Saving the Villain

All right sticky bandit. Jesus look, rise to his project. Can you really ever be discerning

about someone who you only know in a back? Why are we going into relationships expecting

to change anyone? A challenge to her notion that we should just be giving men personality

rehab. Men's are fictitious addition. Yeah. I guess that's love sick. It's disgusting. I would say

Michael to action, but this episode is deleting your dating apps. Everyone like delete them.

This podcast was created on the lands of the Gumbangu and Warnjuri peoples. We pair respects to

Otis past and present. Always was, always will be. We wanted to give you a heads up that this

podcast discusses themes such as domestic violence, coercive control, sexual abuse and child abuse.

Any similarity to Nicholas Firefly of Queensland Australia is due to the fact that this podcast

is about him. We have reached out to Nicholas to give him the opportunity to come on the podcast

until his side of the story. However, he declined our offer.

The views shared in this podcast are our opinions and interpretations of events not statements of

fact. Descriptions of behaviours and characteristics prefer to observe patterns and dynamics

not diagnoses or criminal allegations. We created this podcast because we found ourselves in the

unusual position of needing to warn women about a man whose MO is extraordinary. We delete that

extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so here is ours. Your listening to catch

the Dragonfly with Kiki and Jules. A podcast about a lover, a charmer, a farmer. And what happens

when you try to con a true crime girlie? Welcome to catch the Dragonfly episode 9. I'm Kiki

and I'm Jules. We had no intention of leaving it this long between episodes. We wanted to record

this episode so much sooner, but unfortunately the Dragonfly has been keeping us very busy this year.

We'll cover that in another episode. In this episode, we're going to talk about

more of Dragonfly's lies and stories. Tell you about our last conversation with our undercover

agent Sophie and we'll talk more about what might have driven her decisions. It's a choice.

It is a choice. I would say that this episode is a call in to be discerning about the men in your

life, particularly before you get emotionally entangled with them when possible.

Agreed. Yeah. Let's just recap how we've gotten to this point so far. So you found out that

Dragonfly was a con man, maybe not to the degree that we have since figured out, but you found out

you removed him from your house with the help of the police. He goes to Stradbroke Island

and he meets a woman on the ferry. You get into contact with me and we decide to make a PSA

to warn people so that he can't victimize them like he did to us, basically. So Sophie reached out.

She already knew him online only, but she offered to go undercover and help us stop him from hurting

anyone else. So as per usual, we're going to open the episode with a whole bunch of lies that

Dragonfly was telling. Sophie was sending us a whole bunch of screenshots from her conversation with

him and he was making up all sorts of things. One day he was telling her that Belinda, his victim

from the ferry who by this stage we'd warned and she'd escaped from Dragonfly. Well, he was now

telling Sophie, oh, Belinda called me so distraught because she called Jules for support and Jules was

just so horrible and abusive towards her. Yeah, I mean that checks out with you, definitely.

So obviously the opposite was true and that Belinda had called me distraught because she'd

phoned Dragonfly asking for answers why he would do this to her, why he would lie to her about

everything and about me and he had been really horrible to her. So she and I had ended up on the

phone that night and although she was in tears when she called me, we were laughing by the end

of the phone call because this man is just so ridiculous. I asked her at some stage if he had

any stories about being involved in the music industry because he loves to lie to all of us about

that and she'd told me like, well, yeah, he's like best friends with the band Atmosphere and that

song of theirs, Puppets, that's written about him. I'm like, I think he might actually not know

them and we will be reaching out to Atmosphere to confirm. But yeah, Nicholas claims that not only

is that song Puppets about him, they even make a reference in the song to wearing a bandage on

his hand all the time because apparently that's what he was doing in this era of his life.

I think a bit like Nelly with the bandage. He's so cringe. He's so cringe and like it's

isn't it just so crazy hearing all these lies and now like without the lens of love,

it's just makes your skin cruelty here. All of this stuff that he says and be like, he can't possibly,

he can't possibly think that this is cool. Yeah, I used to walk around with a bandage on my hand

all the time. That was my calling card. All right, sticky bandit.

There we get so filthy, he's such a grub. I wondered if it was like a reference to him having been

like a loan shark for his drug lord mom, how he's chopping fingers off. So that was the bandages

about it. Now I want to ask you, does this woman look like a drug lord to you?

I think we both know she doesn't. I don't think you are. She was also telling me about some stuff

that she thought was really weird. Like Dragonfly was claiming to have built an entire house down

here on the mid north coast, which if you've watched episodes five and six of the podcast,

you'll know that his ex wife Wendy built that house, basically on her own while he was just playing

on his phone. So now that he's up on North Stradberg Island, he's staying in a family house and

Belinda was visiting him there. And she's saying to him like, hey, this this house has

been a better days. Why don't you fix up this house for your family since you're staying here

and Dragonfly is like, oh no, I just only wanted to do the garden. Like, I don't want to be

exploited by my family. While I'm living here, rent free, not paying any of the bills, drinking

all my grandfather's wine, but I draw the line at fixing this being exploited by my family,

by fixing this place up. He wouldn't catch me dead being exploited.

It's called Boundaries, but this is true. This is how he stands by his words.

