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Faking Victimhood To Get Attention / Celebrity / Notoriety

'Swastika attack' woman repents

Desecrated tombstones in Herrlisheim, France

A French woman who confessed to fabricating a story about being the victim of an anti-Semitic assault has begged forgiveness for her claims.

In a televised statement, the 23-year-old mother said she was sorry for all the trouble her allegations had caused.

Her story of swastikas being daubed on her body during a brutal attack on a Paris train caused outrage in France.

"I regret this act and beg forgiveness from all those I deceived and hurt," the woman, known as Marie-Leonie, said.

"I apologise to the president of the republic... to all those people who showed me support after my lie," she said in a statement broadcast on Saturday.

Imaginary crime

Hours after the attack was first reported, French President Jacques Chirac expressed his horror and called for the perpetrators to be punished.

Political and community leaders followed suit and there were even demonstrations held in Marie-Leonie's support.

Now she is due to stand trial on July 26 on charges of "reporting an imaginary crime".

She could face up to six months in jail for her story of being attacked with her 13-month-old child by a gang of North Africans on a Paris suburban train.

The woman admitted to lying after police uncovered inconsistencies in her story.

Her claims came just days after Mr Chirac announced plans to crack down on a rising number of racist and anti-Semitic attacks.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3904025.stm
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Follow story using links to the right. Most odd.
 
Has anyone else come across a 'diet' victim? People who for some reason have totally cut out various things, such as suger, wheat, salt, and suchlike, without medical grounds for doing so.
I know a couple of people who use their diet as an attention seeking ploy in various ways. Firstly, they will use any oppertunity to bring it into a conversation. Secondly, they will make great, and usually highly inconvenient to other people, efforts to feed themselves according to their regime. Thirdly, they will loudly deny themselves things, and complain about it, despite the fact that there is no physical reason why they couldn't eat it if they wanted to. One person I know has actually made themselve ill because of this.

Note that this only refers to those who have absolutely no medical reason for following a certain very restrictive diet, not even to lose weight. There must be thousands of them out there. It would seem to be a fascinating combination of attention-seeking and control, done in a fashionable and seemingly heath-concious way. Is there any research on this kind of thing? Or is it too new?
 
There is a certain moral superiority attached to denying oneself food on non-medical/dietary grounds, IMO. ("Oooh, I haven't had bread in six months!" as you tear into your sandwich) (maybe they're the same people who brag about how early they get up in the morning, I dunno)
 
For some people, there is no doubt a feeling of moral superiority in such denial. But for some, it's a matter of self-support and pure bragging rights. As in "I haven't had (insert whatever foods here) in X amount of time, and look at how much weight I've lost/ how good I look/ how much healthier I am for the weight loss. " If you've never struggled with weight problems, obesity, whatever you want to call it, you have no idea how much reinforcement can help.
 
While the moral superiority illusion would account for a certain amount of it, it's the self-inflicted martyrdom element that interestes me, as there is no logic to it at all, as a recent conversation showed-

The smells of various delightful foodstuffs came wafting past.

Diet Victim- 'Oh, I'd love some of that, but I can't, of course.'

Stella- ' Why not?'

Diet Victim- 'Because it contains this, that and the other.'

Stella- 'Are you allergic to them or something?'

Diet Victim-'Oh, no. I just don't eat this, that, the other and something else.'

Stella- 'Then it's not that you can't eat it, you just choose not to. That's completely different from not being able to eat something. It's self imposed.'

Needless to say, that killed the conversation. Thankfully.
;)
 
Sounds like my ex-flatmate and her gluten free trip, she whinged no end, that and was such a damn self righteous vegetarian too.

When I pushed her once she admitted that her main reason for becoming a vegetarian at 14 was to p*ss off her parents (I haven't eaten meat in X years, Yadda Yadda Yadda).

Re hypochondria, with that do you get psychosomatic/psychogenic symptoms too, like when there are actual symptoms but your mind is making them, or are the symptoms always something and you just read too much in to them?

There was a while last year when I thought I had a brain tumour. Mainly 'cos I had this headache from hell that went on constantly for about 10 weeks, getting worse and with dizzyness and fatigue too and no-one could tell me what it was. In the end the pain was so bad that I was considering suicide, then I got an appointment with a private neurosurgeon, and it stopped within 2 hours of making the appointment:hmph:

It would be tedious to go into all of the P/S symptoms I've had, another nasty though was angina. Nothing wrong with my heart, just rotten angina pain.
 
hug for BRF :(

I get especially wound up by food faddists. Especially people who think they MIGHT have an intolerance and decide to upgrade it to an allergy, instead of getting tested and making any necessary adjustments.

