Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic PsychologyHealy, William
Science
Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic Psychology
Healy, William
Criminal psychology; Swindlers and swindling
On the next day she talked straight to the point, but with a
remarkably dull expression on her face. She said that about five
weeks ago, she cannot tell the exact date, she went to a
neighbor's house. A man there wanted her to come and look at
some pictures. He finally got her to go to a bedroom and then
held her so she could not scream, and raped her. She is sure of
it. He later choked and beat her and kicked her out of the
house. At first she was afraid to tell her people. A couple of
weeks afterward she went back and asked why he did that, and he
swore at her and accused her of being bad, and she and he talked
back and forth for some time. ``He says, `I'll kill you. I did
not touch you at all.' I says, `You did. You're a liar and you
can kill me now if you want to. You have already killed me.
See, I grow large like this.' '' He then set upon her and beat
her again. She has not seen him since. After telling this
Georgia began to cry very hard and said that she really is killed
now and is done for. The whole story was told in a
straightforward way with a full show of emotion.
A complicating feature of this case, resultant upon lack of
understanding of the characteristic vagaries of this type, was
the action of a vigorous knight errant. He was the one who
rescued her. Hearing her ask in the drug store for the carbolic
acid, which she did not get, he thought she was desperate and
questioned her, but she tearfully refused to answer. He quietly
followed her until she got to the river, and then, when she had
her foot on the rail of the bridge and was about to jump off, he
seized her. She fought and kicked him so that she badly hurt one
of his legs. She told him she had reason to commit suicide. He
got her to some house and there she fainted. When she came to
she described her situation to him, naming a man who boarded with
a neighbor as having raped her. She told him this was the reason
she had tried to commit suicide.
This young man visited Georgia's family, found them strangely
indifferent and not inclined to believe the girl, so he set out
to see that justice was done. With his well-intended efforts he
succeeded in getting several agencies to work on the case, the
parents meanwhile partly resenting his interference. They said
they knew what kind of a girl she was.
We never felt thoroughly satisfied with the family history on
account of the comparative ignorance of the parents, our only
source of information, although they were honest enough people.
All points in heredity seemed negative, nor could we learn that
there had been anything significant in developmental conditions.
The girl had only recently menstruated. Her people felt that of
late her word was quite unreliable. She went as far as the 4th
grade. On account of the short time in school in this country
this was considered doing fairly well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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