Does lying have no limits when it comes to living your “best life”? In England, a 35-year-old young woman, mother of two children, did not hesitate to fake several terminal cancers to cajole her partner and live off him. A scam of feelings, even within the home.
3 cancers that weren’t cancers
It all started in March 2017. Laura McPherson told her current companion, Jon Leonard, a businessman known for his fundraising for charities, that she herself had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. That’s not all. She was quickly diagnosed with colon cancer, then breast cancer. To make her story credible, she claims to be undergoing chemotherapy treatments at Derby hospital (with supporting photos) and invents a surgical procedure from scratch: a hysterectomy.
The worried man suggests that she consult a recognized specialist in the field, but she categorically refuses. On the contrary, she indicates that she wants to be treated in a private clinic in Austria, requiring expensive treatment. She therefore asks him to pay for her treatments. In reality, these sums were used to finance cosmetic procedures – including breast augmentation – as well as stays in holistic wellness centers abroad. Between 2017 and 2022, she manages to extract nearly 30,000 euros from him.
The most chilling? To achieve her ends, Laura McPherson also convinced her own daughter that she was suffering from cancer, reinforcing the credibility of the lie within the home itself.
How did this man not see anything?
Many wonder: how could such a committed and lucid man have been abused for so long? According to investigators, Laura McPherson knew how to perfectly exploit the springs of compassion and marital trust. By simulating suffering, by describing side effects of imaginary treatments, by refusing any external medical contact, she built an insurmountable emotional barrier.
Amélie Boukhobza sheds light on this psychological mechanism, which she places more on the fraudster than on the worried man:
“Who can lie like this about their health, to this extent? Not everyone, fortunately, is capable of it. It comes from a deeply disorganized personality, often marked by the need to exist through the eyes of others. We sometimes speak of a perverse or histrionic personality: someone who lies to exist, who feeds on drama, compassion, attention. The illness almost becomes a role. And the lie, a staging. As for the suffering, it becomes an instrument of power.”
The psychologist goes further:In this case, it’s not just a simple scam: it’s a way of occupying a position, of attracting pity in order to control.”
“She destroyed my faith in humanity”
If the court rightly pointed out the manipulation and coldness of the accused, for Jon Leonard, the betrayal is all the more unbearable since he devoted his life to helping others. “She destroyed my faith in humanity.” he confided, upset.
“For him, it’s absolute astonishment. Discovering that everything you’ve experienced never existed. It’s not a break, it’s a cancellation of reality. It’s doubting yourself. It’s no longer understanding anything!” explains our psychologist.
For Jon Leonard, the reconstruction promises to be a long one. How to trust again after discovering that the love shared was based on a fiction? “Can we recover from such a lie? Yes, but not without consequences”, continues Amélie Boukhobza. “We will have to relearn to trust, to distinguish sincerity from lies, to restore meaning where everything has been falsified. Love trauma is this: when the bond has been so manipulated that we then doubt our own perception. In EMDR, it is treated like post-traumatic stress syndrome.”
A symptomatic affair
This story, which in some ways recalls the series “Apple Cider Vinegar”, raises a troubling question about trust within couples and emotional vulnerability. Beyond the financial betrayal, it is intimacy, faith in others and the very meaning of love that have been violated.
Laura McPherson does not go unpunished. She was ultimately sentenced to two years of community service and will have to repay 30,000 pounds to her ex-partner. The human tragedy, however, is irreparable.