Now the research begins. I call it research, but really it’s just me trying to understand more about what makes a sociopath tick and how to survive Tara’s shenanigans until Kit turns 18. After working my way through page one of a Google search to learn the basics, I when to the library and checked out Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door (a sequel), by Dr. Martha Stout. There were only two helpful chapters, Chapter 4, The Sociopath in Court: Fighting for Child Custody, and Chapter 6, Transcending the Sociopath’s Effects: Ten Key Guidelines.
The first stereotype debunked was that all sociopaths don’t fit the movie/TV serial killer model. In fact, they’re all around us, in our neighborhood, at our workplace, in our schools, functioning beautifully in society with their ability to mimic emotional reactions and social interactions without giving themselves away. They are impulsive, but also calculated, and can certainly become violent, especially when confronted with their actions. Men particularly often become domestic abusers.
I struggled to find a lot of info on female sociopaths. Female sociopaths are significantly less likely to be diagnosed as such due to gender bias, though the ratio is 3:1. All of this to say I feel a little less guilty that it’s taken me so long to identify what Tara is. And now that I know what I’m dealing with, my next step is learning to play the game better…and of course, winning.
Because it is a game to them. The sociopath’s primary goal is to win. It’s all about control, gaining pleasure from putting their target in uncomfortable situations and watching them squirm. Their victim’s anger is like a shot of dopamine to them. They rely on lies, manipulation and seduction to get what they want. They have no conscience, no remorse, and thus no empathy. They have a history of risk-taking or thrill-seeking, shallow relationships, a desire to be the center of attention, and an enormous sense of entitlement. Sociopaths are a mixture of nature (genetics) and nurture (environment and upbringing).
Reading this description was such an “aha” moment for me. I had organized a joint baby shower for Tara and Liam, invited all of Liam’s close friends and told Tara to invite hers. Not one single person came that was a friend of Tara’s alone. April, who was Liam’s best friend’s girlfriend, was somewhat close with Tara because they were the same age and went to school together. But that was it. All of Tara’s “friends” were friends through Liam. She had no close relationships.
Once Liam and Tara started seeing each other more regularly, I tried to connect with her, meeting for lunch, getting mani-pedis. We would talk about Liam’s progress in school, Tara’s plans to go back to school, the baby, and always eventually her struggles with her parents, how judgmental and demanding and demeaning and constantly wine drunk her mom was, how overbearing and misogynistic and mostly absent her father was, how her parents fought all the time and how oppressive her home life was. Tara played a recording she made of her and her mom driving somewhere and her mom screaming vile things at Tara and nearly running them off the road in her rage. Liam showed me text messages Tara’s father sent him calling his daughter names and belittling her, warning Liam to be careful, get her in check, be the man, that Tara has always been a liar and manipulator and will do whatever she had to to get what she wants.
As I touched on briefly last week, Tara began secretly recording the arguments between herself and Liam during the summer of 2016 when she was in her second trimester. Those recordings were produced a year later during the custody battle as an attempt to prove DV. It’s clear to anyone listening that Tara hit play once she got Liam good and riled up. And then like a child wanting the top to keep spinning, she would say a few words, just enough to keep him going, and follow him around the house, staying close enough to keep the recording intelligible until he wound himself down.
When my grandson was six days old, Liam came home from work in a bad mood. Tara chose that moment to tell him she didn’t love him anymore and she was taking the baby and leaving. Then, and only then, she hit “record” on the phone in her pocket. Liam raises his voice when he’s upset. He yells. He rants. He’s passionate. In the recordings you can hear his frustration with Tara. He asks her over and over what it’ll take to make her happy, that that’s all he wants.
The recording that night is only a couple minutes long, just enough to hear Liam opening drawers, dumping clothes on the floor and telling Tara to pack her bags and go but he wasn’t going to let her take his son. When he walked away from her, that’s when she stopped recording and dialed 9-1-1, hanging up after the operator answered. 911 operators are required to call back hangups to determine if there’s a true emergency. And if you don’t answer when they call, they dispatch police officers. Tara had kept her phone on silent in her pocket.
When the officers showed up, Liam answered the door and let them in. Tara was holding the baby and had worked up a few tears. She told them Liam had threatened to kill her and she was scared. She told them he had taken her phone and prevented her calling 9-1-1. These are facts. They’re in the police report. Liam let them in, was calm, polite even, answered all their questions. But Tara’s histrionics convinced them to arrest my son with absolutely zero physical evidence.
Tara testified in court that she made the recordings so she could listen to them later to see if she was in the wrong. She claimed Liam’s house was an unsafe environment for a child even though she herself had lived there for months, had set up house, in effect, unpacking boxes and arranging furniture while Liam went to school and work every day. She testified that Liam was an unfit father because he smoked, drank, had tattoos and played in a punk band.
Tara argued that visitation should be limited to daytime only and a third-party supervisor for at least three months because Liam hadn’t been around his own son enough and didn’t know how to raise a child. Now, whose fault is that, I wonder? In fact, nobody knows how to raise a child until they, in fact, raise a child. Not to mention the fact that Liam babysat his little brother many times when he was in high school.
Tara told lie after lie after lie during her three hours of testimony. She testified Liam used drugs regularly, refuted by multiple clean drug tests, including one during the trial over the lunch recess. She stated in multiple documents and on the stand that he has a history of violence and anger issues stemming from the military and a strained relationship with his father with no actual evidence to back up any of it. She even conjured up a few crocodile tears as she talked about how she used to be on a bad path but turned her life around and was baptized and just wants a wholesome environment for her son. The judge couldn’t maintain her impartiality by the end of the day, rolling her eyes several times at Tara’s testimony.
Liam was awarded everything he asked for in the custody case, and then some. He’s won every court battle they’ve engaged in. And there have been many over the past eight years. Still, the bullshit continues.