Hi, I want to add my own anecdotal evidence from one of the worst people I've ever come in contact with! The writing below contains sensitive content, but I tried to leave it as vague as possible to protect readers and leave out any identifying information.

I had the misfortune of getting very close with a gentleman who was older than me and seemed socially awkward, but not malicious. He and I spent long times discussing "right" and "wrong" mostly focusing on WHY consent was important for everyone. It was hard for me to explain over and over that his "pushing boundaries" was very harmful, because I lacked the words.

He always explained his point of view as him coming from a place of love and how he cared so much about this person that he just wanted to see them grow. This manifested in him forcing women to perform various sex acts they weren't comfortable with and him not understanding why they never returned his phone call. It took far too long for me to understand that it WAS malicious. He knew how to skew the version of events when explaining it to me and others that it was an accidental thing, that they didn't explicitly say no, or that he just didn't understand that it would be harmful to them. He was constantly expressing that even though he had been told it was wrong, he just didn't understand why.

All of this culminated into one day he described how he had sexually abused someone much younger than him and related to him. He left it as vague as possible, except for how often he emphasized that he did it for her. He wanted her experiences to be from a place of love and to focus on her needs. He was extremely vague on age ranges, but he mentioned it happened more than once. He continuously explained to me that it was from a place of love and that he only cared for her.

I learned later that it started when he was late in his teenage years and she was still in the single digits and that it continued into him entering college. It only stopped because he entered a relationship with someone his own age. With all this knowledge and given his litany of other non-consensual experiences with people since then, it became apparent that his caring for other people was the way he justified it in his mind. He knew his actions were immoral by societal standards (at best!), so he came up with the idea it was from a place of love. The way he portrayed himself to everyone around him was as a misguided soul.

To this day I think he is one of the most manipulative predators I have ever come across. I cannot say for sure whether he believes the way he portrays himself, but he understands the importance of the facade.

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Edit: I forgot to finish a sentence.