Carnal Abuse By Deceit: Second Edition

By J.M. Short

An inspiring and deeply moving tale of romance that everyone, young and old, can learn from. This story is the remarkable and unvarnished truth that can help you recognize and deal with emotional scammers. It solves the mystery of why we remain with toxic partners.

People often believe that only gullible, naive women get caught in scams, but "Carnal Abuse by Deceit" will change your mind. It's raising awareness and leading the way for new laws on sexual assault and catfish (catphish) profiling. If you're aching over a painful romance, this story will give you the emotional armor, resolve and know-how to heal yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9780615926322

Book preview

Recovery

Message I

Carnal Crime

Forward I

In 1955, the American Law Institute undertook standardizing and updating penal law throughout the various states of the US. Its efforts culminated in introducing Model Penal Code, (MPC) in 1962. The benchmark it used for criminal acts was based on reasonable behavior. MPC faults imposing the sex act on an unconscious or otherwise incapacitated female and when intimacy is achieved by certain fundamental types of deception. It states that force, threat, fraud and coercion vitiate consent, and that consent that is achieved through trickery is not voluntary. Yet, when it comes to sexual assault by fraud or deception in many states, our laws are stranger than fiction, sexist, and hearken back to the dark ages.

Although the use of fraud is a criminal offense in just about every other type of interpersonal exchange, defrauding a victim of their sexual autonomy is only punishable in a handful of states. New York State, the state where I live, is not one of them.

All acts of fraud, regardless of the prize sought, deprives the victim of knowing consent. Just as personal property is improperly taken in other acts of fraud, sexual autonomy is wrongfully breached in acts of sexual assault by fraud, also known as rape by fraud. Although the victim may be unaware of the crime for an extended length of time, upon discovery, they’ll feel defiled and violated similarly to victims who suffer other forms of non-violent sexual assault.

Gone are the dark ages when laws only recognized violence as a means to sexually assault a victim. A person who is unconscious, intoxicated or drugged cannot consent. And a person whose reality has been intentionally confused by the offender is not consenting either. In each case, the victim may in fact assent to the act, but their agreement lacks the element of informed knowledge that qualifies as consent.

The length of time between the initial occurrence of the crime and the eventual revelation of the truth can serve to embroil the victim further into a deeper and more profound web of heartache. Repeated acts of defilement increase the impact on the victim’s psyche, create Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and raise the need for treatment in order to recover.

What follows is a true tale of sexual assault by fraud and how it affected my life and the life of my family. I have written my story in order to convey how harmful and criminal this behavior actually is. When the actions of an offender are willful and so impactful that they can detrimentally alter the life of the victim, they should be addressed in criminal code.

Chapter 1

Programming

I met my ex-husband, Brian Schecter, as many couples met during the pre-match.com era. My hands stung from the chill of a February evening in 1972. I’d misplaced my gloves so I pulled my coat tightly around me and buried my hands deep inside my pockets as I rushed down the windy avenue. I was meeting my friend, Susie Simon, for a drink after work at the Ground Floor Cafe, a crowded bar at the CBS Building in mid-town Manhattan. I was twenty-four.

Susie and I had gone through high-school together and been roommates when we first moved to New York. Although we no longer lived together, we’d remained close friends. The bar was only one block from Susie’s office, and a quick subway ride from mine.

We’d both been displaced Yankees growing up in a Southern town when Susie and I met. It was one of many commonalities that drew us together. Her family was from New York. Her mother had remarried with a man from Columbia, South Carolina, and her family had relocated there.

I’d been born in Newton, Massachusetts, a residential suburb just outside of Boston with rolling hills and well-tended lawns. My family had moved to Columbia because my father had changed jobs. He was a regional salesman for a ladies shoe manufacturer and travelled a great deal. Susie and I both attended AC Flora High School there. We were six months apart in age and in the same graduating class.

My father’s father had been a shoe wholesaler from long before manufacturers hired their own sales staffs. After World War II, the industry changed and Papa’s business suffered. Dad gave up his job so that my grandfather could take over his already established territory. Another position had opened in his firm. My father moved us to Louisville, Kentucky and then on to Columbia four years later, for an even better opportunity with a different manufacturer. Each time he changed jobs, we moved to be centrally located in his new territories.

While my family was not rigid in the practices of our Jewish heritage, we were educated in its values. Papa Ben, had been President of the synagogue we attended back when my father was young. Papa Nathan, my mother’s father, had come from a long line of Rabbis, named Paltrovich, in Leeds, England. His side of the family Anglicized the name to Pelton. He was training to be a Cantor when his father died at a young age. As soon as he was old enough, Papa left his studies behind and struck out for the United States in order to become a business man. He opened a sweater factory and knitting mill.

When I was young, my grandmother would take leftover yarn from his factory and crochet colorful afghans that I’d nestled under to watch TV. Papa’s factory made sweaters for both the Army and the Navy in World War I. I grew up with one of each, as well as sweaters with suede fronts that my mother had worn when she was growing up. I treasure them to this day.

Holiday celebrations are among my fondest memories of my family. While we lived near Boston, we’d gather for every holiday with either my father’s side of the family or my mother’s side. My father was one of three children. My mother had one sister. We were surrounded by extended family with several cousins near my age.

Each new holiday brought with it a decision over our wardrobe. When I was lucky, it heralded a trip to a department store where I’d try on new festive outfits for the occasion. When I wasn’t so lucky, I was expected to wear a hand-me-down I’d acquired from my sister, Nadine, who was two years older, or from my cousins. Since I was small for my age, and thin, they’d all worn their clothes when they were much younger than I. My mother struggled to convince me that the outfit was age appropriate by pointing out that it came from Bonwit’s or Bergdorf’s, but the prestige of the label was lost on me.