GET A LIFE! SMACK! GET OVER IT! SMACK! and in general just SMACK!

Hypochondria is real and can be disabling.... more hugs for those who have it. It's no fun and is totally different to the memememememeee! activities which give me the urge to...... SMACK!

Kath
 
StellaBoulton said:
Has anyone else come across a 'diet' victim? People who for some reason have totally cut out various things, such as suger, wheat, salt, and suchlike, without medical grounds for doing so.
I know a couple of people who use their diet as an attention seeking ploy in various ways. Firstly, they will use any oppertunity to bring it into a conversation. Secondly, they will make great, and usually highly inconvenient to other people, efforts to feed themselves according to their regime. Thirdly, they will loudly deny themselves things, and complain about it, despite the fact that there is no physical reason why they couldn't eat it if they wanted to. One person I know has actually made themselve ill because of this.

Note that this only refers to those who have absolutely no medical reason for following a certain very restrictive diet, not even to lose weight. There must be thousands of them out there. It would seem to be a fascinating combination of attention-seeking and control, done in a fashionable and seemingly heath-concious way. Is there any research on this kind of thing? Or is it too new?
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ARGH. Somebody else has noticed this hideously annoying phenomenon! Finally! :D

I'm on a low-carbohydrate diet for health reasons. (Insulin resistance, can't process sugar/carbohydrates as well as normal people.) I've met several other people who've been on low-carb diets who really SHOULDN'T be, and they bother me to no end. They do it in the most idiotic way ("Oh, I can't have fruit for x weeks."), get sick a week later, and wonder why. Not to mention all the greasy stuff they eat that cannot POSSIBLY be good for someone.

It's like all common sense has just been dumped in the garbage along with the bread.

I also try never to say "I can't eat that." Oh sure, I CAN eat it. It's just not too good for me, that's all. :)


(edited for grammar)
 
Breezilla, you've nailed it :)

I also try never to say "I can't eat that." Oh sure, I CAN eat it. It's just not too good for me, that's all.
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I can eat wheat. I don't go into anaphylactic shock, it's just not too good for me :D

Well, unless hiccups and hives are this season's must-haves of course :rolleyes:

Kath
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Re hypochondria, with that do you get psychosomatic/psychogenic symptoms too, like when there are actual symptoms but your mind is making them, or are the symptoms always something and you just read too much in to them?
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I think it's a bit of both with most people. Certainly the mind can create very real and distressing symptoms all by itself. (which of course has a Fortean link in stigmatics)

It really annoys me too when people say they're "allergic" to all and sundry, when what they mean is it doesn't quite agree with them. It's either that they don't know what an allergy is, or they thrive on drama.
 
On the subject of allergies...

My mother's doctor claims that she (mom) has an allergy to tomatoes and apples because they give her headaches if she eats them.

I've been confused by this for about two years now. I've never ever heard of that before. It doesn't really sound like an allergy... :confused:


And to stonedoggy:
Hiccups? How... odd! :D
 
Breezilla said:
On the subject of allergies...

My mother's doctor claims that she (mom) has an allergy to tomatoes and apples because they give her headaches if she eats them.

I've been confused by this for about two years now. I've never ever heard of that before. It doesn't really sound like an allergy... :confused:
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Probably it's an intolerance, but the medical profession also overuse the word allergy because they patronisingly assume we're all too stupid to understand anything else.
I have various chemical sensitivities (because I have M.E.), so for instance hair spray will give me a headache and sore throat. If I try to explain that to people though, they can't get their heads round it, and can be heard later explaining to other people "Oh, she's allergic to hairspray". I've even used the A word myself on some occasions just to save time and energy. You can't really win.
 
Indeed. I don't drink coffee cos it makes me projectile vomit.
:D
 
Teacher writes threatening letters to herself
July 21 2004 at 08:33PM

Pasadena - An assistant principal at a California high school was arrested for allegedly sending herself 39 threatening letters she claimed were sent by students.

Mary Andrea Mitchel, 41, who works at San Marino High School, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to 123 charges and was jailed after Superior Court Judge Barbara Lee Burke set bail at 0 000 (about R2,5-million) bail.

Mitchel notified police about the threatening letters, which began arriving in March and continued until November, deputy district attorney Shelly Torrealba said. Some of the typed letters contained white powder, she said.

Mitchel offered seven names of students who might have sent the letters, and the students were investigated but never arrested, Torrealba said.

'That was a cry for help'

The assistant principal was given escorts and surveillance, Torrealba said, and police appealed to the FBI and US Postal Service for help in the investigation.