I also asked her because Dragonfly had been talking to me nonstop about how he was making all of

these low-fod-mark meals. And he was saying that he was interested in Fod-mark because Belinda

was on the Fod-mark diet. So I asked her about that and she'd never even heard of the Fod-mark diet.

She had no idea what it was. So further going to show it there, it was Dragonfly following this diet.

And I think we all know why that was. He likes to shoot his pants. Well, maybe he doesn't like to

shoot his pants. Yeah, it seems like he wanted to put it a stop. He's prone to be a pantshitter.

I think it's really important identifying characteristic of this man because

basically he is such a chameleon. You really need to know more about his behaviors so you can

pick up on clues that he might be in your presence. Belinda also told me that he'd been telling her a lot

of really distressing and graphic stories, particularly of a sexual nature, that she felt

were designed to make her feel distressed and disgusted. And Dragonfly is the man who I alleged

is an emotional vampire who feeds off of women's distress and disgust and discomfort.

Yeah, definitely. And he seems like that's a pattern. That's another behavioral pattern of his

to have the craziest most uncomfortable stories. Like you'll be trying to listen to him and you

won't even be able to look at him while he's chopping because it's so distressing. But he does. He

loves her. He's he's just like, yeah, you can you can see him feeding off that.

We were also able to piece together that he'd taken this one childhood abuse story that he told me

which apparently was the catalyst for all of his issues and he'd told that same story to Belinda

except it was like totally different characters and then like some of the key details

had changed to a point where the different versions of the story were not reconcilable.

And when you've got particular stories that change depending on who he's talking to,

regardless of what the type of story it is, you have to come to the conclusion

that probably none of it's true. What? Nobody's getting a true version of that story.

As we know with him, he likes to steal stories so they're probably not his at all.

He's recycling someone else's trauma. It's just such a depraved thing to do.

Yeah, it's just another violation. It's like such a violation and especially because he

particularly targets people who do have a background of trauma. He will connect with people based

on these shared traumas and when you find out that he doesn't have them and in fact, he's come from

like a very privileged background. It's a total like violating, it's a re-traumatising experience.

It adds so many different layers to the betrayal. It's not only that he lied to us about

what he's doing in his life and who he is, but he manufactured conversations with us based on

total lies that were designed to build our trust in him. And designed to make us think that

we can relate to him, he's going to be empathetic, he understands trauma, he's just feeding off it.

That's what he's doing. We didn't know this one, we were with him, we had no way to know this.

Once again, it's things you don't lie about. So when someone tells you that, you don't question them.

Yeah, and also pretty much all of us only knew this man in a vacuum. It leads to the question,

can you really ever be discerning about someone who you only know in a vacuum?

What's the answer? I think not. I think not. You only hear their version of events.

And so if this is someone whose version of events is really far removed from reality,

there's much less likelihood of there being a reality check coming in, like, you know,

meeting up with a friend who is confused by this person's version of events. I think that

there are a lot of people out there who say that a lot of the type of lying that he does,

which is just making up stories for seeming for clout or for excitement. I think he's feeding

on stimulation. A lot of people think that's benign and harmless. But for me, I really don't feel

that way. I think that it shows that this person is trying to build a false image of them

and I think that's a huge red flag. Let's hear. It's just little things that actually lead into much

bigger things like they snowball, don't they? They like pick up and get bigger and bigger and bigger

as they go along. And like as we've seen in this example with Dragonfly, when you're first

talking to him, it's very small. They're tiny little lives, but that's actually building,

let's show him his character. His character is not truthful. It's not honest. It's not trustworthy.

And then that translates to bigger things as well. I think that for me, like, in order to be

discerning about someone, I want to see them in a social context. I want to see them in their

family context. I want to see how they act in public. I want to see how they treat me in public

and in front of other people. And I want to see how they respond when they're in an unexpected

situation, when they're challenged. I want to know all of those types of things about someone

before I'm going to decide that I want to be in an intimate relationship with them.

Totally. Totally. I think that's the only way. Everyone's character changes a little bit

depending on who they're with or the situation they're in, but it's whether or not someone's

character changes so much or their reactions are volatile or whatever.

Also, even if it's just like having them meet your friends, for instance, so that maybe your

friends will ask them questions that you haven't thought to ask them or hearing if there's any

changes in those stories. Also, if a person has nobody from their history to introduce you to,

to eventually meet up with, be questioning why, why don't they? Why don't they have

anybody from their past? Even if they say, oh, I've been such a scumbag, I just want to leave

that all behind. It's got to be someone. I think they're saying I've been such a scumbag.

So the vibe with Sophie, like, I would say that she kind of seemed like she was having both a

self-esteem and a feminist kind of awakening. I feel like she was putting those types of lenses on

a lot of her conversation with us and that she seemed to be really energized in this awakening

that she seemed to be going through. Yeah, definitely. I think, for the most of it,

I think she was really excited to be hanging with the girlies because, you know, in her own words,

she said she only had male friends. She only hung out with guys and I think she was like,

well, I think to have that validation of, yeah, you've been treated pretty poorly or guys do

these things and it's not appropriate or whatever. Just validating her experience, which,

yeah, she was enjoying. And she was like, she was doing some funny stuff. Like, she used her

Facebook prowess to make it so that like whenever one of us would type the word men in what we

were saying in the group chart, like all of these red flags would just like automatically appear

on the screen. So she would make like the most iconic memes.

