abuse

Response to Lauren Shifflett’s story of sexual trauma by church leader

I came across the following post through a WordPress plugin which brings up supposedly similar blog posts to link to in your own posts:

Now We Are Free by Lauren Shifflett

She writes of her sexual abuse and harassment by a youth leader in her church, but prefaces this with how she was bullied as a kid.  I saw similarities with my own experiences, but her comments are turned off (probably because people get mean), so I’m writing this blog response instead.

She, like me, was rejected as a girlfriend, but was a target of sexual harassment by her male peers.  This put all sorts of negative opinions of herself into her head.  She

couldn’t understand why ninety percent of boys found me repulsive and the remaining ten percent felt this strange need to expose themselves to me in some sexual way.

Same thing with me.  My first memory of sexual harassment was from Kindergarten.  I loved to wear dresses.  Every day I wore a dress, preferred them to pants.  Then one day on the way home from school, a couple of boys, smaller than I was, cornered me and kept lifting up my skirt and laughing.

My mother never understood why, all of a sudden, I insisted on wearing pants instead of dresses, because I never told her.

There was the guy who pulled up next to me as I walked to school, and opened the passenger door for me to get in, but I was too smart for him and walked on.

There was the middle-aged man who kept wanting to hug me at church.  It may have been perfectly innocent, but I didn’t know him and it made me feel weird, so I didn’t like him.  I didn’t trust him at all.  I don’t recall him doing this to other girls, just me.

In elementary and junior high, I got a lot of bullying in general because I was different from the other kids.  I couldn’t figure out what it was about me that set them off, because to myself I seemed normal.

No matter what I did in public, I began to feel very awkward about it.  For example, I preferred to always carry something or have my hands in my pockets as I walked, because just walking made me self-conscious.

In junior high, once some kid put a sign on my back during a fire drill.  I never knew what it said because I finally knocked it off, having felt it go on.  But everyone around me was laughing–even my teacher!

The teacher, who struck me as being a classic stereotypical nerd complete with pocket protector, should have known better, but he laughed anyway.

My freshman year in high school, I was also sexually harassed by three guys, two of them together.

One of them kept making sexual comments to me at lunch, and once even put his penis on the table next to me.  I refused to look, but know he did it, because of the reactions of the guys around him.

I couldn’t stand the school’s chicken sandwiches after that because that’s what I was eating at the time, so it reminded me of it.

Now I know that I could’ve switched tables to get away from them, but at the time I felt trapped into sitting at that one table because that’s where I sat at the beginning of the year.  I didn’t realize that I could sit at a different table with other kids.

I’m not sure why I felt that I had to sit at that table, but it could have been an NVLD thing: “You can’t change the pattern you’ve already set!”

After lunch we would all stand by the door and wait for the bell; I can remember this guy doing or saying something while we stood in line, so much that I crouched down as if to protect myself.  But I just don’t remember what exactly he was doing.

The two other guys, who sat at the table behind mine in Biology class second semester, would spend the class period making sexual comments to me.  Once, one spoke so loudly to me during the lecture that the teacher stopped and scolded them.

I don’t know why I didn’t tell the teachers what was happening; a friend told me to do so about the lunch period bully, but something kept me quiet.  In fact, in general I was a passive recipient of bullying.  I just didn’t fight back.

Meanwhile, my Photography teacher made at least one such comment as well.  (I don’t know why all this happened the same year.)

All first semester he’d been harassing me for being a Christian and having conservative values, even though I don’t recall saying a whole lot about them in class or much of anything, really, unless spoken to.

Other kids in Photography class joined in on the religious harassment, including a witch who told me her coven killed my cat (all I said was he went missing on Halloween and never came back), and one day started yelling at me that maybe God is the liar and the Devil is telling the truth–until a Jewish girl told her to quit it and leave me alone.

Then one day, during a work period, the teacher was sitting on a stool at a large table when I had to get around an obstruction of some type.  I don’t remember the details now, what the obstruction was, or anything.  But I didn’t want to go behind him to get around, because there wasn’t enough room and I’d run into his butt.

