A New Female Gumshoe Steps into the Spotlight.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JULY 09, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 070901np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Managing Violence
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

When a person turns violent and opens fire on people at work, kills a spouse or rapes a stranger, that violence probably hasn't come out of nowhere, according to my guest Gavin De Becker.

He's in the business of predicting who's likely to become violent or follow through on a threat. He consults on stalkers, death threats, domestic violence, and violence in the workplace. His clients have included Supreme Court Justices, movie stars, athletes, elected officials, abortion clinics, corporations, and police departments. He's also served on the presidential advisory board at the Department of Justice.

De Becker is the author of the new bestseller "The Gift of Fear," which offers advice on protecting yourself from violence. He says it's impossible to advise people to comply with or resist an attacker. Every situation is different. What he does advise is trust your intuition. I asked him why.

GAVIN DE BECKER, EXPERT ON PREDICTING AND MANAGING VIOLENCE, AND AUTHOR, "THE GIFT OF FEAR": Well, because like every creature on Earth, you've got this astounding God-given ability to protect your own safety; to know when you're in the presence of danger.

And your intuition takes all the advice -- the people who said always comply; always resist; the newspaper article you read; the story you heard from a friend; the advice you saw in the local news. It takes it all and applies it in the only context that really matters, which is the context of the situation you find yourself in then and there.

GROSS: Do you feel that people act on their intuition without even realizing that they're acting on it?

DE BECKER: Many people do, and certainly we act on our fear without realizing that we're really doing it, and without thinking about it first. I hope that my work gives people permission to listen to it more often without debate, because the other side of that coin is people hesitate to listen to it and, you know, while we're cleverly defying our intuition, we're ending up as very frequent victims of violence and accidents.

GROSS: You have a lot of, I think, really interesting signs to watch out for -- signs that you're actually being set up by somebody and they're kind of trying to assess whether you'll be a good victim or not, and they're trying to set you up to be their victim.

I want to run through some of these warning signs, which I think are really interesting. You call one of them "forced teaming." What is this?

DE BECKER: Well, all of these strategies are strategies of persuasion, and they're used by predatory criminals and they're also used by other people in different contexts. But if it is used on a woman in a vulnerable situation or a situation where she is alone with someone that she doesn't know or doesn't want to be with, then they're all real important to know about.

And "forced teaming" is basically giving someone -- or trying to give them the impression that we share a predicament together, so that we have a kind of "we're in the same boat" attitude. An example would be: "hey, aren't we a pair? Both stuck here in the rain without an umbrella."

Well, I would hope a victim would say or think, at least: "you don't have an umbrella and I don't have an umbrella. There's no 'we' don't have an umbrella."

And there's a story in the book of a man who says: "hey, we've got a hungry cat upstairs," because he sees that a woman has cat food in her shopping bag. And in fact, you know, "I have a cat and you may have a cat, but 'we' don't have a hungry cat."

He does that because it will make it harder for a woman to rebuff him when there is this sense of some shared experience of "we're in the same boat" kind of experience.

GROSS: I know I've been in the position sometimes of like turning down somebody who wanted to do a favor because I distrusted this stranger's motives. And the stranger can come back at you with something like: "oh, you're just, like, too stuck up to accept a favor" or "boy, you're the most untrusting person I have ever met."

DE BECKER: Right.

GROSS: And you don't know how to respond to that. Should you start being, you know, nicer because you've just been insulted and maybe you have unfairly dismissed somebody's courtesy?

DE BECKER: Well, that's certainly what he is trying to do. That strategy is called "typecasting" and it's where you give a woman a small insult that she can fix easily, like an example would be saying: "you're probably too fancy a woman to go out with a guy with me." And now to prove that you're not too fancy a woman, then you'll continue to talk to someone who you might otherwise not want to talk to.

Or somebody who says: "you don't seem like the kind of woman who reads the newspaper," and now a woman may feel like "oh, I have to show him how smart I am."

And what I tell people is that the nature of those little insults or typecasting is -- you know, as a predatory strategy, he's just trying to continue and extend the encounter, and you may win the little point of demonstrating to him that no, you actually do read the newspaper, but you lose the bigger war which is that you still have someone in your environment who you don't want in your environment.

GROSS: There's something you call "loan sharking."

DE BECKER: Yes, "loan sharking" is probably the most common strategy, and the one that people are most familiar with. That is basically offering to help someone when they didn't ask for help so that they, then, owe you at least the courtesy of continuing to talk to you.

