An Interview with Attorney Wendy Patrick, J.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Wendy Patrick is a deputy district attorney, author, media commentator, and veteran prosecutor. In addition to her law degree, Wendy Patrick has earned a doctorate in Theology. An accomplished trial attorney, Dr. Patrick’s research focuses on a variety of topics related to interpersonal violence and sexual assault.
Amelia Worley: Hi. Thanks for joining us today for this installment at the Seattle Psychiatrist Interview Series. I'm Amelia Worley, a research intern at Seattle Anxiety Specialists. I'd like to welcome Dr. Wendy Patrick. Dr. Patrick is a deputy district attorney, author, media commentator, and veteran prosecutor. She's completed over 165 trials, including cases of domestic violence, hate crimes, stalking, human trafficking, and first degree murder. She has also been involved with the San Diego Domestic Violence Council, the San Diego Child Protection Team, and the Sexual Assault Response Team. Dr. Patrick researches, advises, and publishes on a variety of topics related to interpersonal violence, sexual assault, and working with victims, including her book, “Red Flags: How to Spot Frenemies, Underminers, and Ruthless People.” Before we get started, Dr. Patrick, can you please let us know a little more about yourself and what you made you interested in dealing with dangerous people, sexual assault, and domestic violence?
Wendy Patrick: I've been a prosecutor for my entire career, I would say since before you've been born, but it lends a little bit of credibility to what I'm talking about. For whatever reason, during the 25 years plus I've been a prosecutor, I've dealt with a steady stream of dangerous people. One of the things that really struck me, Amelia, about this is the sometimes very worldly, intelligent, savvy victims, people you wouldn't expect to be victims because they don't strike you as particularly vulnerable in any arena, yet there they were. I went back to school to earn a Master in Divinity and then a PhD mid-career. It was my mid-career crisis if that's a term, and really became in love with research, as I suppose I was. That's what led me to want to go on and further my education because there's an enormous amount of research behind why, why people fall for dangerous people, how dangerous people corner victims, how they manipulate even very street smart savvy professionals. It is with that combination of the anecdotal, the empirical, and I would say the experiential, given the work that I've done for 25 years, that really brought me to a lot of the information that I cover in that book.
Amelia Worley: Yeah. That's great. To begin, can you describe the acronym “FLAGs” that you created to separate the dangerous from the desirable?
Wendy Patrick: Well, my first book was the revised version of the New York Times bestseller “Reading People,” which I coauthored with a famous jury consultant. That talked about the seven colors of what somebody looks like, how they behave. Red Flags is a deeper dive. Flag stands for focus, lifestyle, associations, and goals. Let me explain each one of those so your listeners can understand a little bit about why this gives you more of an idea of who is this person behind the persona.
Focus is the F, and the reason I wanted to use that for flag, it also talks about focus being attention reveals intention. For example, I think on the back cover of the book, the publishing company has the red flags on a first date, your body, your brain, or the ball game. What is somebody focused on when they're with you? Well, that tells them what they're interested in. If they're not interested in you, why are they spending time with you. Oftentimes in the child predator world it's because they're interested in the child. I cannot tell you how many trials I've had where you've had spouses and girlfriends and boyfriends that had no idea that honestly believed they were the prize. They were the ones that the perpetrator was after, but if they looked back at the focus, that was never really it.
Lifestyle is what you might imagine. I sometimes call this red flags after five. If you want to know what somebody is like, you have to know more about what they do during the work day. You may see them all day at work, nine to five, and have no idea who they really are unless you know what they do when they're off the clock. I say, lifestyle is personality revealed. What are their hobbies? What are their interests? Where do they go if they have a free day.
Now, Associations stands for who do we spend our time with? When I was growing up my parents used to say, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. My law students now tell me that, I suppose, the updated version of that is show me your friends and I'll show you who you are. Either way, it proves the point, birds of a feather. What sort of company do we keep? Are we guilty by association? I mean, who do we choose to spend our time with if we have a choice? What organizations do we belong to? What philanthropic activities capture our attention.
Then Goals is really a profile in priorities. If I knew, for example, Amelia, what you prayed for at night or what you wished for when you toss a coin into a wishing well, you're too young, but we used to do that back in the day, I would know a lot about you. Knowing what somebody's goals are tells you a lot about them as a person. All four of these FLAG areas taken in combination gives you a much deeper picture of what a person is really like.
Amelia Worley: Yeah. What are some recognizable signs of people who have ulterior and self-serving motives then?
Wendy Patrick: Well, one of the things you really have to look at goes back to that focus component. It would be like, I'm a Rotarian, so I'll use the rotary example. Lots of people join service organizations, but why are they there? Are they there to put it on a resume? Are they there because they genuinely want to help serve the homeless? When you're looking at somebody's motivation, some of the signs have to do with where they focus their attention and on what aspect of belonging, I'm just using that as an example, are they interested in when they go to a social hour or a networking event? If you look at their focus, if you look at the fact that they're not necessarily interested in building business, but gathering business cards to maybe put on a mailing list. So, it's really paying attention to what somebody does.
