Journalistic justice: a parable of Jean Valjean

Those who have read or seen the various adaptations of the book Les Miserables are probably familiar with the protagonist Jean Valjean. Spoiler alert, he stole some bread, went to prison for a long time, and then was branded for life as a felon, unable to live an honest life because no one would give him a second chance. But that's not where the story stops. Instead of just submitting to his fate, he breaks his parole, changes his name and starts a new, honest life . . . until his past catches up with him, in the form of the justice-hungry watchdog Javert.

Along those same lines, I read a bizarre article in the NY Times lambasting someone who had committed a crime and then attempted to start a new life, "An Inmate and a Scholar". Apparently the triggering event for the article was that this convicted felon (whom I won't name, in an effort to avoid connecting it on Google with the term "sociopath") had published a paper in the Columbia Journal of European Law on Turkish nationals and the EU. The NY Times reporter, Alison Leigh Cowan (who seems to specialize in maligning?), does not suggest that this young man plagiarized, falsified, or otherwise misrepresented himself in the paper. Nor does she allege that he has done anything wrong in the recent past (apart from the activities leading to his conviction) so much as she insinuates that his past makes him an inappropriate candidate for a legitimate future as a barrister/scholar.

The facts of our inmate/scholar are basically these: he is the child of a conwoman. He perpetrated a Ponzi scheme at the age of 19. After a confession/conviction ("I did what I did") and serving his time, he was deported (Turkish national). Any money he earns beyond satisfying his basic needs is earmarked to repay his Ponzi scheme victims. In the decade since, he has graduated with honors from prestigious European schools. His applications to these schools were open about his past -- he referenced it in his application essays and his former lawyers wrote letters of recommendation. He did not tell everything to everyone, though, and that is not enough for our intrepid reporter.

Reporter Cowan works hard to suggest that she has caught him red-handed trying to escape from his past. For instance, she mentions that he added a middle name that is not reflected in his American official paperwork -- a clear sign that he is hiding something. She liberally quotes from classmates that found it "shocking" to learn that he an ex-con (shout out to my former classmates who may have found it "shocking" that I had been diagnosed as a sociopath, or to my gay friend's former classmates who might find it "shocking" to find that he is married to a man, or my transgender friend's former classmates who might find it "shocking" to discover that he is no longer a woman.) Despite people's alleged shock at having known an ex-con (?), none of his friends or associates suggested that he ever materially misrepresented himself. And do we have a duty to disclose everything about ourselves to everyone we meet? Cowan goes into great detail about whether or not the inmate/scholar was supposed to check a box on his school applications for certain types of past criminal convictions, but ultimately comes up with nothing, at least in my opinion. (The school defined relevant convictions as "offenses of a violent or sexual nature against a person, or something on the order of drug trafficking," and cautioned prospective students against overdisclosing in violation of the Data Protection Act of 1998). So apart from a general reluctance to expose more about his history than absolutely necessary, that's it for his bad behavior. And as one of his mentors said:

“Here’s a guy who paid a very heavy price and is trying to put his life back together. . . . It’s not that he’s averse to publicity and trying to hide . . . but he’s trying to survive.”

It's hard to read Cowan's article and not wonder what the NY Times found print-worthy about this tale. Although Cowan's reporting style is just-the-facts, it is still manipulatively written to suggest that the inmate/scholar has done something wrong in attempting to move on with his life in the way he has. And in doing so, Cowan joins other journalists (Caleb Hannan, and others) who have chosen to make torrid details of people's personal lives international news. I understand that part of journalism is incidentally ruining people's lives (interestingly, journalism is considered one of the top 10 professions for sociopaths), but there doesn't seem to be anything incidental about this (similar to the Essay Anne Vanderbilt story). Rather, ruining a life seems to be the point of this particular story. And why? This type of public shaming is even more difficult for me to understand than the typical ruin-someone's-life Twitter justice you see against people who violate social norms (possible racism and the too-soon). Is this just blatant journalistic pandering to the desire of the proletariat to be an armchair judge/jury/executioner? Or is Cowan just a Javert type who believes that people shouldn't be able to run from their past?

Why do I care about this story? There is the public shaming thing, of course, but his story speaks to me more personally as well. This guy seems to be a young sociopath figuring things out: his mother was a conwoman, he was a very talented conman, he was described by federal investigators as "brilliant and probably capable of doing anything," and according to the NY Times, his sentencing judge:

did not doubt his desire to reform, but she worried if “in point of fact, he doesn’t yet know how.” His “moral compass,” she said, was simply “not present or not functioning." 

So this story struck a personal note with me, as someone who has also had my career prospects ruined, at least to a certain extent. But at least I sort of brought it on myself. This guy just committed a crime and paid for it. He didn't ask to have the media hound him for the sordid details of his past.

But this problem of trying to escape from a past is not isolated to sociopaths, or even to wrongdoers. Everyone makes mistakes of varying degrees or chooses to live a different way, unfettered by constraints from the past. How much should that keep them from having functional adult lives? Some jurisdictions are instituting a right for young people to wipe their digital slates clean, so youthful indiscretions wouldn't unduly limit their life options. But that policy is only viable if no reporter can come along decades later and use that information against you. Should we believe that people are redeemable or not? Apparently most of the inmate/scholar's classmates did, or at least they said that they “judged him only on the present," and found him to be an exceptionally friendly and helpful classmate. Unfortunately, present performance is often not good enough for the Javert types who are looking for their pound of flesh.

See also Anne Perry (especially the comments section of the video clip, which are predictably all over the map).

