Reading true-crime stories (yes, one of my secret vices), I’m repeatedly struck by the way victims are often complicit in the horrors committed against them.
I’m not talking about the woman who takes a strange man home from a bar or the family that fails to lock its doors when a burglar is on the loose (though them, too). I’m talking about victims who feel personal loyalty to “friends,” relations, leaders, and professionals who are doing them obvious harm.
I’m talking about patients who stand by a quack doctor even though she’s obviously killing them to get their money and possessions. (She killed many more).
Or the followers of a preacher who’s degrading and controlling them for his own sick benefit. Jeffs. Jones. Creffield. The horror stories go back at least to the middle ages and more likely to the dawn of human time.
I’m talking about people who repeatedly believe obvious, manipulative sociopathic liars. (The link is to a Joseph Wambaugh book that details one of the creepiest examples of manipulation and self-deception I’ve ever read about. But obviously it’s just one example of thousands.)