BOOK REVIEW: Alexis: My True Story of Being Seduced by an Online Predator

Alexis: My True Story of Being Seduced by an Online Predator
By Alexis Singer

Reviewed by Gillian Fournier

Alexis: My True Story of Being Seduced by an Online Predator by Alexis Singer is about a very typical issue, loneliness. Loneliness can drive us to do things that seem completely irrational even to ourselves and that is just what happened to Alexis. In this mini novel, she had just broken up with her boyfriend, she was a child suffering from a complicated divorce, and to make it worse, she was in her awkward mid-teen years. These type of things can seem like the end of the world at the young age of and in Alexis’s case, those things drove her to get involved in the seedier side of the Internet.

After Alexis gives readers a bit of a briefing on her background, she launches into a detailed description of The Board, an online forum of sorts for thespians. The Board was a place she found comforting because despite not having any real friends, she seemed to be making digital ones that enjoyed talking to her about topics she was genuinely interested in. This ended up turning into a bad situation because although the majority of the people she had met on The Board seemed perfectly normal, there was one very sick individual waiting for someone just like Alexis. Phil, as he was known, was in his late 30s and preyed upon confused young women who frequented The Board. (sounds like our exposed predator DAN JACOBY!)

One especially lonely night, Alexis received a message from Phil asking if she was over 18 yet. This should have been a warning sign (even she recognizes that), but she was extremely desperate for some sort of attention and she replied. This was the beginning of a relationship of sorts that would include many inappropriate advances and words that no 16-year-old should ever hear from anyone (let alone a man old enough to be her father).

Throughout the book Alexis is coerced into having cybersex with Phil, taking naked pictures for him and even ends viewing a webcam live feed of Phil’s genitals. This may seem like enough to make anyone stop talking to a man like this, but Alexis explains how easily one can be talked into things. Phil was an expert at pushing the limits and then pulling back right when he knew she felt uncomfortable. He used this strategy to feel out how far he could push her and then later ended up getting what he wanted. What began with a simple request for an image of a new piercing became much more. In Alexis’s mind the transition didn’t seem like a big deal, since Phil made sure to ask for the “favors” in a very calculated manner.

Eventually, Alexis’s mother ended up finding out what has transpired and immediately banned her from the Internet. She also tried to find her daughter support groups and hired a detective to see if Phil could be prosecuted for being an Internet predator. In the end they decided not to press charges; the case could have caused more harm to Alexis’s life than one would think.

Alexis went to college and started to distance herself from the Internet and from Phil, though she does admit in the end that she still speaks with Phil every so often (though not in a sexual manner). She now has a new boyfriend and is learning the value of social interaction and honest love and friendship.

The book is very easy to read because it is small, the type is large, the chapters are short and without fail, each chapter ends with a little mini cliffhanger that makes you want to keep reading. The average to slower reader will be able to finish this book in less than two hours without breaking a sweat. The topic is interesting and engaging and Alexis is a character that is very relatable. Overall, Alexis represents the everyday girl you meet in high school — though she is sweet and endearing, there is nothing extraordinary about this character. She is simply ordinary, and that makes her real.

I think this book is a good resource for young girls who might be involved in an “innocent” flirtation with an Internet “friend.” It is from the point of view of a victim of online sexual abuse and therefore readers can empathize with her. It also does a great job of explaining teen loneliness.

I think that Alexis is a talented young writer and I hope to see more of her work in the future (hopefully about a brighter topic for her sake). As of September 2010 she is only 19, so I think readers can look forward to a wealth of interesting literature from Ms. Singer.

(NOTE FROM EOPC: this book covers EXACTLY how cyberpaths do it to ADULTS as well!!)

Trolling the Internet for Prey: Cyberpaths

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  from: http://psychopathyawareness.wordpress.com/
  
  The internet offers fertile ground for psychopaths, who are constantly on the prowl for potential new victims while continuing to intimidate and harass their previous ones.
  
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  • Please find below an informative article on psychopaths on the internet (or “cyberpaths”) by a wordpress blogger, Lisa (relentlessabundance.wordpress.com).
    
    What is the cyberpath looking for?
    
    Like all psychopathic personalities, the cyberpath tends to get bored easily. He looks for ways to fill his boredom with exploits that will satisfy his need for personal gratification. The Internet provides a wide array of offerings – chatrooms and discussion groups, mailing lists, social networking sites, and many portals for interpersonal communication with a huge variety of people. The cyberpath tends to find someone that gratifies his need to feed his narcissistic desire for attention – whether with intrigue, argument, conflict or adoration and love. He may flit from one victim to another quite quickly, or may stay with a single victim for an extended period, depending on how long the victim continues to feed this endless need.
    