Rather than leave me alone like any decent man would do, he ridiculed me and told me to go behind him.

I don’t know why on earth I did this like an idiot–probably because I had grown up with the mindset that you do whatever a teacher tells you–but I started going the other way to go behind him, like an obedient student.

He started humming or moaning, and a girl said to me with wide eyes, “Better not do that.”

The following semester, I ditched that class and switched to a class on life skills.  He was a major reason why, both from this and from his religious harassment.

(We learned about such things as teen pregnancy, whether you should marry the teen father, domestic abuse, and watched movies about tough lives like one about teen runaways and The Burning Bed.)

That year or the next, a letter to the editor of the school newspaper complained about an unnamed teacher who would sexually harass students.  I always wondered if the girl who “rescued” me was the writer and if she meant my Photography teacher.  (I must have forgotten her name already.)

All these things happened freshman year, and that year I began to get an ulcer from the stress.  After every lunch period, my stomach was in a lot of pain.

My junior year, I developed headaches from TMJ in my jaw, another stress-related condition, even though the freshman year bullies had either graduated or were no longer in my classes.

Meanwhile, freshman year I had a couple of guys want to date me, but my mom wouldn’t let me until I turned 16.  After that, nobody seemed interested.  I now know that one guy was in love with me senior year, but never worked up the courage to say so, so I had no clue.  Even when I thought for sure a guy liked me, he’d insist that he didn’t.  Or date another girl.  But I was a target for harassment.

In college, a similar problem arose.  Outright sexual harassment didn’t happen so much, but once again, few guys wanted to date me, but even Christian ones preferred to use my body.  One claimed to love me, but turned out to be an abusive narcissist who sexually abused and kept trying to assault me because I did not want to do anal or oral sex.

The one who used me, ripped me apart constantly, then criticized me for being too “negative” and reserved.  How could I feel more confident and open when he kept essentially telling me I was unloveable?

And yes, you internalize this.  I felt much as Lauren did.  I didn’t have a boyfriend at 15 like she did, so there was no sexual activity back then, but I do know how this makes you feel like you’re just a weirdo who no one will actually love, and ugly.  My mom got upset with me for not thinking I was pretty, but how could I think so when this is how I got treated?  I felt ugly.

This is part of the reason why Richard found me so malleable, when he started paying all sorts of attention to me, calling me constantly right before he moved into my house, and then, while here, spending all his time with me.

He basically groomed me, through all this love-bombing and slowly but steadily making me think that his in-secret physical affection was appropriate for friends.  (None of it sexual, but it was way too much.)  When I got concerned about what he was doing, thought we had started an affair, and felt like absolute sh** over it, he said, no, no, no, this was all perfectly innocent FRIENDly behavior.

Then a few of his friends sexually harassed me in an IRC chatroom.  Just yet more of what I’d experienced in high school, only now online.  The whole story is here, too long for this post.  They began making comments about my genitals, totally unprovoked by me, and while Richard saw it all.  His wife even came online and talked about inviting these guys to their house!

But later on, when I asked Richard to not talk about the harassers around me because I was still traumatized by what they did, he said I was being “ridiculous” and that he thought I realized that online “isn’t real.”

I thought he was safe.  He planned to become an Orthodox priest, and had actually been a Foursquare preacher in his youth.  He manipulated my emotions and tore me apart, over a period of a few years.  He eventually even admitted to having hypnotized me without my knowing it.  He said it was to make me open up to him; I have often wondered if it was also to make me more open to his grooming.

Because he was convicted of choking one of his children, he can no longer become a priest, but I fear him still becoming a psychologist.  I hope the conviction will prevent that as well.  Todd says that Richard used his supposed superior knowledge of psychology to bully him; Richard did a similar thing to me.

I believe that Richard is a narcissist who zeroed in quickly on my vulnerability.  I had been married for years, so the lack of a boyfriend was a long-gone problem.  But I still felt the insecurities of those growing-up years, and was incredibly lonely for friendship.