I mean, the typical example is: "can I help you with those groceries?" And then whether or not you accept the help, "I've done this nice thing, so you can't be rude to me now by rebuffing me or by excluding me from conversation."

And it's another one of the strategies that is used all the time to extend the encounter and give a predatory criminal the opportunity to evaluate the situation and, above all, evaluate you.

GROSS: Women so much -- women so often don't want to be rude. And, I mean sometimes on a bus or a train, someone will sit down next to you who's very frightening to you, even, and you won't change your seat because you figure, well, this person might be a very nice unfortunate person and you'd be being rude.

What advice do you have to women who may actually be putting themselves in jeopardy by being polite?

DE BECKER: Well, rudeness is so relative. You know, if you -- what I hope to do is to give people a whole new way to think about that, because people are so concerned that being rude might make a man angry; you know, reasoning that they could turn someone whose intent was favorable into someone dangerous just by not being open to their discussions or their approach.

And I'm glad to tell people that it is impossible, in the context of an unwanted approach from a stranger, to transform an ordinary, decent man into a rapist or a killer. And then, on the other side, thankfully, it is possible to transform yourself into a person who responds to the signals and thus is a less likely victim.

You know, we teach kids now that a stranger who approaches you is a problem. And I want to teach adults that a stranger who approaches a woman in a remote area is, himself, doing something rude, because it is known -- it is predictable -- that that would cause her discomfort or fear. The approach is rude.

So in context, it's not rude to say to somebody: "hey, I'd rather not talk."

GROSS: You know, you talk about relying on your intuition, but I think there are times when you might confuse intuition with deeply-ingrained stereotyping or racism.

And you might find yourself in an encounter with somebody who is of a different ethnic group or race or religion than you, and you're -- you feel like, oh, you intuitively distrust this person, when what's really happening is that you're just acting on deeply-ingrained racist feelings that you were brought up with. And you don't want that to happen.

DE BECKER: No, it's a great point. And what I hope people come away with here is that demographics are absolutely irrelevant to safety. Demographics are for pollsters and oddsmakers. It makes no difference to you in the situation you're whether the person whose behavior concerns you is black or white -- no difference whatsoever.

What matters is that you can see the pre-incident indicators. You can see the signals that human beings send each other prior to violence and as part of violent encounters, and it is about predicting human behavior, not demographics.

And it's a very good point you raise, because people do have in their minds all sorts of information from things they saw in the local TV news that aren't necessarily relevant to their circumstance and the context of their situation.

We may say: "oh, well, this is one of those demographic groups that's more likely to hurt me," but while you're thinking about the -- you know, the black man who may hurt you and you're focused on that, you will fail to see the strategies of the white or Hispanic or Oriental person whose behavior is the issue.

GROSS: I think that behavior is in some ways getting really hard to predict. For instance, you say that, like, if you're a woman walking alone and you feel like somebody might be following you, instead of furtively turning your head and giving them a kind of hidden glance to see if there's really somebody there or not, you should turn around and stare the person in the face in this really no-nonsense way.

I would argue, though, that then you risk this person feeling like you're dissed them in some way. And you know, how many times do you read in the paper or hear about on the news somebody who shot somebody because of the look that they were given?

DE BECKER: Well, the fact is that many people who act out violently use as their excuse later on: "that person was rude to me" or "that person did such and such," which is a way of not taking responsibility for one's action. There's nothing that I could do to you with a look that would justify my being killed.

But with regard to your question, really I don't recommend that people turn around and stare at someone. What I do recommend is that you turn your head completely, take in everything, and look squarely at someone who concerns you, because it not only gives you information, but it communicates to him that you're not a tentative, frightened, you know, victim-in-waiting.

I want to tell people that you are an animal of nature that's fully endowed with hearing and sight and intellect, and that you're not easy prey, so don't act tentative, like easy prey. I do not, however, recommend staring someone down by any measure; just looking at them and taking in the information.

And there is clearly a provocation that comes from staring at people. I mean, with a look alone I could get into a fight with another man. And that's not what I'm recommending, but I am recommending: don't be tentative; look fully at someone so they know you see them.

GROSS: Do you think that people should carry mace to protect themselves?

DE BECKER: Well, mace is a product name for a particular kind of tear gas. If one is going to carry that type -- these are irritants that, you know, burn the eye and the face and affect the breathing -- I prefer pepper spray, which is a better product in my opinion in that it works on a wider number of people in the population.

I think it's a perfectly good thing. It gives you a slight advantage of removing someone's ability to see and it causes a great deal of discomfort and it's non-lethal. So, I certainly don't oppose pepper spray.

