When Women Offend
Lindsay Clancy, 33, wife and mother of three, is accused of strangling her three children to death after sending her husband out on errands.
Rikki Lynn Laughlin, 25, wife, mother, and teacher, faces six charges in connection with the attempted rape of a 16-year-old boy.
Brittany Zamora, 24, wife and teacher, is serving a 20-year sentence for the sexual abuse of one of her 13-year-old students.
Alissa Mccommon, 33, wife and teacher, is accused of raping a 12-year-old student in her own home. After getting released on bond, she called the victim and threatened him, saying he’d “regret” going to authorities. She now claims she’s pregnant with their child.
Dr. Aimee Palmitessa, 45, wife, mother, and teacher, was convicted on three counts of rape of a 16-year-old student. Palmitessa taught for nine years at an elite school in Brentwood, CA, famous for its famous clientele. I knew her. She and her then-husband had been good friends with my former sister-in-law and her husband. My now ex-husband and I had been in their home and out with them a number of times. She was pregnant the last time we’d seen them, which was before her arrest in 2017.
She was charming, pretty, brilliant, and her husband was devoted to her. He had been married to a nightmare before her, and by all accounts, Aimee was her opposite. I thought they were perfect. I envied their lives together. She’d been a research fellow at UCLA studying the reproductive cycle of inch worms. She’d told me that story because I hated my job at the time, but didn’t think I could make a living as a writer. She sympathized. She’d loved her work in research but it only paid $30,000 a year. She didn’t like her job teaching any more than I liked mine.
I never forgot that because it was our first meaningful conversation and it endeared me to her immediately. I really had hoped we would hang out more with them.
I saw her ex-husband and met their new baby girl after her sentencing. He appeared shattered, but like any newly single parent, he didn’t let himself dwell. I’ve thought about her a lot over the years. The news only reported on one victim, but I’d heard through the grapevine that there was another. Perhaps he didn’t want to go to court. At the time, these things happened, but rarely. Aimee received a three-year sentence.
When I first heard Aimee had been arrested, I’m ashamed to say my initial thought was, “The boys must be lying. Do they have a vendetta?” I said as much to my then-husband. But then she pled no-contest, a legal option for when you don’t want to admit guilt but don’t intend on fighting the charges. This means you’ll accept the court’s decision regarding sentencing without admitting guilt.
It’s hard to accept the truth about women assailants, especially when you know them and they’re affluent, educated, and well-loved in their communities. Their guilt doesn’t fit with the image you carry about them, the image they’ve worked so hard to cultivate and hide behind. They don’t act guilty when you see them. They don’t lurk around, shooting furtive glances at passing minors, or tell stories about that time they sent nude photos to their students.
In nearly every case where a teacher has gotten convicted in the last ten years, it’s the texts and photos that put them behind bars. In nearly every case, there are loving husbands and young children. That’s a lot of lives ruined by one selfish predator’s actions. Mothers have so much power over everyone around them.
My mother keeps emailing me. It’s hard to describe how her efforts make me feel. Not good. I’m gripping the edges of my seat and holding on for dear life.
She’s hoovering, a narcissistic tactic designed to suck me back in. She doesn’t love. She manipulates. I recognized it immediately, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t impact me. She’s my mother. I’m biologically predetermined to respond to her affection, no matter how often she hurts me.
Nevertheless, I held out. Her emails came three times a day, and seeing her name in my inbox threw me into despair and fear. You might be wondering why I didn’t block her.
Blocking is a response, and I know her well enough to understand that no response is far better than a negative one. If I blocked her, it would give her ammunition to smear me further. She’d have something to show people to gain their sympathies. Moreover, if I block her, I won’t know what she planned to do. I need to know her plans.
She started reaching out after my younger brother told her of my divorce. I understand it, but it feels strange, nonetheless. She always saw my marriage as a betrayal. And it was. I knew, from a young age, that if I had a man in my bed, she’d stay away.
Once my marriage dissolved, I grew increasingly concerned that she’d find a way to harm me again. The fear gripped me, and I rarely slept. Eventually, the hypervigilance gave way to low-level anxiety, like a steady drip, drip, drip, as I painstakingly picked my way through the past and did my best to heal.
Then, when my younger brother reached out, I considered not answering. I considered lying when he asked about my ex-husband. I didn’t because I wanted to work on feeling safe when I told the truth. Any child of a narcissistic parent knows you risk their wrath if you tell the truth. What I cared about, what I wanted, who and what I loved all got ruined as my mother weaponized anything meaningful to destroy my confidence and keep me cowed.
Nevertheless, I am an adult now, and I wanted to say what’s true and prove to myself that I can keep myself safe.
A few hours after my brother and I ended our call, my mother emailed me about her will and asked me where I’m living now, ostensibly because she needed it for the will. She kept emailing me, and I stopped opening them until today. The most recent, one sentence long, contained the most chilling missive. She’d like to visit me. She misses me and wants me with her. She loves me.
A wave of nausea swept over me and lingers even now. It’s not just that seeing her again is my worst nightmare. It’s that I felt her rage roiling behind the words. She wants me to return home, not simply for the control, but more practically speaking, it’s more convenient to harm me. If she comes to me, she runs a greater risk of exposure. She must take pains to hide her pills and powders, and then what if she loses her luggage or a TSA agent confiscates them for some reason? Moreover, she always promised my older brother, who still lives with her, that he could do whatever he wanted to me once I blacked out.
And he did.
And so here we are. Because I haven’t responded, she’s upping the ante, intensifying her efforts, suggesting I’ll have her to myself. Having to write that, much less do it, would have enraged her. It’s easier for her to hide at home. Out here she has no one to help keep me in line, keep me believing her lies.
This is relevant because when women offend, they’re often better at hiding in plain sight. However, to be sure, the teachers I’ve cited above were not. But my mother would never be so stupid. She has used her position as a Southern, godly woman to fool people for decades. Harmless is how most might describe her. Well-meaning, sweet, a strong Christian woman. And that she only preyed on her children meant that she’d never be found out.
But the grave speaks. It would not have me. It spits me out despite her attempts to shove me back down.
What do we do about the women who offend? The same thing we do about men: assume nothing. Please don’t assume they’re good people whose actions have been misunderstood or are victims of malicious intent. Very few accuse anyone for attention or revenge. And when it occurs, the stories fall apart rather quickly. They do not hold up under scrutiny.
But my story does.
Honestly, it’s something I think about every time I write about her, and I keep writing about her because of how long I hid what she did. And how sick it made me. If anyone were to look closely at her and her children, what she’s done is obvious. Our lives are shattered in ways too perverse to understand in any other way.
People have been seeing her through an ancient lens, one set during a time when few believed children about these things. And no one thought women were capable of predatory behavior.
I’m glad that’s changing. That’s why I write about my mother. I’d tried to tell my father what was happening when I was four. He laughed. I learned to stay quiet and play my role.
I’m writing a new role for myself now. I aim to help dismantle the misconceptions that keep people from seeing the truth about sexual abuse. I want to create a profile of the predator that allows you to see how they hide in our midst. They’re never as good as they think. They slip up, and when they do, you need to know what the signs are. You can know them. You can. You have to learn to trust your gut. It will tell you the truth.
And so will I.
©Punt On Point Media, Inc. 2023
