Pieter Hintjens - The Psychopath Code - Cracking the Predators That Stalk Us

Of all the topics women love to talk about, sexual infidelity seems to top the list. It’s not as simple as "bad news travels fast." Sexual fidelity isn’t data. Cheating is, because repeated sexual misconduct is a prime trait of psychopaths.

Mallory lies and exaggerates when grooming. This lets her stay dominant in that relationship. Her need to control the narrative is a red flag, if you can spot it. It’s more visible than the low quality of the data she is providing. Mallory is the victim, hurt and needing affection. She reports the latest horrendous acts of her male partner. She begs for help and support. She flatters and charms.

In return, Mallory gets valuable information about other people. Alice is quite lost. She gets what feels at first like a valuable and deep friendship. And yet it is empty, and over time, more and more abusive.

These appear to be the key triggers:

❂ Dramatic story-telling. It is the drama of a daytime Brazilian soap opera. The characters are beautiful or evil or both. They are violent and emotional, proud, and loud. The stories are false and they are endless. Alice feels as if she is five and getting a fabulous bedtime story.

❂ Playing the helpless victim. The offender is a partner, employer, or the authorities. The crimes are infidelity, violence, and theft. "He beat me and the kids, took the family money, and spent it on whores." Alice feels like an older sister, compelled to offer advice and help.

❂ Flattering the listener. This means compliments, attention to birthdays and personal events, and excessive amounts of attention. This is a form of "love bombing" I’ll explore more in the next chapter. Alice feels important, valued, and loved.

❂ Revealing others' secrets. These are negative, intimate, detailed, and often invented. The listener feels as if they are getting rare and valuable knowledge. They feel powerful. Mallory uses this to divide Alice from her friends and colleagues.

❂ Utter, palpable sincerity. Mallory lies often and about anything. Yet she shows no stress response or hesitation when lying. She shows deep sincerity in voice, expression, and body language. Alice’s responses is to over-value everything Mallory says. It’s not just true, it’s hyper-true. The stranger Mallory’s lie, the truer it feels to Alice.

How does Alice respond to such triggers, if she does not wake up and walk away in disgust? Usually she opens up, and provides all her secrets. She treats Mallory like a reliable BFF. Alice introduces Mallory to other friends, and engages her in social activities. The reality only hits many years later. It takes many counter-voices to undo those piercing lies. By the time Alice questions the relationship, the damage can be deep. If she can, she will walk away in shame, and never speak of Mallory again.

I’ve covered how Mallory hunts other adults. In general adults are fair game, and expected to be capable of defending themselves. The authorities and general public have little sympathy for adult-on-adult abuse, though this is slowly changing [32] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-psychological-abuse-law-a6789271.html . When laws get broken, then the police and courts may step in. There are two other common scenarios that create more anger and revulsion. That is, when Mallory preys on young people, or on the aged.

Let’s look at the case of young people first. We can see clear, recurring patterns of vulnerability. I believe these both attract, and breed psychopaths.

It starts with children cut off from their family by distance, isolation, or abandonment. In stable societies, orphans and young offenders are housed in homes. In societies hit by economic collapse, young people run away and become street children. In war, families can get separated, and young people end in refugee camps.

Then we see Mallory moving in, and building abuse networks. He may pose as a relief worker, religious organization, or youth worker. Or she may wait at transit points for new arrivals, picking out candidates. "Hey, you look hungry, would you like a meal?"

The trigger is attachment to family. Young people away from their relatives will feel alone and insecure. They will respond to adults who act like parents. As with other triggers, Mallory can exaggerate his behavior, and get stronger responses. The adult shows confidence and gives more fake affection. The young person responds with more trust. Mallory can push this further and faster than social humans.

There is a huge global trade in young people. Sometimes it calls itself "cultural" or "sporting" exchanges. Young girls from Guatemala who think they’re going to become dancers. Young men from West Africa, dreaming of a future in European football.

Sometimes it’s desperate parents who send their children off to a "better future." They pay brokers to take their children to Europe or America. The figures are unknown. This is not a documented trade. One million a year? Ten million? No-one knows. The children often just disappear.

Sometimes it’s blatant slave trading [33] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_contemporary_Africa#Child_slave_trade . Brokers travel to poor villages, buying or kidnapping young boys and girls. They move these children far away. They set them to work in homes, cramped factories, or brothels.

Whatever the cause, the distance from a loving and protective relative means vulnerability. Vulnerable children always attract Mallory. He sees raw material to own, shape, use, and trade. Bob should not die, may not run away, and must make a profit for Mallory. That is the limit of his concern.

Then Mallory builds a trafficking network, with others like him. He starts moving young people up and down this network. He specializes in buying. Or perhaps in selecting and training children for different roles. Or in moving them across borders, into Europe or the USA, where they are worth more.

It remains easy and cheap to smuggle children across borders. It is a matter of knowing how. A falsified passport costs from 500 to 2,000 Euro depending on the country. It’s a real child’s passport, with the photo of the victim. Dark kids all look alike, don’t they? Update: at least in Belgium, this loophole was closed in 2015, with better checks of under-aged passport holders' identities.

And then Mallory filters out young potential psychopaths. He coaches them, using other children as practice material. He promotes them and turns them into his proxies.

This problem of child abuse is old, guarded in shame, and has been hard to solve. One scorns the sweatshop, then wears the t-shirt. So often it hides in families, under layers of tradition and racism.

How to solve this? We can hope to reduce war, stabilize economies, and strengthen families. We can raise awareness of the mechanics of abuse. We can try to keep predators away from vulnerable children. Yet we cannot remove psychopaths, nor switch-off their predatory nature, nor guard every child. Who guards the guardians?

There seems to be another answer, which I believe is emerging little by little. Mallory’s strategy has one weakness. That is, young Alice or Bob must be alone and far from help. The core of the problem is isolation. This means there are no alternatives to the fake parental masks Mallory wears. When you have no-one to talk to, Mallory looks like a friend.

We must give children tools to create their own social networks, face-to-face or on line. Teach children to ask for help, from their peers, and others.

Access to other people over the Internet, using a personal device, is vital. It is as important as clean water, education, and access to health care. One day the technology will be close to free and available to every child on the planet.