A few weeks ago, I was tidying my desk drawer and came across a printout of Thomas Churchwell's Diagnostic Assessment, dated July 16, 2008, and written by his psychiatrist, Dr. Alkesh Patel, ACT Team Psychiatrist for Services For The Underserved. Posted by Churchwell himself on his own blog, it was a stunner. I had forgotten much of the content, including this quote:
"This 44 y/o Caucasian male has a long history of psychosis as well as a history of chemical dependency.... The patient has a history of multiple hospitalizations."
That paragraph clarifies his victimization of me (and others) for three years.
I am a photographer with a background in psychology, so it might be safe to say that Churchwell's latest attack on me, in which he wrote again that I "stole pictures off the Internet," and other crazy lies, suggests another lock-up for him. Cross your fingers.A couple of weeks after I'd drafted this page, but long before I had finished it, I received the following joke in an email from someone who knows the blog situation well: "What do Tarquin Churchwell and a sperm have in common? Both have about a one in 3 million chance of becoming a human being."
Let's begin. Psychosis is defined by the American Psychiatric Association as the extreme condition of losing touch with reality and good judgment. Symptoms include paranoia, bizarre sexual activity or thoughts, delusional thinking and a compulsion to lie. Examples of Churchwell's psychosis can be found on this site. I know nothing about the chemical dependency referenced above by his psychiatrist.
Although Churchwell has been known to post harmless filler on his blogs, he always returns to the topics that have consumed him for years. On a typical day, he posts lewd pictures of teenagers and professes Elmer Gantry style outrage over lewdness; he claims to be a cyber victim, while victimizing anyone who crosses him; he brags that he once was a pickpocket, and accuses other people of stealing, then boasts about his anti-social experiences, and says Yahoo, MySpace and Google are in cahoots with him, and so on. In his bizarre and contradictory posts, we see that what he says and does are two very different things. Put another way, Thomas Churchwell may be the most blatant liar who ever drew breath.
The most telling thing he does is contradict himself. When you wonder about a contradiction, he will deny ever writing it, though it may literally have been only a day since he wrote it—how could you think he'd ever say that? You're a wacko! He will contradict FACTS. He will lie to you about conversations you had with him. Typically, he writes poison post titles about me that begin with this lie: "SCARLETT CONFESSES" or this: "THE CHURCHWELLS BEAT SCARLETT!" and what follows are more lies. When you catch him in a lie, he will say that you are the one who's lying, making stuff up, and you are a stalker, pornographer, thief and wacko.Forensic psychologist Dr. Robert Hare, author of Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of Psychopaths Among Us, wrote this about habitual liars, and it fits Churchwell to a T:
"When caught in a lie and challenged, he makes up new lies."
Psychopaths have always existed. Most come from low socio-economic backgrounds, and roughly 90% of all psycopaths are male. They have been studied using various techniques (perhaps the same techniques Churchwell's psychiatrist used to diagnose him), and through the years their problems have been blamed on various causes. But one thing never varies: anti-social types share four common characteristics. They are egocentric, they have no empathy, they are incapable of telling the truth, and they are very manipulative.
Far from being killers, on the whole, psychopaths tend to harm people with malicious lies. They are not always mass murderers, serial killers or poster boys for Norman Bates. Most are just hostile creeps who enjoy making life difficult for others. Competitive to an extreme, they regularly lie and turn ordinary interactions into struggles to the death. Which leads us to what they do that is truly shocking: an ability to focus their undivided attention on other people, until they ruin them. Some clinicians have compared this to the concentration with which a predator stalks his prey. A couple of years ago, Churchwell posted snapshots on a MSN amateur photography site, and when the moderator, a long time photographer, offered him a bit of helpful criticism, Churchwell berated the poor man on his blogs for weeks, calling him a "phony, crappy nobody," among other slurs. Sound familiar? For three years he has been trying to drive me off the Internet with lies that are identical to what he said about the moderator.As a predictable corollary, anti-social people feel most comfortable with those who they perceive as being one step down from them. They shift their obsessive natures away from defeating people who are trying to get ahead and toward those who they perceive as already having made it. Churchwell is the picture of benevolence when it comes to young girls who will never be professional models, yet when he encounters people who earn their livings as writers, magicians and photographers, he attacks them like a rabid dog. Those people, in his opinion, "need to be taken down a notch." Although his victory dance is often short lived, before he becomes bored again, smearing professional people and beating us to a bloody pulp on the Internet is his definite objective.
In her book Invisible Eden, Maria Flook got this quote from him, and it may be the only completely honest thing that he has ever said: "I love messing up people's heads."
