Don't know how to help a friend, ideas welcome

what was the reason or thought behind why you asked,
Mostly just trying to get a better feel for what the stalker might expect, and maybe even what might actually work to get him to back off. At an earlier point in my life, I had a good friend who had a couple of friends who were in the business of extra-legal debt collection and contract enforcement, so it crossed my mind that that approach might be more effective than the legal system where you are.
I would only caveat that she isn't getting much out of me
You're probably right. Something to consider though, at least in my experience, what people are looking to get out of a relationship isn't always that straightforward. I'm kind of thinking of "people with probable personality disorders I have known." Which might not apply to your friend at all, really. There are a lot of things a person can get out of a relationship. Even just a sort of safety net to fall back on. Someone to listen. Someone to care, even a little. Someone they think they can actually control, even a little, in a world where they can't control much. Or, even a challenge. People are weird! One of the things I keep coming back to is her experience with various therapies. She's tried a lot of stuff and nothing has worked..... My T described a type of client he disliked working with. Their goal seemed to be "not getting better". I know him well enough to be sure this wasn't him being offended for lack of success and blaming the client. These people really seemed determined to thwart any effort to help them. I've seen this elsewhere in the world too. They profess that they want help, but, for anything you come up with, there's a reason it won't work. I have NO IDEA what they get out of that approach, None. Makes no sense to me at all. And yet, they must be getting SOMETHING out of it or they wouldn't keep doing it. IDK Anyway, I can't help but wonder if your friend is one of those people.
 
Mostly just trying to get a better feel for what the stalker might expect, and maybe even what might actually work to get him to back off. At an earlier point in my life, I had a good friend who had a couple of friends who were in the business of extra-legal debt collection and contract enforcement, so it crossed my mind that that approach might be more effective than the legal system where you are.

You're probably right. Something to consider though, at least in my experience, what people are looking to get out of a relationship isn't always that straightforward. I'm kind of thinking of "people with probable personality disorders I have known." Which might not apply to your friend at all, really. There are a lot of things a person can get out of a relationship. Even just a sort of safety net to fall back on. Someone to listen. Someone to care, even a little. Someone they think they can actually control, even a little, in a world where they can't control much. Or, even a challenge. People are weird! One of the things I keep coming back to is her experience with various therapies. She's tried a lot of stuff and nothing has worked..... My T described a type of client he disliked working with. Their goal seemed to be "not getting better". I know him well enough to be sure this wasn't him being offended for lack of success and blaming the client. These people really seemed determined to thwart any effort to help them. I've seen this elsewhere in the world too. They profess that they want help, but, for anything you come up with, there's a reason it won't work. I have NO IDEA what they get out of that approach, None. Makes no sense to me at all. And yet, they must be getting SOMETHING out of it or they wouldn't keep doing it. IDK Anyway, I can't help but wonder if your friend is one of those people.

I understand the description of your experiences and the conclusions your draw about them. Your observation about mine is important, that paradoxically my friend appears to show empathy and love at some times and then appears to lack it in the extreme, to the point of cruelty and rage.

For now, I am keeping an open mind about whether that is her dysfunctional reaction to multiple misfortunes resulting in complicated trauma, or a fundamentally selfish personality incapable of change. Any of that may appear to be consistent with certain traits of vulnerable narcissism, borderline, or post-traumatic behaviour or other mental health issues.

I once told her that it feels like she is like a wolf stuck in an spiked iron trap, and that when I go to free her she bites me. And so I have backed away. In that metaphor, it's not that the wolf doesn't want to be freed and gets something out of her situation, it's that she doesn't know anything else.

For the record I don't see any evidence in her case of a record of anybody having 'looked after her' emotionally or materially, whether she was attempting to manipulate people into it or not. I think she is wracked with grief to the core that neither her seemingly mentally ill father nor her deceased mother ever wanted her. In her heart of hearts, she feels fundamentally unloved. The world has thrown repeated crushing misfortunes at her, including the spite and sadism of envious people, and they only get worse. Most of us would give up in those circumstances.

Hers is a personal tragedy that I cannot imagine the pain of, because the superpower that gave me resilience to overcome mine was my certainty of parental love. I also had the pure luck of stumbling into a job that it turns out I am good at, which gives me satisfaction, security and confidence. I've had immense luck.
 
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Update.

The court hearing yesterday went extremely badly and I am still in shock at what she told me about it. Her stalker had been around her home again the day before it, staring at her. He didn't show up to the hearing citing sick leave granted by a special sick leave lawyer at the last minute. Tactical, so that my friend had to prepared, show up, endure the stress, waisted time, and legal fees. Hearing postponed by the judge.

