A Florida woman is facing felony charges for allegedly posing online as a homeschooler to sexually assault an underage boy.
22-year-old Alyssa Ann Zinger was arrested in Tampa on Nov. 24 and taken to jail; she faces two counts of lewd or lascivious battery and five counts of lewd or lascivious molestation. The police do not believe this was an isolated incident.
“It is disturbing and unsettling to see an adult take advantage of a child and prey on them,” Chief Lee Bercaw said in a statement. “Anyone who may have been a victim of Zinger’s, we encourage you to come forward. The Tampa Police Department will support you and ensure a predator like Zinger doesn’t cause you or others additional harm.”
Police say they were tipped off that Zinger allegedly had a relationship with a child between the ages of 12 and 15, and that following an investigation, they learned that she “communicated with the victim primarily through an online social media platform.”
For the same reason it’s illegal… while there might not be a huge difference in age between someone 22 and 14, there’s a vast difference in maturity, experience and vulnerability to manipulation. While I’m not a psychologist, it seems like for some people, it’s based on opportunity (easier to manipulate a younger person) and others it’s based on a psychological impairment regarding their own sexual development. For this lady perhaps it’s a combo.
I’m not trying to quarrel with the legality at all. There is no question in my mind that it deserves to be illegal. I just can’t wrap my head around the psychology of this. This wasn’t opportunity, this took effort.
I didn’t think you were questioning the illegality. I agree; you’d think it would be easier for her to find someone her age. Except for what I was saying earlier… some people go for minors because they can manipulate them more easily. And then, if she’s warped in the way that she’s particularly attracted to younger people, that explains why she’d seek one out.
The manipulation part does make sense to me. I just find the whole thing hard to keep in my head I guess.
It’s not a bad thing that you have a hard time empathizing with pedophiles, in case that helps.
Haha. Agreed there!
Weird I was just having a similar conversation with my daughter yesterday - not about pedophiles specifically, but the more general topic of adults hurting children- she had heard about the case several years ago of a guy randomly grabbing and throwing a 5 year old off a 3rd story walkway at a mall, and was trying to understand why someone would do such a thing…
IMHO, it’s pretty hard for people who find no joy in having power over others (maybe because they perceive power over others as a massive responsability rather than as a consequence free ego-boost) to understand the mindset of those who derive massive personal pleasure from having such power.
Personally the way I manage to intellectually understand it (or at least think I understand it) is to imagine how it is having zero Empathy, hence not caring at all for the impact on others of one’s action if said others cannot hurt you back if you hurt them. If one has such a mindset ,the power over others is never felt as a weight or a responsability, it is just a tool to at will make other provide you with some direct or indirect form of personal enjoyement - sexual pleasure being a pretty standard direct one, money being a pretty standard indirect one - hence it’s logical that a person like this would seek power over those others who can fullfill their wants and which cannot or will not reciprocate if and when they hurt them.
This explains not just this situation but, for example, things like people in management positions exploiting their power for personal pleasure or simply for personal upside maximization.
Of course even somebody with just a bit of empathy cannot “get” at an emotional level such a behaviour because for them hurting others means them feeling the hurt they caused to others, hence they would feel guilt (an highy unpleasant feeling) so they refrain from acting so. That said, when “normal” people find ways to isolate themselves from said empathy (rage, anonimity, prejudiced, etc) they’re still capable of horrible things exactly because no empathy = no guilt.
Anyways, that’s my theory!
It’s about power. It’s always about power.
Power over the victim, and the power to transgress.
If they can manipulate people and get away with heinous shit, in their mind they must have rich-person energy.
Just spitballing here, but a young attractive woman like her probably gets a lot of unwanted attention from men who have sought to control her. Maybe she wanted someone who didn’t pose a threat. Still illegal, and she still needs to go to jail. It doesn’t matter what turns one into a predator.