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.
KatyDid
NoLaRn,
Well if there was anything I could say to make you feel better, I would. esp b/c I can so relate to your pain. I do wonder about it being more than the rape. It seems so primal, like childhood trauma. I know that’s where a lot of my pain comes from, that same can’t do anything about it and can’t stop the perpetrator in my childhood. Doesn’t make what my spath did any less responsible for himself, but I was devastated to the point of suicide after years of sometimes intense depression. That’s why realizing that NOW I can choose is so empowering to me. If I feel bad, I can get a movie and forgetaboutit for a couple of hours. I can do things that soothe ME. Soothing was impossible when I lived with the spath….
Until you feel better, remember THIS wife is your friend.
Katy
Ox Drover
Dear NoLARN,
Everyone of us here can look back at SOMETHING we have done/said that was a “chitty thing to do” and we knew better…but did it anyway….so your “sin” is not any better or worse than mine or Katy’s or anyone else’s…it just IS WHAT IT IS. So, you ARE sorry for what you did, so give it up already and quit beating yourself up over it. BOINK!!!! (((hugs)))) That is the past, and what is past is passed.
Forgiving ourselves is harder than any other thing we have to do I think. (((hugs))))
KatyDid
NoLARn2bcop
One more thing. Whatever your spaths wife felt, that’s her journey. HE did that to her. NOT YOU. And as you noted, she’d been on that horse more than once. She chose. This is the good ol’USA. She stayed for HER reasons. Just remember, without HIM doing it to HER, it would never have happened. So ya see, YOU were the stick he beat her with. CONNED. By an Spath. Try to put it in true perspective. You are only responsible for YOU, NOT for HIS FRAUD or how his wife deals with HIS FRAUD. (sorry to say if it wasn’t you, obviously it would have been someone. like you said, he did it before… and he’ll do it again when she finally lets some slack in the leash.)
ElizabethBennett
Forgiving myself is really really hard. I know that GOD forgave me a long time ago, as soon as I asked him, but it’s not so easy to forgive myself. I wish I could do something to make it stop hurting. I’m really glad that I finally relented to do counseling but it’s really hard. I had a nightmare early on Saturday morning about the rape-one giant flashback and I woke up screaming. The counselor said that if I have another one she wants me to right it down and give it to her. This is all a lot to be dealing with when I can’t get a full time job. I just applied for 7 jobs this afternoon. One of them is for a clinic for veterans that is an hour away. I really wish that GOD would grant me the opportunity to do something like that. It would make me happy.
Ox Drover
Dear NoLarn,
If GOD forgives you, who the heck are YOU to hold a grudge against yourself????? ((((hugs))))) Sugar I KNOW how it feels to have trouble forgiving yourself, but YOU CAN DO IT! You can learn to love yourself. God bless.
geminigirl
Katy to No larn,
I know you did NOT mean it to sound this way, but I had to laugh at what you just said?!!
“Tie a knot and hang in there?”
I know your not asking the poor girl to go hang herself, but it sounded like it!
We have to laugh sometimes, or wed cry!
{{HUGGSS!!}}
Mama GemXX
ElizabethBennett
TWISTED!
one/joy_step_at_a_time
i am going to repost this:
just talked to the crazy boy’s mom. she is soooooooooooo weird. omg. drunk? dunno; just so flaming weird. she talked about how her husbands son (who used to live here in the same apt (hens, that’s the ’gay’ boxer)) used to ’tattle’ on her son, and ’provoke’ him. um, noooo, your son’s behavior is down to him. but really the rivalry was between her and her bully husband, also a drunk. omg i feel like i fell into a soap opera. ew ew ew
crazy boy will be moving out. turns out he has never had a real assessment (he’s 24, and bonkers for about 6 years already ”“ jayzus) and she is trying to get him to take himself to the hospital tomorrow night.
she also paraded him around the building making him apologize to everyone. i didn’t accept his apology. i told him i understand that it is very hard to live inside his head, but what he did was not okay. period.
i heard my neighbor who teaches little kids saying, ’you know we are not mad at you, we just want everyone to live and get along well, blah blah blah”of fuck someone hand me a coca-freaking cola. I swear that sweet neighbour ”“ i just want to pound her sometimes.
i can’t imagine what genes crazy boy’s momma gave him. god, she’s weird. ick ew.
KatyDid
NoLaRn2bcop,
Just letting ya see Gem’s comment b/f I edit my post. It a quote from a postcard I have taped on my mirror. Advice that someone gave me when I was in survival mode…
Katy, who did NOT intend to be funny OR serious But was tongue in cheek with a different post to GEM on different subject…
ElizabethBennett
Katy-I don’t know what you’re talking about