Couch surfing predator: how a group of drugged and assaulted women fought back | Hacker News Reader

Couch surfing predator: how a group of drugged and assaulted women fought back

theguardian.com

73 pointsmykowebhn63 comments

I (M, 22 then) likely got drugged by an old male host in san jose.

After a single glass of wine I felt very sleepy, I went in the mattress on the ground I was going to sleep on. Guy invited me to his bed (didn't go), he was watching porn, I fell asleep with him staring at me I wouldnt be surprised if I got masturbated on or perhaps worse (no butt pain in the morning)

I essentially forgot (havent thought about this in ages) until I read this now

I'm really sorry that happened to you.

Only remembering now is a clear and common sign of trauma. This is one of the reasons that explain why so many sex-assaulters are never exposed. Another 'interesting' reason is the revictimization. The latter is way more insidious and makes me very mad when identified (on gender matters or anything).

Being exposed to someone else's details then adopting those (or similar) as your own is also indicative of suggestibility. Memory is unreliable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suggestibility

> Only remembering now is a clear and common sign of trauma. This is one of the reasons that explain why so many sex-assaulters are never exposed. Another 'interesting' reason is the revictimization.

Every bit of this is psychobabble. Guy himself is pretty clear he was triggered (ugh) into post-hoc pattern recognition:

> I essentially forgot (havent thought about this in ages) until I read this now

He was very specific in not being surprised if he got spooged on but not recalling anal trauma. I assume wine would not be the last taste he remembered had he quaffed ballsnot. Yet you are coaching him to fill in the memory gaps with a much-worse, speculative story of your own creation.

The real reason why so many sex-assaulters are never exposed is because shit like this wasn't reported to the police (or it never happened in the first place!). This situation is criminal, but maybe it's not actually "trauma" if it was so easily forgettable. Kids block traumatic events out when they can't comprehend them. But as an adult, he could get pipelined into therapy with this "repressed trauma" story, flounder around endlessly, and never find closure for events that didn't happen. He'd keep a therapist employed for a few years though. #mentalhealthawareness

I used to advocate for domestic violence and rape victims before the age of social media. The problem existed back then too but the increase in false claims I've had to deal with ever since (and especially post-COVID, and even from family members) makes me want to stick a gun in my goddamn mouth to get the hell off this rock. I just closed yet another one yesterday; yet another fucking borderline personality ex-girlfriend stalking and harassing her "abuser," sending nudes to his work email and reporting him for it, claiming she's pregnant, threatening suicide, and--surprise--it kicked off by blasting investor relations with "hey one of your executives raped me it was totally rape fr (we were supposed to be together why did he block me!!!)." #believeallwomen

This system is fucked, but the solution is easy-- file a police report around the time of incident or spontaneous discoveries surfacing years later should be dismissed as bullshit. No more excuses. No more grift. No more NLP/reframing/psychobabble. No more histrionics. We have a functional court system where things like evidence are considered, but we've reclassified "crime" as vague "trauma" to shift the venue from public trials to rehearsal behind closed doors of therapists' offices and broadcast on social media. We can make America sane again through adherence to due process.

This is so sad. It sickens me that we can't have nice things because there is always someone who is the absolute worst.

We spend so much time, energy and resource trying to deal with a tiny percentage of people who are absolutely terrible if not downright evil. They are a minority, and a tiny one at that, but they cause so much damage that it's unfathomable. So we design systems that attempt to catch them, prevent their actions or treat their underlying issue in the hope that they might finally provide value or at the very least not subtract any more.

I have no solution, other than trying to spot them at childhood, and then maybe be able to turn them around, or take them out behind the barn.

It would be an understatement for me to claim that I'm not an expert in forensic psychology ... but I suspect that spotting the potentially dangerous people is relatively easy but that the really difficult part would be circulating that information in a way that won't be used maliciously, both by people discriminating unnecessarily against people who are a bit strange and by people deliberately wrecking (or threatening to wreck) other people's lives with false reports.

I think the idea that you could so easily ruin an innocent person's life proves it's not "relatively easy" to detect these psychopaths as children. The outliers, sure, but there are plenty of evil people who seem completely normal their entire lives.

> ... but I suspect that spotting the potentially dangerous people is relatively easy but that the really difficult part would be ...

You have probably met several sociopaths and psychopaths in your life and never knew. It is even difficult for a well trained psychologist or psychiatrist to make a definitive conclusion. Sociopaths and psychopaths are good at hiding it. They know what to say to make them appear empathetic.

It is not easy and it would be a disaster all around.

Of course I agree it's not easy: I was pointing out some of the difficulties. There's probably no point in arguing about whether the diagnosis or the data protection side is, in general, harder. They're both very hard problems in any case.