Any time we'd put in Dragonfly's name, it would be the vomit emoji.

Appropriate. Yeah. And like, don't get me wrong. She would also say some things that were like

confusing to us, but we would not let a judge. And at the end of the day, she had come to us and

offered to help us to keep a woman safe from a predator. So we thought, you know, at least in this

way, our views are aligned and that we all think that what we're doing is worth it to keep this

woman safe from risk. And we all agreed that he is a risk. Yeah, absolutely. What we didn't

realize at the time though was that Sophie seemed to be someone who relies a lot on poor negative

images of the people around her. A poor negative image or a CNI is like a, it's a projection

of sorts. If you have a CNI of someone, it means that you're seeing them as an exaggerated version

of them at their worst or even just an exaggerated version of undesirable qualities that you

think they secretly have. These images often release them from someone's own insecurities.

Let's give an example. Say I'm working at a job and I don't feel like I'm doing a great job there.

I don't think I was like trained properly. I seem to be getting some stuff wrong and it's pretty

confusing. I'm trying my hardest, but I'm not feeling like I'm achieving in my job. Maybe I am,

maybe I'm not, but that's how I'm going home from work, feeling at the end of the day. Say I'm

like that insecure that I'm thinking that everyone around me, whether they work with me or not,

also thinks that I'm really bad at my job. That's going to have an impact on conversations that I

have about my employment, right? Say I've got a friend and even though she never says it and she's

outwardly supportive of me, I just have this gut feeling that she must think I'm bad at my job.

That is a core negative image. I could be having a conversation with her where I could tell I'm

just having the worst time at work. I had to work three hours extra the other day just to get these

spreadsheets in on time. Now my friend who works in a similar role might say, oh you should use

this program that I've started using. It's so easy to use. I bet it will save you a bunch of

time. I have not missed a deadline since I started using it. Now she might walk away from that conversation,

feeling really happy that she was able to offer me a solution that can fix my problem and decrease

my stress. But if I'm taking that all in through the lens of a core negative image,

that she's judging me and that I'm really bad at my job, I might walk away from that same conversation

thinking, oh she thinks I'm so incapable of doing my job that it's just a matter of I would just

need to use this one program and that would just solve everything. She's so judgmental of me.

You see what I mean? Then these people have two completely different experiences of the same

conversation because one person is majorly projecting. Totally, absolutely. I think core negative

images aren't necessarily that uncommon and you can see it a lot especially in relationships

where people live together for example. But there are some people out there who are letting core

negative images project into a lot of their relationships. I think that with this concept in mind,

it makes our conversation with Sophie make a lot more sense in retrospect because at the time,

it didn't seem to make sense. It was really disorienting and confusing. Please,

it didn't seem like she was responding to what was being said. I mean, I actually really wasn't

involved in the last conversation, but going over the chat, I was like, it felt as though

what she was hearing was not what was being put out there. Like she was hearing what she was

telling herself, you know, like kind of like an innocent but her, you know, like, yeah, she was hearing

her own interpretation. Why don't we go over it? It started with her talking about how all of these

men had mistreated her and she was saying that there must be something wrong with her for these

men to have treated her like this and naturally, I replied saying like they abused you because they're

abusive. It's not your fault what they did to you. There's nothing wrong with you. She started

talking about how awful male professional athletes are, even describing one as the devil

and she was telling us about this professional athlete. She knew who had flushed a bunch of

underage girls. When I expressed shock at him having done that though, she started downplaying it

saying that she'd flushed her chest at a bunch of people and says that the sporting organization

made an example of him. She started saying how she has this like compulsion to believe that

people can change and so she'd been a sucker in feeling pity for him and giving him a chance

and the end of the end he hadn't evolved that much. When I expressed that I wasn't surprised

that he didn't change all that much, she then changed her story and said that he'd shown growth

and she was saying that she saw him and men like him as lost puppies and projects and she said

that with him things morphed into this strange platonic yet husband and wife type of relationship.

The combo had started with her saying how awful these men were so I had no idea that when I was

agreeing with her that this guy sounded problematic that she would get defensive. Now I'm comfortable

anyway with having different opinions and perspectives to my friends. I don't see that as a threat

or an insult but Sophie seemed pretty like reactive I guess like streamed in her responses to me

even though I felt like I was agreeing with her but yeah she started to get heightened so I just

tried to try to back out the conversation but she just kept going. She went into talking about her

situation ship. Let's call him Manuel. So Sophie had painted I would say not the greatest

picture of Manuel. She had explained how he'd been abusive emotionally, financially,

sexually towards her how he maybe it sounded as though he had a tendency to lie about his situation

in terms of assets and I guess like status and you know he's like caught himself an artist

but also was a dentist but wasn't in the dentist industry anymore for some weird reason that never

really made sense to us. And then she found out about this other situation ship that he had at

the same time as her, Alice and she'd reached out to her and they had compared notes and initially

they were in total agreeance of yes he did this to me he did this to me they'll comparing stories

and realising that he was a bit of a con but then suddenly Sophie changed her tune and

locked Alice and said that she was lying. Sophie never really explained to us what went on there

but point is it seemed like this Manuel guy was dishonest and dismissive at best but now in my

conversation with Sophie, Sophie was sending me these voice messages about how everything that

Manuel had done was just regular shitty relationship stuff. She said that because he had no intent of

calm that his incredible qualities should just cancel out any of the abuse. I just

replied saying that well I just personally don't see it as an equation like that and that for me I

want a lack of abuse rather than having a balanced act with other things. You know what I mean?

