" You are right, I will find myself in "Hells kitchen" when someone finds out about us. I believe every word you wrote, and I can understand - but I can not really help as I can not risk the relationship to my family members, my wife and my daughters. I am asked not to reply to emails. I just wanted to support you a little saying that I believe what you told me. I try to stay 100% out of L.O.´s personal activities. This turned out to be the best solution."
J.H. (The Stepfather)
The Stepfather
Affirmation
In many cases of narcissistic abuse, family members hover silently in the background, appearing neutral, unavailable, or vaguely supportive without ever directly acknowledging the truth. But in the case of J.H., the stepfather of L.O., something rare happened.
At first he did something surprising, he sent me a connection request on LinkedIn. Long before the Discard happened. I accepted, not knowing who he was yet. The coincidence was glaring enough that I brought it up with Lea that evening. She was quick, almost rehearsed, in her reply: “Oh yes, that’s my stepfather. I don’t know what he is trying to do, I think maybe he’s jealous of you because he always had a thing for me. Just ignore him. I don’t have anything to do with him anyway.” I realise now she must have known he had connected, as she was the one that had told him to do it.
Then she launched into one of her greatest hits, accusing Jan of filming her getting out of the shower, making sexual comments, threatening to throw her out the house, the works.
Classic Lea. Any new connection is preemptively poisoned. If Jan reached out, it must be for unsavory reasons; if he tries to talk, he’s dangerous or jealous or obsessed. She managed, in the space of a single conversation, to cast him as both a potential threat and a nonentity.
J.H. as it turned out, was once a fireman, probably a volunteer. By all accounts, an intelligent, accomplished engineer, but no monster. What he was, and is, is a man caught in the crossfire of a narcissist’s endless narrative war. He sent that connection request, then sat quietly, watching, never initiating, never breaking the rules of his own imposed exile. He had obviously been instructed to do this, probably something L.O. did with every victim.
Who is J.H.
A handsome, highly intelligent and accomplished individual, J.H. is a decorated engineer who rose to prominence as the head of a major international engineering firm. He traveled globally to deliver lectures, led seminars, and was part of a team credited with multiple breakthrough technologies. Recently, he stepped back into a more relaxed role as director of a mid-sized engineering company. On the surface, he appeared to be the model of professional and familial success. But one can only imagine what it must have done to his peace of mind to live under the same roof as a stepdaughter who, should she ever be tested, would doubtlessly be diagnosed as a malignant, psychopathic, covert narcissist.
So why did J.H. contact me?
It struck me as odd the day Jan Hammermann sent me a LinkedIn request. Why would a German engineer, who I’d never heard of, reach out to a South African 3D animator? I don't believe he did..I believe he was told to do so. Because she knew from previous experience that it would or could be beneficial. And he did exactly as he was told.
Initial Contact and Key Admissions
I reached out to him after Lea discarded me, grasping for some external witness who might see what I saw, or at least confirm I wasn’t insane. Jan replied, always with caution, never offering more than polite sympathy. He admitted he’d been warned not to communicate. He knew everything, or at least enough, but chose the safety of distance. In every exchange, the undertone was clear: he knew what Lea was, but he’d long ago learned the cost of challenging her story. It’s easier to play the invisible man, quietly monitoring, than to step forward and risk being drawn into another one of her dramas.
After the discard in August, I sent J.H. a few direct but respectful questions via LinkedIn messages in which I detailed the extent of the abuse I had endured at the hands of his stepdaughter. I detailed every incident up until then, and I even furnished him with evidence of my claims. At first, he was hesitant. But then something remarkable happened. He replied:
“Ich habe alles gelesen, ich glaube ihnen.”
("I have read everything. I believe you.")
When I asked for clarification, he responded:
“Es tut mir leid, ich kann leider nichts sagen.”
("I'm sorry, I can't say anything.")
And then he sent me the following explosive admission:
“Ich glaube dir, ich kenne Lea, du hast in allem Recht. Ich habe leider keinen guten Kontakt zu ihr. Das schon – aber wir reden sehr wenig. Weder geschäftlich noch privat.”
("I believe you. I know Lea. You are right about everything. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good relationship with her. That’s true – but we speak very little. Neither professionally nor privately.")
I finally had someone who corroborated my version. Who knew it wasn't me who was the abuser. Her own family member was affirming what I knew to be true - that L.O. was a covert narcissist, and that she did this on a regular basis. Destroying peoples lives with her manipulation, lies and false persona of victimhood.
