The Truth About Ruth - Part 4

[longskirtlotsakids]

I never believed her from the start. Why? Because it struck me as odd that someone that grows up in a sheltered religious environment would be so careful about identities and boundaries. For someone that grew up in ATI, she sure had a lot of appropriate cautions and boundaries.

I have several friends that are ATI/religious to the point of semi-isolation (I am in their life due to geography and being a long time resident) and they have not half the boundary issues and expectations that Ruth had.

Also- and I know this is odd- but I had a friendship with a girl like this in my teenage years. It started out as a pen pal relationship over horse fancying (hey, pen pals still existed in the 80's) and evolved into this bizarre experience where I would get 100 page letters, on both sides of the paper, filled with fantastic characters and events. Some of them were downright criminal (rapes, babies, illegal abortions) until I cracked and called the girls police, school, and CPS. All hell broke loose. None of it was true.

What was equally bizarre was that she did continue to write to me. I continued to correspond with her parents, and keep up with others, and the scam was ended. However, her real true life took some equally dramatic soap opera turns. It continues today being ordinary.

She was also a gifted artist and sent me several (as in, about fifty) original art objects of various media.

It's actually something I've considered writing about or doing an outsider art exhibit. She really was kind of a junior Henry Darger.

[lizziesmom]

Could I please be a total pain in the ass and ask you for some links? I've googled the PM drama but haven't really found anything beyond what was written by the folks at GDNNOP. Is her blog worth reading?

Here is a link to her blog. You decide if it's worth reading. possummomma.blogspot.com/

[longskirtlotsakids]

I see the donation scroll on the other board and am struck by the amount of FJ users that donated $10. She's moving to IL, huh? Good luck. We Midwesterners have loooooong memories.

The second she hits a town her name will be in the papers and people forewarned.

IL is still reeling the Rita Crundwell debacle. Talk about crazy, no one does crazy like horsepeople. Crundwell took $65 mill tho, not a few thousand. She's rotting in prison right now and will be there till she passes.

[lizziesmom]

I see the donation scroll on the other board and am struck by the amount of FJ users that donated $10. She's moving to IL, huh? Good luck. We Midwesterners have loooooong memories.

The second she hits a town her name will be in the papers and people forewarned.

I don't think the real 'Ruth' is moving to Illinois. She just goes there to pick up her two younger children (ex has custody and lives in Chicago) for visitation. Ruth's move to Illinois per her blog bears as much resemblance to reality as a unicorn does.

[longskirtlotsakids]

Oh, I got that. I understood from chatter on other areas though that the woman behind RR ('Ruth' in my former post) was moving to that area or looking to once her children got custody.

[Stephanie66]

So sorry for using the real name. I didn't know it was against TOS. I promise it won't happen again.

So she isn't the reporter? I am just really curious about her financial status. And maybe the reporter who shares her name can do an investigative report on her. Heh.

And she is living in Chicago now? That's not that far away from LaCrosse, WI...new home of McKmama. (I won't use her real name, either) I don't quite believe either one of them are "munchausens by internet." Those folks fake illnesses for attention. Both of these women faked lives (Mckmama's son was legitimately ill for a period of time) for money. Mckmama didn't really fake about her life so much as she lied to the bankruptcy court. Her life and her kids are at least real.

[okayobee]

So sorry for using the real name. I didn't know it was against TOS. I promise it won't happen again.

So she isn't the reporter? I am just really curious about her financial status. And maybe the reporter who shares her name can do an investigative report on her. Heh.

And she is living in Chicago now? That's not that far away from LaCrosse, WI...new home of McKmama. (I won't use her real name, either) I don't quite believe either one of them are "munchausens by internet." Those folks fake illnesses for attention. Both of these women faked lives (Mckmama's son was legitimately ill for a period of time) for money. Mckmama didn't really fake about her life so much as she lied to the bankruptcy court. Her life and her kids are at least real.