Yeah I mean I don't see why relationships have to have a balance of being treated really poorly

especially when women still kind of like fabricate these good qualities on these men's behalf.

What what were his good qualities? I really can't remember her saying any good qualities that

made me go that's really sweet that's lovely. She did say that when he was telling her that she's

uneducated, unmotivated, going nowhere in life she said that that was a good quality if he's

because he was motivating her. And she'd said about Alice Manuel's other woman who had been

involved with. She said Sophie was now saying that Alice had made things up because she was jealous

when she'd found out about Sophie and Manuel and I think that this is a poor negative image that

she manufactured about Alice that Alice is a jealous vindictive liar to protect her image of Manuel.

I also think that Sophie has this built in competitiveness when it comes to other women and

the validation from other men from what it sounded like to me anyway the relationship that Alice had

with Manuel was probably a lot closer than the one he had with Sophie. I think that

Sophie started getting upset that she wasn't like the main squeeze or like girlfriend number one

or situation ship number one you know. I feel like she is in competition with other women when

she would talk about other women she would talk about them in a sexual way or like you know

or sexualising them or in terms of like hotness or you know like whether it be teammates

even just with us I think you know I mean I think that's part of the the pick me as well that

like competition for validation. So seemingly trying to assert herself as a superior judge of

character Sophie then comes to tie a dragonfly into it. She tries to gaslight me into believing a

situation that never occurred. Remember that I found out all about dragonflies cons and abuse

after we'd broken up and when I found out I immediately had the police come and remove him from

my place. I never spent another second with that man but Sophie says to me that I had decided to

put myself in danger by being with someone who I felt was unsafe. She's saying that I knew he

was dangerous and stayed in a relationship with him and she says I would never put myself in a

position to be around someone like that and it's unfortunate that you did but we aren't the same

not this time my situation ship isn't the same my situation ship doesn't have the intent of harm.

That's what she said not only is that factually inaccurate but it is victim blamey as far

to insinuate that women are just putting ourselves in harm's way and that it's just a simple choice

to avoid abuse by seemingly by assessing intent. She also uses this whole intent defense for

man well too and it's a common defense that we see mounted for abusers. It's easy for people to

say well he isn't trying to be abusive but like okay what is he trying to be because I don't

think someone who's trying to be loving and kind and fair is accidentally abusing women putting

them down so actually abusing them any of these types of things like totally he may not have

ill intent but it's certainly not good not for her. It seems like there's like a level of

Machiavellianism in this mindset as well that like it doesn't matter what the fallout is if someone's

just trying to be decent then nothing else matters. Okay yeah like I can't buy into that. I also

think that this whole like you put yourself in that situation thing is Sophie trying to convince

herself that she's too smart to get conned by dragonfly that she can go ahead and accept the

flotation and the validation that she's getting from him because she is armed with superior

intellect and discernment and she simply will not allow herself to be abused.

In my opinion I think that's part of the reason why she was offended at me having agreed

with her in the past maybe to her that's tying into her core negative image of of me of us

that we would be just as big to blame me as she is and that agreeing that has been abusive might

actually equal in her eyes agreeing that she had put herself in a situation to be abused that she

failed to be discerning but those aren't beliefs that you and I hold about people who are abused

they're beliefs that she stated over and over again and that you and I had both routinely

disagreed with. Yeah again I think her interpretation of our conversations was what?

It really was because then she started taking on a really punitive tone and started to say that

our efforts to warn Belinda and the fact that we had talked about making a PSA podcast about this man

were revenge and cruelty and that we just wanted to ruin his life by warning women about him

claiming that we just derived joy from his suffering. There have definitely been moments you know

like where he's gone from sleeping in our beautiful soft fluffy beds to sleeping on a drop sheet

in a caravan where yeah we do have a sense of humour we do have a sense of irony and that is

objectively hilarious that doesn't change the fact that the reason we're warning women about

this man is because he is a serial abuser he's highly dangerous and he's extremely good at what he

does and luring women in conning and abusing them. Like I mean it's just such a selfish point of

view to take it that what we're doing is for revenge when we just don't want anyone to ever have

to go through what we've been through we want to stop it in its tracks as soon as we possibly can

whenever we've found other victims of his like our heart has broken for them you know it doesn't

we would love to not have to do this it'd be great if we didn't have to do this but unfortunately

there's nothing in place for there to be any kind of legal retribution for him he's allowed to go

about doing this and this is where we need to step up. So obviously I was pretty alarmed by that framing

and I did remind her what we were doing this for and also reminded her that I found this entire

process terrifying and it is terrifying but she asserts that by wanting to warn Belinda

