Mexican men who display extreme jealousy or avoid sex with their wives could be tried in court and punished under a new law, the special prosecutor for crimes against women says.

Special prosecutor Alicia Elena Perez Duarte has told Excelsior newspaper that men who phone their wives every half hour to check up on them, constantly suspect them of infidelity or try to control the way they dress are committing the crime of jealousy.

Those who stop talking to their wives, avoid sex or try to convince suspicious spouses they are “crazy” even if the men are caught red-handed having an affair are guilty of indifference, she said.

Men found guilty of jealousy or indifference could face up to five years in prison, the newspaper said.

Mexico’s individual states will determine the punishments.

The new law was passed this month to protect women from domestic violence.

By Leon Fooksman
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted February 14 2007

Valentine’s Day: a sweet time for florists, chocolate makers, card sellers, restaurateurs — and private investigators.

On a day when romance is on the minds of many, some are filled with suspicion: Are their love interests of interest to anyone else?

LocalLinks
Exposing trysts is good business for private investigators, especially around Valentine’s Day, when, marital experts say, infidelity and extramarital affairs reach a crescendo.

Some of South Florida’s 2,686 licensed sleuths may be spending the holiday hunched in their cars, blending in at restaurants, hurrying through hotel lobbies, legally bugging living rooms and ducking on the beaches to record their targets in the act of cheating.

“We’ve got everyone working,” said Brad Robinson, a former CIA agent whose Millennium Group in West Palm Beach employs six investigators.

Cheating is the side of Valentine’s Day that no one likes to talk about, even though millions of Americans are the victims of infidelity each year, said Ruth Houston, founder of infidelityadvice.com and author of Is He Cheating on You? 829 Telltale Signs.

“This is the day cheaters have to make contact,” Houston said. “It’s a special time. Anyone who doesn’t do something for his or her lover is in big trouble.”

From coast to coast, the day two-timers run amok traditionally is one of the busiest times for private eyes, said Kelly Riddle, a San Antonio, Texas, investigator who has written 10 books on private investigation work and founded an investigator training school.

And for good reason: It’s a period when many couples get engaged and may want to check up on their lovers’ stories before they get married, said Paul Dank, a principal of Advanced Surveillance Group, a Michigan firm with an office in Boca Raton.

The holiday also is one of the easiest days to catch cheaters since they must juggle giving attention to their loved ones and their significant others, Riddle said.

Sometimes, Robinson said, catching an adulterer just takes showing up the next morning at the lover’s home and letting the camera roll as they say goodbye.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said, “how someone doing something he shouldn’t be isn’t hiding it.”

Take the case of a wealthy Palm Beach resident who suspected his wife was unfaithful to him — in their home.

He hired Robinson’s investigators to film his home two years ago. Nothing happened for days, but on Valentine’s Day, investigators hiding in cars scoped out the back of the house.

With the camera rolling, they captured a neighbor slipping through the bushes and into the house. He walked out an hour later.

“If he was getting sugar, he wouldn’t have been lurking in the hedges and been in the house for an hour,” Robinson said. “He turned out to be a 10-year neighbor, a married guy and a good friend of our client.”

Then there was the Miami businessman who showed no interest in his wife. When he dropped their Valentine’s Day plans last year, she suspected something was going on and hired private investigators.

On that day, he told her he was going to the gym. Hours later, a private eye’s camera caught him in the arms of a woman outside her home.

“His wife had a sixth sense and knew something was up,” said German Rodriguez, a private investigator whose Miramar-based PI Detectives of South Florida delivered the video to the brokenhearted wife. “She wanted peace of mind and she got it.”

Three weeks later, she filed for divorce.

Staff Researcher Barbara Hijek contributed to this report.

Leon Fooksman can be reached at lfooksman@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6647.

Feb 8, 2007

Do you have a special online “friend”? Do you talk to your “friend” about intimate matters? Do you quickly exit the screen when your partner enters the room?

If you answered yes to the above, you may be having an internet affair.

Infidelity has been around since the beginning of time but researchers say internet chat rooms, forums and email have added a new dimension to the age-old temptation to stray.

The perils of online infidelity have prompted the release of new guidelines for Australian counsellors and mental health workers dealing with the fallout from people pursuing illicit love online.

“One area of problematic internet use that is becoming a common presenting issue in counselling is relationship issues arising from one partner’s use of the internet,” according to a report in the current Family Relationships Quarterly journal.

One recent survey of more than 1,500 mental health professionals found that about one in five patients were seeking help because of the negative effects of internet sexual activities.

“A common scenario was a husband or wife who had left their relationship after meeting someone online, only to have the relationship not work out,” says Elly Robinson, manager of the Australian family relationships clearinghouse at the Australian Institute of Family Studies.

An online relationship doesn’t have to turn physical to constitute an affair, she says.

“If the individual having the internet relationship is in a committed real life relationship they may need to acknowledge that communication of an intimate nature with someone on the internet is a breach of trust and commitment,” Robinson says.

“The fact that physical sex hasn’t occurred does not necessarily mean that it is not an affair.”

She says three factors make internet affairs particularly dangerous liaisons.

Online communication tends to remove inhibitions and there is an endless supply of potential partners coupled with a lack of clear norms about acceptable behaviour.

“For example, is it infidelity to have sexual conversations with strangers? What if you are pretending to be someone else? What if you engaged in cybersex?” she says.

The anonymity of cyberspace means people who find themselves falling for a sexy, single 20-something who seduces them with an irresistible online persona may be risking their real-life relationship for a lie.

