Last week I posted two articles related to the Vienna Presbyterian Church in Vienna, Virginia. Between 2001 and 2005, as many as a dozen teenage girls may have suffered sexual, emotional and spiritual abuse from a church youth director. This year, the youth director was long gone, but church leaders felt that the wounds had not be properly addressed and healed. So a few months ago, the pastor and church issued a public apology.
Lawyers for the church’s insurance company warned the church not to accept responsibility for the failings of the youth director. Doing so, the insurance company said, would jeopardize the church’s coverage in case a lawsuit was filed.
The Vienna Presbyterian Church ignored the demands of its insurance company. On March 27, Pastor Peter James preached a sermon that acknowledged the church’s failings.
“Let me speak for a moment to our survivors,” he said. “We, as church leaders, were part of the harm in failing to extend the compassion and mercy that you needed. Some of you felt uncared for, neglected and even blamed in this church. I am truly sorry ”¦ I regret the harm this neglect has caused you.”
Guess what—so far, none of the young women has filed a lawsuit.
Why not? The case would be a slam-dunk. The youth director pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The church accepted responsibility. Several of the now young women have trouble in relationships, because they are still seeking the fantasy that the youth director promised. If they filed suit, they’d win.
My guess is that the women don’t want money. They want to be heard. They want to be validated. And they want to be healed.
Invisible damage
The problem with sociopathic entanglements is that so much of the damage is invisible. Even in cases where we lose money, jobs, homes, and are subject to physical violence, the big wounds are not readily apparent. Before all those obvious injuries occurred, the sociopaths softened us up with emotional manipulation, psychological control and spiritual abuse. These internal wounds not only eat at us, but they make it difficult for us to respond to, and recover from, the obvious physical damage.
After the sociopath, we need to purge our emotional and mental pain. We need internal stability. But when we reach out for help on this level, many of the people around us simply don’t get it.
They don’t understand why we need to talk so much about what happened. They don’t understand how, when we suspected that we were being used, we allowed it to continue. They don’t understand why we are still confused in our thoughts and emotions about the sociopath.
Get over it, they tell us.
These are the people, of course, who are lucky enough to have avoided a direct assault from a sociopath in their own lives. We often understand why they don’t really understand what happened—after all, we were once as clueless as they are. Still, their ignorance of the depth of our pain seems to increase our pain. We feel like we are not being heard, and our suffering is being invalidated.
Debriefing
Karin Huffer, in her book, the Legal Abuse Syndrome, describes this situation in detail in her chapter on “Debriefing.”
Debriefing, she says, is the first step in recovery. In the debriefing process, we tell someone exactly what happened to us, in all the painful detail. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find what Huffer describes as “quality listeners.” These are people who have the ability to hear what we have to say, overriding their own protective filters. She writes:
Protective filters are always at work. If an individual begins to share with another and the data threatens the listener’s feelings of safety, they may try to divert the data or simply not hear it at all ”¦
The function of this protective filter is to maintain the equilibrium of the listener. Victims’ stories shake the foundations that we lean upon in order to feel safe. When it is impossible for friends or family to hear, due to their protective psychological filters shielding them from vicarious pain, the victim feels rejected and alone.
Huffer goes on to describe a formal debriefing process. It’s best done with a quality listener or support group, but an individual can do it alone if necessary.
Support at Lovefraud
I believe that we have many, many quality listeners on Lovefraud. I am always amazed at the thoughtful, comforting and patient comments posted in response to readers who are spilling their traumatized guts.
The reason Lovefraud readers can do this, of course, is because we’ve all been there. We know what it’s like to be deceived, betrayed and assaulted. We know what it’s like to sit amidst the wreckage of what was once our lives. We’re all on the path to recovery, and those of us who are further along help those of us who are just beginning.
Healing, in the end, is an individual journey. To fully recover, we must consciously excavate and examine our pain, and find a way to let it go. But the process is helped immensely when we are heard and validated. I am so glad that Lovefraud offers this to so many people.
darwinsmom,
I agree knowing our weakness is the biggest tool for me. I act on surge of sudden empathy and sympathy I feel, now with my open eyes, I am finding some of my close friends have used me in the past, because I let them too, because for me being good everybody was very strong, I wanted people to like me, so I went on any extent. Exspath took advantage of that, he knew right away and then used it until last moment or I should say until I let him.
I am not sure many on this forum, track their spath and his/her doings and follow new victims, I guess poeple have a lot of time and energy.
The only way I can heal, is not keeping any tab on his good or bad, luckily we live little further away, but we do have common friends, and i have asked freinds not to tell me anything…… Memories are enough to disturb me, why add more junk in the pile to deal with… Just my thoughts.
Darwinsmom
I had the cheating husband too. And I learned that OW have their own agendas, just as my husband sycophants had agendas.