    Dominance and power form recurrent themes in the social relations of psychopathic personalities. The cyberpath constantly seeks to dominate and control others. This takes a variety of forms:
    
    •in arguments and debates, he constantly needs to have the last word;
    •he attempts to silence others and close discussion with his point of view;
    •he will resort to insults and attacks in order to retain dominance;
    •if he seems to be losing his dominant position in an argument, he will abandon it, forget it and later deny it rather than face any sort of compromise of his dominance.
  
  
  • In his personal relationships, his bids for adulation and devotion will take on more subtle forms:
  
  
  • he will go to great lengths to elicit love and devotion from others;
  
  
  • he is only interested in the thrill of achieving or winning this, and once the relationship gets past its initial excitement phase, his boredom and need for further validation will lead him to seek out further victims;
  
  
  • he is highly adept at lying, and even as his lies get discovered, he will refashion his story to make himself appear credible, often using the stance of humility and remorse to get himself out of a corner.
  
  
  

  Gradually he will have to set up new online profiles and sites in order to clear away any previous evidence of his track record repeating itself.

  
  

  Psychopathic personalities enjoy playing jokes and tricks on others in order to humiliate them or assert dominance. In other words, he is not necessarily looking for money or sex; he may simply be looking for the thrill of a new connection, a new game. This is not to say that the psychopath is necessarily aware of what he’s doing; he may not even realise or acknowledge that he is hurting or exploiting others in his quest for attention and narcissistic supply. Indeed, his own sense of need and lack may be so great that it may express itself in very genuine self-pity, heartfelt longing and sweeping declarations of love and desire.
  
  A psychopath tends to play the same games over and over. He tends to have no real interest in your inner emotional state as he is incapable of actual empathy (although he may have a deep desire to feel empathy, and may indeed claim to feel it). Consequently, few psychopaths are actually stalkers. They do not connect emotionally to others, so once a relationship has run out of steam for them, they simply move onto the next person that piques their interest. For those who have found themselves at the end of a relationship with a psychopathic individual, one of the most frustrating aspects of the breakup can be the lack of any acknowledgement that the relationship even happened.
  
  Gordon Banks, in his essay “Don Juan as Psychopath” points out that this personality “gives no real love, though he is quite capable of inspiring love of sometimes fanatical degree in others”. Of course, after the relationship is over, it means very little to the cyberpath, who tends to turn cold (and sometimes even vicious) but the victim may find themselves shocked, devastated or seriously traumatised.

  
  
  • The perverse twist to this theme is that the psychopathic personality may take pleasure in “psychoanalysing” his victims, and casting them as crazy, obsessive and even delusional (and reinforcing his own power as the dominant “rational” figure in the relationship).
    
    Most cyberpaths are not the kinds of hardened criminals that go as far as murder, rape and the other crimes we’ve come to associate with literary and filmic “psychos”. Rather, they tend to commit crimes of deceit, lying and infidelity. Their manipulation will go as far as seemingly heartfelt confessions, as well as successive revisions of their own narratives. Sadly, they will often actually believe their own stories.
    
    A cyberpath will keep his victim hooked for as long as she keeps fuelling his narcissistic desire for devotion and approval. However, the charade will drop when this starts waning (typically the phase of a relationship where normal couples settle down from the initial infatuation into the normalcy of their relationship). Alternatively, it may drop when the cyberpath simply gets bored of his current victim and requires a more novel buzz.
    
    What may attract you to a psychopath initially
    
    •he may appear extraordinarily articulate, impressive and charming
    •his provocative behaviour might initially seem attractively brave,
    daring or “true to self”; later when it makes you uncomfortable, you might well rationalise it by remembering that it’s part of what makes him “special”
    •he will “zone in” on you and make you feel like you are at the centre of something extraordinary
    •irresistibly, he will insist that your relationship eclipses and surpasses anything that went before – you are the first person that has truly seen or understood him; the best lover he has ever had; the first person with whom he has been truly honest or truly “himself” (indeed, he may believe this himself, as he does not have any emotional recall for previous relationships)
    •even if he has cheated on or betrayed someone else in the initial stages of your relationship, he will twist this to demonstrate that you are the special case – now that he’s found you, there can be no further dishonesty
    •he may overtly or subtly assert his dominance over you as a kind of private privilege
    •he may create a heightened sense of intimacy (a sort of “me and you against the world” in-club) by insisting that you alone understand him and share his unique perspective.
  
  
  The sorts of things that might alert you to psychopathic tendencies
  •consistent failure to conform to social norms (e.g. a tendency to speak or behave to shock others, insistently provocative behaviour)
  •deceitfulness, lying, creation of multiple aliases
  •insulting or humiliating treatment
  •arrogance, a sense of entitlement, inflated sense of ego
  •a tendency to “psychoanalyse” others, especially previous exes, as insane or obsessive
  •coolly rationalising or “explaining away” previous incidents in which he has hurt, mistreated or lied to others
  •lack of empathy, guilt or remorse for previous misdemeanours and previous victims
  •a limited or nonexistent social circle, largely made up of people he sees rarely or online acquaintances, rather than close friends or confidantes
  •a pattern of serious mental illness or psychosis in his family; fraught or nonexistent family ties.



