Jaclyn Nugent & Kurt Paschke
At MetLife Stadium after this past Sunday’s NFL football game in which the New York Jets upset the mighty New England Patriots, a male Jets fan punched a female Patriots fan immediately after being pulled away from another fight.
Why are we not surprised?
No, it has nothing to do with the general comportment of New York sports fans, which both of us, from time to time, are and/or have been. It has nothing to do with the fact that the game came down to an overtime nail-biter. It has to do with one basic tenet of behavioral analysis: Past action predicts future action.
A video of the incident shows the Jets fan, 38-year-old Kurt Paschke II, being pulled away from a fight. A blonde woman, 26-year-old Jaclyn Nugent, steps forward and Pasche immediately punches her on the left side of her head.
Well, it turns out Paschke was convicted of negligent homicide in 1995, when he would have been 19 or 20, after fatally stabbing a 17-year-old man in a fight behind a pizzeria in Suffolk County, Long Island. He was paroled after three years and has been arrested twice since then, both times for disorderly conduct.
Paschke’s mother told a CNN affiliate that her son merely acted in self defense against the woman at the stadium. “If the girl is going to be out of control like that, why can’t a guy defend himself,” she asked, in the process perhaps unwittingly hinting at some of the reason her son is the way he is.
We don’t know if this man’s upbringing made him the way he is. And we don’t know if the woman said or did something to provoke him, as some reports suggest. Paschke, Nugent and two others have been charged with simple assault and disorderly conduct.
We’re just saying we’re not surprised.
As someone who has been studying different martial arts for over a decade I call BS. He didn’t even try to defend himself, he just reacted violently. In the video he even appears to be smiling. There are plenty of ways to disarm a situation without your first reaction being violence. He should be sent back to prison as this type of behavior is horrible in a modern society.
I always respect the opinions of the intelligent posters here, but for those who think this man was just defending himself, I have to say: A man who is physically attacking a woman a foot shorter and half his weight is not “defending” himself, I don’t care what she did. She should have been restrained, not punched.
I agree with the idea that men should never physically hurt women. That said, I’ve seen abusive women physically hurt men and get away with it because they were women. I don’t believe in anyone physically harming anyone, regardless of sex. Women and men, both, need to know it’s not ok to use their hands to express themselves.
I, too, saw the video and immediately felt Kurt Pascke was being physically attacked and responded by defending himself.
That said, these are the questions that I have:
1. Did he have a father or father figure present in his environment as he was growing up?
2. If he did, was the father present for his mother?
3. Is he the oldest or first son?
4. How much power was he given in his environment?
I’m actually replying to myself 🙂
Yes, he has a father. His father is a retired police officer. Pascke’s parents live across the street from him. This speaks volumes to me.
I haven’t read anything regarding there being other siblings.
My questions were aimed at either eliminating or confirming the possibility of Pascke being a narcissistic personality type.
I’m leaning towards a yes.
Being the daughter of a retired police officer, I can tell you that they are often working long shifts, sometimes inconsistently.
That would leave him, who I believe is either an only or eldest son, to care for the mother and home in some capacity. In essence, “the man of the house.”
When those responsibilities are given to a child at a young age and they are rewarded to them in the form of too much power too soon, the child bypasses the natural process of gaining power at the appropriate time and is, in essence, an immature adult. I won’t even get into why these parents do this to their children. I’ll just say, it is a form of abuse.
They tend to align themselves with adults at a young age. They are not taught the difference between themselves and adults and usually can be found disrespecting teachers and other “authority” figures because of their lack of boundaries.
I’ve also studied birth dates and how they affect behaviors. If I had to guess, based solely on what is available to me online, he was born on the 1st, 10th, 19th or 29th of whatever month he was born in.
Eventually, we’ll use different sciences to figure these things out. More information is more knowledge.
Ok, one last reply to myself. I just read an article and it seems his birthdate is actually October 25th.
I need to disagree on this one. Past behavior predicts future behavior, yes…and I had no idea of this man’s past criminal record….1 homicide, 2 disorderly…..(but apparently the homicide was not ruled murder and the disorderly could be almost anything).
Anyway, I did see the video, so as video witness…..I saw a burly bear like man, I’d guess 6’2″ 230lbs, robust and active in his mid 30’s, half drunk/ but the whole crowd seemed half drunk. I saw him ‘lose’ a slap/push fight with other males, be pulled away…and then retreating head down…until…This little blonde ‘girl’ (I’d guess 130 lbs, mid 20’s) runs….right up his back….and attacks him!
Whether she was going to punch him, pull his hair, I don’t know. Everyone in the video seems ‘over excited’ by the peak of the ‘game’ and it’s end. At any rate he whirls around and with one big ‘bear paw’ smacks her right in the left side of the head making the people on scene gasp.
The fact she did not get knocked out or go down or be even seriously injured from such a blow is…. incredible.
But, in terms of criminal assault, from the video I’d have to say ….she attacked the bear 1st.
I agree. If I were on a jury and that was the evidence presented, I would say he was defending himself.
….. And the clock went tick-tock, tick-tock, and tick-tock.
This story brings to mind a character I read about recently in a wonderful non-fiction book by two authors you undoubtedly know. His initials were E.K. E.K. was also treated quite leniently by the judicial system and according to his own account had an outspoken mother, as well. However, when his clock struck 12, he caused great havoc in a college community before realizing who it was he really meant to quiet, and even then, thanks to her tenacity, not even he, nor the sink’s garbage disposal, could quiet without great resistance.
For the sake of Ms. Nugent, thank goodness the Jet’s won. For the sake of others who may inadvertently fall into Paschke’s future path, well, honestly and truly, I don’t know. But, let history be the teacher.
That’s all I’m saying.
I can never think about Kemper without wondering how his life would have been different if he had just listened to his doctor. When he left the mental hospital his psychiatrist told him to stay clear of his mother, and yet he moves in with her again and we all know what followed. I find this fascinating about families in which abuse exists that some children just seem to develop learned helplessness and really do not seem to think they can survive without the abuser–its like some weird symbiotic cancer. At any rate, any time that the concept of past behavior predicting future actions comes into play I automatically think about three cases: 1) Arthur Shawcross–sexually assaulted and killed two children, ages 8 and 10, sentenced to 25 years and got out in less than 15, around a year after release Shawcross began a killing season in which he murdered 11 prostitutes. 2) John Wayne Gacy–served less than two years of a ten year sentence for sexual assaults of minors, later went on to kill 33 boys and young men upon release. In Gacy’s case there were many many instances where he could have been caught and stopped if just one officer had done a background check on this man whose name kept coming up and found out his past record, and 3) Michael Jacques. This is a lesser known case but one that I think fully explains much, Jacques kidnapped and sexually assaulted a co-worker and was sentenced to 20 years, he served a little over half that and was released and considered “cured” after completing the Vermont sex offender program. Soon after, Jacques was not only sexually assaulting one teenage girl, but used her to lure his 12 year old niece to his home where he drugged, raped, and killed her.
Perhaps these instances are more extreme than the one being discussed, but the tenets are the same. The only viable predictor of future behavior is, indeed, past behavior. And with most of these offenders, violence is all that they know, it is their coping mechanism, it is what they have been socialized into thinking is normal behavior, it is what they equate sex and power with, and so I find it ridiculous that so many clinicians and administrative criminal justice officials somehow truly think that four weeks of 45 min per week therapy is going to fix that, or, that asking the question “Are you going to hurt someone again?” to a sociopath is a viable form of risk assessment.