Sociopaths like to cloak themselves in a mantel of respect. They seek careers, or pretend to have careers, in fields that people associate with good character, trustworthiness, and authority, such as law enforcement, the military and the clergy.
Pursuing a career in religion or spirituality is particularly useful for sociopaths. People tend to trust religious figures simply because they are religious figures, which puts a sociopath several moves ahead when trying to scam someone. A sociopath claiming an inside track to God has a very powerful tool when it comes to manipulating people.
Plus, for a sociopath, a career in the clergy is easy—the primarily visible job requirement is an ability to talk. With typical inborn charisma, and a willingness to lie about other credentials, the sociopath is a shoo-in.
Lovefraud has written about several pseudo-members of the clergy whose behavior has certainly flouted the Ten Commandments:
Anthony Owens claimed to be bishop of a fellowship of more than 100 non-denominational churches, which was a lie. He was married to eight women at the same time.
Rabbi Fred Neulander founded the largest Jewish temple in southern New Jersey. He was convicted of arranging the murder of his wife.
Terry Hornbuckle founded a megachurch in Arlington, Texas. He was found guilty of raping three women, two of whom were parishioners.
Then, of course, there’s Fred Brito, who impersonated a Catholic priest, even performing a couple’s wedding, when he had no religious training whatsoever.
Lovefraud readers have told us of more cases. AlohaTraveler says her “Bad Man” had been a pastor for an Assemblies of God church in Seattle. Another woman has built a website about the real reason a reverend abruptly departed from the First Presbyterian Church of Fort Lauderdale, Florida—an extramarital affair with her.
Fake believers
Even sociopaths who aren’t clergy put religion to work in their manipulation. Here are some examples from the Lovefraud mailbag:
- A woman married a guy who was a “Christian” teacher (her quotes) in schools for 14 years. He abandoned her after six months and started an affair with another woman, all the while talking about reconciliation. She then found out she was his eighth or ninth wife, and he had previously been convicted of bigamy.
- A guy met a woman in a Christian chat room on the Internet. He was in the process of getting a divorce; she claimed she was also. He left everything and moved to her state to be with her. She taught at a Christian school half-days, and would meet him—for sex—after work. She was still married.
- Girl starts dating guy when she is 18. They belonged to the same Christian faith, which did not allow premarital sex; all their dates were chaperoned. When she was 20, they had a fairytale wedding. That night, he raped her, then started gaslighting her, and convinced a doctor that she was crazy, until she ended up on psychotropic drugs.
- A woman’s ex-husband claims to be a Christian minister. “The church is a fraud to bilk people out of money. He helps the other pastor get money from poor people who can’t afford it,” she writes. “When he raped me and tried to kill me, and when he and his daughter broke into my house, well the cops saw him wearing preacher pants and didn’t believe me.”
- Woman meets a guy on a Christian singles site—they both sang, did music ministry, and had an “intense desire to serve the Lord.” They married, started their own church, then she finds out he owed $30,000 in child support and was addicted to hardcore porn. He became physically abusive.
- Woman marries a 51-year-old Catholic school teacher who is an Episcopalian priest, retired military, widowed after 29 years of marriage. Two months into the marriage, his son moves in with them. The son was selling and using cocaine, and her new husband—the priest—was in business with him.
Predators are everywhere
Lovefraud has heard of many more cases in which sociopathic predators were fishing for victims in churches and on religious dating websites. We’ve heard of sociopaths who quoted the Bible, prayed every day, and emotionally tortured their families.
And then there are the sociopaths who use religion as a reason to keep bleeding their victims. Christian religions, and New Age spiritualism, embrace the concept of forgiveness. Sociopaths use this to claim that they’ve “found God” who has forgiven their transgressions, and you should too.
The key point here is that just because someone claims to be Christian, religious, or otherwise spiritual, does not mean he or she is automatically trustworthy. If your instincts are telling you that something is wrong, no matter what the context, pay attention.
AMEN!
I came to meet and learn about psychopaths through Church. It is disheartening and I hate to think others willbe turned off by religion b/cof psychopaths, but they are in the sanctuary.
I know of them and have experienced their predation myself.
Here’s a key to catching them…their actions do not match their words. The ones I have known- pour on the piety all the while chasing pre-teen parishoners, wives and actining out all sorts of profanity. For me, in retrospect, it started with the outrageous conversations, really monologues, in Church. Another told me straight out “how bad his marriage was” ….all the while he was cheating with others in and out of Church.
