by Gwen Adshead
‘I’ll be dead soon, don’t worry,’ he had told the police a decade earlier, on the night of his arrest. He made good on that promise six months after our last session. He had found a room to rent and taken on some night-shift work. This was perceived as a good outcome; I have seen people in his circumstances who move on, who seem to let go of the past and make a new life. But even if he appeared fine on the outside, Ian was living in what Thoreau called a ‘quiet desperation’. One morning, he clocked off at dawn, made his way to the station and threw himself in front of an oncoming train. Peter contacted me as soon as he got the news. He would have to break it to Hamish, and I knew he would bring to bear his compassion and long experience on any concerns the young man might have about whether his request for a meeting had contributed to Ian’s suicide, the act that stops all conversation. I was sorry for Hamish’s loss of his father and for the fact that this earnest, anxious young man would never have the ‘closure’ he had sought.
In my work there is always a danger of being blinded by a fantasy that you know what is in a patient’s mind. The probation and mental health services would come under scrutiny in the wake of the tragedy, in case we’d missed something. But the fact is, even if we had an inkling of Ian’s planned suicide, we didn’t have many options to support or deter him, such as ‘sectioning him’ (a British colloquialism for involuntary commitment to a psychiatric unit) for his own protection. Even if we had, and if by some miracle a bed had been readily available, I suspect the local mental health services unit would have refused to allow him on their ward, arguing that he didn’t have the kind of disorder that made him detainable under the Mental Health Act.
We had done our best to help Ian survive the challenge of coming out of prison from a practical perspective: he had a home, he’d found work and he’d been given some support from the probation team and me. In a psychological sense, we couldn’t offer more. Ian had been unable to come to terms with himself, and in his mind, death became his best or only option. With or without Hamish’s letter, Ian had his shame, and as I’ve said, shame is a powerful motivator of violence, including violence directed at the self. Long ago, I read a book about the effects of incest and child abuse, memorably entitled Soul Murder.13 I have since heard many survivors of sexual abuse talking about that feeling, the notion that some part of them has died. It may seem alien to think about this in terms of how it also applies to perpetrators, but based on my long observation and work with CSOs like Ian, I believe that many of them experience this feeling too. They are doing something suicidal as soon as they abuse a child. Shame is such a soul-eating emotion.14
NOTES
1 Jim Gilligan has written extensively on this topic, but you might begin with Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic (New York: Vintage, 1997); also his ever-more-topical Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous than Others (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2013).
2 Burns, C. (2017) ‘The Young Paedophiles Who Say They Don’t Abuse Children’, BBC online article. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41213657.
3 https://www.csacentre.org.uk/documents/scale-and-nature-scoping-report-2018/.
4 Break the Silence report: https://breakthesilence.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Statistical-Information.pdf.
5 Gewirtz-Meydan, A. and Finkelhor, D. (2020) ‘Sexual Abuse and Assault in a Large National Sample of Children and Adolescents’, Child Maltreatment, 25:2, 203–14.
6 Chenier, E. (2012) ‘The Natural Order of Disorder: Pedophilia, Stranger Danger and the Normalising Family’, Sexuality & Culture, 16, 172–86; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-011-9116-z.
7 Bentovim, A. (1993) ‘Why Do Adults Sexually Abuse Children?’, British Medical Journal (clinical research edn), 307:6,897, 144–5; https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.307.6897.144. Also Bailey, J. M., Hsu, K. J. and Bernhard, P. A. (2016) ‘An Internet Study of Men Sexually Attracted to Children: Sexual Attraction Patterns’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 125:7, 976–88.
8 Faller, K. (1989) ‘Why Sexual Abuse? An Exploration of the Intergenerational Hypothesis’, Child Abuse and Neglect, 13, 543–8.
9 Hanson, R. K., Gizzarelli, R. and Scott, H. (1994) ‘Attitudes of Incest Offenders’, Criminal Justice and Behaviour, 21:2, 187–202; http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/abstract.aspx?ID=148915.
10 Perkins’s review of SOTPs: Perkins, D., Hammond, S., Coles, D. and Bishopp, D. (1998) Review of Sex Offender Treatment Programmes (Broadmoor, UK: High Security Psychiatric Services Commissioning Board). And Welldon, E. (1998) ‘Group Therapy for Victims and Perpetrators of Incest’, Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 4:2, 82–8.
11 Canadian study: Barile, K. (2020) ‘Sexual Abuse in the Childhood of Perpetrators’, INSPQ, Quebec; https://www.inspq.qc.ca/en/sexual-assault/fact-sheets/sexual-abuse-childhood-perpetrators.
12 Waugh, E. (1981) Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (6th edn) (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
13 Shengold, L. (1989) Soul Murder (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
14 This is an ancient idea of shame and has also been widely attributed to Carl Jung.
LYDIA
I wonder if someone passing the prison visiting room that day, glancing through the glass walls on their way to their own meeting, would have known for certain which of us was the professional and which the soon-to-be ex-prisoner: two women, both fair, both in middle age, in the act of shaking hands and settling into bum-numbing metal chairs that were screwed to the tiled floor on either side of a small table. Subtle waves of normality must have emanated from both of us, with our similarly simple earrings, slim watches and unremarkable clothing. The one with short hair, cut in a neat bob and silvering around the hairline, wore black – a sweater and slim trousers. The one with longer hair, piled high in a messy bun, was me, as usual dressed for comfort and reassurance. The only giveaway would have been the heavy grey overcoat hanging on the back of my chair, but at a glance, that would have been easy to miss. I’d come in from the February cold for this visit, while the other woman, Lydia, would soon be escorted back to her cell.