(This is one major reason why I don’t want this man in my church or anywhere even touching my life.  I fear my own vulnerability, along with knowing that he is also capable of physical violence, having served probation for choking his kid.  He was once a mob thug, and has even threatened violence to my husband.  He is able to con people into thinking he’s a pious man with a big heart, so they end up doing his dirty work, as I did some of his when he screwed over his friend Todd.  I also don’t want his wife in my church, because she’s just as bad: She can pretend to be a decent person, but is extremely abusive, emotionally, verbally and physically–and when you recognize it, she smears you, as she did to Todd.  Both she and Richard have also mocked and tried to intimidate me, and have demonstrated stalker tendencies.)

Richard zeroed in, just as the youth leader, Luke, zeroed in on Lauren’s vulnerability.  Luke began an affair with Lauren, and when she tried to end it, began stalking her.  Then she suffered because of the lax response of her church, some apparently taking his side over hers, as her sister describes here.  She does not feel safe at that church anymore.

Just as I feel not at all safe when I think of Richard and his wife just casually showing up at my church again, as they’ve done from time to time, or even becoming part of it now that their church has merged with mine.

Church needs to be a safe place.

Perception of abuse victims as either weak or liars

This e-booklet takes the common perception of abuse victims–as passive, not assertive enough, even passive-aggressive–and turns it on its ear.  It shows how the apparent “passiveness” of victims is actually a form of resistance, especially after the abuser has shown that blatant resistance brings on more abuse.

It also tears apart the idea that if you’re a true victim, you don’t recognize the abuse, unless you’re a narcissist or the abuser yourself.

No, I know very well when someone is abusing me, and I don’t like it.  I recognize it’s unfair.  Whether I try to fight back or just turn it around in my own head, I am resisting the abuser’s picture of me.  That does NOT make me a narcissist or an abuser or a liar about being abused.

And yes, whatever I do, the abuser turns around on me, accusing me of abusing or being selfish or whatever.  In college, my exes Shawn and Phil both did this.

More recently, Richard and Tracy did this to me.  I resisted, sometimes in my head, sometimes in other ways.  I resisted by telling my husband all about it, so Richard and Tracy accused me yet again of doing something wrong by telling him.

When Tracy posted about me on her Facebook wall, I resisted by posting the truth on mine.

I resisted by telling the truth about the abuse to everyone I knew, and also by writing about it on my website.  Yes, I wanted them to find it and see that I was resisting their abuse rather than blaming myself.  Then when they found the website and threatened to sue me, I resisted by keeping the site up and telling all my friends and family about their threats.

When they went to my priest and told him lies about me, I resisted by telling my priest the truth.

According to this booklet, rather than feel ashamed of my actions, I should see them as strength, as preserving my dignity.

Some people will try to make the abuse victim either 1) feel she/he wasn’t assertive enough, or 2) feel she was too aggressive, shouldn’t have told because that’s “gossip.”

But this booklet tears that to shreds and says NO, this is how victims resist abuse, and it is a GOOD thing that helps them keep their dignity:

Honouring Resistance: How Women Resist Abuse in Intimate Relationships

Reblog: “It’s Okay not to be Okay” after Narcissistic Abuse

From Grace for my Heart by Dr. David Orrison:

Narcissistic relationships, whether in marriage, the family, at work, or wherever, are painful relationships. They cut deeply into our hearts.

The narcissist takes life from us, goodness and strength. The narcissist often causes us to doubt ourselves and do things we don’t want to do.

The narcissist messes with our heads and takes advantage of our own weaknesses. And, no, we are not okay.

Some women and men are suicidal in and after narcissistic relationships. I know pastors who left the ministry after dealing with narcissistic leaders.

Some adult children of narcissists can barely function in the world. Some look in fear on new relationships. Some live in various ways of hiding.

Some can’t seem to get it out of their heads. No, we are not okay.

…Sometimes the most healthy thing you can do is say, “No, I’m not okay.” It acknowledges the truth of what is happening in your heart. Living in truth may be the first step to becoming “more okay.”

…You see, we all carry around the broken part of our lives….We hold memories and bear scars and sometimes live with circumstances caused by the things we did and others did to us. That pain and sadness may never fully go away.

 

On Listening to Your Gut (sexual predators, narcissists, abusers, etc.)