She lives in CA. Her kids live in IL. My hunch, and it's only a hunch, is she's on disability and she gets some alimony. The scamming is how she's able to travel to see her kids. Someone with better google-fu might be able to get this information from the public divorce and custody records.

Edit: RR does fake illnesses for attention. Among her big illnesses are lupus, stroke, and heart surgery. Then she has all her accidents and injuries. She has also faked illness for her children (real and fake children) - heart issues, kidney issues, and death from appendicitis. RR is very much a candidate for Munchhausen by internet.

[LeopardLady]

An in depth analysis of PM and her many identities is being done on truth-about-ruth.com. You can probably get the information you are looking for there.

Also okayobee, even just one name is against ToU I'm pretty sure.

[okayobee]

Thanks for the reminder! That slipped my mind. I edited my post.

[happy atheist]

Also okayobee, even just one name is against ToU I'm pretty sure.

Yup.

[Aurora rising]

Aurora and Louisa--you should win the lottery or something "unbelievably" good.

Thank you so much! :)

[onthefringe]

It's so interesting how some things stood out to some people and not to others. Gay couples adopting is so common here that I didn't even blink an eye. I know several. That doesn't seem weird to me. For me it was how quickly things changed for someone who seemed ill equipped to handle change. The hurried and sloppy posting stood out to me but I brushed it off.

eta. I don't come from a fundie background so I never had that mindset drilled into me that gay = bad. I had lots of other crap drilled into me but not that one :-)

My sister is gay so gay couples adopting doesn't seem weird to me. It just seemed a little much because "Gay is Evil" had been pounded into their heads for so long.

[mebeforee]

Wow, finally caught up. I miss most of the drama around here because I tend to come and go depending on what my school schedule is like and how stressed I am about reading or assignments, lol, but I didn't want to post anything on this thread until I was caught up and that took a very long time (unsurprisingly). I was further delayed when the discussion reminded me (and compelled me to re-research) about a 14-year-old boy in Manchester who had created hundreds of personas in an MSN chatroom to keep the attention of another boy from the same area that he'd become obsessed with. He used the characters to manipulate the other boy in crazy, emotionally abusive ways. The "how" is really complicated so I'd suggest looking it up yourself if you're curious, but it culminated in this kid tricking the other boy into stabbing him twice and nearly killing him. Since they're minors their real identities can't be reported on and they're only known as "John" (the scammer/stabbed) and "Mark" (the stabber). John was the first person in the UK to be charged with inciting his own murder, and though they were both released with probation limits, the limits put on John were actually stricter. It was evident to the authorities that he was the more culpable because of the huge mental and emotional control he'd managed to get over Mark. Through online chatrooms.

Some people find it easier to be skeptical about this kind of online stuff but not everyone does. And the emotional recoil of a betrayal like this will be directly related to how much emotional investment people have given... so for some people this is just as gutting as finding out about a real-life betrayal. So that's me joining in with the 'don't feel bad about believing' but also just to hopefully give people who might be really upset about this some support. Don't get too jaded by one bad egg :)

I didn't follow Ruth so I didn't know much of anything about her until reading this thread. Obviously she was happy to take people's money, but she can't be relying on it for any real income. The extent of the lies and many identities, they make it seem like she's doing it more for the validation or constant attention. And people around here know a great deal about this lifestyle, many coming out of it, but let's remember that this is still not a very well-understood movement in most of the world. My RL friends have very little idea about it except what I share out of my own interest. For someone to fake a believable ex-ATI persona would take way more research and commitment (even if they had family in it) than you normally see with flat-out money scams. And her writing with the NLQ series is CRAZY if she is just out for money... I mean, it's possible she saw it as a way to legitimize her fake persona, but jeez! What a risk to take if she's just trying to get money! Pitching a tragic, FAKE life story to the very people who have actually escaped that lifestyle? There's a huge chance of being exposed in that situation. But if she's doing it for personal/emotional/whatever reasons it might have seemed worth the risk, because what better place to get genuine emotional outpouring? From people who have a very real, personal experience with those kind of traumas.

