Shaming Playing the Victim Role

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4.1.8. Shaming

Shaming is the strategy that manipulators use which includes saying sarcasm and even striking people back in a subtle way. This strategy is done to make people doubt that the manipulators are bad persons. Data 13 Reporter : So you’re not guilty?Appendix i, no. 14 Ted Bundy : I am not guilty? Does that include the time when I stole a comic book when I was 5 years old?Appendix i, no. 15, line 1-2 In his statement above, Ted was using sarcasm in responding to the reporter’s question about whether or not he was guilty. He tried to make a little joke which was essentially sarcastic by asking back “Does that include the time when I stole a comic book when I was 5 years old?” What he implied by saying such a thing is that he was not aware of what kind of guilt that the reporter was talking about, because he simply did not think that he should feel any guilt. Data 14 Ted Bundy : People say, “Ted Bundy didn’t show any emotion, there must be something in there.” I showed emotion and you know what people said? “See, he really can get violent and angry.” There’s no one right way for me to act.Appendix i, no. 4, line 1-3 In his statement above, Ted claimed that he did not have one right way to act because whatever he did would always appear wrong in people’s eyes. This is a kind of sarcasm to show that he was actually just a normal person with emotions. He 48 wanted to show it was the people who were not being fair in judging him. This is the kind of language manipulation strategy that could put people in doubt and turn to absorb whatever the manipulator says.

4.1.9. Playing the Victim Role

Manipulators use this strategy to set themselves as victims of one condition in order to gain sympathy. They use this strategy to convince people that they are helpless under a certain circumstance. Data 15 Dr. Dobson : You had gone about as far as you could go in your own fantasy life, with printed material, photos, videos, and then there was the urge to take that big step over to a physical event.Appendix ii, no. 15 Ted Bundy : Right. It happens in stages, gradually. It doesn’t, necessarily not to me, happen overnight. My experience with pornography that deals with sexual violence is that... Once you become addicted to it, and I look at this as a kind of addiction, and like other kinds of addiction, you’d keep looking for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of material. Like an addiction, you keep craving something which is harder, harder; something which gives you a greater sense of excitement, until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far. You reach that jumping off point where you begin to wonder that maybe actually doing it will give you that was just beyond reading about it or looking at it.Appendix ii, no. 16 49 In his explanation above, Ted claimed that his addiction to pornography led him to take a bigger step from only visualising it into applying it in reality. By stating that once he became addicted to pornography, he would keep looking for something which was more potent and explicit and could give him greater sense of excitement, he actually set himself as a victim of the addiction. By stating “Until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far – that jumping off point where you being to wonder if maybe actually doing it will you that was just beyond reading about it and looking at it”, he wanted people to believe that it was his addiction to pornography that stimulated his further criminal action. Data 16 Ted Bundy : I was dealing with very strong inhibitions against criminal and violent behaviour that been conditioned and bred into me from my neighborhood, environment, church, and school. I knew it was wrong to think about it, and certainly, to do it was wrong. I was on the edge, and the last vestiges of restraint were being tested constantly, and assailed through the kind of fantasy life that was fueled, largely, by pornography.Appendix ii, no. 20, line 1-6 In his statement above, Ted was trying to let people picture him as a helpless victim by saying, “I was on the edge, and the last vestiges of restraint were being tested constantly, and assailed through the kind of fantasy life that was fueled, largely, by pornography.” He was saying that he was being tested constantly until he could not control his action. Although since his childhood he was taught to stand against criminal and violent behaviour, but it was not enough to hold him back from trying to commit crimes because he had a fantasy life that was largely fueled by 50 pornography. In the statement above, he indirectly set himself as a victim of pornography. Data 17 Dr. Dobson : Do you remember what pushed you over that edge? Do you remember the decision to go for it? Do you remember where you decided to throw caution to the wind?Appendix ii, no. 21 Ted Bundy : It’s a very difficult thing to describe. The sensation of reaching that point where I knew I couldn’t control it anymore. The barriers I had learned as a child were not enough to hold me back from seeking out and harming somebody.Appendix ii, no. 22 The language manipulation strategy appears in Ted’s statement which says, “The sensation of reaching that point where I knew I couldn’t control it anymore.” Stating that he could not control it anymore suggests that he was powerless and vulnerable to his addiction, that he finally had no choice other than taking further action to harm somebody. He also stated that the barriers that he had learned as a child were not enough to hold him back from seeking out and harming somebody. When he used the phrase, “... were not enough”, he had once again placed himself as a victim of a circumstance, that he was a vulnerable person which was unable to control his own action. 51 Data 18 Dr. Dobson : After you committed your first murder, what was the emotional effect on you? What happened in the days after that?Appendix ii, no. 31 Ted Bundy : It was like coming out of some kind of horrible trance or dream. I can only liken it to, and I don’t want to overdramatize it, but to have been possessed by something so awful and alien, and then the next morning wake up and remember what happened and realize that in the eyes of law, and certainly in the eyes of God, you’re responsible. To wake up in the morning and realize what I had done with a clear mind, with all my essential moral and ethical feelings intact at that moment, absolutely horrified that I was capable of doing something like that.Appendix ii, no. 32, line 3-9 In the conversation above, the interviewer asked Ted about the emotional effect that he felt after he commited his first murder. Ted answered it by saying that it was like coming out of some kind of horrible trance or dream. In his statement above which says “To have been possessed by something so awful and alien”, he had put himself, once more, as a victim. The fact that he said, “Absolutely horrified that I was capable of doing something like that” made it clear that he wanted to plant on people’s mind that even he, himself, was horrified by his action, and therefore make people see him as a victim, rather than an actor. 52

4.1.10. Vilifying the Victim