I've just come across this forum, and this thread is the first I read. I was hooked, because it rang so true to my own experiences. Ace, I do hope things have got better since your last post, and with any luck the psychopath is out of your life. I thought I had to relate my own story, as it also related to our daughter.
My wife (who I'll call Maria) and I have a daughter (I'll call her Greta). Greta already had a history of abusive relationships. She is easily influenced, and invariably ends up adapting her whole lifestyle to that of her partner of the moment. She had a daughter from one failed relationship, who I'll call June. Maria and I doted on June from the moment she was born and provided enormous emotional and childcare support in her early years, giving her much of the stability she would otherwise have lacked from not having a father. Greta and June came to live very close by to us, and we paid the deposit on Greta's flat.
Around 7 years ago, when June was 6, Greta started going out with a psychopath, who I'll call Fred. Of course when I first met Fred, I didn't realise he was a psychopath. In fact I was quite impressed with him, and thought he was a cut above the usual types that Greta usually chose. He said he was an accountant working in mergers and acquisitions, and he talked a really good story.
Over the next few weeks, he gradually started taking over making the arrangements for when June would visit us. After a while that started getting on our nerves, and we told Greta. By this time they'd already announced their engagement. Fred came round one day unannounced and told us in no uncertain terms that we'd just have to get used to him being June's father, and we'd have to deal with him as an equal parent to Greta.
Fred got more and more into our face, we heard less and less from Greta, and we got more and more frustrated. He started being verbally abusive to us, started talking about Greta's flat as "his house", and was plainly in totalitarian control over Greta and June.
After they got married, things got worse and worse. It reached the point where every time the phone rang, we were afraid it would be him, and we got the shakes. It was clear he was doing this on purpose to upset us. Half the time we did speak to him, he would scream down the phone abusively at us.
We finally wrote him a note saying to stop calling, asking him to apologise for his rudeness. He wrote back a rambling hate mail letter, countersigned by Greta, saying he wouldn't apologise, but we would have to apologise to him sincerely, and until we did we couldn't see any more of June.
This was the start of 2 years of hell. After we couldn't stand any more not seeing our grandchild, whom we loved to bits, we would try to make peace with him. Fred loved it when we did this, as he would lay down lots of conditions that we'd have to comply with. As soon as he deemed we'd breached a condition, visitations would cease. The first gap when we couldn't see June lasted a couple of months, and each time it got longer. This on-off situation went on for about a year, after which we decided we would go crazy if we kept on playing is manipulative games. There was then a gap of about 10 months.
By this time I'd worked out that he was a psychopath. Greta was a mature adult, but June was an innocent child. We simply didn't know what to do to rescue her from him. We thought about going to social services, but were afraid that it would make things worse, and we might lose June for ever. We endured month after month of no contact with either Greta or June, with Fred continuing to phone us or call round on various pretexts. He told us that they had decided "as a family" that Fred would from now on be their only spokesman on all matters.
All this may sound surreal, and it was, but he was a master manipulator. The worst thing was that our daughter was unwilling or unable to stand up to him, and allow us to have a normal relationship with June without Fred's bullying.
By the way, a background check had turned up a previous conviction for theft in the US and an arrest for possession of cocaine.
Fred started his own accountancy 'business', from what I can tell with Greta's money. I knew there was something fishy about it, but didn't realise how fishy. For one thing he was calling himself a "chartered accountant" when he wasn't. He was operating tax avoidance schemes for people, including for immigrants. One day we learned that the 3 of them were moving to Portugal. Before they left we learned that Fred was having arguments over money with various people, with the police starting to get involved. We didn't know it at the time, but Fred was fleecing his clients, depositing their hard earned money in trust accounts and embezzling it.
We got to see June for a few days, she came over to stay with us for the last time. She was 9 years old, and our relationship was as warm and loving as ever. Then Greta came to pick her up and they disappeared out of our lives.