Needless to say, a psychopath's relationships are never normal. Occasionally, he teams up with another disordered individual, if it suits his purposes, but having a psychopath for a partner is like riding in a car with no brakes. It's little wonder these types are drawn to the Internet. They used to sit outside their targets' home—hiding in cars or bushes—waiting to follow them. They used to leave threatening notes on their windshields before slashing their tires. But now they have moved into the 21st century, using modern technology to terrorize their victims. They have an uncanny ability for recognizing nice women and can sniff out potential victims seemingly through their computer screens.
I have written about Churchwell's vindictiveness and how he began to attack me the day after I ended those short-lived phone conversations with him in 2006. What you may not know is that his abrupt change from decent (though odd) treatment on the phone to outright abuse was very shocking and bewildering, and so unlike my normal experience that it was months before I realized that my being nice to him was what triggered his nasty reaction. When I told him to leave me alone, then he went bonkers—just like that, trashing me on his blog with unbelievable lies. When an anti-social type knows that you are nice, he'll suck you dry like Dracula—demand all your time, be more work than a newborn—and test you with tiresome demands and power plays. In his world, sincerity is a weakness and trying to "understand" him is asking to be hurt, so be careful; he will try to hurt you without blinking. He can't, or won't, trust, so he will constantly test you. One example of a test I gladly failed happened when Churchwell pressured me for nude pictures. If you won't submit to the tyranny, then you will be labeled a "moron," "wacko," and "If you liked me, you would do whatever I ask."
Three years have come and gone, and he has spent them ranting obsessively to rationalize his awful treatment of me, heatedly battling the wacko, as he calls me, with name calling and finger-pointing in cruel and vulgar rants. It is also in this vein that he has worked on my readers and tried to destroy my photography career, repeatedly telling the Internet that I have no talent or ethics, and that I'm a "photo thief," and so on.Here are typical lies that he posted on Google Groups. He listed every blog he could find with his name in it, and then wrote:
"These are hate site (sic) created by a cyber bully who is now writing "Parody" on the blogs in hope to keep them up but they are not parody blogs and she makes sure to get what she writes on Google listing first before writing parody so people will read her hate in Google listing. She has been doing this for 3 years now and she attacks everyone in my family incluing (sic) my mother and my little girl."
First, if he had a dollar for every time he exploited his family in his libel schemes, and this includes his grown daughter, he likely would have enough money by now to get off the government dole. Here was an actual reply to his comment from a poster who wasn't fooled:
"I think this is funny. I also think that you did, in fact, write these blogs and posted them here to get people to read them. I also believe that no one gives a crap about this. No where in there did I see an attack on you or your family."
Many can see through his lies immediately, so why doesn't he stop? An anonymous comment posted on a victim resource site:
"What surprises me is even when the psychopath stalker has been caught out, he still DOES IT! He carries on! It's an obsession! He doesn't stop thinking about himself long enough to realize his victims are smart and can call him on his behavior! The psychopath will still stand there and in plain sight proclaim that "he is the victim." It's a wonder how they can carry on after being exposed, yet we all know it's a compulsion."
I wish that woman the best of luck.
Churchwell seems to think people are too stupid to figure out that he is a pathological liar. Furthermore, he seems to twist the truth just for the fun of putting something over on someone. The lies he tells about women are outright evil, and could be the result of faulty brain wiring, a childhood trauma, or perhaps he was born that way. Whatever the cause, clinical research shows that habitual liars do not suddenly spring into existence in adulthood. The behavior appears in early life.And what about his victims? Some victims, like the photo site moderator discussed above, or that male writer who he cruelly libeled a drunk, say nothing and just hope that the bully will go away. But sometimes a victim is tempted to give a long explanation to prove the bully's allegations false. I have done that here, of course, and each time I asserted my right not to be libeled, he immediately launched another attack on me. Included was the tactic: "My fans say you are a freak" and "Everyone wants you to go away." This is standard bully-speak and is a variation on: "Nobody reads your blog" and "It must suck to be you."
Don't be fooled into believing what he writes has any validity—it doesn't. In his rants he is actually describing himself. Author Melton said this about projection:
“Keep one simple fact always in mind, regardless of whether he is borderline, narcissistic, psychopathic or sadistic: Whenever he is criticizing characteristics in you, he is making autobiographical statements about himself. Listen closely to the hateful things he says to you about you. You are listening to verbatim descriptions of his character defects. This is extremely important to remember, especially in the midst of verbal attack. These are the only moments when you will hear the truth about the man who lies concealed behind the steel wall of his personality disorder.”