GROSS: If somebody is obviously addled because they're high on drugs, do you think that it's easy to assess what their behavior is going to be? Or are all bets off there?

DE BECKER: Well, I don't think in any circumstance all bets are off, because, really, if someone is in your environment who is a stranger; who makes you feel uncomfortable; and who's also high on drugs or alcohol -- your prediction is done.

Now, it's a matter of what strategies you apply, but the element of predicting human behavior couldn't be any easier than when you have somebody in your environment who causes you discomfort and is high or drunk.

GROSS: But I mean in terms of deciding whether you should comply or find any way to run for your life; even if that person is threatening you with your life if you try to flee.

DE BECKER: Well, it usually isn't a decision, interestingly Terry. One of the premises of my work is that fear, true fear, which is the signal that occurs in the presence of danger, is as gift because it guides people through dangerous situations.

I mean, I've got case after case of people who did extraordinary things, even literally a man who fights with a great white shark and wins, on the basis of doing what fear told him, without decisionmaking.

So many people talk about having completed their self-defense strategy, whatever it was, without even thinking about it. And there's a woman who tells me about following a man who would murder her silently down the hall. He doesn't know that she's behind him. And she told me later: "I was a passenger moving on my own legs. I had nothing to do with it."

Because fear says, in effect: "shut up and do what I say and don't debate" and it's usually -- the strategies when it's true fear are over before people get to the decisionmaking mode. It's smarter than we are, in other words.

GROSS: My guest is Gavin De Becker, author of the new bestseller The Gift of Fear. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

If you're just joining us, my guest is Gavin De Becker, and he's an expert on predicting and managing violence. He runs a company that handles this. He's consulted to senators, Supreme Court justices, movie stars who have had stalkers and death threats and so on. He has a new book called The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence.

You've consulted with many people about stalkers. When do you typically get called in on a stalker case? How far has the situation usually progressed by the time you're called in?

DE BECKER: I think the cornerstone characteristic of a case that involves our office is fear; when a victim feels in fear for their safety, that's usually when we're called. Unless it's a prominent public figure, in which case they are often already clients because they are experiencing so many cases and, really, there our chore is to identify which cases rise to the level of concern and which cases don't.

But usually, people involve our office when they are afraid.

GROSS: Does the stalker typically want to be known or want to be invisible?

DE BECKER: Both, depending on which type. I think there's a bold line that we can draw between two types of stalkers: those that pursue media figures, which are the ones we read about often in the paper; and those that pursue regular people.

And talking about those that pursue regular people, they are not usually attention-seekers. They are usually attachment seekers, and you know, the most common form of stalking is by estranged ex-husbands or people in relationships.

And I know Americans are fascinated when a public figure is attacked by a stalker, but that happens about once every three-and-a-half years. A woman is murdered by a stalking ex-husband or ex-boyfriend once every two hours in America. And that's why you'll see in my work a great deal more focus on those kinds of stalking cases than on the ones that generally are interesting to the news media.

GROSS: Well, if you're being stalked by an ex-husband or boyfriend or something, then the idea of "ignore them and they'll go away" is not going to work for you.

DE BECKER: That's absolutely correct. I think if you -- if you are at a circumstance with an ex-husband or an ex-boyfriend where the pre-incident indicators that are associated with escalations of violence or even homicide are present, then you're in a situation where you need to make yourself unavailable to your pursuer, and there are many strategies for doing that. None of them are easy.

The problem is: we want someone to tell us "oh, it will be all right," which is what our denial is telling us very often. And so, you know, literally several times every day, women are murdered in America who knew full well that they were in danger of being killed, but took advice that was easier to take than going to a battered women's shelter, which is really usually the thing to do if you're in a situation where you have a real safety hazard.

GROSS: How effective do you think restraining orders are?

DE BECKER: Well, I think it's a real serious part of this problem, because if you went to a doctor and he said "you've got to have immediate heart surgery because your life is in danger" or "you can carry this piece of paper," of course, most people would say: "oh, I'll take the piece of paper, doc."

But where we are with a lot of these cases is that some of them involve women who are in immediate danger and their life is at risk, and yet they take a strategy which is the one that sounds simple and easy: carry this piece of paper.

The fact is this, based on as many studies as I've been able to locate: about two-thirds of cases improve after getting restraining orders. About one-third do not improve, and in that population there are some that escalate to homicide.

So it's very, very important that anybody who has the opportunity to communicate with potential victims makes this point clear: restraining orders are right for some cases; very wrong for some cases; and the challenge is to know which kind of case yours is.