At any rate, I wouldn't make any attempt to diagnose her with anything but I think there are some significant emotional problems in this person. However those make her act in despicable and predatory ways. I just really want to give kudos to the people working so hard to handle this. Because she'll probably try again and you MIGHT not be able to stop it, but then again, you might. Hitting enough roadblocks might distress her enough for her to actually see the problem and get help, you never know.

[louisa05]

Aurora and Louisa--you should win the lottery or something "unbelievably" good.

Thanks. :D

And thanks to the others who have posted kind words. We do have some friends and family who are here for us, but the ones who have completely disassociated themselves have really disappointed us. When you have hard times, you learn a lot about your friends and not all of it is good.

I could sort of believe some of Ruth's constant troubles. What tripped me up all the time was that everyone around her was so completely unsupportive, that she lived in a college dorm and was unable to make a single social connection, that her family members who were supposedly out did not help her in the least, that employers and landlords and co-workers were all so mean and unfair to her.

Also...I do have to say in the midst of our constant crises, neither of us has the time or inclination to broadcast it to the world via the internet. I post on two or three forums regularly but have talked very little about it all on any of them.

[Burris]

Could I please be a total pain in the ass and ask you for some links? I've googled the PM drama but haven't really found anything beyond what was written by the folks at GDNNOP. Is her blog worth reading?

My Google string was PM+fake. I didn't save many links. I read long enough to find about eight different aliases though. LOL! (Okay - maybe not quite "LOL.") PM is a pretty good writer and has been for awhile - including on her Athiest in a Minivan blog.

PM - an individual who seems more and more likely to be "Ruth" from RR - pretty much defrauded the shit out of a good-hearted person named Calladus. (To learn about the problems with that story, click here, do a word-search for 'Lupus,' and take a sick-bag for the ride.)

Calladus' wife had died of an undetected medical condition. When PM came along claiming to have some sort of Lupus called SLE, saying she needed UV-proof window film to even walk around in her own house, Calladus and others gave her money - thousands of dollars of it - to have this special film installed.

Not that long later, she posted an image of herself splashing around in an out-door pool with her children. When several posters asked her how she managed it when she had been confined to a room by this light-sensitive condition she had, PM claimed her doctors had put her on a new medication that allowed her to spend a few hours a day in the sun. *groan*

[Mama Mia]

My Google string was PM+fake. I didn't save many links. I read long enough to find about eight different aliases though. LOL! (Okay - maybe not quite "LOL.") PM is a pretty good writer and has been for awhile - including on her Athiest in a Minivan blog.

PM - an individual who seems more and more likely to be "Ruth" from RR - pretty much defrauded the shit out of a good-hearted person named Calladus. (To learn about the problems with that story, click here, do a word-search for 'Lupus,' and take a sick-bag for the ride.)

Calladus' wife had died of an undetected medical condition. When PM came along claiming to have some sort of Lupus called SLE, saying she needed UV-proof window film to even walk around in her own house, Calladus and others gave her money - thousands of dollars of it - to have this special film installed.

Not that long later, she posted an image of herself splashing around in an out-door pool with her children. When several posters asked her how she managed it when she had been confined to a room by this light-sensitive condition she had, PM claimed her doctors had put her on a new medication that allowed her to spend a few hours a day in the sun. *groan*

He has a recent update on his blog about this. Mostly it's about his interaction with possom momma, but he also adds he's getting lots of calls at weird hours. Poor guy ! How weird would it be to be drug into this kind of drama?

[Burris]

He has a recent update on his blog about this. Mostly it's about his interaction with possom momma, but he also adds he's getting lots of calls at weird hours. Poor guy ! How weird would it be to be drug into this kind of drama?

People are calling this guy? That's not right.