That hypothetical passer-by is an apt metaphor for me, in cases like Lydia’s, where I failed to see something significant because I had focused on the surface. This had happened with Zahra, but as I’ve said, learning not to take others at face value is a long process; at least, it has been for me. I have described how I like to think of the mind as a coral reef, mysterious and complex, ever metabolising, teeming with things of beauty and danger. The father of American psychology, William James, also chose a watery metaphor when he coined his famous idea of the ‘stream of consciousness’,1 and this is a particularly useful image in any discussion of human obsession. Picture the flowing water, full of the flotsam and jetsam of thoughts. There can be eddies in the flow here and there, a brief divergence caused by a fallen tree or some carelessly discarded rubbish; these are the mental ripples that develop around certain thoughts. We’ve all been there: think of one of those musical earworms – a pop song or a jingle for an advert that goes round and round in your head. This is uncomfortable but temporary and does no harm; soon dislodged, it will be swept on its way downstream.
The problem comes when a great big boulder of preoccupation gets stuck in the flow. The little eddy becomes a whirlpool, pulling in other thoughts and feelings that swirl in the mind until a delusion is created. This is gradual, not unlike the development of an addiction, which may start small, with the first inhalation of a joint or a teen outing to the pub, before it progressively takes control of the self. The first casualty of obsession or addiction is truth, when people succumb to the dangerous fantasy that they can walk away any time.
Such fixated thoughts or neuroses are the basis of the pattern of behaviour known as ‘stalking’, which has been variously defined as ‘obsessional following’, ‘unwanted surveillance and pursuit’ or, by the US Department of Justice, as ‘a crime of terror, one part threat and one part anticipation of a threat being carried out’. A 2019 British
crime survey2 indicated that 10 to 20 per cent of the population have engaged in stalking behaviour, not including the millions who regularly indulge in some of that familiar post-romantic-break-up or pre-job-interview activity widely known as ‘Facebook stalking’. On average, actual obsessional stalking may last for a year to eighteen months, but around a tenth of stalkers pursue it for more than five years, and in a small subset of cases it can go on for decades. The survey indicated that stalkers in the UK are more likely to be male with female victims than the other way around, but one in ten men reported having a female stalker. As part of my ongoing work with the probation service, I was going to assess a woman who was among their number, and who was soon to be released from prison.
That first visit with Lydia was a ‘hello’ – a courtesy call, not an assessment session. She had just been granted parole and would shortly be released from prison into the community. I had stopped by to introduce myself because we would be meeting together outside the prison for a series of five or six sessions, at the request of her probation team. When I wrote to her about the referral, I had explained my role. I would be evaluating her risk and supporting her in staying safe by exploring the roots of her offence with her: her life experience, personality, how she coped with stress. I had the impression that no one on her team was too concerned about the risk to the general public. After all, there was only one person in Lydia’s sights.
Two years earlier, after previously living a blameless and crime-free life, Lydia had begun a campaign of harassment against her therapist, a Dr W, making threats to him, his family and his property. The police intervened to caution her, and Dr W took out one restraining order after another. These are protective orders issued by the court that are intended to prevent a violence perpetrator from gaining physical access to a victim, and they are mostly used in domestic violence cases. They can attract fines or other charges, depending on the circumstances and the jurisdiction; if the behaviour continues, it can result in a criminal charge and a prison sentence.
Like many stalkers, Lydia had ignored the court orders and carried on, until finally she was arrested, pleading guilty to harassment. Sentences for stalking in the UK have become tougher over the last decade, but at the time (about ten years ago), Lydia got three years and served two, at which point it was determined she could serve the remainder of her term on licence in the community. Her referral to me was meant to offer her an extra layer of support. I would help her to help herself as she reassimilated. She wasn’t obliged to accept the sessions, but I had been told that she agreed immediately when it was put to her. I hoped that meant she was welcoming of support and able to trust. The brief referral letter I’d had indicated that Lydia had completed a few courses or group treatment programmes while in prison, similar to the SOTP groups that Ian had attended for sex offenders, which tend to focus on promoting an understanding of victims’ experiences. Mine would not be the first intervention she had received following her conviction, but as far as I knew, this would be the first time she had talked one-to-one like this since then – or since she had last had therapy with the man who became her victim.
Keeping an open mind about anyone referred to forensic services means being attentive to even the most subtle of first impressions, whether positive or negative. At our initial meeting Lydia really seemed a picture of serenity and calm, and it was difficult for me to imagine this woman making someone so fearful they would ask the authorities to restrain her. There was certainly nothing about her that made me think I should be wary; even though she had become obsessed with her therapist, he was male, and it was a romantic attachment for her. She wouldn’t have a generic interest in all therapists, any more than Ian was sexually interested in all children; like the majority of violent offences, there was a clear relational foundation.