There are, of course, clever psychopaths who are good at hiding it. But there are also psychopaths that you/I know about but there's still almost nothing you/I can do with that information to warn other potential victims. You're probably right that I've met several sociopaths without knowing it. But I've also met several people whose socipathy became rather obvious to me, yet I never had the opportunity to warn anyone else about them. (Even a rather dimwitted sociopath will realise when I've identified them as such and will then avoid dealing with my close acquaintances whom I might have warned.)

The TSA is the living embodiment of your statement.

There is now an entire generation of kids growing up thinking it is completely normal to spend 2 hours on queue to be bombarded by xrays (or touched near your genital areas), in order to get on a plane

It’s funny that no one dares examine the true root cause. In my opinion it will never go away until we face the hard facts and recognize what was going on in this man’s head. It’s very convenient and easy to dismiss him as pure evil, or a psychopath, or the like. And attempt to try to see him as anything other than that is met with shock and horror and is generally just unacceptable as it gives the impression of sympathizing with him.

Do we honestly think he’s pure evil and relishes in seeing his victim’s pain and suffering? Does he completely lack any form of empathy or caring and is he totally numb to the effects of his crimes? Is he a sociopath? A psychopath?

I highly doubt it.

Quite a sad story.

I host 25-30 people on my couch each year, and I've had wonderful times with so many different people from different backgrounds. Some of my surfers had some weird stories about weird hosts, but I've never had anyone tell me anything about drugs, rape, or anything violent.

Couch surfing seems to be a strange crowd.

I knew a guy who used this as his main dating pool.

There's been this narrative that stranger danger was oversold to most people as children. Most people are basically good, and we were deprived of something by being so suspicious of everyone.

Which is true, but a lot of people took it to mean "there are no bad people" which is definitely false.

This is a really easy scenario to imagine. This does not require a criminal mastermind. It's become commonplace to sleep on a stranger's couch, get in a stranger's car, etc., but it is worthwhile to occasionally contemplate what could go wrong.

> It's become commonplace to sleep on a stranger's couch

Has it, really? Unless you're talking about AirB&B, staying in a complete stranger's house while they're there has definitely not become commonplace for me or any of my circle.

I think AirB&B counts.

Maybe, but I would also say that 90% of the AirB&B's I've stayed at have not had the owner staying the same building, even including something like staying in a basement with a separate entrance.

It's still their building, though. They have access.

Can you say for certain an AirB&B host has never snuck in to eatch you sleep?

Could a better-designed review or reputation system on Couchsurfing have stopped this guy quicker? Feels like he should've been kicked from the platform the first time it happened.

Apparently he did get kicked eventually, but he just made a new account. Definitely sounds like Couchsurfing could have done better.

I can't believe they wouldn't require both hosts and guests to identify themselves properly to the platform.

What a horror story.

You can "get verified" but it's not required.

>When Maglio pestered them to write a review, they did. He’d bought them dinner, cooked for them, collected them. That free hospitality makes it hard to write a bad one. Their review was positive.

From a psychopathic view he got a really good setup:

(1) active policeman (2) cultural differences to wash the line between appropriate and inappropriate (3) young woman from far away globetrotting with little experience just staying few nights (4) over the top hospitality (5) sleeping over in his own home + tranquilizers

>(“You’re 21 and sleep in someone’s house for free? You get drunk in his house and blame the host?”)

What caught him was the usual over-confidence chasing the ever bigger high:

>Maglio was finally arrested, for another attack. An Australian woman with two daughters had been staying with him, and woken in the early hours to find her 16-year-old in bed with Maglio. She’d been drugged and was non-responsive for five hours. Incredibly, while Maglio was under house arrest for this incident, the police visited and found two new suitcases in his hallway, and two couch surfers in his living room – one with benzodiazepines in her system.

Another problem is that people just don't use the existing review system as intended. This entire story is hugely extreme, but over the years I've heard plenty of stories that clearly crossed boundaries. For example (all from different people):

"I arrived and we chatted and had a great time; everything was going brilliant. Suddenly he started kissing and touching me; when I hesitated it became more forceful and said 'I know you want to fuck'. I ran away and staid at a hostel."

"During the night he suddenly put his hand on my breast. I asked him what the fuck he was doing. He removed his hand and nothing more happened."

"When I arrived I was surprised that we had to share the same bed; that was a complete surprise. During the night he was far too close; nothing happened, but it was very scary."

When I asked "did you report him" none of them did. People usually aren't sure why they didn't either.

And these are just a few examples; ask any woman who has been couchsurfing for a while and they'll have at least one story to tell. Some men, too. Even though I think a small minority of people are responsible for these actions, these kind of stories aren't rare exceptions.

There's no realistic fear or repercussions here, so that can't be the main reason.