On free-range parenting sites (or, as we used to call it, just plain ol’ parenting), you hear a lot about teaching kids to listen to their guts, rather than across-the-board stranger danger.

Because after all, you teach kids to be scared of every stranger, then tell them to be more sociable at a party full of strangers–How is that going to work?

And what about when they need help from the actual predator, and need to speak to a policeman (stranger) or an adult (stranger) walking along the street?

(This has happened to me: A couple of girls came up to me one day as I walked home from work.  They said a man was following them home from school and they needed my protection, so I walked with them until they were safe.)

Instead, the free-rangers say, you teach your child basic safety rules (because you’re not stupid), but also how to listen to his or her gut.  Across-the-board stranger danger just feeds into shyness and anxiety, and keeps a child from getting help when they need it.

From Free Range Kids:

Freely translated from Dutch, the spokesperson of Child Focus says:

“If you teach your children not to talk to strangers, you create a fearful child. They will think that the world is generally a dangerous place with few safe havens.

A child must above all develop self-confidence and inner strength, and it does not happen by repeatedly hearing how dangerous strangers are.

Besides, there are many examples showing that “strange people” do good deeds to children. Just think of those who bring lost children back to their mom and dad on the beach or in a busy shopping center.”

For more on what Free Range Kids writes about stranger danger, see here.

I can see that.  If I didn’t let that old man help me find my way home one day in Kindergarten, I could’ve been hopelessly lost.

Or the time when I really was lost in the city at night, having slipped out while my brother was watching me.  Two people in a car found me and brought me home.  These were neighbors sent by my mother, but I didn’t know them.  If I didn’t trust them, I could’ve fallen prey to somebody far worse.

These were two times when listening to my gut, saved my life.  Safety rules are well and good, but we need more than just rules to keep us safe.

I just read an article about teaching your kids about sexual predators grooming them by gaining their trust.  I can see that, and I have spoken to my son about predators.

But at the same time, the article seemed to heighten anxiety about ANYONE who wants to hug your child.  Is my child supposed to be scared now if a harmless youth leader gains his trust?

Sure predators act kind and caring and gain trust, but so do perfectly innocent people who truly care.  I’ve had plenty of teachers and youth leaders who cared about me, who gained my trust, and became trusted mentors.  They NEVER harmed me.

There has to be a balance.  Our kids need to be able to tell the difference between a predator and an innocent person.  Along with telling them basic safety rules, and to not be scared of telling on a violator, we need to encourage them to listen to their guts.

But we also need this as adults.  As adults, we seem to go the opposite direction: telling ourselves not to be judgmental, so we don’t listen to our guts.

It also reminded me of Richard, when he stayed in my house by himself while homeless: I was never much of a hugger or into physical touch with most people, though I would give hugs when asked for.  But Richard began breaking down my reserve with little touches here and there, until finally he was giving me long, affectionate hugs.

Meanwhile, he also gained my trust, overwhelmed me with attention, made me feel I had finally found a best friend for life.  I was shy, quiet, and desperately lonely for friendship, because I was far from family and college friends, and have NVLD.  I was easily led.  He gained my husband’s trust, too.

If I hadn’t finally confronted him about it one evening, I wonder how far he would’ve taken this.  But he assured me that it was all meant purely in friendship, nothing more, and made me believe that people do this where he came from.

But if that’s true, then why did his wife, Tracy, become so furious when she found out about it?  She came from the same place he did!

Meanwhile, I know another guy who does the same thing, but in full view of his wife, who laughs.  Richard did this when he and I were all alone.

The more I thought about it over the past five years, the more it seemed that Richard was grooming me in the same fashion as a predator.  The same as the person who runs this website, who writes that her former pastor tried to groom her into adultery.  You’ll also note that Richard weaseled his way into my pocketbook as well, yet his financial situation never seemed to improve the entire time I knew him.

I can give another example of NOT listening to my gut, and the trouble it caused: Richard’s wife Tracy, who is very abusive and most likely has borderline and/or narcissistic personality disorder.  (I’m told that her mother has borderline and split-personality disorders.)

