The Case of Aileen Wuornos Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

The Case of Aileen Wuornos - Essay Example The reality was that she lured each of the men through the promise of some form of sex (she was posing as a prostitute), took them into the woods, and killed them. There is a lot of controversy as to whether she was mentally ill and whether putting her to death was the "right" thing to do under the circumstances. With this information in mind, this case study will look at Wuornos through Attachment Theory and Biopsychosocial Theory. Between the two theories, it seems that the Biopsychosocial Theory is the best one to use for analyzing her situation although a combination of both would probably be more accurate. Aileen (Lee) Carol Wuornos had a very tumultuous childhood. According to Chesler (1994, p. 96), Wuornos was a very abused child who had been "serially raped" and was beaten both as a child and as an adult. She perceived that she was always under attack in her life. Shipley and Arrigo (1994) state that Wuornos was raised by her maternal grandparents because she was abandoned by her mother as a baby. According to several other accounts, including MacLeod (2008) and Osborn (2009), she and her brother were abandoned when Aileen was three or four years old because her mother could not handle the noise that the children made. Her father was a convicted child molester and killed himself while in prison; Aileen never had contact with him. By the age of 14, Aileen was pregnant with someone's child. Although the father was never revealed, she said it was her brother at one point, or someone she called "An Elvis Presley look-a-like" (Shipley and Arrigo, p. ix). Her grandparents sent her to unwe d mothers home where she had the baby and then gave it up for adoption; the baby was adopted by another family. Aileen's life with her grandparents consisted of physical abuse by her grandmother who was also an alcoholic. Aileen was never told that she was being raised by her grandparents but she found out at age 12 (MacLeod, Chapter 2).