My Answer to Richard and Tracy’s Narcissistic E-mail
The post here includes an e-mail Richard and Tracy sent me in May 2012, which proves my belief that they are sociopaths. In it you will see every sociopathic trait–including empty threats and false accusations–and maybe recognize e-mails you have received from your own sociopath. You will see how they began their stalking campaign.
This post was originally posted in May 2012. I wrote it while a baby blogger, and added to it over a period of months, so it badly needed editing. However, I struggled for a long time to look through this blog post again because of the presence of that e-mail and its tendency to trigger all sorts of emotional reactions: fear, pain, hurt, anguish, rage, etc.
But now I am finally able to do some proper editing, and re-post it. I want to sticky it so new readers can see it, as I have been doing for months with my old posts.
It is, however, extremely long, which would take me all night to edit and an hour for you to read, so I will re-post it in chunks. I have divided the original post into several sections, which I will follow in the re-post. If you want to see the entire original post, click here. Now for Part 2.
Warning: The following contains venting of anger, to get it out of my heart and onto the page, to make the story authentic, and to show other victims of abuse that I feel your rage.
The message they sent me:
Nyssa,
We read this in amusement. It gave us a good laugh to find
that almost 2 years later you are still fixated on something that we
forgot about a long time ago. As for your threats, promises whatever to
expose us you can take out a law book and read about defamation laws.
Richards’s court case may be public access and you are free to speculate
all you want without having all the information and facts. However the
rest of your writings about how horrible a person Tracy is and abusive
mentally deranged etc. have gone beyond statements of opinion. You have
represented in your writings false facts, not just opinions, about Tracy
that constitutes an actionable lawsuit. You are free to have your
opinion and feelings however the minute you go public to the members of
the church or community as you have threatened to do we will exercise
our rights to sue you for defamation against Tracy’s character.You
talk about threats and bullies yet what are you doing? You are
threating to falsely accuse and expose lies about an innocent person if
they do not concede to your demands. We will not be threatened or
intimidated. We are free to go to church to worship our Lord God without
fear of retaliation from someone we see as not all there. You want
closure here it is. We are not sorry. We did nothing wrong. You will
never get what you want from us because we do not feel we owe you
anything. We will continue to be active in our church our community and
our town; if you cannot handle that then that us your problem not ours.
We will not move or change our faith to make you happy and comfortable.
As for the local parish being ‘your’ church. I think the archdiocese
would have a thing to say about that. The church is for everyone. We
have stayed away out of respect to give you time. We have gone to other
churches in town outside of our faith when gas prices or work schedules
prevented us from driving 40+ miles one way to church. However we miss
going to a church of our faith, participating in the mysteries having
that commune with our Lord, so we decided that when we can’t drive out
of town we will go to the local parish. We will not be pushed out of the
church by you, two years is enough time. So as fair warning for the
perceivable future our work schedules make long distance an issue as the
other parish is moving to summer hours and Divine Liturgy starts early.
So we will be attending locally A LOT this summer, we will even show up
on Saturday nights.
Here it is in all its ugliness. The clarity of Richard and Tracy’s narcissism is shining through every word they wrote. [See here when I run it through my “narc decoder.”]
My Answer to this E-mail
It’s hard to tell which of them actually wrote it, though it has Tracy’s malicious style all over it: I saw the same from her in 2010, saw the same from her to Todd in 2008, saw the same in her posts on the forum to people she didn’t like.
Jeff says he laughed at the idea that they “forgot” about this a long time ago–showing that I obviously never did anything to hurt Tracy, or she would’ve had to deal with that for a while.
They say they “forgot” about it–well, as Jeff says, that’s because they weren’t the ones who got hurt (which, he says, also belies her claim on 7/1/10 that I had somehow been hurting her).
For them to “forget” about it, tells you the true caliber of their characters. To so abuse somebody that she’s left in tears and PTSD for years, then just forget it ever happened, is a hallmark of abusive and narcissistic behavior.
These claims of defamation and “false facts” are bogus:
Not only did I tell the truth about everything I witnessed Tracy doing (backing up my opinion with examples and research rather than just throwing out some baseless accusation–also, normal, healthy people don’t abuse)–
–not only did I clearly and accurately tell what Richard told me–
–not only have I kept them both anonymous–
–but Richard truly did get convicted by a court of law of choking his child.
You might as well accuse the writer of Narcissists Suck of defamation for all her posts describing the narcissistic traits of her sister and mother.
