What can you do if your abuser fools the court evaluator?

Answer 1

Even a complete battery of tests, administered by experienced professionals sometimes fails to identify abusers and their personality disorders. Offenders are uncanny in their ability to deceive their evaluators. They often succeed in transforming therapists and diagnosticians into four types of collaborators: the adulators, the blissfully ignorant, the self-deceiving and those deceived by the batterer's conduct or statements.

Abusers co-opt mental health and social welfare workers and compromise them - even when the diagnosis is unequivocal - by flattering them, by emphasizing common traits or a common background, by forming a joint front against the victim of abuse ("shared psychosis"), or by emotionally bribing them. Abusers are master manipulators and exploit the vulnerabilities, traumas, prejudices, and fears of the practitioners to "convert" them to the offender's cause.

I. The Adulators

The adulators are fully aware of the nefarious and damaging aspects of the abuser's behavior but believe that they are more than balanced by his positive traits. In a curious inversion of judgment, they cast the perpetrator as the victim of a smear campaign orchestrated by the abused or attribute the offender's predicament to bigotry.

They mobilize to help the abuser, promote his agenda, shield him from harm, connect him with like-minded people, do his chores for him and, in general, create the conditions and the environment for his ultimate success.

II. The Ignorant

As I wrote in "The Guilt of the Abused", it is telling that precious few psychology and psychopathology textbooks dedicate an entire chapter to abuse and violence. Even the most egregious manifestations � such as child sexual abuse � merit a fleeting mention, usually as a sub-chapter in a larger section dedicated to paraphilias or personality disorders.

Abusive behavior did not make it into the diagnostic criteria of mental health disorders, nor were its psychodynamic, cultural and social roots explored in depth. As a result of this deficient education and lacking awareness, most law enforcement officers, judges, counselors, guardians, and mediators are worryingly ignorant about the phenomenon.

Only 4% of hospital emergency room admissions of women in the United States are attributed by staff to domestic violence. The true figure, according to the FBI, is more like 50%. One in three murdered women was done in by her spouse, current or former.

The blissfully ignorant mental health professionals are simply unaware of the "bad sides" of the abuser- and make sure they remain oblivious to them. They look the other way, or pretend that the abuser's behavior is normative, or turn a blind eye to his egregious conduct.

Even therapists sometimes deny a painful reality that contravenes their bias. Some of them maintain a generally rosy outlook premised on the alleged inbred benevolence of Mankind. Others simply cannot tolerate dissonance and discord. They prefer to live in a fantastic world where everything is harmonious and smooth and evil is banished. They react with discomfort or even rage to any information to the contrary and block it out instantly.

Once they form an opinion that the accusations against the abusers are overblown, malicious, and false - it becomes immutable. "I have made up my mind - they seem to be broadcasting - "Now don't confuse me with the facts."

III. The Self-Deceivers

The self-deceivers are fully aware of the abuser's transgressions and malice, his indifference, exploitativeness, lack of empathy, and rampant grandiosity - but they prefer to displace the causes, or the effects of such misconduct. They attribute it to externalities ("a rough patch"), or judge it to be temporary. They even go as far as accusing the victim for the offender's lapses, or for defending herself ("she provoked him").

In a feat of cognitive dissonance, they deny any connection between the acts of the abuser and their consequences ("his wife abandoned him because she was promiscuous, not because of anything he did to her"). They are swayed by the batterer's undeniable charm, intelligence, or attractiveness. But the abuser needs not invest resources in converting them to his cause - he does not deceive them. They are self-propelled.

IV. The Deceived

The deceived are deliberately taken for a premeditated ride by the abuser. He feeds them false information, manipulates their judgment, proffers plausible scenarios to account for his indiscretions, soils the opposition, charms them, appeals to their reason, or to their emotions, and promises the moon.

Again, the abuser's incontrovertible powers of persuasion and his impressive personality play a part in this predatory ritual. The deceived are especially hard to deprogram. They are often themselves encumbered with the abuser's traits and find it impossible to admit a mistake, or to atone.

I went through an evaluation with my exhusband and my kids. The evaluator absolutely believed my exhusband who was lying about everything and told me I was a lier and my kids were too. I met some people who went to the same evaluator and they told me the same thing that this man was very arrogant and obviosly sides with the abusers side. One of these people told me to go onto www.Psychboard.ca.gov and report this man. His name is Dr. Seuter if anyone has seen him too and he ruined your life go to that website or write me back.