This is the story of Derek Alldred, a gigolo and con artist who duped women and stole as much as $2 million of their money. There were as many as twenty-seven women whom the sleazy Derek met online, began a relationship, and then embezzled funds from their bank accounts and credit cards. The 90-minute Oxygen documentary program tells the story through interviews with the duped women and film footage of Derek attempting to defend his rotten behavior.
The viewer can only sit slack-jawed, asking how it was possible for all of the women to be suckered by a career hustler. And the answer is that these intelligent, well-educated, and successful women were fundamentally gullible and moved into a serious relationship with Derek much too fast for their own good. There is an adage that states that if something appears too good to be true, then it probably isn't true. One woman after another parades through this program without having learned from that sage advice.
In a number of the cases, the women were cohabiting with Derek within a month of their first date. In at one testimony, a woman accepted his marriage proposal within three months of meeting him. In multiple cases, the women had given Derek access to cell phones, bank accounts, credit cards, online passwords, and even their guns, within a matter of months after meeting him. These women were not courting Derek; they were courting disaster.
Another question that arises is: what exactly were the women looking for in their relationship with Derek? The program glossed over any depth relationship, focusing instead on Derek's charming behavior in giving expensive gifts, sending flowers, taking expensive trips, flying first-class, going to swanky restaurants, and purchasing a boat. One of the women even admitted that it was the fake military uniform worn by Derek that she found so alluring.
Derek imaginatively used his uniforms, badges, phony credentials, a fake Purple Heart award, and even false identification of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) in order to lure the women who apparently found these superficial trappings to be irresistible. By the end of the show, it is clear that Derek went on fishing expeditions and seemed to have no problem in reeling in the women interviewed in this program.
At some point, one has to wonder about the human values that were missing in these women's encounters with Derek. As the program progressed, there was a deeper emotional connection among the women themselves, who banded together for revenge, than was ever apparently expressed in the descriptions of the women's time spent with Derek himself.
If there was even a spark of a soulful experience of these women with Derek, it was never mentioned in the program. All that was covered were the gifts, the trips, the fun, and the adrenaline that apparently came from the appearances that Derek was able to create. For these women, let us only hope that the sex with Derek was satisfying for these lost souls.
In the case of one interview, the woman boldly proclaimed that in the online dating service, she and Derek were a 100% match. In the woman's tone, it appeared as if the computer's pronouncement was enough to convince her to sacrifice her autonomy and hand over to Derek the keys to her life.
One of the women looked straight at the camera and stated, "I'm smart. I'm educated. How could this happen to me?" The answer to her question is that we as a culture have lost our way when it comes to interpersonal relationships. This tabloid-style television program reinforces how our civilization is in the throws of a tragic orientation to life that no longer values courtship and suffers from intimacy dysfunction to the degree that permits a creature like Derek to thrive.
0 out of 0 found this helpful