we're doing the exact same thing as Nicholas because we're just acting on our own moral code

and our own needs and justifications and so she's saying that we're the moral equivalent of this

woman Bashar because in warning Belinda we are just following our own version of what's just

and fair. Yeah I think I just again think it's such an interesting read on what we're doing

like first of all to imply that morals are all involved in dragonflies plots

so ridiculous like he may talk about morals but he is not using any of them. Yeah he's like

lying to try to make himself sound morally justified if you have to outright lies to do that

like it's pretty indicator that someone's not trying to be moral they're trying to cover up the

fact that they're immoral. Yeah I think we can see like the underlying mindsets that can

tribute it to her perspective though she's like already undermined our credibility. In her mind

it's established that we're just irrational actors who lack judgment so of course she can conveniently

rebrand a totally necessary PSA as revenge and cruelty that we chose to be abused so it isn't

right for us to then go on to warn other people that this man is abusive. Ultimately I think she

needs to frame us as the problem because that's the only way to be able to continue to view abusive

men as lost puppies and projects rather than safety risks which is what they are. Yeah I think it

like for her it's she doesn't want to not have men in her life because that's her main source of

validation so if she can say no they can all be saved there are lots of puppies they just need to

be loved a little bit more and she's willing to offer it then she can continue to have these men

in her life and like even if they're being awful to her having them around is validation enough

you know her. Like that professional athlete who she knew is problematic but she thought she could

fix him and then it turned out that she got really hurt by him she tried it back into him again

and she's saying like you know it just didn't sound right it just didn't fit when you called

him a flashar and I'm like you said he flashed a bunch of people though and then she goes he

isn't a rapist and it's like hang on no one called him a rapist like if I'm pointing out that I'm

just using the terminology that you used and then your response is to now put words in my mouth

that are in extreme hyperbole extreme exaggeration not what I said I think it's because that's the only

way that she could actually continue making me honest is rabid man-hatar by completely misrepresenting

what I said while of course deciding that she is a totally sound judge of people's character

it's difficult because she clearly wants me to join in on huddling these extremely problematic men

but there's no way I'm gonna sit there and do that and I don't think there's a correct way to do it

necessarily when you're disagreeing with someone on their core negative image about you like she's

saying we're just being vengeful and I'm trying to clarify to her what I think is really obvious

but these core negative images are like they can be really strongly held and it's almost like you

know if you don't agree with me then you're against me kind of mentality like it doesn't matter

that I wasn't trying to recruit her to my way of thinking the fact that I wouldn't prosign hers

seem to be enough to really inflame her and she just she was like fully loaded she started crying

she was sending those voice messages with sounded like she was crying and she's saying well

how am I meant to ever find anybody to be with if if my sister and you two and all women are just

saying that all men are just evil and she was like blaring down the phone and saying you're just

saying that all men are rapists you just need to fucking stop man but like

that's just not what was being said it's not always being alluded to like I was just trying to give

real minimalist responses that just clarified what I was trying to achieve in regards to dragonfly

but I'd even kind of stopped with that and was just trying to exit the combo but she's just

telling me that I'm saying all this stuff it's clear that she's not comfortable with like what

you and I were doing is a challenge to her notion that we should just be giving men personality

rehab and even if the personality rehab doesn't work we should just accept however they're gonna

treat us because you know at least there's at least there's a man there now so yeah I did just I gave

up at that point on trying to share our perspective it was clear she was I don't know she seemed like

she was not engaging with me at this point at all it was just solely arguing with that core negative

image and then she said you know and like you've all just decided that I'm just a stupid girl and a

can't which like I'd only be trying to reassure her and clarify what I meant but it just seemed

like that was just her saying I am us we're just man haters we think we're so much smarter than her

we chose to be abused and so we just need to deal with that and shut up and and let her get on

with fixing these men it was her at the start of the conversation who'd said that there was

something wrong with her I disagreed with that but she still insisted on projecting onto me it's

just really difficult when someone's that strongly tied to their projections either way it's

still just like so hard to wrap your head around how someone could get to the level of cognitive

dissonance where they would support drag and flag because he is next level she knew all about

everything that he had done from impregnating a child to bashing a woman faking cancer

calling all of us with a whole fictional lie I mean why don't we get into some more of his lies

right now because he was telling her that he was a wealthy retired landlord a faithful and loving

person to all who knew him and he was of course still making up stories about family members he

was telling anyone who would listen that this auntie over here dad's sister had murdered her husband

yeah apparently the same thing that her own aunt had done as well there was this streak of

merge russes in the family this is the auntie who's on dad's side of the family which

dragon place says it's the white European side of the family but she's also somehow mysteriously

a corn demuka elder on the island as you can see it pretty much takes a fake mentor membership

to navigate the family tree and it has to be fake you can't have an authentic membership of

mensa it has to be a firefly original mensa fictitious edition yeah I'd also spoken to Belinda

some more by this time and we had been comparing more of his stories he had this banger of a story

he would tell me about when he was living down in bellow he was dating this refugee woman

and they would meet up at the beach every friday for dates and he would like dig them a lounge pit

into the sand with a fire pit in the middle of that and they would have a fire at the beach and

make out and it was so romantic and he just loved it but then he found out that while she was

