The Dark Side of the Mind: True Stories from My Life as a Forensic Psychologist

by Kerry Daynes

dynamic between two people in an abusive relationship is incredibly intense, a spinning wheel of violence and shock, deep remorse, emotionally powerful reconciliations, hope and elation. And then the terror. After a period of calm the victim knows something is coming, they just don’t know when, and they attempt to see it off by changing their behaviour – going ‘into’ themselves, disappearing, doing whatever it takes to keep the peace. But they never can. And inevitably there is more violence, and the cycle begins again. For both parties in this potent loop, each repetition of the cycle propels them to the next. The victim adapts quickly, as the threat of violence creates a strong incentive to learn. She begins to believe that her circumstances are a result of her personal failure, and views herself as worthless, weak. When she is a good girl, it will stop. Until then, she doesn’t deserve anyone else’s love. The abuser also becomes attached to the power they hold, and the skilful use of violence and manipulation to achieve the deference that they expect from their partner. This wretched dynamic is like a scar tissue that meshes them together. So leaving, while it may appear like an obvious course of action to many, often feels impossible for the victim.

After I’d left HMP Wakefield I’d continued to see the prison officer. But it had quite quickly turned sour. His behaviour became increasingly domineering and frightening, when I didn’t dress as he wanted, fill the kettle from the right tap, put a smile on my face like he wanted or go along enthusiastically with sex as and when he wanted. It was what we now refer to as coercive control, I can spot it at 30 paces these days. But hindsight is a wonderful thing, and back then we didn’t have a word for it. The onset was so insidious that I may not have identified it, even if we had. It became intolerable when I started my new job as a trainee forensic psychologist in a hospital secure unit. This kind of opportunity didn’t come up very often in those days and I was proud of myself for landing it; I’d made the transition from student volunteer to fully paid, fledgling psychologist. Our relationship had started to feel like the fly in the ointment of my life. I desperately wanted out, but also knew that the moment when

an abusive relationship ends is when the risk of harm increases. I eventually managed to leave, but he didn’t want to make it easy for me to go. He began to turn up at my work. Colleagues would tell me he was lingering in the car park or had marched into the reception area demanding to know if I had left the building for the day. He’d bang on the front door or his face would appear at the window of my home at the same time as the phone would start ringing off its hook. I closed the curtains, and sat immobilized until he eventually went away. On a typically dismal 31 October – Halloween – I’d arrived home from work in the evening and run in to the house just as it was starting to rain. I saw trick or treaters down the road and in a mean-spirited moment thought to myself that they’d be getting soaked in a minute. I rushed in through the door, threw my coat down in the hall and went straight into the kitchen to see if my housemate was home – she wasn’t. When the doorbell rang, I practically skipped to the door, expecting to see the painted faces and plastic masks of children. It wasn’t them. * A few days later it was my housemate who made me call the police, with the ultimatum that if I didn’t, she would. It is bloody difficult to make that phone call. I was filled with foreboding about setting in motion the chain of events I knew would follow. Because when a victim of domestic abuse makes that decision, and calls the police, they are starting a story with only two possible e...

upended and dispersed. All I really wanted was for him – everything – to go away. Reporting a crime felt like inviting a whole new wave of problems into my life. Still, I called them, and many months later found myself in court. Dr Albert von Schrenck-Notzing was the first psychologist known to have testified in court when he gave evidence about the credibility of witness testimony in a Munich murder trial in 1896. I’d been imagining my first moment in court since what seemed like 1896. In my vision I was the erudite expert, holding the court in thrall as I educated judge and jury with my accomplished testimony, Queen’s Counsel sighing ‘no further questions Your Honour’, conceding defeat in the face of my professionalism under cross-examination. What I hadn’t ever aspired to was giving evidence as the victim, cheeks burning, struggling to phrase my justifications for not complaining sooner. In the court proceedings that eventually followed, I testified that I felt like a performing seal, constantly trying to keep the mood upbeat and see off a potential rage that could be triggered by something minuscule and, once ignited, could blaze for days. So I understood the state of perpet...

had had an on-and-off relationship with, had been intimate with, after all. Wasn’t I making a big fuss about nothing? Surely this was a lovers’ tiff? The over-reaction of an attention-seeking, hysterical young woman. I was a timewaster, a liar – at least that was what I was being told. He was convicted of harassment two weeks later, and sentenced to 18 weeks in prison, of which he could expect to serve nine. In actual fact, he only spent a weekend in prison; after the trial his solicitor sprang into ac...