GROSS: Is that what your job is?

DE BECKER: Absolutely. Both my job in my work and in my work with -- I'm the co-chair of the Domestic Violence Council Advisory Board -- and my job in public education, which I'm doing that job right now -- is to make clear that restraining orders are right for some cases; very wrong for others; and to identify the characteristics associated with where it will help.

And the answer is, usually it resides in the victim, which is asking the victim: "how do you think he's going to react to this?" And if the victim says: "I think he's going to be afraid to be arrested and he's going to leave me alone forever," then that's the right strategy. But if the victim says: "I think he's going to react angrily and possibly escalate," then it is the wrong strategy.

And we really -- we've got a country now that is recommending restraining orders wholesale -- 1,000 a day issued in the United States. And news agencies and local news always saying "here's how you get a restraining order if you're being stalked" instead of "should you get a restraining order if you're being stalked" -- because it's not right for every case.

GROSS: Do you think it's as simple as asking the person who's being stalked what they think the impact of the restraining order will be on their spouse or boyfriend?

DE BECKER: No, it's not as simple as that, but that person -- in that person resides the best information in terms of intuition, and then there are about 40 other things that I talk about that one would measure in these cases to determine if a restraining order is the best strategy.

The real problem is that we can't, and yet we do too often, diagnose a situation on the basis of one characteristic. I mean, can you imagine if a caller called in and said "I have chest pains," would any doctor in the world say "oh, OK, here's what you do" and give a prescription or a treatment plan?

Yet, ironically, women are calling, you know, radio shows and police departments and lawyers all over the country and saying, "I'm being stalked by my angry ex-husband, what should I do?" And people are actually willing to give a treatment plan without a diagnosis.

And that's why women every day are being killed, and in their, you know, personal effects is a restraining order. So clearly it's not right for every case.

GROSS: You consulted to the prosecution team on the O.J. Simpson criminal and defense trials. Can you sum up for us what your -- what your assessment of that situation was?

DE BECKER: Sure. That's a fairly easy one. I consulted with the prosecution on the stalking aspects of the Simpson case, and then I consulted for the Goldman family on their civil action against Simpson. And I consider the crime that Simpson committed to be what I call "murder in defense of the self," as opposed to murder in self-defense.

For him to lose control over Nicole; for her to finally actually reject him entirely after all those years of violence -- and bear in mind, Nicole's intuition was right on the mark. She told 12 different people that she felt he would kill her. She even called a battered women's shelter in the weeks prior to the homicide.

And there isn't much question in my mind regarding the factual elements of the case. Clearly, Simpson is the perpetrator of the homicides. But, where there is a question is in terms of the public's response to it. We are so reluctant to believe that someone we know is also a killer, and that's because we think they're going to look some special way.

Well, I'm here to tell your listeners: murderers look like we look. There isn't an appearance. There isn't, you know, a costume that they're wearing. They don't light candles the day of the homicide and chant to the devil. They do just what Simpson did: they shower; they shave; they get a hamburger; they return their phone calls. That's what it's like, and there's nothing exceptional about Simpson's case except that we gave it a lot of attention.

GROSS: Gavin De Becker is the author of The Gift of Fear. His Los Angeles consulting firm evaluates violent threats. He'll be back with us in the second half of our show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Back with Gavin De Becker. He's an expert on evaluating and dealing with the threat of violence. His firm is called in to consult on stalkers, domestic violence, and violence in the workplace. His clients have included Supreme Court justices, movie stars, corporations, abortion clinics, and a former president.

De Becker is the author of the new bestseller on how to protect yourself from violence, called The Gift of Fear.

You've consulted to so many different kinds of people who've had stalkers, from, you know, employers to Supreme Court justices, famous actors. Are the stalkers that get attracted to different types of people different types of stalkers? Will one type of stalker go for the Supreme Court Justice and another kind for the famous actress?

DE BECKER: Well, I think there are motivational categories that differ, and indeed between the Supreme Court Justice and the famous actress, there can be a difference because of the sexual component of the famous actress, which a political figure, a Supreme Court Justice, or a senator or a congressman doesn't necessarily have.

But people who stalk others, who don't let go, usually do it on the basis of four general motivations. Some are seeking attachment, like a relationship; some are seeking identity, like the assassin of a public official; some are seeking some type of revenge or control over another person.

And so, you have identity seekers and attachment seekers and attention seekers -- and then you have a very small population of those that are delusion-based, where they're stalking someone on the basis of a false belief that usually is the result of mental illness, but that's a very rare type.