So, Churchwell projects his deviant thoughts and behaviors onto others. In other words, he accuses other people of what he is guilty of himself. Additionally, something should be said about his feigned victimhood. When he starts to think that maybe this time he will be held accountable for his behavior, he turns on the water works. These 'poor me' dramas commonly take the form of self-pity, phony indignation, pretending to be misunderstood ("Me hate women? I love women!"), claiming that he's the one being bullied or harassed or stalked, claiming to be deeply offended, martyrdom ("I wonder how much longer I will live..."), claiming a scary childhood ("I think my father was in the Mafia.."), and even claiming religious persecution, and more dramas ("I am mentally ill..." and "I gave up magic because of Christa Worthington's murder...", "I am the victim of a wacko ..."). All of these tales portray himself as the downtrodden victim rather than the victimizier.Here is another one: "I'LL KEEP WRITING ABOUT SCARLETT UNTIL SHE STOPS ATTACKING ME AND MY FAMILY AND GOES AWAY." Translation: Every time Scarlett exposes me as a liar, I will get even!
Those of us who have had an experience with psychopaths know that their language is two-dimensional. They are, as someone once said, as "deep as a thimble." An analogy is given by Dr. Hare of a psychopath as a color blind person who has learned how to function in the world by certain strategies. He may tell you that he "stopped at a red light," but what he really means is that he knew the light at the top means "stop," so he stopped. He calls it the "red" light like everyone else, but he has no experience of what "red" looks like. Psychopaths use words about emotions the same way people who are color blind use words about colors they cannot perceive. They not only learn how to use the words, and repeat the same words over and over, they also learn to pantomime the feeling. But they never HAVE the feeling.
As for his feigned victimhood, experts say that thoughts of persecution often combine with delusions of grandeur: defined as the gross exaggeration of one's own importance, abilities or talents. Delusions abound in Churchwell's writings and can be found in numerous posts in which he claims to be a "witch" (perhaps meaning warlock?), as well as a psychic, successful photographer and famous retired magician, who used to know and date celebrities like Brooke Shields. Delusional types believe they are special, unique, or famous, or that they know someone who is famous. Churchwell is just as eager to fantasize that he was a member of "the press" who photographed a Catholic Cardinal, as he is to fantasize that he was pals with the notorious wife slasher O.J. Simpson!Read what others say about Churchwell's occult delusions on this thread.
Regarding his failure to lead a productive life, anti-socials rarely hold a job for long. Churchwell's old girlfriend from twenty years ago reports that he couldn't even keep a Santa Claus job in a department store for more than a day. According to her, he lost his marbles after he and other store employees were filmed for a holiday segment that was to air on a local TV channel. The camera crew got only one distant shot of Churchwell, and no one recognized him on TV. The next day, feeling slighted, he refused to get out of bed. It was much the same story in 1996 when he was hired as a 'table-hopper' magician in a bar and "worked" briefly as a pickpocket in a strip club.In Invisible Eden, Maria Flook wrote about that time in his life: "T.C. was no longer a rising star but was more like a disabled satellite orbiting the same seedy wee-hour solar system, night after night."
Normal people work for a goal, even if the goal is only a paycheck. Normal people measure things by how much they have to spend (in time, work, energy) to get the desired results. Anti-social people might work for a goal, too, but it's a different goal: they want power, authority, adulation. Yet, they don't understand how people achieve these things; they think it's all arbitrary, it's all appearances, it's all who you know. They often try to attach themselves to those who already have what they want, as Churchwell did with two magicians.
To read what magicians really think of him, go here and here.
And go here to read an entry about him on the Urban Dictionary website, by one of the magicians he ripped off.
Was he ever invested in magic? Well, he never paid attention to things like ethics and honing his craft, preferring instead to leech off, or demean, those who were successful. Anti-social types feel entitled to whatever they can take. They expect special indulgences, and they also feel entitled to use people. The idea of working for a paycheck, of competing in the work place with other men, and with women, is anathema to Churchwell. Of course, he has no time to earn a living anyway, since he is hard at work being a cyber bully and stalker.
