Though Rebecca Culley is obviously a wrong ’un – having stolen £90,000 from her dear old gramps while pretending to care for him and only spend a minimum of his cash on ‘bits and bobs’ – I couldn’t help feeling a flash of admiration for her. When she was caught bang to rights, she diagnosed herself as a ‘spoilt brat’. At last, a person with lousy personality traits – in this case acquisitiveness, laziness and dishonesty – has refused to reach for some bogus medical synonym to justify their behaviour and has used words which all of us can read and think: ‘Yep, sounds about right.’
In return the judge rewarded her with a 20-month jail sentence suspended for two years; in mitigation, Culley’s defence lawyer Simeon Evans said she had a ‘degree of insight… This may seem ironic but she very much misses the emotional support of her grandfather, who was a father figure. She has robbed herself of that’.
As well as a suspended sentence, Culley was handed three weeks of ‘rehabilitation activity’ and six months of mental health treatment. I’d venture that she might be better employed lecturing other cons on exactly what ails – or rather, doesn’t ail – them, knowing as we do how many shady people reach for the nearest fashionable diagnosis of what exactly it is that has brought them to the attention of the authorities.
Mental ’elf issues preventing you from working but allowing you to take frequent foreign holidays? Lazy Sod Syndrome. Such an ‘empath’ it hurts? Terminally Wet Syndrome. Highly sensitive person? You haven’t got a personality, and you know you’re boring, so you’ve opted for this crap instead.
I’ve known one fraud who’s done a whistle-stop of personality disorders, shucking off one analysis the moment she’s accused of simply being a rotter and grabbing another one, like someone surprised in a shower seeking to cover their shame.
Far better to do as I’ve always done when caught out being bad: the it’s-a-fair-cop-guv defence. Revealed as being not quite as faithful as a labrador? Point out to the complainant: ‘Well, you knew what I was like when you took up with me, as I was already with someone else!’ Caught passing on juicy gossip about your best friend when you accidentally forget, drunkenly typing, that the person you’re emailing is the actual best friend as opposed to the presumed tattle-mate? Exclaim: ‘You’re the most fascinating person I know – of course I gossip about you, everyone else is so boring!’
Some years back I was having an online ding-dong about an article in this magazine with a cross (very cross) dresser calling themselves ‘the Dame’ who first threatened me with a duffing-up from their ‘Hell’s Angel’ partner. ‘The Dame’ went on to mistake me for a Jew – I sadly do not have that honour – and crow that ‘Hitler was right!’ before threatening to report me to the police for hate crimes. At this point I lost patience and – always keen to meet trouble halfway – phoned the local police hate crimes line myself. After I’d given my name, contact details and whereabouts that day, the charming lady asked me for a brief summary of the online squabble.
When I came to the bit about Hitler being right, there was a sharp intake of breath: ‘Let me stop you there, Julie, because this is starting to sound like you should be the one filing a complaint.’
‘I won’t, thank you, as I’m not a cry-baby. But if this Dame person goes ahead with his complaint, may I think again about this kind offer?’ Answer affirmative, I went back to the fray refreshed and soon had the Dame deleting posts left, right and centre: Hitler and the Hell’s Angels would have to try to scare me into submission another day.
On one occasion, I heard from what I believe is known as a ‘scammer’ informing me they had put their grubby paws on footage of me abusing myself to online pornography and would release it to a breathlessly waiting world should I refuse to reimburse them financially. ‘That’s interesting,’ I replied, ‘as I have done that a few times – but I’ve been both fat and fit over the last few years. Could you possibly show me a snippet, and if I’m fat I’ll pay you not to show it – but if I’m fit, you go ahead!’ I never received a reply.
So if anyone is ever caught in the unfortunate position of Rebecca Culley, I’d advise them to find a few more misdemeanours to fess up to. Maybe chuck in more diagnoses; swinging-the-lead syndrome, perhaps, or idle-itis, or for thieving of a commercial kind, five-fingered-discount–disorder.
After all, as the greatest of the Stoic philosophers, Epictetus, said: ‘If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, “He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”’
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