Or countless other writers of blogs about abusive experiences, in which they say they believe narcissism and/or BPD is driving their abusers’ actions, even without official diagnoses–because the actions are still there, still causing damage, with or without an official diagnosis.
And the behaviors I witnessed in Tracy–they’re all described in various online sources about NPD/BPD (narcissistic personality disorder and the malicious version of borderline personality disorder)! I have also been told that Tracy’s mother has BPD, that Richard himself said so. And this e-mail Tracy/Richard sent to me–It oozes, it drips with NPD/BPD!
No, I give my opinion on NPD/BPD, state it as opinion, and then back it up with facts–things I witnessed with my own eyes/ears, and things Richard told me about himself, including in an e-mail which I still have–and research into abuse, narcissism and BPD. This allows the reader to decide for himself if I’m full of crap or not.
[Update 8/17/12: I just discovered that, two days later, they even went to the trouble of sending this message to my alternate Facebook account. They had not known about the second one, opened up after the breakup, yet somehow found both the new and old account and sent this same message to both.]
Also, I got all my information about the court case straight from the official online court records, and from the newspaper. It’s not a secret, or the newspaper would not have published it in both its online and print versions. The state also saw fit to publish the information online.
Because these are publicly accessed resources, I am clear of any charges of defamation for publishing what I found there, or telling anyone I choose, even though Richard and Tracy say I don’t have all the facts.
It’s just the same as if I published information found in an encyclopedia that turned out to be false: I cannot be guilty of defamation for that. I also cannot be found guilty of defamation for telling people what I found there on the public records, because it is both public and true, and because it was published by the local newspaper.
You’ll note that this e-mail does not say anything like, “Richard is sorry for what he did,” “Richard is trying to do better,” “Richard wants to be a better father who does not do things like this.”
No, it just says I don’t know all the facts.
So what if I don’t know all the facts? What facts could possibly make this better? If it wasn’t your 9-year-old child–what, did you choke somebody else’s child?
Why did you admit to doing it if it wasn’t true?
If there was enough there for the courts to convict you, if you did not go to trial to defend your innocence but pled no contest, if the newspaper published this conviction (as it did) and said that you admitted to choking your daughter, then don’t try to make it sound better than it was! There’s yet more narcissism.
I also have looked into laws about defamation, slander, libel, false facts, malicious intent, etc. Writers have to deal with such things all the time, and I have often worried about them when writing my fiction and nonfiction, which incorporate my life experiences. So I have several articles from Writer’s Digest about this which I collected over the years, and have also found information on the Net. A few things stand out:
- Truth is an absolute defense.
- Opinion is not actionable.
- For it to count as defamation, malicious intent, slander, etc., it has to be something you know is a lie but publish anyway.
And I state right here, right now, for all my readers, that I have not and have never lied about this situation.
My family and friends can also be my character witnesses that I do not spread lies about people, that I avoid lying in general. If there were something which I knew was false, I would not have put it in these published, online accounts. Everything in these accounts on Richard and Tracy, I know or believe to be true.
I can trace each statement of fact I have made here to its origin, whether I was an eyewitness, or Richard told me that, or Todd told me that. As for what Todd told me (second-hand information), it is only in a couple of cases, and I can back them up with what Richard and/or Tracy told me and my own observations. So I have every reason to believe Todd is telling the truth as well about those things.
In many cases, I even have e-mails, online chats or other printouts to prove timelines and that I was told these things by Richard. I even have an e-mail from Richard, and notes from a follow-up phone conversation with him the next day, which prove I’m telling the truth about her abuses. I also have at least one of Tracy’s e-mails verbally attacking me, one she sent to my husband Jeff.
If something is an opinion, I have done countless hours of research (which is what people with NLD/Asperger’s do, far more than other people might) which has given me that opinion, so I can back it up. I have fact-based reasons for all of my opinions, even if it turns out that my opinions are off-base.
I have also used fake names for Richard, Tracy and others in this story, use a pseudonym (I avoid using my real name on the Net as much as possible and use a pen name for my fiction), and the names I used for Richard and Tracy are in no way similar to their real names. I have kept out various identifying details. As for the very few physical traits, they can describe countless other people, especially in Wisconsin.
And as I wrote before, they tried to turn everything around on me, tried to make me into the bully for speaking up about how they bullied me, cried about being bullied–after Tracy had constantly bullied me for two and a half years in various ways.
I see clearly here that Tracy considers it her right to say all sorts of horrible and untrue things about and to me, but cries foul if I speak up about what she did, show how she bullied and abused me, even though everything I said happened, happened.