Ironically, people like Churchwell actually receive a disability check from the government so that they are able to spend their entire day attacking people on the Internet. Several years ago Churchwell apparently qualified for disability checks by satisfying the diagnostic criteria for manic depression, according to him. This means that he may have qualified under any of the eight mental disorders listed on the Social Security website; personality disorders are included. In order for a claimant to receive benefits, psychiatrists state the patient can no longer perform his past work, or any type of work, that he has repeated episodes of decompensation (mind deterioration), and ongoing difficulties in maintaining social functioning. Manic depression, also called bipolar disorder, is characterized by mood changes that swing from depression to mania, with periods of normalcy between the two extremes. There are many online articles explaining the "mood cycling" involved in this disorder, and the differences between a mood disorder and a personality disorder. One of the hallmarks of manic depression is guilt. As most of us know, guilt is a feeling of responsibility or remorse for something wrong we have done. It is our conscience judging us for our actions and thoughts. In people who are bipolar, guilt feelings seem to come from nowhere, and when bipolar people hurt others, they are remorseful. But Churchwell never demonstrates remorse for anything. If he is bipolar, then surely this is only one of his problems, and it is his anti-social personality disorder that is mainly responsible for the misery he has caused on the blogs. I will close the paragraph by adding this. I loved a wonderful man who suffered with manic depression. Believe me. He was nothing like Thomas Churchwell.If someone you know is a psychopath, watch out. They think the rules don't apply to them, and they will always cause trouble wherever they think they can get away with it, not to mention alienating family, co-workers, clients and friends with their arrogance, lies, and malice. They become enraged over simple disagreements, plus they have evil mouths and will say ANYTHING. If you live or work with them—or find yourself in the same blogosphere with them—expect big trouble sooner or later.
A quote from a satire site, by "Frank the Psychopath":
"I don’t think I feel things the same way you do. It’s like… at my first job. I was stealing maybe a thousand bucks a month from that place. And this kid, he was new, he got wise. And he was going to turn me in, but before he got the chance I went to the manager and pinned the whole thing on him. Kid lost his job, the cops got involved, I don’t know what happened to him. And I guess something like that is supposed to make me feel bad, right? It’s supposed to hurt, right? But instead, it’s like there’s nothing..."
That quote is eerily similar to Churchwell's writings. Anti-socials typically steal, and they know that stealing is wrong, but they never experience feelings of shame, guilt or remorse. They flat out refuse to accept responsibility for their actions and insidiously point fingers at others instead. Dr. Hare describes them as being morally insane.
A recap of excuses they use to avoid responsibility in all situations:
* Justifying: "I CAN'T HELP IT. I'M MENTALLY ILL."
* Blame shifting: "YOU ASKED FOR IT!"
* Play Acting: "I AM A VICTIM!"
* Entitlement: "IF I WANT TO DO IT, I CAN."
* Grandiosity: "I AM SMARTER THAN YOU! YOU ARE A DUMMY!"
* Projection: "YOU ARE A BULLY, STALKER, LIAR, THIEF, WACKO!"
And let's not forget this biggie: Leaving out major sections of any incident and inserting his own loony spin. Rewriting history. As we slosh through Churchwell's cesspool of lies and manufactured excuses, we always come back to what he told Maria Flook in that interview: "I LOVE MESSING UP PEOPLE'S HEADS."
Shouldn't he feel embarrassment and shame for what he has done to me and others? He should, but he has no deep-seated emotions. No empathy, not even a morsel of compassion or concern for other people. Thomas Churchwell is completely amoral, or perhaps, he has the morals of a bright two-year-old. You have heard it said that every magician has a bag full of tricks. Churchwell is a failed magician who has a bag full of lies, and when he becomes bored with one lie, he temporarily tosses it back into his bag and pulls out another. The following are links, in no particular order, to my archive posts setting the record straight about his big bag of lies.The truth is here:
The child porno writer lie
The phone message lie
The Susan and I are the same person lie
The "I never threatened to kill Scarlett" lie
The hate blogger lie
The nudie pictures lie
The photo thief lie
The photo thief lie redux
The stalker lie
The "Scarlett is attacking my family" lie
If I have forgotten a lie, readers, just read this blog.
H.M. Cleckley writes in The Mask Of Sanity:
"One almost amusing example of how psychopaths lie can be exemplified by a man who's footprint was discovered at the scene of the crime. "No, that's not my foot" he said, even though everyone knew he was lying."
Before writing my first post on this blog, I tried to convince Churchwell to stop telling lies about me by appealing to his better nature. But I found out that appealing to his better nature was about as effective as spitting in the sea. What you see is what you get: he has no better nature. The fundamental problem, again, is that he doesn't feel empathy. He doesn't take other people's feelings into consideration and he overlooks an obvious fact, that people will react when abused or exploited and that most people get REALLY pissed off by being lied to, or lied about.
His deviant history includes posting lewd pictures of underage girls, stealing magic tricks (according to several magic forums), stealing the copyright of my commercial photography in 2007, and boasting that he once was a pickpocket, among other weirdness. Again, these are prime examples of how he projects his own behavior onto others. The pretense that his allegations about me are part of a morality campaign, of all things, is another lie designed to dupe the Internet along with mental health professionals.