We used to say a picture is worth a thousand words. Actions speak louder than words. That is the takeaway from being able to tell what a person is really like. A dangerous person, their actions speak for themselves. They're not philanthropic actions. They're only asking questions designed to elicit the kind of information that might give them an idea of an area of vulnerability. I gave the example of the focus and some of the women, in particular, that were married to child predators or married to pedophiles. They would often find that looking back, right, that's always sadly the way that many people look at red flags, looking back, there were tons of signs that they really only wanted, they were almost only a conduit, a way in which the predator could gain access to the person they were really interested in. Some predators use people to gain access to resources, time, money, favors, all the kinds of things in a workplace setting, for example, that shows they're not really interested in a coworker, but in what that coworker can do for them. It's that end game that sometimes we have to really keep an eye on.
Amelia Worley: Yeah. In your book, “Red Flags: How to Spot Frenemies, Underminers, and Ruthless People,” you talk about how dangerous people use selective attention to manipulate their victims. How and why does this work?
Wendy Patrick: Well, it works because to somebody that's not used to receiving attention, that can be the most intoxicating experience of their life. I'll give the example of somebody that isn't drop dead gorgeous, somebody that's perhaps not attractive is not used to getting attention really from anybody. It's a terrible situation. As a Christian, my heart goes out to those people. They're the most beautiful people sometimes that I will ever meet, but their experience is not getting double takes on the street by men in whom they might potentially be interested in. If a manipulator, and we see this a lot in the human trafficking arena, if a manipulator, a trafficker, somebody that has ulterior motives, swoops in and gives them the kind of attention they've only dreamed about receiving, that is uniquely attractive to somebody that's not used to receiving that type of attention. Of course, a predator, a manipulator, somebody that's interested and has ulterior motives, of course they're going to use that approach.
Now they have to be careful because sometimes people that are not the most attractive people in the room might be the smartest, so they have to be very subtle about the way in which they're approaching these people so they don't raise the antenna. Let me tell you what the research shows. This is going to surprise some of our listeners and viewers. Sometimes, even when you have somebody that suspects somebody has ulterior motives, even they can't help being flattered by the attention. How do you like that? It's almost like an emotional cognitive override. Emotionally it feels so good that even though cognitively you suspect ulterior motives, you still respond favorably to the flattery. That is the bread and butter of people, dangerous people that have ulterior motives is knowing that people are susceptible to that kind of attention.
Amelia Worley: That's really interesting. What role does physical appearance play in misjudgment and wrong perceptions? I know you've talked about this a little bit, but additionally, how does this relate to the halo effect?
Wendy Patrick: Well, the halo effect stands for, and all of our psychiatrists and psychologist guests will appreciate this, as they know, it talks about this phenomenon that if somebody looks good, sounds good, is pretty, is attractive, we tend to ascribe to them all of these positive qualities they don't have. Some of the research, there's a lot of research behind the halo effect, maybe some people that work with you have even authored some of the studies, but it has to do with us saying things like, “Oh, I bet she's a really good mother. I'll bet he can be trusted,” only because they're good looking. There's many studies that show that attractive criminals, which is of course my line of work, are treated more leniently. They sometimes get more favorable plea bargains. Juries give them the benefit of the doubt.
I've tried about 160 cases. That's a lot of cases if you're a lawyer. In that time period, I've had the opportunity to speak to almost all of my jurors that have waited around after the fact and found that they often really do give my pretty defendants a break. It's one thing to say, this woman is charged with being a child molester and sleeping with her students at school and all the rest of these nasty things, it's quite another to look over and see those jurors smiling, looking at the pretty lady in the polka dot and pearls sitting at the defendant's table. That sometimes translates into a very lenient verdict or a non verdict in the form of a hung jury. It is very difficult to overcome the halo effect because, again, it's something that is emotional, not necessarily cognitive.
I'll tell you one exception of that. There's been some research that has shown that if a jury finds that a pretty or a handsome defendant used their looks to facilitate a crime, they don't like that because that's almost a counterintuitive backdoor way of using what they might otherwise have been susceptible to as the triers of fact in the way that they committed the crime.
Amelia Worley: That's fascinating, actually.
Wendy Patrick: It is.
Amelia Worley: Also in your book, you talked about helping behavior. How can this create a power imbalance and eventually lead to a dangerous situation?
Wendy Patrick: Well, helping behavior creates dependence. Many of the cases that I've tried have involved predators, child molesters, sexual assaulters. They gain access into the victim's life. They weaseled their way in by being helpful. They're the handyman. They can do anything. They can fix the internet. They can fix the car. If they engage in enough helping behavior, a victim becomes dependent. There have been some cases in which that's been illustrated, sadly, in grand fashion where you have a neighbor that's interested, for example, in a next door neighbor's child. He becomes indispensable to the next door neighbor. I mean, he's over there fixing her car, fixing anything that goes wrong in the house, sometimes even beginning to show up unannounced. It's a boundary probing kind of insidious progression, creating vulnerability.
