It Was Bound to Happen

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

The news we have been expecting has finally broken: Scores, if not hundreds of women have written to, posted and tweeted about their attraction to imprisoned Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The psychiatric name for this phenomenon is hybristophelia: a paraphilia in which a person is sexually or erotically attracted to an individual who has committed a gruesome crime or outrage. The classic example given in most descriptions is Bonnie Parker’s attraction to Clyde Barrow. Where we see it, though, is with women approaching already incarcerated offenders. And we see it so often that we have developed a nearly 100% accurate profile.

It often starts out as a pen pal relationship. It can then blossom into love, and even marriage, with the full knowledge that her spouse will likely forever remain behind bars.

Included in the profile is loneliness and a real or perceived inability to make it with “normal” men; a vicarious fascination with excitement, violence or the taboo; a desire to nurture or “mother” those who have never had sufficient attention or “understanding.” This is often combined with the seemingly contradictory feelings of low self-esteem and an illogical, self-righteous confidence in their ability to “reform” the killer and make him a peaceful and productive member of society.

But whether the motivation is sexual or maternal, and regardless of the age of the woman relative to the offender, the one trait that holds up is that these women are misdirected and psychologically inadequate.

We have seen only one exception to this: Lorri Davis, the great lady who wrote to West Memphis Three lead defendant Damien Echols on death row and eventually married him. But Lorri is not even the exception that proves the rule, since she believed Damien was innocent and then dedicated her life to getting him and his codefendants out of prison. In fact, Lorri is one of the most complete women we have encountered.

Tsarnaev, on the other hand, though in the eyes of the law technically innocent until proven guilty, is most assuredly a bad actor responsible for death and horrible injury. And any woman attracted to him on any level, for any reason, should examine her own emotional inadequacies and refocus her passions and sensibilities in a more worthy direction.

This guy is a loser. And we feel sorry for the many women who seem to want to share that label with him.

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