They denied the abuse, tried to gaslight me into thinking I did not see and know what I saw and know. They also denied abusing me, even though I have shown, here on my blog and in more detail on my website account, how outrageously they behaved on 7/1/10, how they verbally abused and intimidated both Jeff and me, behavior which cannot be justified in any way, shape or form–yet they still insist they did nothing wrong and will not apologize.
This shows their lack of recognizing right from wrong in their own behavior, and justifying their own abusive behavior, a typical narcissist trait.
They had read in one of my blog posts:
If the churches merge, I will have to go to the priest with my concerns, and show him the proof that Richard is a convicted child abuser.
Because Tracy has abused me as well, I will have to also show him an article I found on a contract one church drew up with a member who had been charged with molestation, a contract which was meant to help the member find redemption, but also consider the needs and fears of the victims.
If Richard comes to my church again, my husband and I will have to address the elephant in the room, and confront him with the child abuse case, tell him we know what he did and he can’t keep coming here, intimidating me and bringing up all my feelings of grief and anger all over again while I’m trying to worship God.
This–me saying I would tell the priest about Richard’s conviction and Tracy’s abuses of me, IF OUR TWO CHURCHES EVER MERGED–must be what they meant about me allegedly “threatening” to take this “public” to the church and community, which I never threatened. (Richard and Tracy go to a church in another county. Both our churches risk closing if we don’t merge, but neither of our churches wants to.)
Since the e-mail was not clear, I am forced to go by context/subtext. And after scouring through my posts, including the ones I wrote to them (which only told them to stay away from me and said absolutely nothing about me going to members of the church or community), this is the only thing I can find that could possibly be what they meant by this “threat” to go “public.”
They also read the page (in the long version of my memoir) numerous times which described Richard’s criminal conviction and how upset I was about it, what a scum he was to choke a kid, along with other blog posts which also referenced it.
On the night they first discovered my blog, they read that page seven times, and the other pages only once or twice.
Every time they went back on my website, that’s the page they kept looking at.
There was only a small amount on that page about Tracy, things barely even mentioned, which had already been detailed in full in previous pages which they only looked at a couple of times.
Nearly all of this page was about what Richard had done and the evidence of his violent nature which I found as I thought back over the past couple of years.
When I removed the pages from my website for a time, that’s the page they looked at to make sure it was gone. When I copied the pages onto my blog in June, that’s one of the first pages they looked at, and spent some time on. (I also noted that they spent 20 minutes reading about how Richard had behaved with me.)
I have every reason to believe (from this and other evidence) that Richard wants to keep this conviction quiet, even though the newspaper published the information.
After all, since they read that page numerous times, they knew quite well that I had already reported them to CPS a year previous. And, well, reporters in good faith to CPS are immune from lawsuits.
Oh, yes, and I had already told my priest and a couple of friends at church about what happened, including Richard’s conviction, before Richard and Tracy even found my blog, though I didn’t mention this in my blogs.
Which means that they must have been referring to me telling the priest about Richard’s conviction and Tracy’s bullying of me, that not only do they not want me telling the truth about how Tracy treated me, but they also don’t want word of his conviction getting out. The evidence I see from their hits on my webpages, is that the story of his conviction worries them far more than anything else.
But this was no “threat”: This was me telling my readers, if there were any, what I would do if the churches merged, and not addressed to Richard or Tracy at all, who found it months after I posted that.
The closest thing to a “threat” was me telling them directly to apologize or stay away from me; that I was not using their names and was using a penname and had every right to blog about what they did to me; that if they bullied me again I would tell again; and that if they so much as left an angry message on my answering machine, I would report them to the police.
There was absolutely nothing in anything I wrote threatening to “go public” to the church and the community, just what I had already done, writing about my experiences with fake names on my blogs, and continuing to do so.
See for yourself here and here to see what I actually wrote. Use the password “thetruth” to access.
The only thing that even faintly resembles their claims here of a “threat” to go public to members of the church/community, would be the above quote about going to my priest for help and counsel, and showing him my printouts of Richard’s criminal record to prove that I am telling the truth about their abuse.
And I had also mentioned in that same blog post that I would show the proof of his conviction to any mutual friend who asked, but that I was not directly telling the mutual friends (all of whom were on the Internet) whom I meant, nor was I certain they were paying any attention to my Facebook wall. I’ve since edited the post, but as proof, this is the version that Richard and Tracy read:
When you have been abused by a friend, or when you have discovered that your friend is a narcissist, or when you have discovered that your friend has a dangerous personality disorder such as borderline, mutual friends may or may not believe you.