Sometimes when he shows up unannounced, the neighbor that is so used to this man fixing everything, doesn't even stop him because she doesn't want to lose access to that free labor. Nothing's free. It's only a matter of time before this man will ask to babysit a child. Now, is it true that there are some really kind people that are helpers? Absolutely. That's why there are four flag areas and not just one. You just want to make sure that if something seems too good to be true that sometimes it is. Make sure you go through all the areas of interest, that some people are as good as they look, but not everyone. I'll leave it at that.
Amelia Worley: Yeah. Once you realize someone in your life is manipulative or deceptive, it can be anxiety-inducing or depressing. What steps should you take when you realize someone like this is in your life? What if it's someone you love?
Wendy Patrick: Ah, depression and anxiety are something that everybody struggles with. Those are conditions that transcend any kind of boundary, socioeconomic. I mean, no matter who you are, where you live, what you do, you're vulnerable. Part of the reason you're vulnerable is exactly what you just mentioned. Sometimes you find out the hard way that it's somebody very close to you that's manipulative. One of the ways in which you deal with this is exactly what you do in your line of work. You got to talk to somebody about it. People think, oh, I can handle this on my own. They can't. However, it's often very empowering to speak with those who've also gone through the same kind of circumstance. In my line of work, we call those survivors. Human trafficking victims are often helped along towards the path to survivorhood by other survivors who have been through the exact same thing.
So too, those who've had the wool pulled over their eyes, those that have been manipulated, who have been fooled by somebody they thought really loved them, are sometimes very much helped by others who have been there. Sometimes reviewing the red flags will empower them not to fall forward again. Part of what I often teach in connection with these programs I give, because I do this as a speaking series, I've done it all over the world, and I'm going to give you some takeaways along the lines of how can you prevent yourself from being in a position that you're asking a question, what do you do once you recognize you're in that scenario. Maximize first impressions. In other words, don't trade in your reading glasses for rose colored glasses. You're wearing reading glasses when you first meet somebody or first go on a date. Perceive as much as you can when you are most objective.
Be wary of under exposure. If there's an area of somebody's life that they don't share with you like that unaccounted for hour or two after work, you want to know where they are. Why are they off the grid during certain times of the day or night? Most people are very transparent. Sometimes we make the joke TMI, as my students say, too much information, that's preferable to too little information because secrets breed suspicion. Time lapse photography is the next one. You notice I'm on a photography theme, which of course was a thing when I was growing up. Observe somebody's behavior over time. You can't tell what somebody's like if you just have a snapshot of their day. Maybe a continual snapshot, like you work with them. You only know what they're like when they're on the clock. You have to know what they're like in different settings and across time to be able to get a good read on them.
That would also be, I suppose, using a wider angle lens. You're looking at behavior in different settings, in different contexts. Solicit multiple exposures. Introduce people to your friends and family. You may trade in your reading glasses for rose colored, but I guarantee you, your family and friends will not. Anybody who has been second guessed by an objective sounding board, i.e., parents, spouse, family, good friends, colleagues, coworkers, they're going to tell it like it is because they care about you. We live in a day and age of vision enhancement. You can go online and look at social media. Sometimes you look at other dating sites if that's the way you met somebody and see how they describe themselves on other dating sites. Shocker, news flash, yes, people use multiple dating sites and don't go off of those sites just because they start dating you.
There's a lot of information available to make sure that you are not the one that ends up in that scenario where you are involved and are just now recognizing that you're involved with the wrong person. Now, let me temper all of that with what we'll call, I don't know if we really want to put a word on it, but the tendency we have to believe. It's easier to believe. It's cognitively more challenging and difficult to doubt. When we first meet somebody, we're disinclined to go online and look up and fact check everything. Nobody has the time for that, and we don't want to do it because we're sometimes enamored with a new love interest. Those are some of the reasons that even very smart people sometimes fall for the wrong individuals.
Amelia Worley: Yeah. That's really helpful. Thank you. Lastly, do you have any advice or anything you want to say to someone regarding dangerous or deceptive people?
Wendy Patrick: I think I just said it. I think that laundry list of ways that you would make sure you don't allow somebody to get too close to you until you've gone through all of those steps is probably the best way to prevent yourself from being in that scenario to begin with. The reason my book has all those chapters, it talks about all the different ways that we are captivated by somebody when we don't really know who they are. That's one of the reasons that there are just so many ways, counter intuition, when the optics don't match the topics, make sure you use all of your senses all of the time when you're getting to know somebody. That is the single best way to make sure you are not fooled.
The last chapter in my book, as you know, is green lights because I don't want anybody to think that my years as a prosecutor made me a skeptic. Some people are as good as they look. Go figure. I'm going to give a big amen to that, because that sometimes is what we find out when we get to know somebody better is it's authentic, it's genuine, and that creates a healthy, happy relationship.
Amelia Worley: Well, that's great. Thank you so much, Dr. Patrick. It was wonderful having you on our interview series today.
Wendy Patrick: Thank you for having me.
Please note: The views expressed by the interviewee are for educational and informational purposes only, are not meant to diagnose or treat any condition, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Seattle Anxiety Specialists, PLLC.
Editor: Jennifer (Ghahari) Smith, Ph.D.