Sociopaths in the news: Stealing babies

I actually don't know enough about the culture of China to be able to tell whether this would be considered something sociopathic, or rather something just a little opportunistic and coldheartedly pragmatic. The Los Angeles Times reports about an obstetrician in China who convinced parents and grandparents to give up newborns that she claimed were disabled or otherwise undesirable:

Her method, authorities and victims say, was cruel and effective: convincing families that their babies were dead or dying, or afflicted with incurable diseases or congenital deformities. In rural China, a lack of support and restrictions on family size can make people reluctant to raise a child with disabilities.

Police say the doctor's victims were often friends and neighbors, forced to make heart-wrenching decisions about whether their babies should live or die, thus becoming complicit in their purported deaths. Zhang, the families say, even charged them a fee of about $10 to dispose of the corpses.

Zhang is believed to have frequently preyed on the fears of the grandparents, who in the Chinese countryside are desperate for healthy grandchildren to carry on the family line. The mothers were frequently left out of the loop.

Part of the reason this could happen is that health care is not sufficient to care for certain babies who could otherwise survive, or a lack of support for people raising children with disabilities:

A generation ago, unwanted babies in rural China were dumped in a well or smothered. Zhang Wei of the Enable Disability Studies Institute, a Beijing-based advocate for the disabled, said a disabled child still makes life very difficult for rural families.

"The whole burden comes down on the family. There is nobody to help them, no money and no education about what they can do, so they abandon the baby," Zhang Wei said.

However, perhaps the most shocking example happened with a family who was convinced to give up a baby who was claimed to neither be clearly male nor female, due to the dishonor it would bring on the family:

"He is not completely male, but not female. It will bring shame on the family," whispered the doctor, Zhang Shuxia, a trusted family friend whom they affectionately called "Auntie." "Don't worry," Dong recalled Zhang telling him. "Auntie can help you."

She advised that Dong and his mother give up the baby, euphemistically, to let him be euthanized.

Now I understand that parents of newborns are probably vulnerable, particularly ones without a high level of education and sophistication, but can you imagine choosing to euthanize your child just because it failed to conform to particular social norms that had nothing to do with its health? Of course it is difficult to raise a child who is different in these ways, but it has nothing to do with actual physical disability and everything to do with a natural human intolerance for difference. People put enormous pressure on each other to conform, often enforced with bullying and shaming. Although sociopaths don't feel the same sort of pressure to conform or enforce conformity, I can imagine that they would use this pressure people feel against them, if it would benefit them. That's why I wonder about the obstetrician. Either way, the antidote is to be self-actualized and to not fear the opinion of the masses, something that these princess boys have down (and Bradley Manning, apparently, good for him).

Canadian Psycho: Luka Rocco Magnotta

I'm sorry to be so late on this, but there is apparently another (?!) "Canadian Psycho" on the loose, but not really because apparently the Mounties actually did manage to get him into custody. (Am I doing ok with the Canadianisms?)  He is the murdering star of "1 ice pick 1 lunatic". As reported by Thestar.com.

Aspiring model, self-professed bisexual porn star, hustler, small-time felon, palpable narcissist, dissected in recent weeks by profilers-for-hire as classic psychopath, the Scarborough born Magnotta — born Eric Clinton Newman, formally changing his name in 2006 — was obsessed with cosmetic surgery to alter the features he didn’t like and, reportedly, to look more like James Dean . What remained throughout was the signature sensuous pout, the bedroom mouth of a man described by a former transgendered girlfriend as actually a dud in the sack, disinterested in sex and woefully unskilled as amorous partner. Magnotta also, she claimed, hit himself compulsively.

In videotaped interviews, he touches delicately at his face.

“A lot of people tell me I’m devastatingly good-looking.’’
***
“If I don’t have my looks, then I don’t have any life. My looks and my body are my life.’’

Estranged from family, he’d already been accused by animal lover groups of torturing and killing kittens, suffocating them in plastic bags, feeding them to snakes, and posting the evidence online. This would be textbook emerging psychopathic behaviour, characteristics evident early to one relative who told the Peterborough Examiner: “He’s a nut job. I did not trust him. Eric is the type of individual . . . I think he’s mentally ill. He has delusions of grandeur. He concocts stories that he tends to believe and they in turn become fact in his mind.’’

“I am a survivor of mental illness and I’m not ashamed of it. I went through a very traumatic childhood and in my teen years experimented with drugs and alcohol. At first, I thought this was the problem . . . it wasn’t. I am manic depressive and bi-polar. One day I’m normal, the next I can’t get out of my bed and then next week I want to conquer the world. Very confusing to someone who doesn’t understand.’’

Compulsively exhibitionistic, in thrall to himself, but no more than a cipher for most of an utterly superficial life, as insubstantial as a hologram. His only known object of interest was Luka Magnotta — when not calling himself Vladimir Romanov or Angel or K. Trammel, perhaps inspired by the ice-pick murdering Catherine Trammel character from Basic Instinct.

So many identities, shedding bits of himself, forensically, in the short period that he remained a fugitive at large — he’d professed, online, to being expert in disappearing — tracked first to Paris, where he made others uncomfortable in a bistro. French police found porn magazines and air sickness bags from his flight in a room where Magnotta had stayed before lamming it when Interpol publicized his name.

“I do not necessarily feel the need to redeem my reputation since the people that know me best will be more than happy to vouch for my honesty in conduct and I can provide many satisfied and loyal references if necessary.”

Magnotta was arrested June 4 in a Berlin Internet café, where he’d been surfing the web, reading about himself.

Is he really a psychopath? Parts seem to fit, yes, but I actually would bet borderline over both psychopath and bipolar. Thoughts?