apparently non monogamous she still hadn't told her partner that she was seeing him

sounds like one of those stories where he's just confessing his own non monogamous lies

but anyway I was really surprised to hear some reason when I was on the phone with Belinda

her telling me this exact same story but now it wasn't a refugee it was a brusillian tourist

every other detail the same but what here he is she also told me about the time she was at

the bus stop with dragonfly and a rather eccentric man started talking to Belinda at the bus stop

about all of his artwork that he'd been working on and and he was just um talking a lot

quite a radic and she was wondering about his well-being status kind of thing but she looked over

at dragonfly and dragonfly was just kind of like smirk and laugh in a bit but staying back but like

how to look at his face like he was familiar with this guy and knew what was going on with him

it was only when dragonfly and belinda were alone later on that dragonfly said to her well that's

there that's the air to a local family is fortune it's the it's the

company

he's filthy rich because of this family business on the island so that's why he can afford to just

be an eccentric artist because he's living off the family trust fund

yeah she also said to me you know he's really fixated on you jewels like he's always always

muttering about how oh jules think she's so much smarter than me but I am so much smarter than her

she doesn't know who she's dealing with like ad nausea we have all believed ridiculous lies

from this man some of us with pre-warning but most of us without that luxury but regardless let's

take a look at it because you know like this isn't about saying that someone is unintelligent to

believe his lies because people like this compulsive liars, con artists, narcissistic people

they don't need to be smarter than us they just need enough time to manipulate us they need that

access to us is what they need so I think in order to keep us all safe from people like this we

need to not think okay this person is manipulative but I'm smarter than them so therefore I'm

going to come out on top I think we need to go all human beings are susceptible to manipulation

I can tell that this is a manipulative person so I'm not going to give them access to me yeah totally

it's I mean it's like assuming that anything that you think you are smarter than can't harm you

when it's just not the case I mean I would say objectively most of us are smarter than ticks

but you get a tick and it'll make you really it could make you really fucking sick I think

it's a pretty good comparison but because he gets under your skin he borrows in there and he like

fucking finds a way to get in there and he makes you sick with trust and I guess it's love sick

isn't it disgusting he finds a way he gets you to trust him very quickly as well like he mirrors you

he'll make you think that you guys are two peas in a bar you don't question these crazy stories

and he'll regurgitate every green flag that an ex of his has ever shown he's now projecting out as

being a part of him yeah exactly I think also giving yourself deal breakers that make you bullet

proof to this kind of person for example a zero tolerance policy for abuse rather than insisting

on a balancing act where abuse can be excused by other behaviors I think believe victims when

they tell you about abuse believe perpetrators when they tell you that they've done abusive things

and let discrepancies be read flags if someone who's telling you that they've got it made that

they're financially comfortable they're secure in their employment but then you never see them

going to work they never shopped pay for their half of things let that in and of itself be

enough of a red flag like have the discernment to where you don't get in deep enough to even find

out how bad it gets with this type of person it's not going to go somewhere good anyway back to Sophie

the question was how can someone be experiencing such cognitive dissonance that they would

support someone even so heinous as dragonfly and the next part of the conversation I think

answers that question it seems like her ideology might actually be a defense mechanism for her

own family because Sophie told us next that her son had been accused of rape and not only had

he been accused it seems that he was convicted because she said that he'd been put on all sorts

of lists that it has affected his permanent record forever and she was saying that a group of women

nearly took him down because they believed lies that the victim had apparently told she described

the women who were seeking justice as being part of a harmful culture saying that her son had been

demonized and villainized and that his permanent record had been affected forever because and I

quote because everyone decided it's always men right now I don't know what happened in that court

room but I don't think that that was part of the decision about the consequences for her son

there are a few things that happened here so from what Sophie told us it seems that the girl and I

say girl because she was a 15-year-old child accused two people of sexual abuse now there was

Sophie's son who was under 18 at the time and there was separately there was a man in his mid 20s

so when talking about the man who's in his mid 20s Sophie was characterising this 15-year-old

child as manipulative in her interactions with this mid 20s man now me personally I'm gonna call

these interactions grooming and abuse because it's a 15-year-old and a man in his mid 20s I think

that by calling her manipulative she's protecting this adult man and then like by extension she's

protecting her son as well it's so gross it's so it's so disgusting it I'm like filled with rage at

the moment it really made me think back to earlier in the conversation where she was saying about

Alice and saying that Alice had made up allegations about Manuel because Alice was jealous

and had a hurt ego like it seems like the same sort of scheme or of thinking

absolutely absolutely I think we can see where her whole allergy to accountability comes from

theorem saying that that Flascha guy had been made an example of by the sporting organisation

to saying that drag on fly doesn't deserve to have his reputation ruined by us a warning

Belinda she's already got this standard that even reporting rape is a vengeful act

and and and apparently at least partly because it's affected his permanent record so of course

she's not okay with the notion that I called a Flascha or a Flascha even though she had it's

clearly different coming out of my mouth because I'm someone who is not gonna try to rehab that man