The Email That Changed Everything
But that wasn't the end of it. Shortly afterward, he sent me an email that would become one of the most important pieces of corroboration in this entire case. He wrote the following:
"You are right. I will find myself in 'Hell's Kitchen' if someone finds out about us. I believe every word you wrote, and I can understand—but I cannot risk the relationship with my family members. I've been asked not to reply to emails. I just wanted to support you and say that I believe what you told me. I try to stay out of Lea's 'personal activities' as that turned out to be the best solution."
I could hardly believe my eyes. This short email from her own stepfather confirms five key facts:
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J.H. believes my account in full, without reservation, confirming everything I had told him.
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He feared repercussions if our correspondence was discovered. He never wrote me again after this.
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He was explicitly instructed not to respond to me, suggesting active suppression and monitoring of his work emails.
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He intentionally avoids L.O.'s "personal activities," implying a long-standing awareness of her actions regarding other victims.
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He still wished to offer support,privately, in silence. He at least had some sort of a conscience.
Forensic Significance
J.H. is not just another name in the cast. He is a direct witness to her behavioral patterns, and his words hold weight. And if he is involved in the criminal side of L.O.'s doings then perhaps it is because he feels he has no choice. But he never denied what he’d said.
From a legal and psychological perspective, his admissions serve multiple functions:
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Validation: His statements independently corroborate my testimony without qualification.
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Witness isolation: His fear of fallout supports the suspicion that witnesses were pressured into silence.
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Pattern recognition: His reply confirms that this wasn’t an isolated incident, but a repeated pattern.
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Operational insight: His remark about “personal activities” shows he knew enough to avoid her manipulations entirely.
But now read again her message about him:
"because i told him to stop saying these sex comments to me. i finally told him after he did that my whole life. he escalated a week later. i was at their house, he came downstairs and screamed at me about how bad i am etc., insulting me etc. wanted to throw me out. my mom told him, if one of us goes, he is the one. then he wanted to leave. but it is his house, so I said, no, I will go. I never was there since then".
Classic DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender):
- She positions herself as the victim of "sex comments"
- She claims he "escalated" when she "finally told him to stop"
- She makes him the aggressor while she's the innocent victim
Now read again his email to me:
"You are right. I will find myself in 'Hell's Kitchen' if someone finds out about us. I believe every word you wrote, and I can understand—but I cannot risk the relationship with my family members. I've been asked not to reply to emails. I just wanted to support you and say that I believe what you told me. I try to stay out of Lea's 'personal activities' as that turned out to be the best solution."
But Jan's behavior tells the real story:
- He was terrified to even email me
- He said he'd be in "Hell's kitchen" if she found out
- He's "asked not to reply to emails" (controlled communication)
- He has "no relationship" with her despite living in the same house
- He immediately believed my story about her abuse
If Jan was actually a sexual predator would he:
- Be living in fear of her retaliation?
- Be controlled by her rules about who he can email?
- Immediately believe a stranger's account of her being abusive?
- Be desperate to "stay 100% out of Lea's personal activities"?
J.H. has kept reading my emails, even if he never answers them. He was told not to and he obviously listens to what he is ordered to do. But I can see when he opens them. And how often. And he always reads my emails, even now. He is the only person who was ever willing to talk to me.
Conclusion
J.H. may not be a hero. But in a story this murky, truth from any source is a form of light. He spoke, however briefly. And when he did, he said the most important words of all:
“You are right about everything.”
He remains the only one from her inner circle to ever say those words to me. And for that reason, his testimony matters.
Above: The email from J.H. that corroborated my side of the story
So who exactly is J.H.?
When I look at J.H., what I see is not a villain, nor a hero, but a man quietly standing at the edge of a battlefield he never signed up for. J.H. is, by nature, a survivor. Once a volunteer fireman, later a skilled engineer, he’s built his life around order, caution, and calculated risk. It’s clear to me that he doesn’t gravitate toward conflict, he avoids it at all costs. Years of proximity to someone like L.O. would teach any sane person that fighting back only makes you a target, and that silence is the one form of self-preservation that still works.
J.H.’s entire mindset is risk-averse. He’s learned, probably the hard way, that involving yourself in L.O.’s emotional chaos comes with a price he’s not willing to pay. He’s watched the explosions, seen the character assassinations, and felt the pain of challenging her narrative. I have no doubt he’s learned that in her world, reality is whatever she says it is. The more you resist, the harder you get burned.
