Types of Predators and the lies told to victims by all involved

[FullCircle]

Okay. If you go to Amazon you will find this book. It is a good book and it was mentioned once before on one of these forums years and years ago. It is, The Healing Path, A Guide for Women Rebuilding Their Lives After Sexual Abuse. It is written in harmony with those who grew up and lived in religious homes, as the abusers used God's name to justify the abuse but it is also written with the psychology of the sexual predator in it. I worked this book in group therapy and in private counseling, it is a very good book, it is a very potent book and while I worked it, I have several back up support systems going as it helped me to face what I had repressed at the time and to deal with all the emotions that churned for a long time inside of me like some big fire breathing dragon trying to escape. I am sharing this because if any decide to buy it and read it, it is just advice to have a back up support system in place if needed.

Personality Profile of an abuser:

Some personality traits common among abusers: Many theorists do not think that sex is the primary reason for sexual abuse, there are other needs that the sex is a substitute for like power, intimacy, dominance, has emotional immaturity as he/she is erotically stimulated by children, he/she has not grown up but is stuck emotionally or stunted, filled with inadequacies he/she is less comfortable with adult sexuality and may have been physically or sexually abused himself/herself. All abusers are deviant, psychologically immature and inadequate even if they seem committed to spirituality and a church.

Two types of abusers..Passive and Aggressive

Aggressive abusers always use intimidation, threats and or physical strength or violence to get what they want, they cannot stand to be resisted, he uses fear as a weapon and may not harm the child psychically unless he has to and will up the ante if he has to as he wants mastery and this type of abuse is not a random event.

Another aggressive abuser is the sadist, he will use physcial harm and has picked the child out in advanced, stalked the child an has the exact plan of what he is going to do to the child and when and where all planned out. He despises the child's weakness and vunerablity which increases his violence and what he does to the child is acting out his hate against himself for being weak and vunerable at one point in his life.

Passive Abusers use warmth, charm, personal need and manipulation and relationships to obtain sexual favors. They use trust and genluiness to hurt and manipulate. Usually the passive abuser is a friend or relative of the family, someone who has gained trust. He/she relies on the victim's desire to please him/her as they are a trusted person to exploit the victim. The passive abuser as well often stalks the victim for some time, watching and fantasizing and plotting before making his move.

Lies told by the predators and lies told by those around the victim when she/he speaks up, these are intermingled from abuser to people around the victim:

This is our secret, no one must ever know.

If you love me, you will not say anything

If you ever say anything, I will say that you are lying, who are people going to believe?

You were responsible for this, you made me do it to you.

If you tell anyone, I will kill myself, kill you, kill your cat/dog/kitten/sister/mother/father

You were always trouble (and here you are again making trouble by speaking up about the abuse)

Slut, whore (what did you expect that is what you are)

You're imagination is getting carried away (you made it up so don't trust your memory)

You're so lazy (a good reason for me to abuse you or not believe you about being abused)

You don't love me/God (if you did, you'd let me do what I want)

Dressing as you do is a sin/come on (all your fault I did it to you, not my fault)

You're too maladjusted to hold down any job (I am lowering yourself esteem so you will stay to be abused more)

You're big for your age (let me help you grow up)

You're too emotional (you're feelings don't count)

I don't have anyone else (therefore you will do)

Our family was normal because we ate dinner at 6 every night and went to church regularly (that is supposed to wash out the horror of what happened in between those times)

Tell me everything you can trust me (I gain info about you on your abuse so I can abuse you as well)

You should have known better you should have stopped them

If you tell anyone, the whole family/church/community will fall apart (victims are responsible for maintaining the diseased community)

It's all in the past, why bring it up again (ignoring reality is better than facing it cause it makes others uncomfortable and the otheor implication is, what is wrong with you that you have to bring it up?)

You imagined it (don't trust your own self or memories doubt yourself)

I have to teach you something about sex to help you be your best/grow up

If you tell, you will be in trouble (no one will love you if you tell)

You wanted it, you deservd it

I did not do that to you and you know it/you're possessed (agressive denial is very hard to overcome adn the more pressure put on the victim, can make her/him distrust her own memory or understanding because she was given warmth and trust and got abused instead, makes a victim confused about what the real intentions of the perpetrator was)

You consented to it

Boy, what a figure (and one to be enjoyed by me, woohoo)

This is not all that is told, but it is a snippet of the lies and deceit a person/child who is abused has to sort through in speaking up and when she/he speaks up.

This is just a tidbit of the mind and workings of a sexual predator. When it is a non family member it is called molestation. When inside the family it is called incest.

I thought I would share it as it is a much deeper subject than a man's urges going out of control and it is much more than a simple mistake or error in judgment made on the part of the predator but rather he has a whole pathology going.

Oh yes, Happy Easter

[FullCircle]

Family abuse

If you were the victim of incest, a family member abused you, and there is repetitive long term or frequest abuse it is because the family was dysfunctional and unhealthy, long before you were born into it. It did not start with you (persay) or end with you..it was a system you were born into and it was made long before you came along. Under the surface of your family, no matter how well it may have appeared to outsiders, something was seriously wrong in the make up of the family. You can compare it to a virus being on the loose, that no one was willing to recongnize or deal with it and confront it. This type of abuse needs people to look the other way for it to continue. It needs the help and aide of family members to aid and abet it by doing NOTHING.