I have posted on Facebook and my blogs what really happened, that Richard and Tracy abused me, abuse their children and abuse each other, and that Richard has been convicted of choking his daughter. But I didn’t use their real names in these posts.
Mutual friends have seen the posts, but only one has acknowledged figuring out who I was talking about. That one, Todd, already knew what Tracy was really like, having been her target two years previous. When he found out about the criminal case and saw the proof for himself, he dropped Richard on Facebook. So somebody believes me!
The others–I don’t know if they even know who I mean. Richard and Tracy are still on their friends list, so even though I can’t see the blocked posts, I can see the mutual friends responding to their posts. If they do know who I mean, do they believe me?
One mutual friend dropped me from Facebook almost a year ago now, with no word at all of why; this was Chris, my replacement as Richard’s BFF when I kept thinking for myself instead of following everything Richard said about politics and everything else.
Websites often warn that you can lose mutual friends after being abused and/or being caught in the web of a narcissist. They’re still caught in the web, and don’t believe this person could do what you say he’s done. Maybe one day they, too, will come to the truth about the narcissist, but for now they think you’re crazy, bitter, whatever.
I wonder how the mutual friends can possibly not know who I mean, since I haven’t posted on the walls of Richard and Tracy for a year and a half, when I used to post there all the time. (These people are connected via Internet and don’t live near each other.)
The mutual friends may occasionally respond to my posts of what happened, but they don’t acknowledge knowing who I mean. They never ask for proof of my assertions that Richard has been convicted of choking his little girl, and is now on probation for it. But if they only asked, I would give them three links which would prove to them beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m telling the truth.
These are three publicly available links; one is from the website of the local newspaper, and two are free, public, state-run websites, one with court cases and the other an inmate/community supervision locator.
All the information is on those three links, including mug shots, name, birthdate, addresses, what happened over the course of the case, details of the choking incident. Yet they never ask; they keep Richard and Tracy on their Facebook; apparently they are in denial.
Maybe they’re afraid to face the truth, that their friends are abusive, violent people who have hurt many and who have already lost many friends, both individually and together. Yeah, well, the truth is right there if only you want to face it, the proof is all on the Web that he’s not the amiable, big-hearted person he pretends to be.
It’s hard for me to deal with this. I avoid poking around too much in the posts of mutual friends, for fear that I’ll see them reply to Richard or Tracy, because I get a sour feeling in the pit of my gut when I see that.
There is still too much grief; there is still too much disbelief that Richard is a narcissist, even though I see the proof in his mug shots, the lack of remorse, the contempt instead of shame. There is still too much anger at the injustice of Tracy’s projection of guilt onto me, at her abuses of me, at her gaslighting and vicious, nasty behavior.
Hubby wants me to no longer care what she thinks of me, and that’s what I want, too, but the anger and feeling of injustice still burn hot.
But when I do accidentally see a mutual friend responding to a post that is blocked from me, as I did last night, I start wondering,
“Are Richard and Tracy acting like nothing has happened and they’re just normal, healthy people who wouldn’t hurt a fly?
“Is Richard pretending to all his friends that he never got charged with choking his child, never got convicted?
“Are they pretending to all their friends that Social Services is not involved in their family, even though it says right there in Richard’s signature bond agreement that he was ordered to cooperate with Social Services?
“Or do the mutual friends know all this, but not care that Richard and Tracy claim to be Christians but are severely lacking in morals, just as Richard kept being friends with the creeps who sexually harassed me in 2009, and got upset when I suggested their morals were lacking?
“Do they believe Richard or Tracy if they say that I’m the crazy one? Does Tracy still post things like she did on 7/1/10, when she posted on Facebook that she was having a GREAT day because she no longer had to sit back and be quiet and nice, that she finally got to say what she wanted to say?”
(My husband said to that, when I told him yesterday about her post, “Say about *what*? When was she keeping quiet and nice, and about what?” Which is what I wonder as well, because I really don’t know. I tried to be polite and kind to her all the time.)
I wonder,
“Is Tracy still staying with Richard even though he almost killed her daughter? Is Richard still staying with Tracy even though she hits him and he once told me he had to hold himself back, but if she ever hit his face, he’d tell her, ‘You’re not a woman,’ and hit her back like she was a man?
“Doesn’t Richard realize that this never ends well, that if he doesn’t get out now, the violence will escalate over time, until one day he’s beaten her up or even killed her, and the law won’t care who hit first, and will throw him in jail? Especially now that he already has a child abuse conviction against him!”