I got little hints before I met her–just knowing her from a web forum–that she was not the kind of person I should spend much time around.  She was very volatile and would go off on people on the forum.  Then she moved into my house, and I got to see firsthand what kind of person she is: Screaming tirades at people online, her ex, her kids, her husband….

My gut was SCREAMING at me that I should not be friends with her.  Yet she and Richard both tried to force me–through shaming, punishment, withholding, all sorts of things–to be not just friendly, but best buds with her.

Well, it all ended in tears, after years of her emotional abuse and mean-girl snarks, and then finally all-out verbal abuse and even stalking.  It has taken me years to recover from this trauma.

But then I can tell you another time when I DID listen to my gut, and things turned out well: As I told my son, when I was a little girl, a middle-aged man at my church kept wanting to hug me.

I didn’t even know him, which is probably why I felt weird about this, did not like him, did not want to be near him.  Eventually, he and his wife stopped going to my church.

To this day I don’t know if he really was a predator.  But you know why that is?  Because I listened to my gut and didn’t get too close.  So he never had a chance to DO anything.

But I also hugged and cuddled with Richard’s little girls all the time.  But then, they knew me.

Also, just last night I read about an archbishop who often visited little children at an African mission school; he’d open his arms and they’d rush for his hugs.  The writer saw this as an example of his huge heart.

So just wanting to hug a child, doesn’t make you a predator.  But I had a feeling about that guy at church.

I knew that neighbor was harmless.  I knew that old man was harmless.  I did not know if that guy at church was harmless.

I knew Tracy was harmful, but was forced to ignore my gut, so horrible things happened.

The gut is our friend, whether dealing with sexual predators or domestic abusers or con men or whatever the case may be.  It tells us things even when we try to rationalize them away.

People can argue over stranger danger and safety rules, or whether we should be suspicious of everyone who hugs children and gains their trust, but one thing is for sure:

We need to respect the gut.

 

 

About that new video of a Baltimore mom smacking up her son: white praise linked to oppression

What’s disturbing is how many people are calling this behavior “mom of the year.”  She’s screaming cuss words at her son and smacking him on the head, which causes brain trauma.

I would be okay with her getting angry and pulling him away, and certainly applaud her for going to get him.  I also understand that she is frightened and doesn’t want him to get killed.

But the cussing and the slapping are NOT okay.  Many people have noted that embarrassing her son on national television will only cause harm, and have given other means she could have used, such as talking to him, validating him, but telling him this is not the way.

We can understand WHY she did this, and sympathize, but we need to stop condoning such behavior.  We need to know there are other ways to raise children that WORK.

And let’s not excuse abuse because a parent was “under pressure.”  Abuse victims have heard all sorts of excuses, yet it traumatizes them anyway.  Don’t forsake the victim for the sake of “not judging” the abuser.

Also, when people say they “turned out okay” after such harsh, outmoded “parenting styles,” or even defend what their parents did, it sounds like Stockholm Syndrome.

Some have also noted that this video’s popularity demonstrates white America praising the beating-down of blacks.  See, for example, Joan Walsh’s The hideous white hypocrisy behind the Baltimore “Hero Mom” hype: How clueless media applause excuses police brutality

Also see Why is America celebrating the beating of a black child? by Stacey Patton, who demonstrates how praising this behavior is part of white supremacy and systematic oppression of blacks:

The kind of violent discipline Graham unleashed on her son did not originate with her, or with my adoptive mother who publicly beat me when I was a child, or with the legions of black parents who equate pain with protection and love.

The beatings originated with white supremacy, a history of cultural and physical violence that devalues black life at every turn. From slavery through Jim Crow, from the school-to-prison pipeline, the innocence and protection of black children has always been a dream deferred.

I see almost nothing in the comment section to Patton’s opinion piece except calling her an idiot and saying the mother’s actions are not abuse.

To that I say, YOU’VE GOTTA BE FRICKIN’ KIDDING ME!

WHAT THE HECK????!!!!!

Do we really still have THAT many abusers left in this country, who think that smacking a kid around is NOT abuse?