It is very difficult to describe shame. I’d been gradually getting a measure of how deep it cuts via my clients – both the victims and the ones who had done terrible things to others. But perhaps it is something you have to feel in order to fully appreciate it. I went to the toilets and stood looking at myself in the mirror, sick at my own image.

choose a response. In the 1960s, US lie detection expert Dr Paul Ekman first conducted analyses on physical reactions like those Hogan could not control in that moment. Behavioural analysts at the UK Emotional Intelligence Academy have since identified the 3-2-7 rule: if a suspect has a cluster of three reactions (for example, nodding, flushing and voice dropping in pitch), across two or more of the six channels that communicate emotional information (interactional style, voice, verbal content, facial expression, body movements and physiological changes) within seven seconds of the question, it is a reliable indication of deception. We didn’t know about that then,

words that I was now staring at in disbelief. Online abuse is now a depressingly everyday part of life for women, especially those in the public eye. A 2017 study by Amnesty International clarified what any woman with a Twitter handle already knows. Online abuse of women is widespread, with one in five women suffering some kind of harassment, much of it sexually or physically threatening. The ‘online’ bit is something of a red herring, because the effects of the abuse are experienced offline, with over half of those surveyed reporting increased anxiety, panic attacks and stress as a result of the ‘virtual’ abuse, as well as other psychological consequences like loss of self-esteem and a sense of powerlessness. Amnesty’s ‘troll patrol’ counted over a million abusive tweets alone sent to the women in the study over the course of 2017 — that’s one every 30 seconds. The outlook gets even worse if you are a black or ethnic minority woman, and/or LGBTQ. This was still the comparatively early days of the internet and there wasn’t the same awareness around the perils of simply being a woman online. The idea that someone you’d never seen or met before could intimidate you from the anonymous comfort of their living room hadn’t yet been declared an occupational hazard of being female. I watched with a strange vibration inside my chest as each

with inadequate laws and legislation to guide them, they had failed to see the bigger picture. It was a horrible position to be in – and my insight as a forensic psychologist was proving more of a hindrance than a help. Stalking has been nicknamed ‘assault in slow motion’ because the drip-drip of stalking behaviours tends to escalate over time if left unchecked, and too frequently culminates in violence. I was only too aware that a high proportion of murders of women (94 per cent according to research conducted since then by the University of Gloucestershire) are preceded by stalking (surveillance activity, including covert watching, was recorded 63 per cent of the time by the same study). In short, not all stalkers are killers, but most killers of women start out as stalkers. But I also knew that the risk is highest where a prior intimate relationship has existed between the stalker and the victim. And – even taking into account his fevered imagination – that clearly did not apply here. I tried to reassure myself with the rational, factual evidence that it was highly unlikely that a physical attack would happen to me. I knew that stalking by a stranger was likely to escalate into violence in roughly one in ten cases, rather than the 50 per cent of cases involving former partners. And I was a professional who had made a career out of working with, and keeping my cool around,

behaviour was an ugly caricature in every sense. It is not that often that a case file includes a fully illustrated guide to the fantasy life and offence rehearsals of a predatory stalker. The Stalking Risk Profile, developed over the course of 20 years by leading psychologists and psychiatrists in the field, assigns stalking offenders to five different motivational types. Liam’s behaviour was definitely true to type for the rarest of the bunch: a predatory stalker. These are men who follow and collect information about their victim, typically a female and a stranger to them, as an elaborate precursor to a violent or sexual assault. For this stalker type, the sense of excitement and anticipation that comes from covertly watching an unsuspecting victim is as gratifying as the ultimate attack. Far more typical than predatory or other types is the rejected stalker, someone who is either attempting to reconcile with a former intimate partner, or seeking revenge for the rejection they have suffered when the relationship ended or they were rebuffed. Other types include the incompetent suitor who targets strangers or acquaintances, and is driven by a combination of lust and loneliness, going entirely the wrong way about trying to lure their victim into a brief encounter such as a date or a short-term sexual liaison. The intimacy- seeking stalker is fuelled by delusional beliefs that they are already in an intense relationship with the victim. And the resentful stalker blazes with...