Mitchel eventually admitted she wrote the letters to get attention, the prosecutor said.

Mitchel was also charged with threatening the high school's resource officer, who is a police employee.

Defence attorney Michael Mayock said Mitchel and the resources officer Jim Henson were romantically involved.

"She was attempting to extricate herself from a situation she couldn't put up with. That was a cry for help," Mayock said. - Sapa-AP


This article was originally published on July 21, 2004
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http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=22&art_id=qw1090434781734B224
 
I think it's a bit of both with most people. Certainly the mind can create very real and distressing symptoms all by itself. (which of course has a Fortean link in stigmatics)
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Ha Ha I'd never thought of it like that before.

The most obviously physical symptom I've ever had (thankfully rarely as an adult) is an odd form of ecema on my hands. Like I wake up one morning and there's small fluid filled bubbles in my skin, then for about a week or two I get more and more of them and they get bigger until my hands are almost covered in what looks like blisters. They itch like nothing else, and a really bad case felt like I was wearing rubber gloves. Then almost overnight it goes into a 'dry' phase, and the skin hardens and cracks. At least with that it's not super uncomfortable as long as you moisturise heavily every few hours.

It's kind of weird knowing now that it's my mind doing that, even though it's not something that I could have consciously done. it raises all sorts of questions about personal resposibility too that I haven't got my head around yet. From a purely functional perspective, I'm responsible for doing this to myself, but knowing that doesn't seem to stop anything from happening. I think I need to run this one past my therapist or something...
 
beakboo said:
It really annoys me too when people say they're "allergic" to all and sundry, when what they mean is it doesn't quite agree with them. It's either that they don't know what an allergy is, or they thrive on drama.
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I totally agree with you, but I have to tell this little tale...

I once read a text on etiquette by a lady considered to the the premier knower of those things in Sweden... answers questions in tv and newspapers about the right thing to wear on early mornings weddings in late autumm if you're the groom's sister and so on. The question was that to do if you. at a party, were served something you loathed to eat but wasn't allergic too in any way.

Her answer was that you should claim to be "a bit allergic" to the foodstuff in question, because no hostess would ever be so impolite as to question your statement. This becasue simply telling her the truth would make her feel bad about not knowing and taking into account your hatred of whatever it was you don't want to eat. :rolleyes:
 
Chigrima said:
Her answer was that you should claim to be "a bit allergic" to the foodstuff in question, because no hostess would ever be so impolite as to question your statement. This becasue simply telling her the truth would make her feel bad about not knowing and taking into account your hatred of whatever it was you don't want to eat. :rolleyes:
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Oh dear, she's never met me of course. I'm afraid I might have to question the guest on the medical basis for this self diagnosis. I would also expect a guest to let me know in advance if they can't eat a particular food, in fact, I always make a point of asking.
I think the onus is on the guest to tell the hostess, not for the hostess to be psychic.
 
I worked with a girl who came in one morning making a big deal out of the fact that she didn't feel very well as she'd eaten peantus the night before and she was allergic to them.
Needless to say she didn't get much sympathy, just questions like "why did you eat them if you know you're not supposed to?" and "if it's that bad you should go to hospital" etc. She must have thought we were all stupid.
Out of earshot, she was awarded the nickname Peanut.... silly mare!!! :rolleyes:
 
The BF used to claim to be 'allergic' to ice. Ice!

I let it go for a while, then challenged him.

'You can't be allergic to ice. Ice is just frozen water.'

He disagreed as when he was a kid he'd had reactions to ice creams, ice lollies, ice pops and so on so he MUST be allergic to ice.

No, I said, when you were a kid those products were full of E numbers which set off a lot of kids. It was the chemicals added to the ices which disagreed with you.

Haven't heard anything about being allergic to ice for quite some time now. :D

The problem of simply hating a particular food is a little tricky because disliking individual foods feels childish.

I'm veggie, which I have no problem discussing, but there's one vegetable which even the sight of makes me nauseous. Not an allergy or intolerance, I just can't bear it.

This is embarrassing to disclose and looks ungrateful when a host has gone to a lot of trouble. :(
 
Doubts over 'honour killing' book

By Phil Mercer
BBC correspondent in Sydney

A controversial book about the "honour killing" of a Jordanian woman has been withdrawn by publishers in Australia after the author was accused of fabricating the story.

Norma Khouri's Forbidden Love was a best-seller in Australia.

It is a first-hand account of a Muslim woman's death, murdered by her father over her relationship with a Christian.

But an Australian newspaper says it has uncovered dozens of inconsistencies. The author stands by her story.