Here’s a clue: married men DO NOT pursue personal conversations with women other than their WIVES- esp. shocking is the obvious loitering around young girls…
The stories I could tell…claims of abject poverty whilst brining in income of over 150,000…One good that has come from my experience with psychos in Church…I know there is only one God I can turn to. I believe that is key, palcing all our trust and hope in a person is a disaster waiting to happen. Even trusting a a bit , a psycho leads to pain and suffering…
This is just another one of those incomprehensible things about these creatures. How they can speak such loving words, say such inspiring-sounding things and yet just be doing that to garner trust so they can get away with the most despicable things.
In my personal journey I have gone through so many phases. From shock and disbelief to denial, bargaining, hope, despair, suicidal ideation, curiosity, fascination, learning, confusion, more shock, acceptance, pain, endless yammering–I feel like I’ve bounced around like a ping pong ball. Ultimately, however, I am coming to the place Liane, I think it was, spoke of: disgust with the sociopath. I am getting to a place where more and more I feel nothing but revulsion toward a man I once loved with all my heart. A man I utterly believed in and trusted.
The more I am able to get my head around what “my” S has done and what he continues to do and always will do, the more I am filled with this disgust.
And disgust particularly heightened when I think back and remember how he was a deacon in our church. How he helped with communion. How he washed other people’s feet (Adventist). How he got up in front of the entire congregation and sang “How Great Thou Art.”
How he would request prayer and pray aloud, such a good out-loud prayer, my own are awkward and clumsy, he always knew the best words, gave me tingles.
And he would do all this all the while he was living an ugly double life, betraying every sacred vow, violating every rule and standard of what he professed to believe in.
And even now, now that he’s been caught, he is no longer going to church, but is attending AA, which–although he is there talking about God, telling people how he is spending hours down on his knees and how his higher power is doing for him what he could not do for himself–he is actually using as his personal trout farm. He is going to meetings all over southern California so that this woman won’t know about that one and that one won’t know about this.
For him, AA is just another group of people to con, another bunch of people to stroke his ego. Another source of women to seduce and conquer.
I am the biggest thorn in his side. He is my worst nightmare, but I am his worst nightmare too. He so wants to convince me that he is a changed man, not just so that I won’t expose him to his new honey (who he is now living with although he is still carrying on with the woman he’s been having a 5 year affair with and who he planned to leave me for–under false pretenses–last year and is “seeing” many other women as well: women he works with, women he’s met in AA; and how I know all this is because via the internet I can see all the calls he makes on his cell phone), but so he can convince his family, particularly his parents, who now know the complete ugly truth about him, that while he is very very sorry for what he has done, he’s undergone this miraculous transformation. He’s had a “white light experience” as he told me two months ago.
And he gets away with this–not with me or my family and friends anymore, but with all his new “friends” and the people he works with because he sounds so sincere. He has such a buttery voice. Chocolate eyes. A warm touch.
Yesterday I had a long discussion with my sister-in-aw and she said and could not be convinced otherwise that even though she can believe that the S doesn’t care about me or most anyone else she just cannot believe that anyone could not really care about their own daughter, could not love their own flesh and blood, their own child they held and comforted and kissed and played games with. That seems impossible to her. And I do understand. It took me a long time to realize that my S truly did not and does not care about his own daughter. Even though I had read that this is so in a book, Martha Stout’s I think, where she says sociopaths use their children as props to help them pass for normal I could not quite believe this about my S. He was every other thing, but not this. It wasn’t until I inadvertently discovered that the brakes on my car (in which my daughter was often a passenger) were shot and that my S knew this and said nothing that I got it. I finally, finally got it. And by “get” I don’t mean I understand, only that I know this is so.
And I felt such frustration talking to my SIL yesterday because, like I used to and still have the inclination to, she insisted on applying normal-people rules to the S. But you cannot apply normal-people rules to the sociopath. I don’t know how many times I have asked: “How can he do this?” “How can anyone do this?” “How can anyone treat another human being like that?” “How can anyone lie so completely and utterly, say they’ll call you again, “just before [they] go night-night” all the while they are staring at one of the women they are having an affair with who is sitting in her silver car parked down the street?” (A very long story.)
But there’s never an answer. Not a satisfactory one anyway. The closest I can ever come to that is: “Because he’s a sociopath.”
I doubt there will every be any more complete answer than that because who could ever ask a sociopath a question and know they’ll get a truthful answer? They can’t; they never will; everything the S says is completely self-serving and manipulative. Even when they sound remorseful or sincere or earnest or desirous of change there’s no point in asking them anything because everything they say is a lie. Even when it is the truth it is a lie. And, to me, that is the most confounding thing of all.
Dear gillian: I read your post. I’m glad to read that you are healing from all the pain he caused in your life. