Purity Culture guy who slut-shamed me was arrested for prostitution
Sometimes, in the years after breaking free of a narcissistic and/or abuser or rapist, you will find out new information that proves you were not to blame. One ex kept pretending to be something he wasn’t to get girls to date him. Another has various psychological disorders and sleeps around on his girlfriends. An ex-friend nearly choked his stepdaughter to death.
In the 1992/3 section of my College Memoirs, you’ll find the story of Shawn, a guy who accused me of separating him from God and not doing enough to stop his advances while he kept pushing and pushing for physical and sexual favors. I let him do it because I was in love with him and–after growing up with a learning disorder and bullying–didn’t know how to stick up for myself. I didn’t know how to give myself some self-love by telling him to stop and getting away from that situation. I was only 18 and 19 years old and kept hoping one day he would say he loved me. And meantime I kept letting him do whatever he wanted after initially resisting.
He kept saying we were “just friends” and he didn’t want to have an actual “relationship” with me, but he kept coming over to see me and inviting me over. We both intended to save sex for marriage because of Evangelical Purity Culture, but he kept pushing my boundaries until I stopped wanting to stop him, then he blamed me for giving in. Then his ultimate slut-shaming of me was saying he couldn’t be my friend anymore because I had given in to him and that made me so repulsive to him.
He severely psychologically damaged me. I wrote about my realization that his attitudes, the way he shamed me constantly for everything from my introversion to giving in to him to my alleged “imperfections,” came from patriarchal purity culture and his own psychological disorders, here and here. I wasn’t raised with the idea that I was responsible for stopping him, but HE apparently was, so he blamed me for his own transgressions, while I was left confused, wondering how it could be my fault when he’s the one who kept pushing. He made me feel like I was forcing myself on HIM when I was actually very passive through the whole thing, letting him take the lead.
He did eventually call me again to try to bury the hatchet. We connected a few times over the years, briefly. He finally let me friend him on Facebook a couple of years ago, for a day, but there I discovered he’s a Trumper who listens to far-right con artists like Sean Hannity and Vicki McKenna. I think he unfriended me again because of my liberal views and disdain for far-right con artists.
Well–I just learned that in June of 2019, Shawn was busted for sex with a prostitute.
WUT
Details are sparse. But here are the facts:
He’s married and has daughters.
He pled guilty and paid over $1000 in fines.
It was “Prostitution-Nonmmarital Sexual Intercourse.” He was required to “Provide biological specimen to state crime lab for DNA analysis, and pay DNA analysis surcharge.”
Apparently prostitution rings are common in that part of the state, and they regularly do stings, so maybe he was caught that way, but I have nothing but conjecture to go on. I know that whether prostitution is “bad” or should be a crime is controversial these days. But I think most people can agree that a married man with daughters going to a prostitute is disgusting.
UGH
I dodged a bullet!
And I can’t help but wonder at the implications of an Evangelical guy who slut-shamed me, going to a prostitute.