I’ve done all I can. I told Social Services what I witnessed and what Richard told me. I told my priest what happened, and though I did not tell him Richard’s identity, I believe he’s figured it out.
I’ve tried to tell my friends the truth, whether mutual friends believe me or not, or even know who I mean. I suggested to my husband that he report the threat Richard sent to him back on June 28, 2010, but he doesn’t want to.
The rest has been done by their oldest daughter, who had the amazing courage to report her own step-father to the police, and by law enforcement and Social Services. I really should let myself rest with that, but I keep feeling like there’s something else I need to do [to help the children]. But what else would there be?
Richard’s church and mine are both very small and in financial trouble; the archdiocese has suggested they merge. The two churches don’t want to merge, since they’re in different counties, and somebody would have to move. But the option is still on the table.
If the churches merge, I will have to go to the priest with my concerns, and show him the proof that Richard is a convicted child abuser.
Because Tracy has abused me as well, I will have to also show him an article I found on a contract one church drew up with a member who had been charged with molestation, a contract which was meant to help the member find redemption, but also consider the needs and fears of the victims.
If Richard comes to my church again, my husband and I will have to address the elephant in the room, and confront him with the child abuse case, tell him we know what he did and he can’t keep coming here, intimidating me and bringing up all my feelings of grief and anger all over again while I’m trying to worship God.
I thought, the last time he came, that he was showing signs of repentance for what he did to his little girl.
I hoped again, hoped he was cooperating with Social Services, hoped they were making him go to anger management and parenting classes, hoped he was working on those violent tendencies that drove him to tell me he was going to kill the lady who evicted him in 2009, to want to hit his wife [if she hit his face], to choke his daughter until she passed out just because she wasn’t cleaning up after herself.
Those violent tendencies that drove him to tell my husband that he’s easily provoked to physical violence, that he was ready to fight verbally and physically, that because my husband was sticking up for me against Richard’s bullying, Richard felt angrier than he had felt in years.
I hoped that Richard now realized, thanks to his conviction and nearly killing his daughter, that he needed help desperately. I hoped he was full of shame. I hoped he would finally come to Hubby and me, and try to make things right. I hoped that good side I thought was there, would finally get him to do the right thing, and this grief would end, I would get my friend back….
But then I saw the five mug shots taken a few weeks after he came to my church, and they were full of contempt. Hubby says Richard also looks like the cat who swallowed the canary, like he got away with something.
There are also the many things he himself told me which show him to be a narcissist:
- using conversational hypnotism to get me to open up to him,
- his boast of arrogance,
- his boasting about all his past women and getting them fighting each other,
- telling me that his exes would sit around at the same table talking about how evil he was,
- joking about his big ego,
- faking speaking in tongues to his congregation while preaching….
There were so many things he told me which painted a distinct picture of narcissism in his youth. But he had led me to believe that he had turned away from such things, respected women now, was being saved by the Church. I had this image of him, this friend, that may never have truly existed.
In 2009 or 2010, he complained about having to “pamper” me, even though I never asked him to, said that Tracy actually got angry with him for not saying things she knew he wanted to say while I was visiting.
This makes me wonder, WHAT things? How much of what I believed was his personality and character, was real? Was it all an act? Did the person I saw as my friend–Did he ever even exist, or was he just a persona invented by Richard to lure me as his narcissistic supply?
I’ve been a victim of narcissists in the past; now I was vulnerable because I’m very shy, have trouble making close friends, all my close friends were living so far away that I hadn’t seen them in some time, and I have always wanted one of those platonic friendships like Frodo/Sam, Bill/Ted, Anna/Clarissa, Anne/Diane, Gus/Shawn….
After all, in one of his favorite chat rooms, the other people were very surprised to hear that he wanted to be a priest. I have every reason to believe that Richard is truly a narcissist, that I’m not just making up some idea in my head to make myself feel better. The proofs are at least as clear as the proofs of Tracy being a malignant narcissist and/or borderline personality disorder. The biggest proof is the look in his eyes in his mug shots.
I thought he had changed from the violence and “dog” days of his past, was now gentle and sweet, especially because he wanted to be a priest and we were always talking about theology, the Church and God. But now I see him as just as much a predator as he was in his younger, “dog” days, just more subtle.
After all, why should I believe him anymore that he’s changed in this way, when he also claimed to have changed in other ways–turning away from violence in general, no longer abusing his kids–only to be proven a liar when he planned to kill that lady in 2009, threatened my husband in 2010, and choked his daughter a few months later?