Certainly, the most common type of stalker in America is the attachment seeker, and there's not a woman in your audience who isn't very familiar with someone that they dated or that a daughter or sister dated who didn't want to let go. And that type is certainly the most common kind of stalking in America.

GROSS: Well, as you point out in your book, persistence is always considered to be a real character strength, and we need to draw the line about where the persistence starts to become a real problem.

DE BECKER: I sure agree. I think that, you know, we're told in this country that, you know, if you just stay with it, anybody can even be president. And I'm glad to tell people that the fact is, not anybody can be president. One person can be president and 240 million others cannot.

And so, teaching people the lesson that persistence is the end-all characteristic that is associated with success is just not true. There's a quote in my book, I don't remember who said it, but he said that our successes come not only in knowing when to persist, but in knowing when to start over. And that's a message that's not heard very much in America.

In the romantic situation, persistence once it introduces fear, discomfort on the part of the woman, usually, then persistence is a plague. It's not an attribute at all at that point.

GROSS: You mentioned before that the visible stalkers -- the stalkers where the victim knows who's stalking them -- this tends to be the person who's getting stalked by an ex-spouse, an ex-lover -- for the Supreme Court justices and celebrities and politicians who get stalked, is it often somebody who they don't know? A mystery person?

DE BECKER: Almost always someone they don't know personally, although very rarely is it someone who's anonymous. The, you know, there is stalking by people we've actually had some contact with; and then stalking by people who we didn't even know were in our lives. And public figures, you know, the very definition of a public figure stalking case, is that it involves someone who is not known to the victim personally.

That isn't to say they don't identify themselves, because anonymous cases are actually fairly rare. Generally speaking, people are accredited and the very kind of person who stalks a public figure wants attention and is perfectly glad to say "here's my name and here's my address."

GROSS: How do you assess how potentially violent this stalker may be?

DE BECKER: I think on the basis of behaviors that are pre-incident behaviors. Things that occur prior to a public figure attack, for example, include gaining research on that public figure; showing up at locations where he or she is expected to be; reading about the person; writing letters to be found after the attack; telling people in your life "something big is coming;" focusing on public figures as objects who will solve your personal problems.

These are all behaviors that are associated with people who, you know, ultimately may become assassins or stalkers of public officials. Obtaining a weapon; researching the schedule of a victim -- those are the kinds of behaviors that we are looking for. And some of them are pretty reliable.

I'll give you an example. In behavioral predictions, you almost never get to say 100 percent, but in this one I get to say that 100 percent of modern-day public figure attackers communicated with some public figure, inappropriately, prior to the attack -- not always the victim, but communicated with someone.

So to the degree that we can capture those communications to other public figures, we are identifying people who might be dangerous to public figures in general.

GROSS: Well, this reminds me, you met in prison with Robert Bardo (ph), the man who killed the actress Rebecca Schaefer (ph) and who earlier had stalked both Debbie Gibson and Tiffany (ph).

DE BECKER: Yes.

GROSS: What did you learn from talking to him?

DE BECKER: Well, a great deal. You know, the first thing that -- when I came out of that series of interviews, people said to me: "well, what was he like?" And people are often surprised to hear my answer, which is that he was like you and me.

I mean, his relative normalcy really had to take me out of that place where we want to live, which is "us and them" -- you know, experts and assassins -- and the assumption that people will be somehow wildly different.

Robert Bardo was, to use his word, "a geek" who worked at Jack-in-the-Box. That's how he described himself. And he was a guy that any of us would see and not give a second thought to, like most assassins are. And you know, perhaps most sadly, he had the kind of childhood that is associated with people who act out violently.

He -- you know, he described to me that he gets more social interaction in prison than he ever got at home. And he said: "I learned how to interact socially with people here in prison, because at home I was just like the family cat."

And clearly, a person who grows up in that environment is going to be someone who wants to assert his identity in a very powerful way, because he is -- he comes out of childhood with no identity intact whatsoever.

GROSS: Have you ever been wrong in predicting which stalker was going to be violent? Did you ever have a client murdered or attacked who you had reassured previously that they'd probably be OK?

DE BECKER: No, I'm both blessed and I think very watchful about the nature of how our predictions are done, and we have not been wrong in a high-stakes prediction. Certainly, we've been wrong on, you know, the little elements of what someone might do next.

But in terms of a high-stakes prediction, the fact is that the public figure attackers and even more notably spousal homicide perpetrators -- they follow a protocol, and they follow the same strategies in most cases as those who came before them.