• If you have been in a relationship with a psychopathic personalit:


• get as far away from them as you can, as quickly as possible


• don’t bother trying to communicate with them about the relationship – they will be unable to enter into a meaningful dialogue


• if you seek to expose them, bear in mind they are likely to respond with vitriolic rage, threats, vicious and hurtful communication, or attempts to discredit you and smear your reputation


• resign yourself to the fact that you are unlikely to retrieve anything from them unless you are fortunate enough to have a legally binding contract from before they turned cold on you
  •don’t beat yourself up about not recognising the signs earlier; just act as soon as you do


• seek therapy as soon as possible; the trauma of these encounters can be long-lasting and profound


• if possible, warn others of your experience


• bear in mind he will be doing his best to cast you as irrational or downright crazy, so it might not be possible or worthwhile to warn his friends or his most recent victim


• tempting as it is to try get him to hear your point of view, cut your losses and keep away from any further contact.
  

The other side of the coin

With around 4% of the general population displaying psychopathic traits, some psychologists readily regard psychopathy, like some forms of autistic traits, as “just another way of being”. The psychopaths that end up committing socially unacceptable crimes such as rape and murder are simply the ‘unsuccessful psychopaths’; the successful ones may actually exploit their tendencies to achieve great outward trappings of success. Intelligence, charm and uncompromising self-interest can be a recipe for high earnings and some degree of social (or at least sexual) success. That said, if you’re among of the 96% of the population that values a degree of empathy and compassion in your friends and partners, it’s worth knowing what to look out for.

Lisa, http://relentlessabundance.wordpress.com

PREDATORS

Punishing narcissists [by exposing them] is not being mean to them. It may be the only thing that can help. And, as for their victims, it is simple justice, the right thing to do for their sake too. - What Makes Narcissists Tick

What is the predator thinking? What's going on in the mystery behind those steely blue eyes? What do they see in you?

Something to love for anything but lunch?

How many tiger-tamers and lion-tamers have fooled themselves into thinking they had developed a relationship with these beasts? Fooled themselves into unknowing that every minute of every day in the cage that tiger was tempted.

That's what tiger-taming is - astounding an audience with the audacity of dangling yourself as bait before a predator.

Until one day, when out of the blue, almost off-handedly, Tiger hops down off the pedestal and eats the tamer to just be done with it already.

How many times have authorities similarly fooled themselves about a child molester, rapist, or serial killer - thinking they can safely be released from prison? Then, out on the street, bait is constantly dangled before their eyes.

Sooner or later....

One might as well expect a wolf to be lovey-dovey with lambs or expect that tiger to roam the streets without hurting anyone. It ain't gonna happen.

It's all because of the way a predator VIEWS you. There is no connection in that look. It's a tiger and you aren't - you are lunch.

A narcissist has no proper relationship with him- or her-self (N's identify with their image instead of their buried inner selves), so how can they have a proper human relationship with anyone else? They see nothing to identify with in you.

Predators - the way to deal with them is simply to get and stay a safe distance away from them. They may resist the temptation today, but if you keep dangling bait before their eyes, sooner or later you know what is going to happen.
So let no one tell you it's mean to divorce one or cut off contact with one. I don't care how much the narcissist cries about it or even if he or she threatens suicide if you leave. People might as well tell you that you have a moral obligation to remain within striking distance of a great white shark because it's mean to stay away and let it go hungry. Absurd.

A predator has no RIGHT to prey, no claim on your life that you must fulfill by allowing them to use you as their whipping boy.

It's just too bad that they will be sad and unhappy without one, because that's THEIR problem: you have a right to pursue your own happiness.

original article here

Perfect Prey: Surviving a Cyber Shark's Romantic Fraud

Liz Cole was victimized by an online career con artist - but she turned the tables to expose the con man on national television. Much of this book is written as a real time journal, taking readers inside the world of Liz Cole and her suitor, convict and predator John Melvin Hill.


Recently divorced, with low self-esteem, Liz Cole turned to online dating and met a charming Irishman - in reality, a Quebec con artist - who preyed on her and vanished. She then found him and set up a televised sting operation and has great advice.

Millions use Internet-dating sites to look for love. Some find their mates, some find disappointment. And some fine something far more dangerous - con artists and sex predators lurking in the shadows of cyberspace. -- CTV's W-Five

What do you do when your charming knight on a white horse turns out to be Satan in a tuxedo? (this is the true story of how one woman fought back) -- Canadian Living Magazine

buy the book here