Norma Khouri's celebrated story details the tragedy of her best friend, a Muslim woman in Jordan who falls in love with a Christian man.

The relationship so enraged her family that she was murdered.

'Harrowing memoir'

At the time of its launch in Australia two years ago,the book was marketed as "a harrowing memoir by a Jordanian woman whose lifelong friend was the victim of an honour killing at the hands of her own father".

Over the weekend the Sydney Morning Herald alleged that the author had fabricated the story.

The paper said an exhaustive investigation spanning three continents had uncovered a series of lies.

It claimed the author had lived in Jordan only until she was three and that the central character in the book never existed.

Evidence

The publisher of Forbidden Love in Australia said it was being withdrawn until its authenticity could be proved.

In a statement, Random House said it had requested evidence from the author that the book was a true representation of her life and experiences.

Norma Khouri has strongly rejected the allegations.

She said she stood by her story and insisted she could prove she was telling the truth.

The 34-year-old writer lives a reclusive life in north-eastern Australia.

She has been granted asylum on account of the troubled past she said she suffered in the Middle East.
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BBCi News 26/07/04
 
Sparta woman going to trial for faking husband's death on 9/11




Donna Miller


(Sparta, August 13, 2004, 6:27 p.m.) A woman from Sparta accused of telling the American Red Cross that her husband died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks so she could collect money is heading to trial.

Donna Miller waived her preliminary hearing this week which means the case moves to circuit court.

Prosecutors say Miller collected more than ,000 from the American Red Cross by saying her husband Michael died when the World Trade Center towers fell.

Michael Miller is actually alive and well.

Donna Miller faces five years in prison and must pay restitution if convicted.
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http://www.woodtv.com/global/story.asp?s=2172453
 
The Boy Who Cried Wolf Effect

This also takes into account some of the reports posted in the Missing People thread too:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1583

Crying Wolf

By Neil Parmar -- Publication Date: Jul/Aug 2004

Summary: What spurs people to stage crimes against themselves?



Once feared kidnapped—or worse—Audrey Seiler, a University of Wisconsin honors student, was found this spring curled up near a marsh in Madison. She told police she’d been held captive at knifepoint for four days. Melissa McGee, from Auburn, Washington, reported she had been raped in a park last year while her 5-year-old daughter played nearby. And last year a 16-year-old New York girl said a man with a swastika tattoo punched her in the face after she refused to get into his car.

All three women have since admitted their stories were fabricated. The Seiler and McGee cases have another common thread: Both seemed to be cries for attention targeted at specific people. Seiler allegedly sought her disinterested boyfriend’s eye, while McGee reportedly hoped her parents would pay her rent.

Such stories aren’t as rare as one might think. Although few match the media frenzy generated by the Seiler case, newspapers are sprinkled with local stories of crime fakery. Many hoaxes are discovered, but it’s likely that others are not.

Psychologists have dubbed the phenomenon The Boy Who Cried Wolf Effect, named after Aesop’s fable about a shepherd who fakes wolf attacks. In real life, experts say, these “shepherds,” mostly women, aren’t acting out of boredom. These damsels in distress are very often motivated by an intense desire for attention and may feel unfairly neglected by those close to them, often romantic partners. Others are simply crying out to a world they feel ignores them.

People who fake crimes are transforming feelings of invisibility into a fantasy that they may come to believe is reality, says Bonnie Jacobson, a psychologist and director of the New York Institute for Psychological Change in New York City. She says a “hoaxer” wins attention by playing the passive victim, similar to a person with Munchausen syndrome, who fakes an illness to get the attention of doctors or loved ones. But that doesn’t mean that people who perpetrate large-scale deceptions are necessarily in need of psychiatric help, says Maureen O’Sullivan, a University of San Francisco psychology professor who studies how people lie.

They simply may be good actors, which is in part why we believe them. In one study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, O’Sullivan found people will more readily believe even outrageous lies when the deceiver is familiar, outgoing and outwardly happy. That’s because we tend to “listen” to their personality more than the content of their story. Hoaxes often spin out of control, O’Sullivan warns, when the liar decides to harm herself to make the hoax appear more convincing.

Among crime hoaxes, there’s a subset of tricksters who concoct crimes for political causes, says Gregg O. McCrary, a retired FBI agent who profiles criminals as director of Behavioral Criminology International, a consultancy in Fredericksburg, Virginia. This kind of hoaxer is just as likely to be a man as a woman. A recent case occurred last November when Jaime Alexander Saide, a Northwestern University student in Evanston, Illinois, published a column about his Mexican heritage in the campus newspaper after he claimed to be the target of two hate crimes. Saide later confessed to filing false reports to bring attention to campus race relations.