I think it's always a complex dynamic, even without outright manipulation. You're always grateful you were allowed to stay at someone's house for free, so even after the fact there's a complex mix of emotions.

Designing a good review system around this is pretty hard, although I have no doubt couchsurfing's system can be improved (insert long rant about mismanagement at couchsurfing).

Most women still loved couchsurfing by the way! I met all of them on the platform after all. I don't want to discourage anyone from using couchsurfing, but at the same time you do need to have a bit of a backbone.

I know someone who had what can only be described as a nightmare scenario from using couchsurfing. I don't know many of the details, and not something I want to pry into, but she was essentially kidnapped, trapped in a house, and had her passport stolen by the host in a foreign country where she didn't speak the language and on her first trip overseas. This was also before smart phones were just commonplace such that everyone had one.

What if the law said that a anyone could file a complaint against anyone, and all complaints were public record, always available to the public online?

I know I was sexually abused by cops and more than 40 years later I still can not force the pigs to admit I filed complaints. I still can not get one bit of information out of the pigs.

Evil exists, society and it’s systems will fail you, and you have to learn to trust your gut. Overall a pretty accurate (but unfortunate) rundown of the current societal decline that most will face at some point in their life. Hope this story teaches more people to keep their head on a swivel.

How does the story relate to a “societal decline”?

Bad, evil people is probably a constant. The societal decline would be parents etc not teaching their sons and daughters about the dangers in the world. Why don't parents do this? Do they want to preserve their child's "innocence" regardless of the price that might be paid?

I think people are far more aware of the dangers than they used to be. They just get their information online instead of through parents.

For all of its faults the Internet has been very good at revealing what does happen - sometimes - as opposed to what should happen.

> The societal decline would be parents etc not teaching their sons and daughters about the dangers in the world.

Nonsense.

Kids these days are as well informed and trained on threats as any kids in living memory. They aren’t even permitted to walk to school, in many cases, and are trained on how to cope with people coming to their schools to kill them.

Well if you read the article instead of rushing to write "Nonsense!", to feel like a superior hacker, you would know that the victims were children and young adults a while ago. Let's hope kids today get better advice!

The societal decline was local police not giving a shit until 15+ victims organized and advocated for themselves for years.

That's not exactly a new form of system failure.

If anything, doesn't this article have hopeful notes about society? Sure, there's something to be said about trusting a platform too much; but there's also the part where, without that Facebook group, these women would almost certainly have never found justice.

I also lament the idea that we should keep our heads on a swivel. Being a victim forever, or forever expecting to become one, sounds like an utterly terrible way to live. Having strong boundaries and knowing when to say no is really important, but I don't think that's nearly the same thing.

People really read into this, the societal decline was local police not giving a shit until 15+ victims organized and advocated for themselves for years.

That's not new.

If you want people to read your comment a certain way, you should say so up front.

The most shocking revelation in this story is that, after being convicted of multiple incidents of drugging and rape, Italy will let this monster back out on the street after nine years. Their government is condemning women in the future to suffer horrific abuse at the hands of this psychopath, because he will find a way, and he will be more crafty about not being caught. And they know this will happen.

It seems hard to argue with the cops. “You’re 21 and sleep in someone’s house for free? You get drunk in his house and blame the host?”

A lack of common sense is often fatal.

i disagree. it's tough for me to explain but there seemed to be a really kind culture around couchsurfing that was about sharing space and experiences with people from all over the world.

the role of a host is at minimum to provide a safe place for someone to crash. i really felt safe at the ~10 places i stayed. I'm male, so definite bias, but i met other surfers that were female and had similar experiences to mine and female hosts that never had issues. profiles could have shaped the version of couch surfing i was seeing however.

Street racing is fun and you can make some great friends.

It’s still stupid.

Wait, isn’t this something common and actually cool to do? I always Couchsurfed and it has been amazing.

Person A using the couch for its intended function (a place to sleep over) vs B who is using it also for social function with possible slight degradation in faculties (drunk), lowering of social barrier (socializing).

What you say is true: it is cool and positive social experience on travels are fantastic. However, objectively, A has a lower risk profile. B is creating doors to possible negative outcomes. These doors may never open for B, but for A’s risk profile, some of these doors (paths to potential negative outcomes) do not even exist.

Additionally, for the potential predator, A’s behavior raises risk for the predator and B’s lowers it. So B type behavior raises possibility of negative outcome at both levels: vulnerability is raised for victim, and control over the situation and outcome (i.e. assault) is increased for the predator.

the whole point of law enforcement is to create a society where we can trust our fellow human. victim-blaming is avoiding responsibility.

A cynic might counter claim that law enforcement was created to protect criminals from lawful citizens.

I don't understand your point, yes they took risks does not change the fact that some of them got raped. No reason to "dismissed" their report ...

They were drugged; they didn't "get drunk".

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