Whatever decision was made over what I’d wear, when the holiday finally arrived, our family would dress up in our selected clothing. Nadine and I knew we were expected to be on our best behavior. She hardly ever disobeyed and was a remarkable student. I was more artistic, independent, and distracted by social interests.

When we were little girls, my father would spare us from the Rabbi’s sermons on the high holidays. He’d take us across the street to visit the zoo while the Rabbi spoke. On one occasion, when I was around six years old, my mother had tied a beautiful, starched, red ribbon bow under my chin to fasten my hat. I’d complained that it itches, and she’d patiently enlightened me, women have to suffer to be beautiful. While we were outdoors, my father granted me a reprieve as we strolled around in the sunshine. He lacked my mother’s artistic flourish and I recall the humorous glance she shot my father as I slid past her into my seat with my hat askew. I leaned at his side as he pointed out the Hebrew letters of the prayer book so I could follow along, feeling comfort and love.

My parents enjoyed an upper middle class lifestyle. My mother’s tastes were elegant and subdued, not ostentatious. In fact, I remember being severely admonished when I bragged to my friend about our new car. It was a white Cadillac with big fins and I’d been awed by the pushbutton windows. I was taught that humility was a preferable attitude and to feel for others, a trait I later came to know as empathy.

I wasn’t aware that having empathy was the basis of conscience and that people without it were capable of horrid misdeeds toward others. It was not common knowledge that cognitive empathy produces awareness of another person’s condition, and affective or emotional empathy enables us to put ourselves in the shoes of another person and relate to their emotions.

I was brought up to believe that we all determined whether we’d be kind or cruel. I was schooled on the golden rule. My mother would often tell me, Don’t do unto others what you wouldn’t want done to you, and I thought it a universal truth. That a significant portion of the population of the world is genetically predisposed, or socially misshapen, to exploit others was simply not something I knew about.

Having a bit too much empathy had been my undoing as a small child and it played out in several ways. A youngster in my first grade class had suffered rheumatic fever as a baby. The vestiges of her ailment were evident to all who encountered her. Her speech was slurred and she drooled. Her nose continuously ran and she infrequently noticed. Her clothes were constantly askew and rumpled. The children in the classroom made fun of Annie, and our inexperienced teacher was unable to stem their taunting.

For around three weeks I continually became physically ill in school. I’d go to the teacher and ask permission to go to the girls’ room because I felt sick. The corridor to the bathroom seemed enormous to me as a little girl. Sometimes I could hold back the awful churning sensation brewing in my stomach long enough to make it all the way down the hall, and sometimes I couldn’t. My embarrassment was intense as the janitor hurried to clean up after me with a bucket and mop. The school nurse would call my mother who rushed over to pick me up. As soon as I was out in the fresh air, I felt fine.

After a while, the teacher determined that I was just trying to get out of her classroom and refused to let me go. She had called all the children together into a circle in order to read a story to us. Annie had stumbled and two little girls laughed and moved away from her in an obvious attempt to shun her. As I stood beside the teacher pleading to leave the room, I couldn’t hold the eruption back any longer and vomited all over the sleeve of her dress.

The school arranged for a specialist to have a few sessions with me, which resulted in awareness of the problem. They provided training to the new teacher to remedy the interaction of the students and I became more cognizant of how the taunting of Annie made me feel sick inside.

My sense of pathos for others never changed as I grew up. I was the only adult on a crowded plane to object when a passenger whipped off his belt and struck his three year old child across the face with it. Even the steward on board told me to mind my own business. To me, injury toward someone in my presence is my business. Being silent in the face of brutality or injustice was never something I could do.

That caring extended to animals. I was forever bringing home injured birds and small critters. To this day, my policy has been that if a bug doesn’t bother me, I don’t bother it. I try to use the most humane way possible to deal with insects when I need to dispose of them.

I’d been bitten by my Aunt’s Dachshund as a baby. Although I had no memory of the incident, I had a deathly fear of dogs. My sister told me that if I saw a dog, I should simply stay still and he’d walk away.

I was building a snowman in our front yard on a chilly day when I was about seven years old. Around dusk, a small beagle who was equally fearful of people happened by. It seemed that someone had taught him my sister’s suggestion in reverse. He stood stalk still, staring at me without movement, except for an increasing tremble from the cold. Just like the little dog, I was freezing, but glued to my spot with fear. When my sister opened the front door that stood behind me and only a few feet away, the dog scampered out of the yard.

The incident motivated my parents to purchase a puppy. He was an all-black mutt with pointed ears that stood up straight. His appearance prompted his name, Perky. I recall being overwhelmed as my father disciplined the dog. He’d push Perky’s snout into the mess he’d made and smack him with a rolled up newspaper. Perky chased after the newspaper boy on his bicycle. If a newspaper came into his grasp, he would rip it to shreds, provoking my father even further. It was a vicious cycle. Eventually, Perky ran away. As a young child, I envisioned that he found a caring home where no one beat him when he made a mistake.

At about eight years old, I recall feeling horrified to find a perch I’d caught, while ice fishing in the Charles River Basin, sizzling in the pan for breakfast the next morning. I’d been invited to tag along with a friend who had two older brothers. The ice was so thick that we built a bonfire directly on it. It helped us stay warm and we used it to roast hotdogs, marshmallows, and keep our hot chocolate heated all afternoon. It was arduous to pick through the frozen ice and set our traps. When we were through, we skated away the afternoon playing ice hockey as we watched for the flags on the fishing lines to spring.

We kept all the fish alive and