I'm someone who's gonna stay away from him so I think it means more coming out of my mouth

that same word totally and also there's got to be a decent amount of evidence to support

whatever the victim claimed happened for her son to go on a registry it is so hard to get that

at all most rape cases go nowhere so I don't know yeah many are so much more likely to be raped

than to be falsely accused of rape like men's steak in the rape conversation should also be

about their own safety like their potential victims not that they're gonna be having false allegations

made about them so yeah I think that I think that whole thing is just like it's too close to

accountability for sophie's comfort just even labeling something for what it is it's a threat to

that whole notion of giving men personality rehab no it's not all men but if a man's abused if a

woman's abuse more often than not like you know it's a man abusing them so when these behaviors are

shown you can't expect that it's happening in this isolation either that it's just this one-off time

this like thoughtless acts especially when it seems to be repeated and I think I feel like she knows

that like she made the red flags appear on the screen and whenever we type the word men like she

knew that but suddenly she was just like done a 180 on us and now we're the bad guys for like

acknowledging reality also the whole thing where she was saying to me that I'd put myself in that

position to be abused by dragonfly that is making sense to me even more now because she seems to

have this whole thing where the victims are manipulating these situations to happen just so that they

can report someone to ruin their life something's not adding up here the process of

reporting sexual assault is so traumatic it is so traumatic people aren't just learning up to do

that for a bit of petty revenge like what on earth it just seems like to her even if it's a

decade-long pattern of behavior it is not worth tarnishing a man's reputation such as in the

instance of dragonfly we've got his history going back decade it's it is the same over and over

again it is violent it is deceitful it is abusive it is exploitative and yet still that

in and of itself is not enough to justify warning another woman because he deserves a clean slate

just because meanwhile we don't deserve to tell our truth we don't deserve to be heard or believed

we don't deserve to have a say in the conversation because apparently we're vengeful that's it

is like protecting men's reputation and comfort at the expense of women you know like it doesn't

if we're labeled as being manipulative vengeful or dramatic or any of these things which also

like that follows women as well in you look at hollywood and a lot of the times it's not the perpetrators

of sexual abuse or any kind of abuse that their reputation gets tarned it's the people who speak

up about it they lose their careers they're difficult to work with you know like it's

I mean we see this all the time and it's just unacceptable

as for what Sophie's son has or as she says hasn't done we're not saying that she is to blame for that

just the same as this woman and this woman and this woman and this woman like none of them are

responsible for what dragonfly did Sophie is not responsible for her son's actions but I think

that what we are responsible for is how we treat victims in our society you know like there are

parents of abusers who are not enablers there are parents of abusers who believe and support victims

like we do have choices in how we respond when these awful things happen in our lives it would be

an awful thing to have to reckon with the fact that your child has been accused of horrific abuse

like this like I really feel for her having to deal with that but at the end of the day it seems

like she has decided to deal with this by deciding that all victims survivors of abuse are manipulative

that we put ourselves in these positions and that we seem to be co-collaborators on our own abuse

and that therefore we should remain silent that I think is something that she should be responsible for

absolutely I don't think it's fair either that it seems to be so much blame on mothers like

there are meant to be two parents for this child and even regardless like they're they're just so

many factors there's like genetics there's environmental most children are spending so much time

out of the home in the schooling environment you know raising a son in particular and let's face

that most abusers are someone's son raising a son in a patriarchal colony and a white son at that

like it's an uphill battle I think against narcissistic and abusive traits that are embedded

into men in this society and also the fact that women are being groomed in this type of society

to absorb the blame for those men's behaviors I'd like I just want to reject that you know

Nicholas Firefly also known as Nicholas Davis is perfectly capable of describing appropriate

and inappropriate behavior here is in control of his behavior in fact his behavior is extremely

calculated and controlled so it's him who is responsible for his behavior and same for Sophie's son

but I do think she's using that moral relativism as a shield she said to me I'm not saying you're

a shitty person I'm just saying we're all shitty people and she seems really obsessed with this

notion of like who gets to judge and she seems to want it to be that no one can judge anyone for

anything because of this moral relativism otherwise she might have to judge her own son

so she said she was going to tell Dragonfly about our whole operation the next day

that she'd been giving us information about Dragonfly's involvement with Belinda

and being sharing some of her conversations with him to us I asked her to please consider my safety

before deciding whether to do that like she'd said herself that it would be really dangerous for me

if he ever found out and obviously we both agreed with that so I asked her to consider my safety

and she was saying well you're only scared because we've done something that bad that would make him

angry but I'm like girl I was so scared to be saying anything at all in any way

before you even had this idea of going on the cover that like I was messaging you from an

anonymous account like I was terrified we've discussed a lot of the factors that could have played

into her doing this but it's still really difficult to understand someone going so far as to

tolerate sexual abuse for example and I found this study because I was trying to look into like

what is going on for people who would just like turn the other way about this and I found

this really interesting study called tolerance of sexual harassment and examination of gender

differences and bivalent sexism social dominance and gender roles it's really interesting now

it can be different for everyone I'm not saying that this is exactly what's going on for Sophie