A new study, to be presented at a computer/human interaction conference in the US later this year, found that online daters usually fib about their appearance. The research found that men “systematically” overestimated their height, while, women underestimated their weight, says lead author Jeffrey Hancock, an assistant professor of communication at Cornell University.

Online affairs can do much more damage than causing a painful relationship bust-up, as a recent US case illustrates.

A cyber fantasy between two middle aged people pretending to be an 18-year-old marine and an attractive young woman turned deadly when Brian Barrett, was found shot dead outside Buffalo, New York, last September.

Investigators charged Barrett’s colleague, Thomas Montgomery with his murder, saying the motive was jealousy over a woman both men had been wooing over the internet.

The woman was a 40-something mother using her daughter’s identity to attract internet suitors.

Montgomery had started chatting with her in 2005, and Bartlett later became drawn into the relationship.

Montgomery is being held without bail after pleading not guilty to second degree murder and is due back in court in June. He is also facing divorce proceedings from his wife.

The case illustrates the web of deceit, jealousy and despair that can arise from seemingly harmless online flirtation, says US internet crime expert J A Hitchcock.

“I’m hoping this case will make people think twice about what they do online and what their actions can cause in the long run,” she says.

If you answer yes to five or more of the following questions you could be crossing the line from online chatting to a cyber affair:

1. In the past week, have you spent more than three hours talking to an online “friend”?

2. Do you plan/look forward to your next communication with them?

3. Does your partner know about your “friend”, and would you be comfortable for them to join in chats?

4. Do you chat when no one is around?

5. Do you make excuses to go online?

6. Do you exit the screen if someone walks into the room while you’re chatting?

7. Do you tell your online “friend” more about your thoughts, feelings, achievements and disappointments than your partner?

8. Do you talk to your “friend” about problems in your real life relationship?

9. Do you think your online “friend” understands and supports you more than your partner?

10. Are you becoming unpredictable about how you act towards your partner?

11. Has your sex life with your partner changed since meeting your “friend”

12. Do you think about sending your online “friend” photos, talking on the phone or meeting for coffee?

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (UPI) — The Swedish Web site Pappatest.se makes it possible for suspicious partners to find out if their significant others have been unfaithful.

Although the Web Site was mainly set up to offer DNA paternity tests, the company said it would be more than willing to test any samples sent in to them, The Local reported.

The technique gives customers the possibility to find out if their partner has been unfaithful, spokesman Bo Erlandsson told The Local.

He added that although the Web site offers the service, it has not had very many people use the site to test for infidelity.

We have just had a couple so far. This service is not something we beat a big drum about, said Erlandsson.

There is also a catch to the service, besides the fact that it costs about $450 — some sort of evidence that the partner may have cheated must be provided.

There must be a reason to come to us. For example, a man might suspect that his wife is unfaithful. If he finds stains in her underwear he can send it to us. We can then determine if it is sperm. Then we can find out if it comes from another man or from himself, said Erlandsson.

Comfortably established at work and at home, the over-50s should be enjoying their most contented years.

But nearly a third claim to be having affairs instead.

Older people are much more likely to be tempted into infidelity than the young, a study has found.

The reason, according to an examination of more than 13,000 sex lives, is that those in their 20s and 30s are not likely to have settled into marriage or a long-term relationship.

And even if they have, they are more likely to be in “the first flush of romance”.

But the middle-aged find the lure of an affair “overwhelming”, according to the survey results.

After the hard work of maintaining a marriage and often a family for so long, perhaps they can’t resist what they regard as a last chance for a little self-fulfilment.

And it seems the general lessening of sex drive after 50 is no barrier to adultery.

In some cases, it is in fact the final straw that causes a husband or wife to seek solace with a more accommodating lover.

Psychotherapist Brett Kahr, who led the British Sexual Fantasy Research Project, said: “I would be hard pressed to recall any couple who presented for marital psychotherapy with a healthy sex life.

“As we may not fully appreciate, sex might be the most sensitive barometer of the solidity of the relationship between husband and wife, or between two lovers.

“When the gremlins of infidelity or inattentiveness or other forms of cruelty enter the relationship, then the sexual life will suffer as a consequence.”

The survey, which asked for detailed information on sex lives, was sent to more than 34,000 people.

Just over 13,000 replied. The findings showed that 14 per cent of those under 30 had had sex with someone outside their marriage or long-term relationship, as had 23 per cent of those between 30 and 40.

Appetite for sex tails off after 50, the survey found. The number of over-50s who claim to have sex once a day or more was too small to record.

Nineteen per cent had sex three times a week, 44 per cent between twice a week and once a month, and 32 per cent less than once a month.

Just over eight million were not having sex at all, the researchers said. Fewer than a million have always been celibate – the others have simply given up sex.

More women than men, 21 per cent against 15 per cent, have had sex in the past but have now stopped.

Despite the fling-prone over 50s, the great majority of all those in relationships are faithful most of the time: men have on average 1.18 sexual partners in a year, while women have 0.7 partners.

The survey also undermined a regular claim of the gay lobby that between 5-10 per cent of the population are homosexual. Just three in 100 said they were gay.

Infidelty by numbers

Thirty-one million Britons are married or live with a partner.

11 million of these have had an extramarital kiss.

42 per cent of men have kissed another person while in a relationship.

31 percent of women have kissed another person while in a relationship.

14 per cent of under-30s have had sex outside marriage or partnership.

30 per cent of over-50s have had sex outside marriage or partnership.

23 per cent of 30 to 40 year olds have had sex outside marriage or partnership.

15.64 is the average number of women a man has sexual contact with in his lifetime.

14.56 is the average number of men a woman has sexual contact with in her lifetime.