his regime. I feel justified. I have often thought about the question: when is violence justified? I guess every head of state in world has asked themselves that self same question before declaring war on their neighbours.

Being a peaceful person at heart, I find it hard to justify any. I am certainly not a supporter of war or violence in any shape or form, but having lived through four years of an abusive relationship, I can understand why victims display violence and anger too. But I have also come to realise that, as with war, it doesn’t actually solve or achieve anything and in that sense it is not the answer. It doesn’t stop the abuse or violence from the perpetrator nor does it shut up their verbal attacks and emotional undermining. If anything, it feeds their campaign and it does this in three ways:

1) Whilst the victim is being angry and violent, they are giving their power away to the perpetrator and thus, unwittingly, putting them in a position of power and control (which is exactly what the perpetrator wants).

2) It feeds the perpetrator ammunition with which to sustain their campaign of accusation and undermining.

3) It gives the victim a sense of powerlessness and thus makes them feel bad about themselves, which ultimately undermines their confidence and self-esteem, which is already at a low ebb – again, what the perpetrator wants.

Most people I have talked to are of the opinion my actions were justified, that I had been pushed beyond the boundaries of self-restraint to a place where I had no option. Now, that may be so, but it doesn’t stop me from wishing I hadn’t done it, wishing I could have been more composed, able to ‘turn the other cheek’ and not have been pushed into a reaction. But I did and I was and so I have to live with that. But I take comfort from the fact that, for me, anger is not a problem merely an emotion.

 

Fitting in

Okay, look, this is gonna be controversial – but then so is domestic abuse so I guess you’ve come to expect that from me. 

I went to our local supermarket today. It’s a co-op and they purport to have ethical policies and do good things and so forth so I shop there. I also like the staff; helpful and friendly. Anyway, so I’m there today and I am standing in line at the counter waiting patiently for my go with my basket of shopping and this guy who they have just taken on pushes past me to get to where he wants to go – I mean literally elbows me out of the way. No word of “excuse me” or “mind your backs” or none of that. Okay, I think, perhaps he didn’t mean it so I let it go. Couple of minutes later and he comes back the other way and this time he clatters into my basket, thus, pushing it into my ribs (it hurt) and waltzes on his way – still no word of apology! I stand there, seething, debating with myself whether to say something or not – and then it’s my go at the till and I pay and I’m done and out the door. Should’ve been quicker but something big was stopping me from saying anything. 

The guy in question is disabled you see. I don’t know for sure but it looks like he has Cerebral Palsy, which affects his balance and mobility. Now (this is the potentially controversial bit), whilst I sympathise and empathise with the plight of disabled people and make appropriate allowances, I do not think it is an excuse for bad manners or disrespect! Clearly this man bumped into me – twice! and hard! It was not just a little nudge. Now, if it had happened once – well, of course, my immediate assumption would have been that he could not help it and it was not intentional – even then a little “oops sorry” and a smile would have gone a long way. However, this was twice and – no word of apology! I wasn’t even in his way really – although if I had been he could have said “excuse me” and I would have moved, even just some kind of acknowledgement and I would have moved! But no, nothing! I’d say it’s damn bad mannered – disabled or not!!

Now, you can imagine my dilemma because if I had said something like “do you mind?” can you imagine the looks I’d have gotten off the other members of staff and customers?!! But he’s disabled he cannot help being unbalanced and anyway you have to make allowances for him!! Yes, indeed, I’m sure there would have been lots of ‘unspoken’ comments – maybe even some spoken ones! But like I say, I will make allowances for anyone with any sort of impairment – temporary or otherwise but there is NO excuse for blatant bad manners! 

Why am I so passionate about this? My abusive partner was disabled and he had a real chip on his shoulder. He exploited, big time, the fact that most people (when confronted with an afront by a disabled person) have a hard time standing up to them. Have you noticed how suddenly very helpful people become around disabled people, how forgiving? Yeah, well my husband used his disabled card to the max and he knew how to push it! He used a weapon against me (his walking stick) many a time and yet on the few occasions when I hit back (with open hands) he stepped back in horror, ran to his parents and before too long it was me in the dock (metaphorically speaking) being vilified for HITTING A DISABLED MAN!!!! OMG – how could I?!! this is the same man who called me a fat fucking bitch, poured various liquids over me at one time or another (including pots of water, alcohol, coffee etc.), stole my keys and mobile phone and locked me in the house so I couldn’t leave him, purposely masterbated over my side of the bed when I was in another room reading late at night so that when I got in it was all wet and I had to get up and go and sleep in the spare room. Yeah, that’s the same guy – the one I slapped because he was insulting me and wouldn’t let me out of the room so I could leave the house. 

Okay, so maybe I am being unfair to this guy in the co-op because of my own harboured feelings and bitterness towards my disabled ex-husband but I still think there is no excuse for bad manners – disabled or not!

