Pants on Fire: Humans in Progress Series

By Teresa Crowe

"Liars. They get under our skin. They betray our trust. They make us question whether we have misunderstood a situation, misinterpreted the meanings and actions of a person, or just plain missed the point."

Learn who around you can be a liar, as well as how to spot or catch one. We also dive into extreme liars and why they do it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Teresa Crowe
• Release date: Aug 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201291983

Teresa Crowe

Teresa Crowe has a Ph.D. in social work and is a licensed clinical social worker in Maryland and the District of Columbia. She specializes in behavioral health with deaf and hard-of-hearing adults. Since 2000, she has been a professor in the master of social work program at Gallaudet University. Dr. Crowe is fluent in American Sign Language and has been involved with the deaf community since 1987 when she learned ASL and later began working at the Maryland School for the Deaf. She has a master of fine arts degree in creative nonfiction from Goucher College. She lives with her husband and two dogs in Edgewater, Maryland, two blocks from Chesapeake Bay.

Book preview

Foreword

The Humans In Progress Series, or HIPS, is a series of nonfiction mini-books, small books you can read in one sitting. Academics and intellectuals may be used to reading lengthy, dense textbooks, but if this is you, then this is not the book for you. My interest is the inspiration for the books in the HIPS series. After writing about a deaf serial killer in a true crime book, Death Space, I had many more questions than those that first impelled me to write the book. In Death Space, I wanted to know who killed the two deaf college freshmen, how the killer got caught, and where the killer was now. After years of chasing down the answers to those questions, I am left with more. My curious mind won’t leave me alone. 

Before I reveal the topics of the mini-books, let me explain what brought me to this point in my journey. In the fall semester of 2000, my career as a social work professor at Gallaudet University began. I graduated from the Master of Social Work program in 1992, pursued my doctorate, and then returned to teach students who wanted to become social workers. However, they weren’t ordinary students, and I wasn’t teaching them to be ordinary social workers. These students, like me before, would take all of their classes in American Sign Language. They would take classes in human behavior, social policy, social work practice, research, and field practice. The MSW students would learn skills in assessment, intervention, and evaluation. Like all trained social workers, they would learn to work with individuals struggling with many challenges. The students would learn how to lead groups and direct organizations. They would learn how to advocate for communities and develop policies for people with disabilities, including deaf people. These social workers, like me, would enter the labor force to work in many areas of the deaf community, helping deaf individuals, families, communities, and organizations overcome myriad challenges.

After graduating from Gallaudet University in 1992, I worked in the mental health field, specializing in deaf and hard-of-hearing populations. Before graduate school, I was fortunate to know I wanted to work with individuals struggling with mental health difficulties. I first worked in an inpatient psychiatric unit, mostly with people who could hear. Then I went to work at a community mental health agency which only served deaf people. Later, I set up a private psychotherapy practice working only with deaf adults and teenagers. After obtaining my doctorate, I went to work at Gallaudet University but kept practicing at a community mental health clinic with deaf adults with chronic mental illness. 

On a warm Tuesday in late August 2000, I officially returned to my alma mater to teach aspiring students all I knew about social work and mental health. However, I arrived on campus a few weeks into the fall semester to find mayhem. Students, faculty, and staff gathered outside one of the dormitory halls. Flurried hands and faces told me something was amiss. Reporters and camera crews threaded their way through the crowd, frustrated they had not brought ASL interpreters and thus couldn’t get the scoops they wanted. News traveled fast through the deaf grapevine. It took me only five minutes to learn someone had murdered a deaf freshman, Eric Plunkett. 

Reporters and police flooded the campus through the fall semester, but to no avail. The murder remained unsolved. The campus community felt tense, worried, and paranoid. Still, they thought, surely, the police would apprehend the killer before the start of the spring semester in January. In mid-January, when everyone returned, students, faculty, and staff felt