Obviously we still have TONS of work to do to get the word out!  THIS IS ABUSE!!!!

Also Sunn m’Cheaux:

This is about the utilization of her actions as propaganda by the very elements of society who created the conditions that led to her believing what she did was the best course of action. This is about the shameless hypocrisy of media that selectively demonizes the behavior of Blacks, depending on how said behavior fits into their agenda. This is about the fact that the media–including social media–is now more inclined to indoctrinate us with narratives than inform us of news. –Post here

Abuse leads to bad behavior, and does NOT stop it.  Yet in various comments people are complaining that “liberals” are somehow the problem if they see this as abuse.  Um, NO.  Obviously the complainers don’t understand that abuse at home does NOT create well-behaved kids.

My blog/website is FULL of pages against screaming at, cussing at and slapping kids.  It has become my mission to fight this, ever since I saw Tracy doing this kind of crap to her kids.  My most popular posts include “Slapping kids upside the head causes traumatic brain injury.”

She then turned around and became my worst nightmare, psychologically abusing me and trying to intimidate me in various ways, and now my cyberstalker, because I dared to say she’s an abuser.  She threatened to sue me if I went to my priest for mediation if she began coming to my church full-time.  Yet asking him for mediation was the only way I could handle it if she became my fellow parishioner, which was a real danger because her church has now closed.

I also unfriend anybody who says crap like, “Parents, beat your children.”  I’ve actually seen this in my Facebook newsfeed, and was absolutely appalled.

Yet now I find people praising behavior like this, saying the lack of screaming/cussing/smacking around kids is why this country is so screwed up, and calling the woman in this video “mom of the year,” and complaining that “idiot liberals” are probably going to sic CPS on her.

(Yet spanking is still done by the majority, so that kid you see acting up, is probably spanked at home.  And my generation got spanked plenty, yet WE acted up plenty as well: cussing, disrespectful comments, promiscuity, not obeying, all the stuff people blame on lax parenting.)

How can I possibly be okay with this???!!!!

And now I find that many blacks are not okay with this, either, are horrified at the glee with which whites praise it.

Also see Violence for Violence: A Mom’s Turmoil in Baltimore:

Finally, a mom doing parenting right, the world seemed to scream.

It made me profoundly sad, and quite honestly, confused.

The very same people who recognize that violence is not the answer in retaliation to the police somehow find violence an appropriate response when it’s coming from a parent?

From Unschooling Momma and Poppy’s Only in America would an abusive mother receive the title “Mother of the Year”:

The real problem here is not whether or not this is abuse but the fact that abuse of children is so widely accepted in America and often sugar-coated under the umbrella of “discipline.”

Watch this video and imagine this happening in any other context outside of a parent child/relationship and tell me if abuse would then be too harsh of a word to describe this scenario.

If a man dragged and beat his wife like this to “protect” her it would be abuse. If an employer slapped his employee like this to teach him a lesson it would be called abuse. If I protected my dog from being killed and proceeded to beat him, it would be called abuse.

People would be outraged! Animals have more rights and are offered more protection than our children! Yet, this woman is seen as a hero on national TV because she showed up to beat her son.

….I know there are plenty out there who disagree with my “bleeding heart” approach to parenting but I say America needs more bleeding hearts! We need to be people our children can look up to and respect. We need to practice what we preach.

We need to value our children as humans and not hurt them. We need to open up our eyes and see by physically punishing children we are treating them that is how they deserve to be treated.

They feel worthless, they have no self-respect and it opens up the doors for them to be more likely to be abused in the future “out of love.”

We need to model the behaviors we want to see in our children, violence begets more violence. Violently attacking a child does not teach a child not to partake in violence!

Respect is taught by feeling respected. Children develop respect for their parents and ultimately authority by being respected themselves not by being beaten down.

For a time, I felt alone in my feelings on this case, when usually there are lots of voices speaking out against an abusive incident.  I wept for humanity.

But now I’m finding all sorts of blog posts and people on Facebook speaking out against it: friends, strangers.  And they, too, say, “I felt alone in this.”  Here, I’ve only posted a few such blogs which I have found so far.

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