I’m very disappointed in Richard, very disappointed to have to let go of the belief that he could still be saved from himself. It’s very difficult because for all this time, I’ve hoped that the good in him would one day win out and I would have my friend back.
Even at my angriest, I’ve been sad over having to give up his friendship, and hoped it was only temporary. It had been such an important friendship to me, and I had thought for so long that it was important to him as well, that he didn’t want to lose my friendship or my husband’s.
So why won’t he man up and talk to us, why won’t he fight for our friendship, apologize to us? Why did he plead no contest and still show, in his pictures, contempt for law enforcement, which is only doing its job protecting our weakest citizens?
Somehow I must accept that I now have proof of his narcissism, that he’s not the man I thought he was, and somehow I must stop longing for his friendship back. But I don’t know how I’ll do that.
When I speak of new evidence I’ve found for Richard’s narcissism, my husband doesn’t sound surprised at all.
I keep remembering things that make me think Richard really does have a good heart, but my husband keeps remembering things about Richard that rubbed him the wrong way, made him think that Richard is actually heartless, such as his politics, or that he lacked in empathy and wasn’t a good, caring friend, such as when [first I and then] Hubby tried to explain to him why I resisted Tracy and how I was being unfairly treated, but Richard did not listen.
My giving nature keeps looking for the good in Richard, despite all the evidence in front of me, or how angry I am with him. But Hubby seems to just nod whenever I have some new revelation. For example, when I showed Hubby the mug shots taken a month after the conviction and a couple of weeks after Richard seemed repentant and humble at church.
For Richard to act this way at church but act contemptuous while dealing with law enforcement over his despicable acts–I was shocked and dismayed, but Hubby didn’t seem surprised at all.
…You will note that I stayed friends with Richard and Tracy even though I knew they were both being asses to Todd. Of course, Richard told me enough things about Todd to make him sound like a horrible person in general, even though he’d been close friends with Todd for years, so I began to disregard the crap being slung at Todd over the game.
So maybe it’s not so surprising that Richard’s other friends are still with him, even though I’ve exposed the abuse. If they’re still caught up in his web, they may not realize just how badly he’s acted, even with the evidence in their faces.
I still stayed with Richard even though I knew he almost assaulted that lady. As one person wrote to Todd about Richard after finding out about the court case, “He always was an a–hole, but you were his friend and didn’t notice.” Several people also said that Richard is a narcissist.
…Todd was one of those loyal friends, even though they lived far apart, and when he stayed with Richard on vacation, he wrote on the forum about how much he loved being with Richard, wanted to move in with Richard for good, was actually planning it for a time.
But then, a couple years later, the blowup and fallout happened, and he began to come out of the spell. Now, he’s the only other friend of Richard I’m aware of who no longer wants a thing to do with him because of the choking incident.
If I had still been friends with Richard when it happened, I wonder if somehow he would have convinced me that he was being persecuted by the guvmint, and I would have stayed friends with him, even though he had done a despicable act that goes against everything I believe in.
…Mutual friends, face the truth, or you’ll be next. Richard and Tracy are both unstable people, and without me around, they need a new target. Face the truth, try to get them to face the truth, do something! I’m sick of being afraid to run into them at church or on the street, for fear of what they’ll do.
If Richard doesn’t take his conviction seriously, if he keeps complaining about police states and the police and how we need to defend our own homes and get rid of the police and fight CPS–one day, he’s going to be the one shooting his wife or killing one of his kids. Or Tracy will be the one killing him, because she’s crazy, too. Or at the very least, those kids are going to be so screwed up.
I don’t want to see that happen, but I’m so afraid that with the light sentence, they’ll somehow fall through the cracks and the dysfunction will continue. After all this time, I still worry like a mother hen over what will happen to Richard, what will happen to the children.
And now that he can no longer be a priest, and any political aspirations are no longer possible because of his criminal record–what will he go after next? Will he be like Elmer Gantry and just move on to the next thing?
Keep in mind that the references I made on Facebook were vague and sketchy, with no names. I also made no mention on Facebook of the blogs/webpages about the situation, only telling some details of the story to Todd because he had been in my situation before.
(My Facebook wall is private and mostly made up of friends/family/old classmates; it’s my main way of telling my friends what’s going on, and getting support.
(I don’t believe people should be quiet on Facebook about being bullied and abused, because speaking out can be a great help for them. Everyday drama can be tiresome and TMI, but abuse/bullying victims should tell everyone they can, to decrease the power of the bullies/abusers.
