Home / Top Headlines / First to Know: Week in Review

First to Know: Week in Review

Catching up with Dr. Brian

On Monday, a Columbine-style attack at a California high school was thwarted by heroic teachers who tackled and subdued a former student who returned to the school with a bunch of pipe bombs.  Prosecutors are deciding whether to charge the perpetrator as an adult or as a juvenile.  I’m thinkin’ that sounds like an adult crime, so I’m thinkin’ it probably deserves some adult time, but if you’re interested in the factors involved in deciding whether to charge someone as an adult or as a juvenile, see my previous post dated 5/1/09.

On Tuesday night’s Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell, we discussed the latest in the Michael Jackson death probe.  Toxicology reportedly confirms that a propofol appears to have been the proximate cause of Jackson’s death.  The coroner reportedly has deemed the death to be a “homicide,” but that’s a little misleading – as I understand it, that means the coroner believes the death to have been caused by the actions of another person and that those actions were not accidental, but I don’t think it necessarily means the coroner believes the death to have been intentional.  In other words, I think the forthcoming criminal charge is still likely to be manslaughter rather than murder.  Stay tuned.

Also on Tuesday night’s Issues, we reported the death of the reality t.v. star who was wanted in connection with the death and dismemberment of his ex-wife.  He apparently hanged himself in a Canadian motel room.  As a shrink, I’m against suicide of course, but as an American, I say good riddance — no complicated capital-case extradition proceedings to get Jenkins back from the Canadians, and no massively expensive death penalty trial here in the U.S.  There’s at least one woman still under investigation for allegedly helping this guy while he was on the run (by booking and paying for the motel room on his behalf).  I want to know if that’s all she did or if she helped in more nefarious ways, like in the actual killing/dismemberment, and whatever she did, I want to know if she did it completely voluntarily or if she was under some kind of threat.  Depending on the answers to those questions, she may be an accomplice or an accessory after the fact to murder, and if she’s either or both of those things, we may need a trial in this case yet.

Also on Tuesday night’s Issues, we discussed the sentencing of rapper Chris Brown — as I predicted, he got the five years’ probation plus community service and counseling that had been agreed upon by the prosecution and defense, but the judge also ordered Brown to stay away from the victim of Brown’s violent tantrum, singer Rhianna, for five years.  It’s not really ”celebrity justice” because, unfortunately, weak sentences like this are given to violent offenders all across this country every day.  At least the judge made sure that the community service will involve hard physical labor and also tried to look out for Rhianna, whose intellectual ability to look out for herself (i.e. to not give Brown a second — or third, or fourth based on unconfirmed reports of previous incidents — chance) is still in question.

A 29-year-old California woman who went missing at age 11 has been found…alive…with two kids, both apparently fathered by her captor and imprisoned along with her by him…and his wife!  It’s disgustingly reminiscent of the Austrian dungeon case that you’ll recall if you’re a regular reader and/or viewer.  We discussed the current case on Thursday evening’s Prime News and Campbell Brown.  What happened to this woman and her two children is nightmarishly horrifying, and my utter disgust is compounded by the fact that he’s yet another monster who never should’ve been free to commit these crimes — he reportedly had received a 50-year sentence for a previous kidnapping and rape but was paroled early!  One report says he’s already blaming drug use early in life for messing up his brain to the point that he committed these horrific acts.  That’s a load of crap.  Another report says he’s talking in jail about how his treatment of the now-29-year-old woman from the time she was 11 years old was some kind of spiritual bonding experience between the two.  That’s a load of crap, too.  Sounds to me like he’s trying to set up some kind of insanity defense.  There is no mental diagnosis that explains this behavior ladies and gentlemen.  Like it or not, this is where psychology dead ends at evil.  And I’m including the guy’s wife in that as well.  I don’t want to hear any sob stories from her about how drugs ruined her brain or how terrorized she was by him, etc.  As happened in the Elizabeth Smart and Shawn Hornbeck cases, many in the media are talking about “Stockholm Syndrome” — a psychological phenomenon named after a 1970’s bank robbery in Stockholm in which captives start to identify, sympathize, and even potentially collaborate with their captors (see my previous post dated 1/16/2007).  I believe that can happen, but I believe it’s extremely rare, and I believe there usually are better explanations for why a captive might not have seized opportunities to escape.  One is the phenomenon of “learned helplessness” or “accommodation” in which a person truly convinced that there’s no hope of ever escaping his/her fate stops trying to change it and tries instead to “make the best of it” in various ways.  Another is ongoing duress, not just in the form of threats to one’s own safety but also in the form of threats to the safety of others.  This woman’s oldest child is apparently 15 years old, so if you do that math, that means she’s been a mother since the age of 14 and may have been pregnant even earlier.  She may therefore have cooperated to some extent with her captors in order to protect her child and later, children.  Given that she apparently was raped early in her imprisonment, and that her children are now apparently aged 11 and 15, I think it’s disgustingly likely that the children have been similarly victimized.  So can these three victims ever recover any semblance of normal lives?  That’s a tough one to answer without examining them personally, so I have to hold out hope that it’s possible on some meaningful level.  Obviously their lives will never be the same, but are they completely ruined, completely without the possibility of ever experiencing joy?  I hope not.  It’s difficult to know where to even begin in the treatment of such unprecedented emotional traumas, but I would agree with Ed Smart, the father of Elizabeth Smart and a guest on Thursday night’s show, that the probable place to start is with tons of assurance and reassurance that they’re finally safe and that they’re loved.

Study this:  A new study of women who excel in male-dominated occupations found that those women’s testosterone levels are higher than those of most women, suggesting for that there’s a physiological component to heightened levels of occupational aggressiveness and/or risk tolerance among some women.

OK, think we’re up to date!

Dr. Brian Russell is a licensed psychologist, attorney at law and familiar national television pundit on psychological, legal and cultural issues.