Never in my life have I encountered such a damaging person. If I hadn't stopped carrying his libel around with me like suitcases, I probably would have had a nervous breakdown. There was a period of time two years ago when I remember looking in the mirror and feeling like I was the most worthless human being to ever walk the earth. This was after I had lost my parents and was dealing with depression, a result of my mother and father dying within 11 months of each other. Two years before that, I had lost my fiancé tragically. I was vulnerable, in other words. I actually believed, when I met Churchwell on that message board, that my young, 60-year-old parents might have recovered from the heart attack and cancer, if I had just prayed harder and taken care of them 24 hours a day. Believing myself a failure, I was ripe for buying into the awful things Churchwell was saying about me on his hate sites. I think this is part of the hook of being in the same blogosphere with disordered people; victims want to prove that they aren’t the way the hater says they are. I know this was true for me. I would get so close to the proverbial delete button and then he would say something so outrageous that I couldn’t stand to close my blog without defending my character and proving him wrong. Even after I came to terms with my grief and began to rebuild my life, I continued to defend myself against his lies. Defending myself against scurrilous attacks, or dodging them like arrows, had become an unwanted habit.As readers know, he told you that I was a pornographer, stalker and thief after I had lost sleep, work, and suffered so much from his libel that I ended up in the hospital with pleurisy. Not content with that, he mocked my illness, claimed crazily that I posted he gave me "flu on the Internet" and continued to attack me, even while I was hospitalized. His emotional abuse was (and still is) an attempt to break me down—and make it appear that I am like him. Anti-social types live by the words, "Throw enough mud and some of it will stick."
Here's a link to an article about stress and the immune system.
Before I soldier on with my experiences, I want to share what happened to a friend of mine from the UK. She had been communicating for over a year with a man who lived in Florida, and during the time of their correspondence and phone calls, he seemed so "sweet, caring, and kind." She mentioned how he had grieved over his dead wife, and so on.
This man asked my friend to marry him, and, to top it off, he promised her that he had a terrific job lined up for her in the city where he lived. My friend believed him and came to the United States to meet him.
At their first meeting she mentioned how it was the beginning of the end, and she should have seen it coming. She told him, after they met at the airport, that she needed to make a phone call, but instead of letting her use his cell phone, he coldly told her to use the pay phone. She noticed how this contradicted his warm personality on the phone and in emails. She said she was shocked, but being naive, she married him anyway.
As the weeks went by, things got worse. She found out that he had lied about the terrific job. Next, she began to get phone calls from two women in Canada who told her that her new husband had been inviting them, via online chats, to live with him! My friend was distraught and told these women that he was lying to them. The women didn't believe it (why do women tend to doubt another woman when she is trying to warn them?), so my friend said, "If you want proof that I am married to him, come down here and see for yourselves."
Eventually, she learned from his family that Mr. Wonderful was a pathological liar who had a long history of using women and having his mother cover his tracks. I don't want anyone else to go through what my friend and I experienced. It is my hope that this post will provide a bit of support to others who live, work, or blog with psychopaths. I'm sorry that I cannot also provide a solution, but since a prime characteristic of anti-social people is believing that they are always right, no matter what, they are extremely resistant to change and, unfortunately, tend to get worse as they get older. I know this is true of Churchwell; he is worse now than when he started blogging three years ago. The key, then, is prevention; learning how to recognize losers, before they can damage you. I hope that more women will become informed, so that they will not become victims themselves.
Narcissists are attention seekers. More than anything else, they crave attention. It doesn't matter if the attention is positive or negative, as long as they get attention. Churchwell lives for the "narcissistic hits" (narcissistic supply) that he gets from reading posts about himself, and from the knowledge that others are reading them, too. As Freud said of narcissists, these people act like they're in love with themselves. And they are in love with a fantasy of themselves—or they want you to be in love with their fantasy self; it's hard to tell just what is going on.Lying is the most common complaint about narcissists. Fishing for pity and expecting everyone to defer to them are other signs of the disorder. Narcissists are quick to blame others when their expectations are not met. They react like hornets to criticism, and if they are rejected, they will vilify the person who rejected them. Thus, Churchwell's attacks on me. Their lack of insight is breathtaking and often leads them to wildly misinterpret others' motives. Churchwell's self-preoccupation has always obstructed his ability to see people as they really are, obstructed even his ability to perceive bloggers as separate people. For years he was convinced that the bully Susan a/k/a SuziQ and I were the same person, even though she and I are obviously nothing alike.