(More full, explicit details were put in e-mails and chats to certain friends/family, NOT to my Facebook wall.)
I did not tell the other mutual friends whom I meant, and even distanced myself from them, never sending them e-mails, just occasionally responding to something they had posted on their Facebook walls. I often pondered just how much I should tell them, wondered if I should ask for their help, but was afraid to be too detailed, too explicit in what I wrote on Facebook.
I wondered if it was right or wrong to tell them what happened, if it would be seen as gossip, or if it was my duty to warn them about the narcissism, or if it was my obligation to tell them about the bullying or abuse so they could do some sort of “intervention.”
I never asked them about Richard or Tracy, never let on to them just who I meant by “ex-friend,” just occasionally vented in my statuses vague sentences about the crap I’d been put through and that I’d witnessed.
We weren’t close to begin with, didn’t run in the same real-life circles, and even saw each other on the Net only occasionally in places where Richard and Tracy no longer went. So I never tried to tell them the whole story or identify the “ex-friend” or “my bully.”
But if they did figure it out and ask for proof, I would show them, in hopes that they would not only believe me, but try to get Richard or Tracy to stop abusing and bullying.
[Update 9/27/14: At least one more mutual friend does know now, possibly two, because in 2011, Todd brought the story to the Forum where we all used to congregate. And that one believes me, as well.
I also no longer have qualms about using real names on my Facebook, part of my growing courage to tell the truth.
Of course, I dropped several of those mutual friends after Richard and Tracy’s threatening e-mail, because I did not know whom to trust. But then one of them found Todd’s posts on the Forum, and then another re-friended me recently.]
I had just read through this blog shortly before reading Richard and Tracy’s e-mail to me. So this must be what they meant, what they’re so afraid of, me showing the priest the conviction records (to establish my credibility and Richard’s violent tendencies) and asking for a contract to protect me from my bully Tracy.
So–Why are you more worried about whether people at church find out what you did, than turning away from this horrible deed and bettering yourself? And why are you so concerned about me telling the priest? Shouldn’t you be telling him yourself, asking for his help and absolution? (This goes for both Richard and Tracy.)
So–Not only do they deny what they’ve done, to my (virtual) face, but they accuse me of and rail at me for wild threats which I never made, and accuse me of threatening them and rail at me for telling them to either apologize or stay the f*** away from me?
I saw they were reading through my blogs pretty fast; I see their reading comprehension suffered quite a bit.
In another blog post, I say that I wish they would move away so I wouldn’t have to deal with running into them anymore. I also spoke here of how the Bible itself says to deal with people like this in the church, how church discipline is supposed to be administered.
Though I only quoted it to provide examples that Christians are not supposed to fellowship with unrepentant abusers and criminals, that we are indeed supposed to watch out for such people, even though so many people think you’re supposed to “not judge” them and “forgive” no matter what they do and keep fellowshipping with them.
I had no intentions of trying to get Richard and Tracy out of the faith entirely; I just wanted them to be kept away from me, to keep going to their own church, which they decided 4 years ago was far better than mine because they hated my church.
I wrote that for me to keep in the faith, I’d have to disconnect it from Richard, and that would require him staying away from me.
You can see all this for yourself at those links, how I really meant and worded it, and that it did not even imply that I would try to push them out of the church or community, but only that I wished they would move away so I wouldn’t have to see them around anymore. This is a perfectly natural desire felt by everyone who has been mistreated.
I also had no idea they’d ever find and read that; I thought they cared so little about me or what I thought, that they’d never read any of my websites again. I also wrote:
It is a huge relief to be among family, friends and church members who do not judge me for being quiet, who do not tell their husbands that I hate her and can’t be trusted with him because I blend into the furniture, who may make a little joke once in a while about my quietness but nothing nasty.
To be among friends who freely do the things that Tracy once wanted to kill me for. To not get snarked at or criticized for every little thing I do or say, not just by Tracy but by Richard.
To be myself, without being accused again and again of disrespecting her or snubbing her. To relax and not worry about two people–one my best friend–ganging up on me because of my selective mutism/NVLD/Asperger’s/extreme introversion/whatever it is.
I can’t help the way my brain works, and I don’t want to; I just want to be accepted as I am, same as anybody else.
To have these two people just waltz back into my church and then back out again as if they’ve done nothing wrong and I deserve nothing but to be ignored–disrupts my life, disrupts the gradual loosening of tension that I’ve been feeling by being around decent people again.