Let me just take this opportunity to congratulate both the England Women’s Cricket team and England Women’s Rugby squad who, in the same weekend, won world titles: Women’s World Cup and Women’s Six Nations title (respectively). The Women’s cricket team did rather better in the publicity stakes, gaining a modest amount of coverage in the press whereas the Rugby squad hardly got a mention. ‘course it’s only women so it’s not proper sport is it……………….

Meanwhile, how are our boys teams doing? Ah………..hm……….Oh well, never mind, it’s only a game eh!

I have a very dear friend who thinks she is a ‘modern woman’ with modern, liberated views. We went to lunch on Monday and the conversation came round to equality between the sexes (not sure how but that’s irrelevant). She mentioned Germaine Greer (a renowned British feminist) and said how damaging she thought she had been to sex equality: “Well, because of her and others like her,” she said, “Young men are now frightened of women!” 

It was all I could do to restrain myself from screaming at her! I stayed calm and said that I think Germaine Greer is great, which is true, and that if men feel uncomfortable around her then that is their problem. For centuries women have stayed quiet, diminished themselves, their views, opinions and needs, and made themselves appear smaller, less able and talented to make men feel comfortable around them – and it is not women who have made young men feel scared but older men putting it out there that young men ought to be scared of modern, liberated women! 

C’mon guys! You race cars round tracks at 200mph, you fight in wars, you build machines that take people to the moon, you perform brain surgery, you take part in extreme sports, you do all sorts of scary stuff – don’t tell me you’re scared of women! I suspect, however, that it is my friend’s old-fashioned view that is out of sync, not the male populous – least I hope so!

 

Older women

Are women over 40 attractive to men? I’ve been told recently by a woman who runs a dating agency that they seldom get ‘chosen’ as dates – unless they look really, really stunning in their photos. 

Do we really live in such a shallow world? 

Answers on a postcard please……………………..

This is interesting: Initially, Fritzl pleaded not guilty to murdering his child through neglect but he changed his plea at the last minute – and without consultation with his lawyer who then claimed Fritzl had done it after watching the video evidence from his daughter. In a BBC report, lawyer Rudolf Mayer, is quoted as saying: “He was really destroyed by his emotion……………….It was possible for him to feel for the first time the feelings of his daughter.” Fritzl’s lawyer also tried to blame his actions [Fritzl’s] on a damaging childhood and the fact that his mother used to beat and mistreat him.

Nice try but we all know this man has no feelings. How could he and do what he did? I prefer the theory of Professor Jeremy Coid, professor of forensic psychiatry at Queen Mary College, University of London, who is quoted in a separate BBC report as saying:

“This is a man who is very private; and he has to be in control. While Fritzl might like to say he changed his plea after hearing his daughter’s emotional evidence – that for the first time he was able to understand his daughter’s feelings – from what I know of similar offenders, I would be extremely skeptical.

When the trial started, I’m sure Fritzl believed he was going to use his day in court to deny some of the charges and to portray himself as a good father, who was not as bad as people might think.

But, he is obviously socially avoidant and anxious in social situations. In court, he was confronted by the reality of the situation. He was no longer in control – facing the court and the media’s flashbulbs would have been unbearable for him.

We saw him covering his face – this was not just to hide from the media but because it was painful for him to be exposed.

A confession allowed this whole process to stop. We shouldn’t see this as an admission of remorse.

Among incest offenders, Fritzl is down the heavy duty end – a sadist who is intensely perverted.

Offending in the way he did would have made him feel grandiose. Raping his daughter and acting out his perversions would have given him sadistic pleasure.

To me it was interesting that he [acted out his perversions] within his own home. He has previously been convicted of a sexual offence. My hunch is that he wasn’t any good at offending outside the home.

This socially avoidant part of his personality would have caused him to withdraw from the trial.”

I disagree with Coid’s last point. I would say that it was his ingrained sense of having to be in control and be right that made him change his mind and plead guilty – without consulting his lawyer first. By doing so, he put himself firmly in control again – perhaps he didn’t get the outcome he originally wanted (which was to portray himself as a caring father and not a deviant monster) but to abusers the outcome is often a much less important issue than being in control and being right. My husband, for example, was willing to be ‘dead right’; he was not scared of death but absolutely petrified (although he would never admit it) of being controlled and made wrong.

It is also said that he (Fritzl) recognised his daughter in court when she turned up in disguise one day. I would argue that it is not so much that he recognised her but that he recognised an opportunity to use her – one last time – to rebuild his façade, his lie, thus: “See, I am a caring person. I have owned up to my sins and apologised, now the public must see that I am not a monster.” This, as we all know, is a classic tool in the cycle of abuse that abusers use: abuse, apologise, charm, abuse, apologise, charm and so on.

Monsters they may be, but abusers are extremely clever thinkers – like chess players. No matter what the game, nor who the opponent, they will always outsmart – even to the point of destruction.

The sad thing is, I suspect, Fritzl and those like him will keep on abusing – even in prison or psychiatric units. As long as he is alive, he will do so. The only way to stop him doing so is to keep him away, in solitary confinement, from any other living beings (human and animal). I believe he will get the last word – again! I believe he will find a way to take his own life as a final stand in being in consummate control (you read it here first!).