[Mustang Sally]

In his latest entry, Calladus basically implies, by using the term "false flag," that someone else is impersonating being PM impersonating "Ruth." It's not technically impossible, as he says, since IP addresses can be spoofed. But it strains credulity and Occam's Razor says that PM has likely fed him a story about someone in her life pretending to be her scamming people online in order to throw off suspicion and elicit sympathy. I mean, seriously, it's on the same level as Anthony Weiner claiming his Twitter account was "hacked" to post illicit photos of...himself. And as always, she plays the victim.

Oh, and here's the thing - "Ruth" was not exposed as PM by comparing two sets of IP addresses. She was exposed by comparing "Ruth's" IP address locations to the actual locations PM was at and reported, with photographs, on her FB page. Putting those two things together is a different process than the one he is describing on his blog. He seems to be assuming that someone here has directly compared PM's IP address with "Ruth's", which, as far as I know, is not what happened here at Free Jinger.

[Burris]

In his latest entry, Calladus basically implies, by using the term "false flag," that someone else is impersonating being PM impersonating "Ruth." It's not technically impossible, as he says, since IP addresses can be spoofed. But it strains credulity and Occam's Razor says that PM has likely fed him a story about someone in her life pretending to be her scamming people online in order to throw off suspicion and elicit sympathy. I mean, seriously, it's on the same level as Anthony Weiner claiming his Twitter account was "hacked" to post illicit photos of...himself. And as always, she plays the victim.

He's a true believer and he's going to let her destroy him.

[Mustang Sally]

He's a true believer and he's going to let her destroy him.

Rather sad for a self-described skeptic, no?

I mean, I feel for the guy. I was duped too, though not as egregiously as he was. Smart people fall for manipulators all the time. But only the foolishly proud refuse to consider the evidence and then admit it.

I would love to see the "evidence" she has provided to him that she's been the victim of a false flag operation. Love to.

Calladus, if you're reading this - read The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin.

[mcc6676]

Rather sad for a self-described skeptic, no?

I mean, I feel for the guy. I was duped too, though not as egregiously as he was. Smart people fall for manipulators all the time. But only the foolishly proud refuse to consider the evidence and then admit it.

I would love to see the "evidence" she has provided to him that she's been the victim of a false flag operation. Love to.

I feel for him, too. I think she is taking advantage of his emotional pain. She's being an emotional vampire and the poor guy doesn't want to or is unable to see it. This type of emotional fraud is what really burns my ass about situations like this.

[Mustang Sally]

I agree, mcc - it's unconscionable to emotionally manipulate someone who's been through what he's experienced.

[mcc6676]

I agree, mcc - it's unconscionable to emotionally manipulate someone who's been through what he's experienced.

Absolutely, but that's a key element to the ruse isn't it. Find a person or group of people who lean one way, emotionally manipulate through situations that gain sympathy and support and then take advantage (financially, emotionally, intellectually, etc.) when convenient.

It's a sick, sad game and I have no sympathy for people who play it. Lots of collateral damage.

[okayobee]

I can just imagine the cackling joy she must feel in pulling one over on a fairly well known skeptic. To have him in her pocket just feeds right into her narcissism.

[Burris]

I can just imagine the cackling joy she must feel in pulling one over on a fairly well known skeptic. To have him in her pocket just feeds right into her narcissism.

At first I thought it was just straight up financial fraud. She’d started with a story, found it made her money, and took thousands of dollars from people with it. It’s bad, yes, but my view of what constitutes outright cruelty is really skewed: Something has to be blatant for me to think more than, ‘Meh.â€

But this...she keeps hitting this same guy, and publicly humiliating him in the process (although he clearly doesn’t see it yet). He’s taking a lot of pain for her actions. It’s just pointless cruelty on her part for her to keep dragging him down by his own loss like that.

She should be utterly ashamed of herself for this, but I’m starting to suspect that one doesn’t feel shame.