At the time they were leaving the country, Greta was selling her flat. Being unwilling to see Fred get his hands on Greta's assets, Maria put a caution on the flat claiming back the deposit. As it turned out, they were unable to sell the flat with the caution until the deposit was repaid, which it was. Fred's retaliation was to mail us a photo booth picture of him with June, followed by a demand for repaying the "stolen" money, threatening criminal charges. He got Greta and June to sign this!
About 8 months after they had left, the police came round to our house asking if we knew Fred's whereabouts. We understood he was wanted for questioning on suspicion of fraud.
After they had been gone about 2 years, we learned (via a friend of Greta's) that Fred had been arrested in transit through a UK airport. We thought he would finally face justice, and he'd be out of all our lives. No such luck. We learned he was back in Portugal and they were all moving to South Africa (where he was born). We think he may have skipped bail.
Fast forward to last March (2008)... We hadn't had direct contact with Greta or June for 3 1/2 years. Out of the blue we were phoned up by a South African childrens home charity. Both Fred and Greta were in prison in South Africa on fraud charges, bail had been denied, and the childrens home was looking after June. After a few weeks of to-ing and fro-ing, June was sent to come and live with us in England. The social workers had quickly came to the conclusion that this was a no-brainer, and Greta had reluctantly given them her consent. She was presented with only one other option - June could be put into care of the South African state. Greta would have to then prove she was a fit mother to reclaim her child!
June is now living with us and our relationship is once again very close. She left our lives as a 9 year old and returned the day before her 13th birthday. We have managed to slowly undo most of the brainwashing she endured over the years. She always was very special, and she's becoming a confident and intelligent young lady. Greta and Fred are on trial, and it's expected to drag on for some months more. We don't know whether Greta will be convicted, her lawyers appear confident that thecase against her is very weak, but Fred is in serious trouble for sure. He's also facing extradition after this case to the UK on even more serious charges. Fred has defrauded individuals and institutions out of millions of pounds. He is expected to serve several years in jail.
It's clear that Fred manipulated Greta to turn a blind eye to everything except what she wanted to see. He created a house of cards that appeared to Greta to be a royal palace: they lived the high life travelling to exotic places, driving flash cars, and living in grand mansions. Then one day a warrant for Fred's arrest was delivered to their beachfront home in South Africa. Stupidly, Greta decided that she and June would join Fred and they all went on the run and into hiding. June was even pulled out of school - I still don't know what Greta can have been thinking. I know she loves June, but she had entered into a Faustian pact with Fred. She has even told me over the phone that she had been thinking of leaving Fred. She is now paying a heavy price for her misplaced loyalty. We are sorry for her situation, but strangely it may have been the only wake-up call that could have worked.
We are able to exchange letters and phone calls from time to time with Greta. We are not 100% sure, but she seems to have seen the light. She plans to come back to England as soon as possible, and says she loves and misses us. We have told her our doors are always open. She will be virtually penniless. We are using the reclaimed deposit from her flat to pay for June's education. We're sure Greta will bounce back. She may come across in my story as being a weakling, but that's not really so. She's easily influenced, it's true, but she's resilient and an optimist by nature. I only hope she doesn't get mixed up with another psychopath. She needs a lot of healing - unfortunately she will always bear some scars, we're sure.
Fred has also tried to make phone contact with June. We have consistently hung up on him, and June (after our careful and patient explanations) is in full agreement. She understands that he is a psychopath. She doesn't miss him and has written to her mum to say so. We have written to his lawyers informing him that we will not permit him to have any contact with June, and we have copied the letter to social services in both England and South Africa. No one we've spoken to has told us we've done the wrong thing - even Greta.
We don't know what the future will bring, but we are increasingly confident that things will turn out okay. If you'd asked me 6 months ago, I would have been very pessimistic. We thought we'd lost them forever. We hope Greta will recover from this trauma once she's released from prison, whenever that is. At least June is doing fine.
I've condensed my story quite a lot - I could probably write a book. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction! The story is not yet finished, but we are cautiously optimistic that there will be a happy ending. It's been 7 years and counting...
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