Psychologist Theodore Milton has written about two primary types of narcissists: the elitists, who often become successful leaders in government, and the fanatic type, which probably describes Churchwell. The fanatic narcissist has major paranoid tendencies. When unable to get attention, or massive amounts of praise, he takes on the role of warrior on a grandiose mission, such as his mission to rid the Internet of perceived enemies, claiming that we are all stalkers, thieves and pornographers. Fanatic narcissists can be found among cult leaders, in mental hospitals if their delusions become sustained and extensive, or in prison, if their actions counteract those of society.
Grandiosity can take many forms. Like Narcissus gazing at his reflection in a pool of water, narcissists are obsessed with their looks. One of the first things Churchwell said to me was, "I hate getting old." His bizarre lie that I am old must be a projection of what he sees when looking in a mirror. But male narcissists are more likely to get hung up on the 'specialness' of their work—in Churchwell's case, "work" is his hate blog, which means if he is spewing on his blog, by definition it is more important than someone else's nice blog. Narcissists are envious of others and they have those strange religious ideas, in particular believing that they are God's special favorites. God loves them, so they are exempt from ordinary rules; God tells them they are omnipotent, so they can do anything they feel like. Conveniently, the narcissist's God has strict rules for everyone else! Churchwell's recurring fantasy that he is a Jew, and persecuted, fits with other aspects of his victim fantasy. Always contemptuous of others, he makes insulting, mocking and crude comments about women, as if auditioning for Jerry Springer. A person like this who is quoted in Invisible Eden as comparing a part of a woman's anatomy to a computer trackball, is either a narcissist, emotionally retarded, a loathsome misogynist, or all three.
But I digress. The high that he gets from reading about himself wears off after a few days, or within minutes, and then he must try to provoke another reaction.
I should point out here that many of his attacks on me failed to get a response. In fact, I defended myself against his daily libel in thirty-something posts over the past three years. To some of you, that may seem like thirty-something posts too many, but let me tell you, if your character was being defiled on the Internet every day and your livelihood threatened by a psychopath/narcissist bent on destroying you, then you just might get into the habit of defending yourself occasionally. He recently posted libel about me on some sleazy website that caters to sado-masochists, where, no surprise, he happens to be a member. Of course, the link ended up in the Google blog listings. What he wrote was hideous, yet this was one of many times when I didn't bother to defend myself.
His name calling, in particular, is a sign that I am silently winning one battle, if not the war. He is telling me that I do know what I'm talking about when I describe him as a psychopath.
I take it as backhanded validation when he "critiques" every word of my blog in the nasty style of a psychopath. Further, I understand how Maria Flook may have felt, had she known that Churchwell plagiarized her insightful chapter in Invisible Eden, the one detailing his brief romance with socialite Christa Worthington, six years before she was raped and murdered by her garbage collector. When Churchwell put this chapter on his blog without the author's permission, readers saw that he had scribbled snide comments over the text and all along the margins, obviously hating what Flook had written about him. (You can download the entire text here and read a brief biography of the author here.) He has spent years trashing her. Paradoxically, he pimps her book, his obvious purpose being to lure people to his blog with tabloid style headlines: "YES, I WAS THE BOYFRIEND OF CHRISTA WORTHINGTON IN INVISIBLE EDEN!" On other sites, he makes disgusting comments such as this: "IN INVISIBLE EDEN I AM PEPPERED THROUGH THE WHOLE BOOK AND HAVE MY OWN CHAPTER ON PAGE 288 CALLED "THE AMAZING TARQUIN." Since he desperately wants to be famous, or infamous, he is not above exploiting his short-lived relationship with a woman who was brutally murdered. Yet, to those of us who have read the book, he comes across as a seedy bar magician, a moocher, unstable, and a source of comic relief for the sometimes meaningful relationships that filled Christa Worthington's short life. Flook aptly described Churchwell's personality as "exibitionistic." Interestingly, she relates in her book that he sent her numerous "heated emails that were incendiary, sensational and always wacky." Sound familiar? Now that I have reposted a tiny portion of his bona fide, genuine psychiatric diagnostic assessment, he will step up his attacks on me, just as he did to Maria Flook and others.
Michael O'Keefe, lead prosecutor in the Worthington case, described Churchwell as a "nutcase." There you have it.
One guideline for dealing with this type of person is: don't respond, don't interact and don't engage. Of course, as I stated above, this is not as easy as it sounds. From my own experience I know it is natural to want to defend yourself and set the record straight. But I have learned that trying to reason with a psychopath is like trying to reason with a toddler. Toddlers act out for only a brief period, after which they are on the road to becoming grown ups, whereas anti-socials never grow up. Churchwell's response, upon reading this post, will be more name calling; so immature and childish, as to be beyond the belief of any adult.