I told my husband when we decided to be exclusively dating that if he was the type who wanted women to complete for him, that I was NOT a match for him. I would NOT stand in line for a man. He took it as a challenge on how good he could hide the truth from me. And have to say, it is my daughter (whom I allowed him to adopt) that suffered the most. SHE is the reason I refused to complete. I needed to TRUST and RELY on him, I did NOT want insecurity in my home.
Some people HELP the cheating spouse, love being in on the intrigue and secrets. Some believe that if a man is unhappy, it’s okay to cheat. Some believe if he is separated, that is open invitation even though we were separated b/c of his cheating and my agreeing that he needed time to think (about what he was sabotaging). Some was HIS lies, that he was on a short leash (NOT true only b/c I refused to spend my time tracking him down)
I left after the second woman. The first was supposed to be a mistake, someone getting him into a blackmail bind. After the second, and he was supposed to be THINKING and getting his act together, then women and betrayals started coming out of the woodwork.
I too, refused to even date a man who hinted at a girlfriend. I wouldn’t do it, and I sure didn’t want it done to me.
Other woman LOVE being the “chosen” one. The more competition the more they WIN. Some believe him, that they are all lying (one believed my husband, that women assumed things that weren’t true and he just avoided them b/c they were predatory). Some ARE predatory, thinking MY half the biz and assets would be THEIRS. HA.
Lots of reasons that you can’t even guess why bimbo is still with him, inspite of what she’s been warned. And yes, it is VERY invalidating that they know what was done to me, and still think him wonderful.
Katy, shaking her head and free for a GOOD life
Look, I asked recently a common freind, whoknew him for 25 years, why didn’t she tell me about him and his mother, when I paln to marry him. she said even if I did, you would not have listened to me, you would have thought that I am jalous or something, because when you are in love you are blind in true sense.
KatyDid:
I agree, separated means still married and shouldn’t mean free reign to just do whatever you want, but I saw the X spath and the woman in my office who he was triangulating me with both do it. She thought the same thing…that as long as she wasn’t “at home” she wasn’t really cheating!!! HA!! What a crock. It all makes me so angry. I still have so much anger. It’s the one thing I am having trouble letting go of. I also saw his friends be the enabler and help him just as you said. And he was also separated because of the cheating!! But I didn’t know that at the time.
I can tell you are still really angry about it and I am sorry. It makes me feel really guilty now because I feel like I should have known better, but I was duped, what can I say?? At least I learned and will never do it again.
When I hear all these comments about OW all the time it just makes me feel 10 times shittier than I already do.
eb92044
If what I wrote made you think I am still angry, then I gave the wrong impression.
What was done was horrendous and much more than you know, but I am NOT angry anymore simply b/c I have such a good life now and I would not have had this if I were still with him.
My comments were to validate Darwinsmom, how it seems even when people KNOW and would NEVER want that for themselves, they still persist with hypocrisy and idiocy and completely enable and support spaths; those with their loopdeloop logic.
Katy who really means I just shake my head at those kind of people and praise God for being free to live a GOOD life.
KatyDid:
Good, I am soooo glad you are past that and have a good life now.
I agree, but I think MOST people see the light eventually and give these spaths the boot? Do you agree? I mean, SOME people might put up with it and enable it their entire lives including the wives, but thankfully, most people get fed up and realize what the TRUTH really is like you did and GET OUT!! 🙂
NoLarn2bcop
YOU KNOW my spath is NOT about you. You were targeted. My husband sometimes did the targeting and sometimes the women were like scavenging buzzards. You were VULNERABLE and your spath befriended you enough to know your sore spots.
I hope Ya make a distinction b/t me as a victim of my spath and that you were a victim of a different spath. Both of us need support and healing. I have to process too. There’s room for both of us right?
Katy 🙁
My grandmother (mother’s mother) once confided to me that she saw something in my father that raised a few bright red flags before they wed. When asked why she remained silent, she, too, replied that she believed my mother wouldn’t have listened and that it would have served only to create a rift between them.
Gradually over 20+ years following my finding my father after his abandoning his family for 25 years, I discovered for myself his narcissism, if not psychopathy, from whence my sister’s was born.
This is why I urge those who feel compelled to do something, anything, even while moving on, to connect with previous targets instead of current or future targets. Chances of building consensus & unity are far greater, which increases our personal support, and has a more likely possibility of educating the current or future target or the public as a whole acting as a unified group.
Not to mention, imagine how validating it would feel for you if a discarded target who succeeded you were to come to you seeking validation & support.
Katy-there is totally room for both of us and I can’t begin to understand how you would feel. It makes me think about how his wife felt and it just rips me up inside and makes me feel like total slime that I had such a part in doing that to another woman. We talked about it in counseling this morning and I’m really sorry but I just feel really shitty today and pretty much lower than low for what I did. It kills me that I was that OW and it hurts really bad. I don’t want to diminish your feelings AT ALL. I am just really suffering about it and nothing that anyone says is going to make me feel better.