Later, I would try to recall if some of her lines had a rehearsed quality, but at the time I was probably just glad to find her so willing to talk. I began our chat by running through a few general questions about her offence and imminent release. Yes, she had pleaded guilty at trial, that’s right. Now, she said, she could see that the way she had gone about things in the past had been ‘a dreadful mistake’. It was as if we were talking about a social faux pas or an ill-judged bit of parking. I thought I’d bring in her victim’s name, in case that altered her tone. Had she given some thought to Dr W and whether she might be tempted to renew contact with him once she was released? Before I could say any more, she put up her hand, palm out, as if to stop me from even considering such an idea, her voice turning rueful and serious. ‘Oh, him – I have no plans to make contact. Of course not. I know that’s not allowed. And I so appreciate your help, Doctor. Frankly, I don’t want to end up in here again, not in a million years.’
I asked what her plans were. She had a place in a temporary hostel on release, didn’t she? She told me that she actually owned a flat, which had been taken care of by a friend while she was inside, and she would move in there as soon as the tenants had left. She was fortunate, I reflected; as many as half of all women leaving prison have nowhere to go and can expect to be homeless, and many dread coming out for that reason. One female prisoner I spoke with, who had yo-yoed in and out of prison for years for a range of minor offences, told me, ‘This is the best place I’ve ever lived.’ But Lydia talked about how much she was looking forward to going home, adding that once she had settled, she thought she might get a cat. She ‘just adored animals’, she said, and had missed having them around. Although she’d been a solicitor ‘before all this’, someone had suggested she might initially get some work dog-walking, just to ease back into things, no pressure. ‘Lovely to think of walking in the park every day. I can’t wait.’ I nodded. It all sounded very sensible.
There was just one moment of tension at the end, when I asked her if she had ever met with a psychiatrist like me in the past. I thought I knew the answer, based on the brief conversation I’d had with her probation officer, Jane, when I rang to prepare for this meeting. I had caught her at a busy moment, she had said, and we shared a laugh at that, because every moment was busy in her work. Then, when she’d tried to log in to access the file on Lydia, she discovered the system was down and suggested I try the offender-management unit at the prison. I was well accustomed to this procedural rigmarole, as I’ve described in other cases; despite all the technological advances since I started out in that long-ago era of box files and handwritten notes, the lack of centralised systems for the use of forensic mental health professionals and law enforcement has continued to be a problem.
Jane did recall that there had been some psychiatric reports submitted by the prosecution during Lydia’s trial which described her as hostile and fixated on her victim, with one expert suggesting she might be paranoid. Or perhaps that was wrong, or I’d misunderstood, because Lydia was firm in her response: she’d never seen a psychiatrist in her life. ‘No need!’ She could be lying to me, or believed it was true somehow, or knew she had seen someone at the time of the trial but discounted them as irrelevant. There was a challenge in her level gaze now, and I thought I detected a stiffening in her posture. It was not my job to argue with her. Instead, I asked her what it meant to meet with me, whether it was problematic for her.
‘Not at all, Dr Adshead! Quite the contrary. This is for my own good, isn’t it? And my probation officer, Jane, she recommended I do this. I must say, it has been rather stressful in here, and I’m sure they’ve told you I even had some suicidal thoughts at the beginning. But now, thank heavens, I can go home! Get up and running again – make a fresh start. Best foot forward, as they say.’ A positive, word-perfect response. I was conscious of feeling bewildered; the flash of negative emotion I’d registered moments earlier had vanished. I decided I could return to my question about psychiatrists later. I had only wanted to build enough rapport so that we could feel a sense of psychological recognition when we next met. We parted, the officer coming to usher her back to the wing, while I shrugged on my heavy co
at. As Lydia left the room, she fluttered her fingers in a little wave, with a friendly, lilting ‘Bye for now!’ I was conscious of a sense of relief that she’d gone and aware, too, that I’d been holding myself in tension for several minutes. What was that about?
*
So far, this woman might not fit anyone’s notion of a ‘typical stalker’, but as we’ve seen, there really is no one typology for any category of violent offender. Stalking, a term once associated with animal hunting and poaching, is a relatively recent category of offence. The word was first appropriated in the 1980s by the media, in relation to some high-profile and particularly lurid murders involving fans who had become obsessed with Hollywood stars. As a result, California was the first state to pass specific anti-stalking laws; most other states followed suit within the next five years. Prior to this, unwanted surveillance and stalking-type behaviours had been prosecuted in the US as criminal harassment or elided with attempted or premeditated homicide, most famously in the cases of Ronald Reagan and John Lennon. After the legislative changes in California, the press tended to align the word with female celebrities, with breathless headlines like ‘Look Who’s Stalking’ accompanied by images of beautiful women looking haunted or hunted. Such narratives of women as prey have excited a certain kind of male imagination for centuries; reports of ‘celebrity stalkers’ seemed to trivialise the experience of the victim, as if obsessive pursuit were the price of fame or even a weird sort of accolade.
