By
Gordon Basichis
In
1975, the recently deceased Judith Rossner published her best selling book,
“Looking for Mr. Goodbar." The book told
the story of a young female schoolteacher’s search for the perfect man, Mr.
Goodbar. Her relentless cruising of the
singles bars and her increasing flirtation with danger ultimately leads to her
descent into hell and her subsequent murder.
The public in general found this cautionary tale shocking and
disturbing. Critics praised both book
and film as honest depictions of female sexuality in the freewheeling
seventies.
Rossner’s
novel was loosely based on the actual murder of Katherine Cleary, a
schoolteacher. On New Year’s Eve in 1973 she picked up one
Joe Willie Sampson in Mr. Goodbar, a singles watering hole in New York
City, and took him back to her
apartment. Sampson killed her there and
later hanged himself in his jail cell, while awaiting trial.
Since then, in the American vernacular, Mr.
Goodbar has become synonymous with a sociopathic killer who preys on
single
women.
Today
there is a new Mr. Goodbar. Chances are
you will never find him in the modern singles bar. Unlike the Mr. Goodbar singles bars of the
seventies and eighties that offered sex, romance and always a touch of danger,
the modern watering holes have been sanitized, franchised and often
transplanted to the eternal blandness of the shopping mall. It is unlikely the modern woman will be
driven to the gates of hell by a khaki clad executive stopping by the local
BJ’s after a hard day at the business park.
Perhaps other than boredom and enduring the predictable mating habits of
her office cronies, the modern woman faces a greater danger driving home in
traffic than she does rejecting the guy hitting on her at the hors d’oeuvres
stand.
Realistically,
most women stopping off at happy hour and even later are there to do what their
male counterparts are doing—let off a little steam. For the most part they have seen the
repertoire of available men, dated some and avoided the rest. Now, for the most part, their time spent at
the local watering hole is a mild distraction between work and a trip to the
gym, or to go home and feed the cat, order in Chinese and log onto their
favorite online dating site. They
become one of millions of women, engaging strangers on the thousands of dating
sites pervading the Internet. And here
in this virtual world of romantic fantasies and wishful thinking, they are
risking the fateful encounter with the new Mr. Goodbar.
The
new Mr. Goodbar need not be a sociopath ready to erupt into a murderous rage to
be considered dangerous. He is usually a
lot smarter and a lot more calculating.
The new Mr. Goodbar may have no interest in taking a woman’s life. Instead he may take her money and steal her
identity, leaving her to spend the next year cleaning up the credit mess. There are thousands of male predators seeking
out professional women and women of means.
To a predator it’s no secret the glass ceiling has been cracked if not
shattered. He has done his
research. He likes successful
women. The new Mr. Goodbar finds his
happy hunting ground in many women graduating law school, medical school, and
the high paid executives at major corporations. His potential prey own houses, have bank
accounts, and own stock portfolios.
They are women who have money he can steal if he plays his cards right
and persuades even the smartest women that with him they are fated for the
mythical land of “happily after ever."
It
begins usually with a predator writing wonderful emails, indicating how
sensitive and caring he is. He lies
about his job, his wealth, his present state of mind. He loves your cats, your dogs, your kids he
adores your personality. He knows you
better than anyone has known you before.
Before long he may have a woman convinced they are soul mates. He is, after all, very good at what he
does.
The
all new and reconstituted Mr. Goodbar will not just con a woman over the
Internet. He will arrange to meet and to
come to her house where he can avail himself of her financial records. If they sleep together, he may slip out of
bed and check through her drawers, and through her wallet for driver’s license,
credit cards and her social security number.
He may persuade her he needs money to start a business, or he may order
credit cards in her name, delivered to a blind post office address. The female victim may not discover she has
financial difficulties until as much as a year later.
Before
anyone scoffs at the notion and thinks that I am exaggerating, consider these
facts. Women are five to eight times
more likely to be victimized by an intimate partner. More than one-and-a-half-million women are
raped or assaulted by an intimate partner every year. More than four in ten incidents of domestic
violence involve singles. Michigan and
other states have considered making it a blanket law that all applicants to
online dating sites first undergo a personal background check, before being
approved.
There
are several reputable companies offering background checks for singles and
members of online dating site. One
service, Corra Group, caters to the professional woman with the kind of
material assets that may very well attract the new Mr. Goodbar. Corra Group also specializes in personal
service. For further information contact
--
http://backgroundchecks.corragroup.com or
www.corragroup.com
Gordon Basichis is an author, and
has nearly twenty years experience as a screenwriter and producer. He is also a marketing executive and
co-founder of Corra Group, which specializes in pre-employment and online
dating background checks as well as corporate research and investigation.
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