That’s why he chose silence. I don’t believe it comes from weakness. I think it’s a battered, hard-earned wisdom, a defense forged in the fires of past confrontations. J.H. knows that sticking his neck out won’t help me, and it certainly won’t help him. If he says nothing, nothing can be used against him. If he validates me privately, he can sleep at night, but if he does it publicly, the risk to his own peace and family becomes real.
He is, in his way, stoic. He endures. He doesn’t resist; he weathers the storm. He’s made himself invisible to L.O.’s drama, always staying just close enough to see what’s happening, but never so close that he becomes a target. Even after cutting off public contact, he still opens my emails. That detail says everything: he can’t let go, whether out of guilt, curiosity, or the old instincts of a man who once ran toward emergencies. Now he watches, quietly, waiting for the final act.
J.H.’s reasoning is straightforward: engagement is dangerous, silence is safe. He offers empathy in private but never in public. He tells himself (and probably believes) that inaction is wisdom, that he’s protecting what little peace he has left. And I get it. The cost of involvement is always higher than the cost of silence, especially with someone like L.O. orchestrating the chaos behind the scenes.
In the end, J.H. is not my enemy. He’s just another survivor, shaped and scarred by years of proximity to a master manipulator. His passivity is both his shield and his prison. He knows more than he lets on, feels more than he’s comfortable admitting, but he will never act. And that is the tragedy of the bystander: fully aware, quietly empathetic, but immobilized by fear and habit.
She had told me stories about J.H.
Like apparently every man in her life, including her father, she had a tale to tell of abuse. She told me J.H. had once filmed her getting out of the shower. Later I realised that this was probably a lie. I began to notice something deeply unsettling. Every male figure in her life was depicted in this way. From her father to her boyfriends, from colleagues to her stepfather to strangers on Discord, and eventually even me, every one of them had allegedly violated or abused her in some way. They were all abusive narcissists according to L.O. She told me even her mother had abused her as a child.
It was a visceral, powerful narrative. Designed to provoke outrage. And it did. I believed her. It shook me to think that anyone could behave like that towards this innocent, vulnerable woman.
But it wasn’t true. And she did return to the house. Many times.
She described Dom to me in the very first week of our contact. She told me he was a narcissist and a psychopath who terrorized her for two years, forcing her to flee Cologne in the middle of the night and rebuild her life with a new identity. She said he had driven her to the brink, and that she was lucky to have escaped with her life. Months later, I discovered she was still speaking to him in secret.
When I confronted her, she claimed he was blackmailing her with over 400 emotionally vulnerable emails she had written during their time together. I was meant to believe she had no choice. In retrospect, this was projection, a pattern I would come to recognize all too well.
Yet she did not seem upset that her stepfather had connected to me. So why would she allow, perhaps even encourage, this LinkedIn connection by J.H. if she had truly distanced herself from him as she claimed? It seemed improbable and raised one of the first red flags I actually paid attention to. Was he there to watch me? Monitor my reactions? Or study what my professional status made me worth? He never once tried to talk to me, despite initiating contact.
Tracking Silence
As part of my investigation, I employed email tracking, code that silently records when an email is opened, how often, and with what device. Though J.H. never again answered any message after the last email, he consistently read every one of them. That silence, punctuated by tangible engagement, allowed me to conduct an indirect experiment.
Keyword testing.
I began embedding specific terms and sensitive references into selected emails to gauge whether certain topics triggered outsize reactions. The results were surprising, to say the least.
Case in point:
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The moment I mentioned “Vogelsang Detektei” in an email to J.H., both 'businesses' WhatsApp numbers blocked me immediately.
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Within minutes of that email being opened, the WhatsApp communication line was severed.
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This was not coincidence. This was reaction.
But the most telling evidence came from the engagement metrics of the emails themselves.
Emails containing the following keywords triggered the strongest tracking responses ever recorded:
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Vogelsang Detektei
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Fake Facebook accounts
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Carl Zeiss street address
Each of these messages was opened or forwarded more than 10 times the normal rate.
Collectively, they generated nearly 200 open events, a clear sign that:
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The emails were being read by multiple parties
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They triggered some sort of panic. These mails were opened and forwarded at all times of day and night.
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I had poked some sort of a beehive, with registered openings soon reaching a total of over 200.
Something had triggered a response. And now I knew where to focus my attention.
The moment I touched upon fabricated businesses or identity manipulation, the network reacted with coordinated withdrawal and evasion. This incident proves that J.H. was not a neutral observer. Whether willingly or not, his inbox was the indicator to suggest a broader infrastructure at work, one I needed to investigate. My very freedom was at stake.
And that’s precisely what I did.
But first I needed to know more about the narcissist and her accomplice Dom.