Families are like organisms, just as amoebas, human beings, churches and nations. It wants to feel balance and organized, to keep their version of equilibrium. Sick and dysfunctional families systems are more than willing (churches and organizations too) to sacrifice one or more members of that family and allow an adult male to continue to rape a child if that is what it takes to keep their perceived sense of peace in the system.

Read that again and again, it is not only true for families but gives us the reason why TWI and other groups turn a blind eye and continue on the way they have been going without change.

In some dysfunctional families, there is a role called the scapegoat, just like in the Bible. All the sins, all the problems, all the sickness and pain is laid on one child and that child is blamed for all the problems in the family, and is blamed for the whole family's pathology. This scapegoat child is treated like dirt, the abuse is justified in the family's eyes and the sick family would rather keep the sickness and their own immoral, illegal and totally reprehensible way of living and sacrifice the child rather than facing the truth and making the necessary changes. The victim is blamed repeatedly as the source of trouble rather than the family (or organization) that has allowed the abuse to happen time after time after time.

If you feel any of you are the scapegoat, don't despair, so am I am you are in good company ;)

The book goes on about the emotionally unavailable or the emotional cold mom/grandma (whatever female is in charge) and the adult male who is lacking and seeking out his own inadequacies in the child or children he is abusing. None of it is written to excuse the problem, but rather to shed light on the individual pathologies of each person present who had the power to do something but did nothing. It is shown it is not the child or teenager, it is and was not their fault, but the illness of the family itself cause it to happen.

It is a bunch of very very sick folk who allow these things to happen. Each has to bee ill in their own way.

We have seen this with TWI in that any woman who came forward then or now is often labeled as possessed, bitter, crazy or over emotional, just focusing on the negative, give it to God and let it go because God forbid anyone gets their boat rocked in having to face the evil and darkness in that dysfunctional system and admit it was wrong from the very basis of the start of it. Women sacrifced daily on the altar of TWI just so it can go on like nothing ever happened and sick twisted families do the same damn thing.

As I said before, this book was written and co authored by women who lived in religious homes and there is something I would like to share that the book shares about religious abusers. It is worth mentioning.

Quote "No person who knows the least bit about God, His great love for us, His deep desire for us to be whole would believe for a moment that sexual abuse is in any way related to God's will."

Quote "No matter how "religious" (insert spiritual there) a perpetrator may wish to appear, he is a fraud if he has not

a. confessed his sins to God, his victims and any others he has wronged

b asked for forgiveness form God, his victim(s) and any others he has wronged

c stopped the abuse

d done all in his power to make amends to his victim and any others affected by his sins

Pay no attention to his claims of religion (spirituality); they are meaningless

[Abigail]

Very helpful information there, FullCircle. Thank you. I will be rereading it again in a while.

[VeganXTC]

Thanks for posting this, Full Circle. I'm going to look for the book.

[ChattyKathy]

I want to give this my time but have not yet, but will, thank you in advance Full Circle.

[Eyesopen]

This is some really interesting and helpful information. Thanks for taking the time to post it all.

[Diamond]

Wow Fullcircle, Thank You for taking the time to have written all that, I will look for the book...That was much more helpful to me than you know. Thanks again!

[ChasUFarley]

*bump*

[Dot Matrix]

As a six year old in the woods the teens that jumped us said this one

If you tell anyone, I will kill myself, kill you, kill your cat/dog/kitten/sister/mother/father

They were going to kill my cat.

[FullCircle]

I am sorry Dot.

I have mine own beliefs of why predators seek out those who have already been abused. One is the abused person who may not have dealt with their situation has a low self esteem and a need to be loved and validated more than the next person. It makes the person more vunerable to lies and the charming approach or the false caring/love approach.

Then there is the factor that the abused person has kept the secret for so long. They have learned not to speak up. The lies originally told to them becomes an ingrained part of their psyche, to tell any secret of dysfunction is likely to cause a major melt down for them emotionally and mentally. I know this was true for me and opening that closet door to the family skeletons was hard and it had emotional and mental fall out for me. It was not like, "whew glad to get that off my chest, big grin" it was earth shattering to start going public with what happened, not just to me but to come clean about the whole system of dysfunction. In TWI add to that that we were also programmed not to give any offense to the household of God. I was literally told that even if I was beat up by a bro in Christ, I would be defaming the household of God by going public or pressing charges. We were doubly programmed to keep silent and he, VP knew that the females who were abused were already in a system of denial and secrecy. All he had to do, imo, was continue to build on that.

I hope that this thread helps to start shedding some light for anyone and that it helps someone somewhere.

[ChattyKathy]

Again, thank you for this thread. And it is amazing the control an adult can have over a child's mind. I know experientially that what I was told looking back on it now I can't believe I was taken by but at the time they were threats that kept me under his control and then in time shame took over and that was sufficient to keep me quiet when his threats no longer had the impact because I was older and knew better.

Edited April 14, 2007 by ChattyKathy