I mean, look, we've got 4,000 cases every year of spousal homicide perpetrators that we can study and they don't differ much from each other. And so I think contrary to what the news media may be telling people, you know, on the local news: nobody just snaps and goes berserk. That does not happen. It is a process that's observable, like water coming to a boil.

And you know, we want to believe that people just, you know, crack and go crazy and come to work with a gun. That never, ever happens. Ever.

GROSS: My guest is Gavin De Becker, author of the new book The Gift of Fear. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

My guest is Gavin De Becker, and he's an expert on the prediction and management of violence, and he's the author of the new book The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence.

You say that you learned about predicting violence as a child growing up in an abusive household. What kind of violence were you exposed to seeing and taking as a child?

DE BECKER: Well, like millions of other kids, that certainly was my first, you know, my early academy was in predicting the behavior of the people around me -- the violent adults around me. And I saw my mother shoot my stepfather.

I remember we lived in one house where there were probably nine or 10 bullets embedded in the walls and floors of that house by the time we moved. And I drove by it not too long ago, and I imagine those bullets are still somewhere in the walls and floors.

And I often wonder about what other families in that immediate neighborhood were experiencing behind closed doors the kinds of things that drug addiction brought into our household and violence brought into our household.

GROSS: You saw your mother shoot your stepfather?

DE BECKER: Yes.

GROSS: What did you see when you saw her do it? And were you watching for signs?

DE BECKER: Oh, sure. I recall that she was holding a gun on him and she was repeating over and over again "this time I'm really going to kill you." And I was watching attentively for any, you know, indication that this would be more than just words, because I had the responsibility not only for myself, but for my little sister who was two years old. I was 10 years old.

And I saw what she said and how she moved, and I even had to predict his behavior, because he might try to rush her for the gun at some point. And ultimately, near the end of that encounter, she stepped back away from him and it was that signal, combined with everything else I knew about her behavior and our circumstance -- and I mean, I didn't know it as an expert; I knew it intuitively -- but it was that behavior that told me that she was going to pull the trigger.

GROSS: Well, that's kind of counter-intuitive that she's stepping away. You'd think that would mean she's disengaging.

DE BECKER: In fact, it is counter-intuitive in some ways, but people using guns -- guns are not intimate weapons and people using guns tend to want to distance themselves from the person they intend to shoot. And it is a fact of shootings that people who act out violently want to dehumanize, distance from -- it's just not an intimate weapon. It's not like knives.

GROSS: Why did she shoot your father?

DE BECKER: Stepfather. That's a big question. I mean, it's -- but it's a, you know, we want to look at violence at being like cause and effect: this happened, so she decided to shoot someone. The process of violence starts way, way before some particular cause and effect.

So I don't really have an answer for you as to why, because it's a very long answer. You know, she was a person who was suffering all of the dramatic effects of heroin addiction. She was violent. She was very precariously perched when it came to any kind of perceived abandonment or rejection. And like other people who act out violently, she was desperate.

And you know, all of these things contribute to the pulling of that trigger. It isn't a simple cause and effect question.

GROSS: You say in your book that after the shooting, your mother transformed not only into like a reasonable person. She shifted into the role of the supportive wife and mother.

She was going to nurse her husband's injury as if she played no part in it. Is this a typical reaction after somebody beats or shoots a spouse or a lover, that then they become the supportive person who's going to help them back to health?

DE BECKER: In, in -- yes. It is in this particular kind of violence. In spousal violence, I think there is a, you know, a very fast return once the discharge of all that hostility and energy happens, there is a very fast return to the relationship. And unfortunately, it's part of what keeps violent relationships together so long, and more often the woman is the victim than the man.

But there's the belief that everything will be all right if we just get through this one incident. And there's tremendous relief when an incident ends, so that victims in domestic violence situations just don't get an opportunity to gain any perspective because, as human beings, we see what we want to see. We, you know, we see the way it could be or used to be or ought to be or should be, and we don't see what's actually happening.

And something I really try to give to readers and to audiences when I'm speaking with them is the importance of seeing things as they are and listening to intuition, rather than listening to denial.

GROSS: Did anyone in your family press charges against your mother?

DE BECKER: No, no. No, our violence was, you know, what -- we experienced a great deal of it -- she had other efforts to kill my stepfather, to run him down with a car at another time. And we had a great deal.

Thankfully, I don't have to put your listeners or myself through the kinds of experiences that we had as a family, but like most family violence, it was a secret. And we became experts at keeping that secret, and in large measure, I probably kept most of it for 20 years.