But this is not merely the case of a bully who is unbelievably crude, immature and mean. People who spend their lives verbally attacking others are afflicted with a form of sadism. They find joy in hurting people. They are psychopaths.
Churchwell's lust for causing pain is evident in what he posts on his hate sites. In addition, he irritates innocent people by flooding a group with nasty character assasinations on completely neutral sites. A few months ago he spewed malicious lies about me on the ABC news network political blog! He spewed more libel in a 'personals' ad in my hometown newspaper (another attempt to ruin my photography business), and again on a website for artists. Since it is unlikely that any rational person would be favorably impressed or influenced upon reading flaming comments posted under the guise of "warning" strangers about some unknown woman, it is obvious that his goal is to find excitement from being a sadistic pest.
My other blog, which was not about him, is closed now due to his daily harassment. It is a fact that he has written hundreds of abusive comments on my blogs, including death threats. As a result, I had to close the comment section on both blogs.
Some of his threats are posted on this site. Here is one:
"SOMEONE ASKED ME WHAT I WOULD DO IF I FOUND OUT WHERE SHE LIVED. MY RESPONSE IS: I WOULD SHOOT HER 1OOO TIMES. EVEN AFTER SHE WAS DEAD I WOULD CONTINUE TO SHOOT."
Disturbing, isn't it? I have always known that either he would eventually stop, or I would have to close my blogs, unless I was willing to tolerate the abuse forever. Since he doesn't view people as human beings, but as objects to be used for his entertainment, he will never allow me to blog in peace. Instead, he would continue to close his daily tirades with this: "YOUR MOVE, DUMMY!" or "GOTCHA!" It is as if he is permanently condemned to "mess up people's heads" using a juvenile dictionary.
I have never been able to escape him. I broke off those short-lived conversations with him 3 years ago (fortunately, we never met), but he still harasses me, still copies my posts and alters them, still plays that meaningless phone message, demonstrating over and over that he is a stalker, still tries to ruin my photography career, and threatens my life. Are you sitting down? A few weeks ago, I received an email inviting me to join him for online chats! His behavior is truly psychotic. I haven't talked much about his stalking in this post, but it has been ongoing for three years now, and seems to be neverending.
As for the belief held by many of his victims that another hospitalization is likely for him, anti-social types are difficult to treat. In his mind, he is not doing anything wrong; if there's a problem, it's your problem, not his. Furthermore, as Dr. Hare points out, all they do in therapy is learn more about human nature, and then use this knowledge to further plunder humanity. Therapy works only when someone wants to change and, though psychopaths and narcissists hate their real selves, they don't want to change—they want the world to change. Short of nonstop hospitalization, or neurosurgery, there seems to be no effective (and legal) way to protect society from these people. They typically do not stop their destructive behavior until they are either dead or in jail.
Thomas Churchwell's violence towards me takes the form of verbal assault, which survivors of abuse will tell you is every bit as emotionally damaging as being beaten by an abuser's fists. When he does it again, I won't defend myself. When it comes to words, this loser will always win in his mind. He has no insight, which makes any effort to confront him on a blog completely useless. Moreover, all the name calling and allegations that he makes about me and other people are actually true confessions and revelations about himself. He is a great big projection machine. I will ignore it. If you are a blogger and the victim of a psychopathic bully or narcissist, I hope you will do the same, out of respect not only for your readers, but also for your own well being.
For a change of pace, my blog recap with photos is on this page.
His name calling, in particular, is a sign that I am silently winning one battle, if not the war. He is telling me that I do know what I'm talking about when I describe him as a psychopath.
I take it as backhanded validation when he "critiques" every word of my blog in the nasty style of a psychopath. Further, I understand how Maria Flook may have felt, had she known that Churchwell plagiarized her insightful chapter in Invisible Eden, the one detailing his brief romance with socialite Christa Worthington, six years before she was raped and murdered by her garbage collector. When Churchwell put this chapter on his blog without the author's permission, readers saw that he had scribbled snide comments over the text and all along the margins, obviously hating what Flook had written about him. (You can download the entire text here and read a brief biography of the author here.) He has spent years trashing her. Paradoxically, he pimps her book, his obvious purpose being to lure people to his blog with tabloid style headlines: "YES, I WAS THE BOYFRIEND OF CHRISTA WORTHINGTON IN INVISIBLE EDEN!" On other sites, he makes disgusting comments such as this: "IN INVISIBLE EDEN I AM PEPPERED THROUGH THE WHOLE BOOK AND HAVE MY OWN CHAPTER ON PAGE 288 CALLED "THE AMAZING TARQUIN." Since he desperately wants to be famous, or infamous, he is not above exploiting his short-lived relationship with a woman who was brutally murdered. Yet, to those of us who have read the book, he comes across as a seedy bar magician, a moocher, unstable, and a source of comic relief for the sometimes meaningful relationships that filled Christa Worthington's short life. Flook aptly described Churchwell's personality as "exibitionistic." Interestingly, she relates in her book that he sent her numerous "heated emails that were incendiary, sensational and always wacky." Sound familiar? Now that I have reposted a tiny portion of his bona fide, genuine psychiatric diagnostic assessment, he will step up his attacks on me, just as he did to Maria Flook and others.Michael O'Keefe, lead prosecutor in the Worthington case, described Churchwell as a "nutcase." There you have it.
