Your Brain Knows More Than You Think by Niels Birbaumer

Author:Niels Birbaumer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SCI089000, SCI090000, PSY051000, MED056000, PSY022000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2017-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

7

Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key?

even psychopaths can change

Stefan was successful, charming, amusing, sometimes quick-tempered, but otherwise friendly — a perfectly well-regarded member of society. Then, together with a friend of his, he was accused of kidnapping several women and abusing them. Could such a man really be a ruthless and cold-hearted criminal?

His case was heard in court in the summer of 2008, and it left the public, and even hardnosed lawyers and journalists, aghast. Not only because of the crimes themselves — videos of some of which were able to be shown in court, because the two men had filmed them — but also because the 42-year-old web designer displayed absolutely no emotion during the entire trial. He was obviously totally indifferent to the suffering of his victims.

The story of his crimes begins in August 2006, when he and a friend placed a contact ad in a newspaper offering ‘attractive and well-paid part-time jobs’. When a foreign psychology student replied, Stefan and his friend asked her to meet them at a two-storey house, from which she was not to re-emerge for three months. The 23-year-old woman was stripped naked and wrapped in cling film, kept in a cage and raped repeatedly, and eventually forced into prostitution. She was made to eat her food, mostly dry pasta, from a dog’s bowl and was led round the house on a dog’s leash by the two men. A few days later, she was joined in captivity by another woman, who suffered similar abuse at the hands of the two men. The second woman was also forced to have sex with paying customers, all of which was filmed using a camera hidden in a teddy bear. The two victims’ ordeal did not come to an end until the criminals kidnapped a third woman, who managed to escape through a skylight — naked, with her hands still cuffed together.

During the court case, Stefan’s accomplice showed remorse for his crimes, and it was generally believed that his feelings were genuine. This did not result in any leniency from the court or sympathy among the public, but people were willing to accept that there was some spark of empathy in him. The same was not necessarily true of Stefan. He showed no emotion at all, and certainly uttered not a single word of remorse. His strategy was a different one: he hoped to be spared jail by arguing that he should be classified as mentally ill. He believed that it would be easier for him to influence things in his interest in closed psychiatric care than ordinary prison — although he did not give the impression that he was in any way afraid of a lengthy prison sentence. Stefan’s attitude rather resembled that of a Monopoly player trying persuade a fellow player to sell him Mayfair. But his plan backfired.

A psychiatric expert confirmed sadistic and narcissistic personality traits, as well as an antisocial personality disorder, leading the court to sentence Stefan to 14 years in jail with subsequent preventive detention, due to the ‘threat he posed to the community’.

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