When my friend got home she found a letter from the stalker showing that he is extorting her for money. Her (now resigned) attorney would have got this too. It's a formal payment demand witnessed by his (lawyer?) friends saying they'll testify that they saw he leant her the money. It has professional stamps and signatures on it. It's for about the value of her condo. She's penniless and has chronic fatigue syndrome as well as everything else.

Payment deadline is three days before the judge's postponement to next hearing, which is an almighty coincidence. As said the stalker is himself a lawyer and his attorney appears to have influenced or even bribed the judge. All of this may have contributed to her own attorney's resignation. Cronyism is highly possible here, even bribery.

No, she hasn't made it up, and I have no evidence to indicate that her stalker is telling the truth.

This is a ludicrous, horrifying situation out of a movie that is implausible in everyday life. Yet here we are. For the time being, while remaining compassionate to my friend, I am having to keep self care front of mind and get on with my job.
 
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Yikes.
didn't show up to the hearing citing sick leave granted by a special sick leave lawyer
That seems like a really strange way to run a legal system. But, we live in a very diverse world, for sure.
All of this may have contributed to her own attorney's resignation.
That totally makes sense. At least it totally seems possible. This letter, what does he want? (I know he's asked for money that he must know she doesn't have.) Is the idea to make her drop the court case? If it is, and dropping the case would make the rest of this go away, maybe she should do that. If there's a chance that the system there isn't totally corrupt, and she can find a lawyer looking to crusade against corruption......IDK. Here, in the US, you'd have to do a bit more than say someone owes you money and a lawyer who agreed to lie about that would be risking their license, but I can easily imagine a situation where that plan would work. Hoping for the best for both of you!
 
That seems like a really strange way to run a legal system. But, we live in a very diverse world, for sure.

That totally makes sense. At least it totally seems possible. This letter, what does he want? (I know he's asked for money that he must know she doesn't have.) Is the idea to make her drop the court case? If it is, and dropping the case would make the rest of this go away, maybe she should do that. If there's a chance that the system there isn't totally corrupt, and she can find a lawyer looking to crusade against corruption......IDK. Here, in the US, you'd have to do a bit more than say someone owes you money and a lawyer who agreed to lie about that would be risking their license, but I can easily imagine a situation where that plan would work. Hoping for the best for both of you!

Yes the sick note getting accepted by the judge indicates the stalker or his lawyer have special connections. She says the stalker's letter shows he's filed a separate lawsuit against her demanding payment for alleged debts, so yes it does look like leverage.

But it also looks like psychopathy to me. She described the letter as about 100 pages long, and includes many personal details including the make of her laptop and the make of her phone, which he is demanding he gives her as she allegedly bought them with money he loaned her. This suggests he's either hacked into her devices, spied on her at coffee shops or broken into her home - she actually doesn't know.

She says that even if she withdraws her charges against him of assault and home invasion, he may still pursue his alleged debt (which is a separate case) as a sadistic victory lap. She's been up all night in tears, in terror that she's going to lose her condo to her attacker. I tried to reassure her, saying he doesn't have enough evidence of any loan, no matter how "credible" his witnesses are.

She just said, perhaps ironically, that the stress is so bad she may check in to a psych ward - not because she is going to kill herself, but because at least she will be treated for stress, safe, fed, and have a bed.

It all sounds too crazy too me. But psychopaths do prey on the vulnerable. Indeed I recently learned from a moderator here that this forum doesn't have personal messaging and advises against meet-ups for that very reason, because it's happened here. Which makes me treat everything she says as plausible.

She talked me through more details about the night of the attack. After she called the police when he accosted her outside her building, she tried to go home to wait for the police. He then actually pushed her into her condo as she unlocked the door, and went in after her. He then started rummaging around her belongs, perhaps looking for her laptop or house keys (a set went missing), as if already with that debt-collection story in mind and looking for his cover story. When the cops showed up, the story he gave them was that he had come to claim a debt; they told him this is not the way to do it and sent him on his way.

This is literally the only other place I am talking to anyone about it so far. I can't share with my mother because the stress will be too much for her. God knows what friends will say. Nobody would know what to do. My friend doesn't know what to do other than beg another lawyer to take her on as a success-fee only case. She needs a replacement lawyer for the assault case, and a second lawyer for the alleged debt claim case.

She recalled her therapist (discontinued when money ran out) commented it's like dealing with the Columbian mafia. I'm inclined to agree. Her mother died of a stroke and I had a thought yesterday that this could bring her to one.

I don't need a 40-mins therapy session, I need to get back to work.

It feels like a very cruel world today.
 