I'm just saying that it's something that could be happening but this study indicates that it's

ambivalent sexism and hostility towards women that drives women to tolerate sexual harassment

and men who give out characteristics of sexual harasses which we definitely saw a lot of hostility

and objectification of women from Sophie not only with us but her really aggressive and confusing

conversations that she would have with other women online there was a lot of you know yelling and

blaming and straw-maning with Sophie sometimes even five-minute voice notes of her yelling so

that's but sort of maybe adds up there and I was thinking also and like I should let us know that

acknowledging abusive men is a threat towards her finding a partner and like her and dragonfly had

been floating they had exchanged loot and nude photos with each other it was pretty clear that he

was like like he was buttering her arm big time I think he was putting himself out there as a

potential partner for her to her she loves the lost puppy or a project and Jesus Lord

writes to his project I guess it's like these social norms of like letting amends

he our campaign like negate his negative qualities well totally I mean you know we were telling her

that he was lying to her about certain things and stuff but he was having like a redemption to

her you know he was saying he was a reformed man and he's so much better these days and also

the text that she was sharing with us when I was looking back through them I was like

some of these texts don't quite add up I feel like we're missing gaps of the conversation

big gaps I mean you know she told us that she was sending she was like I'm going to try and flirt

with him I'm going to send loads and they shared loads with each other which I don't know why you

would do that to yourself we that was we'd not encourage that at all it's not worth it I think she

was developing feelings and I think also she was thinking maybe well you know the devil you know

she didn't have to find out all his flaws she would be going into that knowing already what they

are already conveniently in denial about them can't fool me I already know who you are and I think

you're cured this man can't be cured I cannot be cured like it's he fakes going to therapy

he won't put in an IOTO of effort and like I guess we're going to have to talk about in another

episode we're going to have to talk about that whole concept of no me shame and that personality

type that is actually really resistant to changing because of how the the particular way that

they experience shame it's really interesting I think that the fact that Sophie knew everything

about this guy and his tactics and still decided to go inside with him you know it's not all on

her she was also being strongly manipulated by someone and I think that really speaks to the fact

that that it is not worth giving abuses access to you would I ever agree to this type of situation

absolutely not I don't care what the other person says about their levels of discernment and

ability to handle a situation I think that we have unfortunately learned that like really all it

takes is access exactly and because even if you know that he is lying and covertly abusing you

that doesn't give you the upper hand this guy feeds off energy so regardless of whether you know

or not if he is around you he's feeding off you he is feeding off your joy he's feeding off

your sadness he's feeding off your discomfort he's he needs to be around other people this man

will never be alone even when you're not feeling like you're being overtly abused by him

you come to find out later that he's been manufacturing all of these situations and conversations

where you're feeling extreme discomfort so that he can feed off of that that is abusive

he abuses us in ways that it's impossible to identify in the moment Sophie ended up like

manufacturing these poor negative images about women so she could protect this notion of good men

who can who can change and be fixed and I think that this episode really is again a call in

to be discerning about the men in your life and to try to be discerning before getting

intimately entwined with someone it is often difficult to tell an abusive relationship from a

regular relationship when you are in it because you are already being abused by someone who knows

how to do that to you who knows how to push your buttons but this time the personality has

too much access and too much influence over you for it to be click hard so I think being discerning

before getting intimate or before getting into a relationship with someone is ideal and I think

that really goes against like Tinder kind of culture I would say Michael to action

for this episode is delete your dating apps everyone like delete them stop getting to know potential

romantic interests in a vacuum get out there and live your life meet people go engage in hobbies

engage in online groups but meet people outside of the vacuum yeah yeah without like giving people

a chance get to know them maybe it's a front like you know I think especially as women we are

taught to be fixes to nurture to give people a chance and like bring out their softness but if you

realize somewhere along their our values don't align here but down the truck I think I can change

their mind down the truck I think they can change it's not up to you to change people why are we

going into relationships expecting to change anyone especially when it comes to core values and

morals if you are polar opposites of how you're aligned and how you see the world I don't think that's

going to be the best case for a relationship I don't think opposites do attract be honest with you

we just like fold well I think we've got to be at a point in our life where we're not like

desperately trying to fill a vacancy we know that these abusers are not coming into relationships

being abusive they're charming they are manipulative love farmers future fakers they're going to

help you as starry eyed as the day you joined your first MLM yeah people can't wait for my

amazing future with this man and or pyramid scheme yeah exactly who's going to make me rich baby

as for Sophie it seems like it was too late I asked her to consider my safety before

telling dragonfly and she said she'd sleep on it but I never heard from her again however some other

people did

great yeah like no why is the man that you're disgusting you're in trouble now say goodbye to your

fingers and you toes fucking grunk head did we call him ugly he's really ugly he's a nice or

senior you know I just watched that lily through the ministry documentary and all the guys on there

all those fucking like pathetic fucking red pill wankers you know what they're all having common

absent abusive fathers but they don't want they don't want a woman with daddy issues

we'll be doing a Q&A episode in the coming weeks so if there's anything that you wanted us to

clarify any questions that you've had reach out to us you can email us at catch the dragonfly at

BretonMales.com or you can comment on any of our videos on social media with your questions

or send us a message on instagram or tiktok thanks for listening to catch the dragonfly with

kiki and jules every time you like and share this podcast a horrible man shits his pants

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if you or someone you know is affected by domestic or family violence you can call 1-800

respect for free confidential domestic violence support that's 1-800-737-732