You know, we didn't acknowledge any of the experiences that we had as kids. Ultimately, my mother committed suicide when I was 16, and I don't think I spoke a syllable about it to my older sister or the other family members for probably more than 15 years.

And I know it sounds extraordinary, but all of us were going about our lives and you would look at us and not think there was, you know, a churning issue like that going on inside. But like a lot of families who suffer both violence and suicide, you get good at keeping the secret. That's what we were trained to do as kids -- keep the secret.

GROSS: Was there an occasion for ending the secret?

DE BECKER: Oh, yes there was. Sure. There was -- I mean, one very notable conversation I recall with my older sister where we both sort of gave up the, you know, gave up the lie and spoke about it for the first time. And it was certainly the beginning of any healing on this topic. And you know, families that are affected by violence and by suicide, they invariably go on a very unrewarding search for who to blame.

You know, a family whose young teenager commits suicide might look at the people who sold the child drugs or the girlfriend who broke up with the young man who shot himself; or the -- you know, other spouse in a divorce -- everybody's looking for someone to blame. Sometimes even, you know, people sue a rock group for causing violence in their family.

The problem is that when you don't go through that process, particularly children will tend to blame themselves and tend to feel, well, there's something I could have done or should have done that would stop this. And that's certainly the way suicide was managed in my family and in my head.

GROSS: Gavin De Becker is my guest, and he's an expert on predicting and managing violence. And he's consulted on stalkers and death threats, domestic violence. His new book is called The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence.

In your book, you say about women who are abused by their husbands or boyfriends: "once a victim; twice a volunteer." Now, I mean, there's been such an effort to explain why women have such a hard time leaving abusive relationships. So when you say "once a victim; twice a volunteer," it sounds as if you are kind of playing-down that difficulty of leaving. What do you want to communicate when you say "once a victim; twice a volunteer"?

DE BECKER: Well, you know, this is a very controversial issue because every time I do, in a speech or a television appearance, I'll say that the first time a woman is hit, she's as victim and the second time, she's a volunteer -- I will hear from so many people who feel that I don't understand the dynamic of battered wife syndrome. And it gets a very emotional response from well-meaning people, I know.

But I'll tell you why I feel this way, and particularly when parents have children. To the degree, you know -- in the case where a man is violent, more violent than a woman, he is terribly hurting his children.

But both parents, by participating and by letting it continue, are doing great damage, because just as a boy sees his father commit violence, so likely will he. And a young woman who sees her mother tolerate it, so likely will she.

The thing is this: I have a deep and personal understanding of the dynamic. And it is not my intention to blame the victim, but I must communicate to people that leaving is a choice.

Because when we -- even well-meaning experts -- say: "oh, well, because of battered-women's syndrome, the woman can't leave" -- when we do that, we are saying that staying is not a choice and leaving is not a choice, even though thousands of women every week do successfully get out of violent relationships.

And I have to be very, very clear, as both the co-chair of the Domestic Violence Council Advisory Board and as an advocate for women on these topics, that leaving is a choice. Because only then can we empower people to do it.

I mean, if we don't, then we're saying -- we might as well say, "oh well, his behavior is involuntary as well, and it's not a choice for the violent husband either; and none of it's a choice and it's all determined by syndromes."

And that's just something I don't accept. And I do believe, controversial though it may be, that the first time a woman is hit, she's a victim; and the second time, she's a volunteer. Our challenge is to empower people to stop volunteering for that violence and to make that phone call to the National Domestic Violence Hotline or to their local domestic violence hotline or go to a shelter. It is a choice. We mustn't take choice away from people.

GROSS: I'm wondering -- because you deal with so many violent people, do you walk out of your house and just see the potential violent person wherever you are? Or is it like picking that person out whose behavior is clueing you that they might erupt?

DE BECKER: Terry, it's a good question, but the answer is it's literally the opposite. I am blessed to live a fairly fear-free life, because my philosophy about fear is that it is a signal that will sound in the presence of danger, so I needn't invent nor have worry or anxiety about things that might happen.

You know, people who are focused on what might happen, instead of what is happening, tend to not only be more anxious and have a lot more worry and anxiety in their lives, but also less safe. Because if you're saying, gee, somebody could climb out from behind that bush or behind that car, you're not perceiving what's actually going on.

And unwarranted fear will kill more Americans this year than violence will. Striking to say, I know, but the fact is there is more fear in America than there is danger. And what I've really focused on in my work is how you tell the difference between true fear, which you want -- that's a survival signal in the presence of danger -- and unwarranted fear, which is anxiety and worry and all of those things that you don't want.