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My own default response to things like this is to go into "problem solving mode". Kind of a bad habit sometimes. I have a suspicion it's something you tend to do too. These days, confronted with situations that look like problems in need of solutions, I try to start out by asking myself what, exactly, the problem is and who's responsible for solving it. (It might not actually be my problem to solve.)
She talked me through more details about the night of the attack
Something to think about, maybe. I know there's nothing necessarily wrong with details coming to light as things evolve, but sometimes....... IDK, there's a type of situation where that happens.... I guess I'm not totally sure the what or why of it, but there are situations that evolve that way and it's not a good sign. Somewhere about the point you're at now, I try to realize that I should pause and ask myself "what else aren't they telling me?" Because you're probably dealing with someone who wants to recruit you to their side of the cause, rather than provide the complete facts of the situation and it's worth knowing the whole picture before you launch into Problem Solving Mode.
She described the letter as about 100 pages long,
That sounds a little crazy, for sure. Does she have a copy of the letter? Has she been officially notified of the debt collecting case? I guess I can't help but wonder why it matters, to him, what she used the money for. He allegedly loaned her money and wants to be repaid. If she used it to buy groceries instead of a laptop, would he be wanting the groceries back? If one of her house keys is missing, I hope she changed her locks.
But psychopaths do prey on the vulnerable. Indeed I recently learned from a moderator here that this forum doesn't have personal messaging and advises against meet-ups for that very reason, because it's happened here. Which makes me treat everything she says as plausible.
I remember when they stopped the PM function. I honestly miss it. I made some friends back then that are still friends, because we could exchange contact info through PM's. Everything comes with risks and benefits I guess.

Story that maybe relates to that, and may, or may not, relate to your friend's situation.

My ex-husband & I raised horses and it was pretty common to get a down payment, let the customer take the horse home, and have them make payments until the horse was paid off, then they'd get the registration papers. We sold a young horse to a nice young woman who was married and had a couple kids, one with cerebral palsy. When she picked up her horse, she asked us not to tell her husband what she'd paid for her. (Because it was more than she'd told her husband it was.) I told her I wasn't going to lie for her. That, if he asked, I'd tell him the truth, but I wasn't going out of my way to tell him anything, that was between them. At first, she made her payments on time. Then they were late. Then they were late enough that we reached out to her and there was always a story, but we got paid. At one point, after this had been going on for a while, she showed up at the house, at the end of what had been a longish day for me, with another story. She'd had the money, but got stopped by the police, with her son in the car, and was taken to jail, and it was all a misunderstanding, her husband didn't really steal that car..... While I was listening to all this, it struck me that the story was rolling quite easily off her tongue. Then a light came on for me. That was easy for her because she did it all the time. Basically, I worked for a living and she lied for a living. I told her that we were running a business and I couldn't go the the electric company with a sad story, they wanted money. I told her she could either pay for the horse, or we'd come and get her, end of story. (In reality, it would have been more complicated than that, but I wasn't sure if she knew that or if she'd take advantage of it if she did.) The end of the story was, after I blew up at her, we got paid. Promptly. So there was money available to pay whoever got mad at her first? I have no idea what, if any, of her story was true. Don't really care either. What I'm pretty sure of, now, is that there are people out there who make their way in this world by using people that way. And, it's turned out there are more of them than I suspected back then.

I'm not sure if people like that are involved in your situation at all. If they are, I'm not sure if you're dealing with one of them or two. I can kind of imagine what might happen if two people of that tribe tried to take advantage of each other...... The possibilities are probably endless.
 
@scout86

I appreciate you advocating for me, to me, and for being sceptical. At the same time, right now my energy is not being spent on disbelieving a female victim of stalking, home invasion and assault in her own home.

As far as I am aware, women who report such crimes to the police and then pay to go to trial are usually not making it up. I believe a large proportion of perpetrators of stalking, home invasion and assault are psychopaths. They are exactly the kind of people who seek vulnerable targets, just as moderators of this forum say they have done here.

They are exactly the kind of people who are driven to hack devices and make up stories to launch parallel cases to use as leverage and stay out of jail. They are also driven to psychopathic revenge.

Please let's not give a man who has attacked a woman entering her own home alone at night the benefit of the doubt. You live in a country where he could legally have been shot dead for that. Over here, she didn't have that level of security. He is now threatening to destroy her life through the dysfunctional legal system here.

I'm not in problem solving mode, she is. So far, she's handling this problem with professionals. Given I find it highly likely that the perpetrator has hacked her devices, he may know my identity and therefore may be hacking mine. For this reason I am now reluctant to go into more detail here just in case he has access to it.

Mods: As this is a criminal case and extremely dangerous for the victim I am going to have to review all my forum posts and think carefully about this further.
 

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