One guideline for dealing with this type of person is: don't respond, don't interact and don't engage. Of course, as I stated above, this is not as easy as it sounds. From my own experience I know it is natural to want to defend yourself and set the record straight. But I have learned that trying to reason with a psychopath is like trying to reason with a toddler. Toddlers act out for only a brief period, after which they are on the road to becoming grown ups, whereas anti-socials never grow up. Churchwell's response, upon reading this post, will be more name calling; so immature and childish, as to be beyond the belief of any adult.
But this is not merely the case of a bully who is unbelievably crude, immature and mean. People who spend their lives verbally attacking others are afflicted with a form of sadism. They find joy in hurting people. They are psychopaths.Churchwell's lust for causing pain is evident in what he posts on his hate sites. In addition, he irritates innocent people by flooding a group with nasty character assasinations on completely neutral sites. A few months ago he spewed malicious lies about me on the ABC news network political blog! He spewed more libel in a 'personals' ad in my hometown newspaper (another attempt to ruin my photography business), and again on a website for artists. Since it is unlikely that any rational person would be favorably impressed or influenced upon reading flaming comments posted under the guise of "warning" strangers about some unknown woman, it is obvious that his goal is to find excitement from being a sadistic pest.
My other blog, which was not about him, is closed now due to his daily harassment. It is a fact that he has written hundreds of abusive comments on my blogs, including death threats. As a result, I had to close the comment section on both blogs.
Some of his threats are posted on this site. Here is one:
"SOMEONE ASKED ME WHAT I WOULD DO IF I FOUND OUT WHERE SHE LIVED. MY RESPONSE IS: I WOULD SHOOT HER 1OOO TIMES. EVEN AFTER SHE WAS DEAD I WOULD CONTINUE TO SHOOT."
Disturbing, isn't it? I have always known that either he would eventually stop, or I would have to close my blogs, unless I was willing to tolerate the abuse forever. Since he doesn't view people as human beings, but as objects to be used for his entertainment, he will never allow me to blog in peace. Instead, he would continue to close his daily tirades with this: "YOUR MOVE, DUMMY!" or "GOTCHA!" It is as if he is permanently condemned to "mess up people's heads" using a juvenile dictionary.I have never been able to escape him. I broke off those short-lived conversations with him 3 years ago (fortunately, we never met), but he still harasses me, still copies my posts and alters them, still plays that meaningless phone message, demonstrating over and over that he is a stalker, still tries to ruin my photography career, and threatens my life. Are you sitting down? A few weeks ago, I received an email inviting me to join him for online chats! His behavior is truly psychotic. I haven't talked much about his stalking in this post, but it has been ongoing for three years now, and seems to be neverending.
As for the belief held by many of his victims that another hospitalization is likely for him, anti-social types are difficult to treat. In his mind, he is not doing anything wrong; if there's a problem, it's your problem, not his. Furthermore, as Dr. Hare points out, all they do in therapy is learn more about human nature, and then use this knowledge to further plunder humanity. Therapy works only when someone wants to change and, though psychopaths and narcissists hate their real selves, they don't want to change—they want the world to change. Short of nonstop hospitalization, or neurosurgery, there seems to be no effective (and legal) way to protect society from these people. They typically do not stop their destructive behavior until they are either dead or in jail.
Thomas Churchwell's violence towards me takes the form of verbal assault, which survivors of abuse will tell you is every bit as emotionally damaging as being beaten by an abuser's fists. When he does it again, I won't defend myself. When it comes to words, this loser will always win in his mind. He has no insight, which makes any effort to confront him on a blog completely useless. Moreover, all the name calling and allegations that he makes about me and other people are actually true confessions and revelations about himself. He is a great big projection machine. I will ignore it. If you are a blogger and the victim of a psychopathic bully or narcissist, I hope you will do the same, out of respect not only for your readers, but also for your own well being.For a change of pace, my blog recap with photos is on this page.