I go to coffee hour to relax with my church family and work on understanding Greek, but if I see Richard and/or Tracy I feel tense, nervous, shaky.
These are honest and natural thoughts and reflections, not me telling them to leave their religion or their community, but you see here that they twisted them and turned them into “threats” somehow.
They lack empathy for their victim, not only laughing at her pain but proclaiming that they will do what they can to make her pain even worse, by showing up at church where they know she does not want to see them–out of some weak, pathetic claim of worshipping God, while their very own words accuse them of doing it out of spite and malice.
They show absolutely no understanding that their behavior was bullying and abuse, no understanding that victims need to go through a long, hard, painful process–which can take years–to recover from abuse.
They accuse her of threatening them because she told them, If you bully me again, I will tell [about the bullying] again. They get upset because she told them to stay away from her, because she feels their presence is meant as intimidation, especially since they freeze her out and do not speak to her even in greeting–and she tells them to stay away, because their presence hinders her healing process.
They then proceed to try to cut off the victim from her support systems, by threatening her with a defamation suit if she goes to her priest for help! (It’s not defamation if it’s true, and this court conviction and Tracy’s abuses are for real.)
It’s also stalking, because I clearly wrote that I did not want a dialogue with them, did not want to hear anything at all from them–no justifying, no minimizing what they did to me–except for an apology.
Then on Sunday afternoon, I came home from church to find “Tracy Richard Doe” (as this e-mail was signed) as a new follower on my blog.
It’s just the same as when Tracy told me on 7/1/10, “Don’t go crying to Jeff, because we don’t need the headache.” As I wrote before, this is just the same as any bully on the playground telling you not to go telling the teacher, or a molester warning you not to tell anyone about your little “secret,” or a domestic abuser threatening to kill your family if you tell anyone what he’s done.
It’s just the same as what they did to Todd. In reviewing the printouts of their online argument, I discovered how Tracy made everyone think he was the crazy one for defending himself and telling what really happened, even though her initial rage episode was over something he did to help her, but she decided to accuse him of hurting her. And that she called him a “baby” for getting upset about her rage episode.
Jeff says Richard is afraid of me because I know about this and so many other things he’s said and done, and that he wants to keep me under his thumb.
I need no more proof than this that I have them pegged correctly as a combination of malignant narcissism/narcissistic borderline personality disorder. Every word they wrote, every action they take, oozes narcissism.
I have clear proof that they are abusers because of Richard’s criminal conviction, the contempt in his mug shots, and the lack in this e-mail of any sign of remorse for what he did to his daughter. I can move on–stop wishing he would come to us and apologize–because I know him to be dangerous. They both are violent.
See this post for how abusers minimize, justify and try to excuse their abuse when you confront them with it. They complain about me painting Tracy as “deranged” and try to call me the crazy one, which is what abusers do all the time to their victims.
[Update 9/27/14: I removed that term, but by “deranged” I meant crazy, volatile, violent–all words I still use and believe when referring to Tracy. And all three words are perfectly legal to use.]
But stalking with malicious intent is not the behavior of a sane person, and neither is hanging out the window of a moving minivan or going off in a rage at someone for writing “I’ll miss you; have fun on your trip!”
I’m not sure if they’re sociopaths or psychopaths, but at least one of the two -pathies seems to be in here as well.
This makes it crystal clear to me that when I lost Richard’s friendship, I lost nothing of value, just the friendship of an abuser and narcissist who does not care about anybody except himself.
And if they send me just one more e-mail, try once more to contact me, I will file charges.
It’s amazing and astounding: Even though I told them they do not have the moral high ground, even though Richard choked his kid and they know I know about it, they’re still trying to claim the moral high ground!
They’re still saying they did nothing wrong to me, still showing no remorse here in their e-mail about what Richard did to his kid. These people are unbelievable!
If you had any doubts at all about my claims that they are both Cluster B, look at their e-mail and banish your doubts. Their e-mail is here in its entirety, and unedited: I just clipped and pasted it. Yes, they even used the fake names “Nyssa,” “Richard” and “Tracy,” which is bizarre, considering we all know and use each others’ real names in real life.
I think Tracy actually wrote it, since it has her markings all over it. And because, despite the many complaints I had made about Richard’s behavior, narcissism, political extremism, betrayal, coming on too strong, threatening Jeff, threatening the apartment manager, violent past, and criminal conviction of choking his kid–this e-mail focused mostly on what was said about Tracy.
To be continued.