And in this culture, it's very, very hard to do, because the local news is selling us a diet of all the ways we might die and the urgency, you know, with which they tell us: you must learn this information.

GROSS: Gavin De Becker is the author of The Gift of Fear. His Los Angeles consulting firm evaluates violent threats.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Gavin De Becker
High: Terry talks with author Gavin De Becker about managing violence.
Spec: People; Labor; Violence; Crime; Management; Psychology; Health and Medicine; Aggression
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright (c) 1997 National Public Radio, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc. Formatting copyright (c) 1997 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954
End-Story: Managing Violence
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JULY 09, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 070902np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Deception on His Mind
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:55

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Elizabeth George is known for her literary detective novels, populated by a complex cast of characters, both posh and proletarian. But in her ninth novel, "Deception on His Mind," George has pared down her detective force to one, lone, lumbering woman.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BOOK CRITIC: Over the past few years, whenever I've been in a tricky situation, I've tried to imagine what Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennyson (ph) of "Prime Suspect" fame would do. Tennyson supplanted V.I. Warshawsky (ph) as my favorite female detective, who herself displaced Miss Marple, who followed in the bootsteps of Emma Peale (ph), who usurped the Ur-Girl sleuth Nancy Drew.

But now, it's Tennyson's turn to be toppled. I've got a new gal-gumshoe alter-ego, and her name is Barbara Havers (ph). Sergeant Havers of Scotland Yard is not exactly the stuff that dreams are made of.

Tubby, irritable and insecure, the working-class Havers cares for her mentally infirm mother and reads soft-core romances in her down time. She makes no effort to be likable, yet wants desperately to be liked.

In short, she's the most plaintive but plucky figure to inhabit mystery fiction since Asta, the Thin Man's dog. In eight earlier mysteries by Elizabeth George, Havers has played smart second-banana to her aristocratic boss, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley (ph).

But in Deception on His Mind, Lynley is away on his honeymoon, and shortly after Havers has guzzled the last drop of champagne, she rashly rushes off on a solo murder investigation that will pit her professional loyalty against one of the few people she cherishes.

At first, Deception On His Mind seems to be a pastiche of images lifted from golden age British mysteries. There's the requisite village and the perplexing corpse that turns up where least expected. But this is 1990s England -- a place Havers astutely describes as a polyglot society that had engendered a score of polyglot problems.

Despite superficial similarities, the site of the murder is not Miss Marple's St. Marymead (ph), but rather a tacky beach resort, riddled with racial strife. The cadaver is that of a Pakistani man -- a former member of the town's prospering Asian community.

How does Havers wind up in this seaside morass of murder and political incorrectness? Well, her closest neighbors in London are a bubbly eight-year-old Pakistani girl named Hadayah (ph) and her father, Azhar (ph), a university professor. Azhar has been summoned to the resort town by relatives who want him to pressure the police to solve the murder.

Havers, who's at loose ends on a mandatory vacation, trails after the pair with the vague intention of running interference. Once in town, Havers discovers that the officer directing the investigation is Emily Barlow (ph), an old comrade from detective training school. Such coincidences ordinarily seem hokey. Here, they give the plot an eerie, fated feel.

Barlow needs help. Not only is she quashing racial unrest, she's also dealing with an oinker of a superintendent -- the sort of man who claimed women's hands had been shaped by God to curve perfectly over the handle of a Hoover.

Havers and Barlow join forces to interrogate a horde of suspects, including the dead man's intended bride, her hot-headed bigot of a brother, and a local girl who was born without a proper face.

Here's how good Deception On His Mind is: 15 pages from the end of this doorstop of a novel, I still didn't know who the murderer was and I still cared, intensely. Page after page, George manages to make one chilling murder scenario after another materialize and then dissipate like mist.

And as in the very best mysteries, when Havers, in her grouchy, slouchy fashion, finally apprehends the truth, she exposes not only a murderer, but also what Raymond Chandler immortally called "a world gone wrong."

There's nothing wrong, however, with Deception On His Mind. It's so much fun to read, it's criminal.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed Deception On His Mind, the new novel by Elizabeth George.

I'm Terry Gross.

Dateline: Maureen Corrigan, Washington, DC; Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest:
High: Maureen Corrigan reviews "Deception On His Mind, a new novel by Elizabeth George.
Spec: Books; Authors; Elizabeth George
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright (c) 1997 National Public Radio, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc. Formatting copyright (c) 1997 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954
End-Story: Deception on His Mind
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.