While most reported hate crimes are real, hoaxes often occur on college campuses around the same time as antiracism forums, says Laird Wilcox, who’s currently updating his book, Crying Wolf, to include more than 320 staged hate crimes that he’s tracked in the U.S. since 1994. Consider the recent case of Kerri Dunn, a social psychology professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, who police suspect may have slashed her own car’s tires, smashed its windshield and spray-painted it with racial slurs just hours before speaking at a campus forum against hate crimes last spring. Two eyewitnesses identified her as the culprit shortly after hundreds of students marched to protest the crime. Dunn denies that she staged the attack.

Another big tip-off is when an alleged victim calls the press before calling the police. “These people are not knowledgeable about what a typical crime looks like,” McCrary says. “You’ll try to find support for their allegations and find the facts don’t match up.”

Seiler, the supposed Wisconsin abductee, was exposed when police uncovered a store surveillance video that captured her purchasing rope, cold medication and a knife—all items that she claimed were used to hold her captive. Detectives soon discovered that only a month before, the 20-year-old had claimed she was attacked and knocked unconscious near her apartment.

Investigating hoaxes is costly. Seiler’s case sparked a manhunt involving 150 officers, police dogs and a helicopter. It cost more than ,000. She faces 18 months in jail and a ,000 fine for lying to police. According to police interviews, she says: “I set everything up. I’m just so messed up. I’m sorry.”
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http://www.psychologytoday.com/htdocs/prod/PTOArticle/pto-20040825-000003.asp

The book mentioned is:

Crying Wolf: Hate Crime Hoaxes in America
Laird Wilcox (1994)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0922915180/
 
Re: The Boy Who Cried Wolf Effect

Emperor said:
In one study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, O’Sullivan found people will more readily believe even outrageous lies when the deceiver is familiar, outgoing and outwardly happy.
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http://www.psychologytoday.com/htdocs/prod/PTOArticle/pto-20040825-000003.asp
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The paper is:
O’Sullivan, M. (2003) The fundamental attribution error in detecting deceit: The boy-who-cried-
wolf effect.. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 29 (10). 1316 - 27.
http://www.sagepub.com/journalIssue.aspx?pid=65&jiid=80659

abstract


Most people are unable to detect accurately when others are lying. Many explanations for this inability have been suggested but the cognitive heuristics involved in lie detection have received little attention. The present study offers evidence from two experiments, based on two different groups of observers, judging two different kinds of lies, presented in two different testing situations, that the fundamental attribution error significantly undermines the ability to detect honesty and deception accurately. Trait judgments of trustworthiness were highly correlated with state judgments of truthfulness, leading, as predicted, to positive correlations with honest detection accuracy and negative correlations with deception detection accuracy. More accurate lie detectors were significantly more likely than less accurate lie detectors to separate state and trait judgments of honesty. The effect of other biases, such as the halo effect and the truthfulness bias, also are examined. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.


keyword(s)
deception, social cognition, judgment errors, heuristics, accuracy,
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Homepage:
http://artsci.usfca.edu/servlet/ShowEmployee?empID=264

Bio (PDF):
http://www.ets.org/research/dload/ei-conference/O'Sullivan.pdf
 
Shot policeman suspected of faking attack
By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent
08 October 2004

A policeman awarded a commendation for bravery has been arrested on suspicion that he deliberately shot himself in the stomach to fake an attack.

An attempted murder inquiry costing hundreds of thousands of pounds was launched after PC William Morrison, 50, was wounded in an apparent attack in north London in December 2002. But the officer, since promoted to sergeant, became the focus of the inquiry after the investigating officers became suspicious of his story.

Sgt Morrison was being questioned yesterday at a police station in north London after being arrested and charged with firearms offences and attempting to pervert the course of justice. The officer, who works in Islington, was a probationer PC at the time of the shooting.

[...]

Glen Smyth, chairman of the Police Federation's Met branch, said then: "It is a unique set of circumstances to be seriously injured twice in the line of duty in such a short time." But investigating officers from the Specialist Crime Directorate, who deal with firearms incidents, were suspicious of PC Morrison's story. Despite a lengthy inquiry and several public appeals no one has been arrested for the shooting.

Several months ago the investigating officers turned their attention to their colleague and a covert inquiry was set up. Some of the Met's most senior officers were kept informed of the progress of the case because of the extreme sensitivity of investigating a officer in such circumstances.

Sgt Morrison was arrested at his home in Tottenham, north London, on Tuesday. A police source said yesterday: "This is one of the most bizarre cases I have come across in my career."
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http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=569938
 
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