This time it’s out of Canada. Asian immigrant ‘gifted student’ gone bad.
Wow!
While it is wrong for parents to have unrealistic expectations of their child, and putting her under some sort of “house arrest” for awhile was crazy,
This story sadly resembles that of Mark Hacking’s. His family, not Asian, were high achievers. Dad a doctor, brother a doctor, brother an attorney, and there was an expectation (spoken or unspoken) that Mark would also have a prestigious career.
Mark, married to Lori Hacking, faked getting his college degree, faked being ill the day of his “graduation” so that the family wouldn’t show up and realize that he wasn’t graduating, and faked acceptance to UNC-CH med school. BTW…his dad was paying for all of this faking.
Mark’s lies began unraveling just a few days before he and Lori were scheduled to move from Utah to UNC. While at work, Lori, who had no idea that he H had been lying all this time, called UNC med school to find out what their living arrangements would be. During the phone call she learned that her H was not an incoming med student. She became quite upset and told a fellow employee or two and left work.
Once Lori got home, she confronted her H. The rest of the story can only be pieced together thru evidence and Mark’s version. He claims that they argued, she went to bed, then while he was going thru their packed boxes, he “found” his rifle, went into the bedroom and killed her in their bed. He dumped her body in a dumpster and later claimed that she disappeared after going jogging. He was convicted and I think is serving a life sentence.
His family feels terrible that the “atmosphere” in the family household (not tiger like) somehow conveyed the message that a certain level of success was expected.
I know of someone who was about to get married, but fortunately found out a week or 2 before that his fiancee had lied about college attendance, graduation (same excuse of being “sick” so wouldnt attend graduation), lied about student teaching, etc etc. How doe people get away with this for so long, and do they really believe it will work??
Jay Gatsby… Don Draper…
But they are fictional, GMTplus7.
We hear of imposters in several fields, and movies are made about some of the “better” ones (The Great Imposter (based on a true story); Catch Me If You can) but everyday folks living these lies for years and years??
What does being Asian have to do with it?
Watch “Keeping Up Appearances”.
This sounds like many other stories. Read about the doctor who hired hitmen to kill his family in a home invasion, and how all talk of it being a set up because he, the adult male in the house, was only tied up loose enough to escape the house fire the “robbers” set. First week there was clear evidence that he masterminded it, but he paid enough people off that he got all the sympathy. And the quick remarriage and the life insurance, even on his kids.
Lying is something we all do, but we also have to understand it happens. My friend going through a divorce was told that it was 5 years since the decision was made, but only was told last week. Daily lying in a major way is not that uncommon.
And magical thinking is not that uncommon.
(if this was in the US, she’d have gotten off by not guilty by reason of insanity because of how she was treated, fair or not)
People do get away with doing this sometimes–remember this case:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/us/27mit.html?_r=0
And now she is a private college counselor.
I think there’s a huge difference between someone who told what he/she probably felt was a “white lie” on a job application or a resume decades ago and someone who has woven and is living a completely fabricated life and is compelled to commit murder as a result.
The MIT dean may have lied about her official credentials but she presumably went to work every day and actually did her job and provided service to MIT students. No doubt the school was embarrassed but I don’t get the sense at all that she was a pathological liar or a bad person or even a bad dean beyond hurting the school’s credibility. Frankly, if we checked the credentials of everyone considered at the top of their organizations, i.e. CEO’s, politicians, judges, etc., who started their careers before such credentials were easily verified online, I bet you would find more than a few similar cases.
I don’t think the case from the OP is about “a lie” and I also don’t think there’s an explanation in terms of intent (“do they really believe it will work?”). I think it’s about mental illness.
I think it started with a little white lie, and then snowballs because the person can’t admit it to her parents due to the pressure. The lies built upon each other until it became impossible to disentangle it from her real life, so she just lived her make-belief life which was much better then the reality.
I don’t think “how it started” matters. We have all told lies as teenagers and our teenaged kids tell us lies, they simply don’t escalate to murder without a bigger underlying issue, even under extreme pressure. I was one of the Asian kids… only child, two PhD research scientist parents. I know how it is. I think my “bomb” was the first B I got and, yes, I did consider whether it would be possible to intercept my grades (this was well before the internet.) But at some point, a “normal” person finds maintaining the lie to be too exhausting. Confessing, despite the consequences, is usually a huge relief.
The idea that a B is a “bomb” that you’d have to “confess” gives some sense of the kind of pressure there might be on some kids.
Very sad story. To me it illustrates just how important parental approval is to kids and the lengths they will go to in order to obtain it. I try to keep that in mind when I need to correct one of my children. At the end of day most kids really do not want to disappoint their parents. Unrealistic expectations or a standard of perfection can put kids in a no win situation. They either give up entirely or resort to unhealthy solutions.
This case is obviously extreme, but I do know of one child who ran away from home in middle school when the child received a B on a report card. The child was retrieved quickly (next day) but it shows just how much pressure is on these kids. I do not remember my childhood being even remotely like this. My parents did not like C’s but there was never any pressure for straight A’s.
I think a few years ago, a student was lying about attending Stanford (or another school) and was crawling in the window of the dorm.
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How do people get away with this for so long, and do they really believe it will work??
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I always wonder how people get away with it when parents are supposedly paying for college. Do these people just hand over big checks to their kids in the kids’ names??
I thought the Stanford student was living in the library?
OT, but @rhandco, can you please clarify what case you’re referring to in post #5?
I though the video here was quite interesting. http://www.yorkregion.com/news-story/4468987-court-shown-video-of-agitated-jennifer-pan/ .
I thought she would be a bit resentful of her actions after she did what she did, but I’m not seeing it.
If she had taken even a bit of responsibility for her actions she would have repeated the class, graduated from high school, started working, etc. She was a grown woman who could have left the house. Instead she chose to act like a child and lie. It saddens me.
I don’t think she could admit to failure. Let all me seek help.
My HS had a school secretary that had 3 children - the older two were quite accomplished in school. The youngest, a boy was not. She actually followed the school he was in - she transferred to HS job when he went to HS. His parents had him with a punishing hair cut (at the time, a crew cut when they were not ‘in’). He was pretty quiet, but he confided to my friend that he had extreme punishment at home for not achieving academically (being locked the basement,meals withheld, etc). He finally couldn’t take it anymore - as a HS junior he was missing - they found him a few days later in a remote storage building, gunshot suicide.
I didn’t know the older siblings to know if they had tried to protect him, or if the parents were just so domineering and they thought they knew how to handle ‘misbehavior’.
Rigid thinking and indoctrination can cause people to do different things to ‘resolve’.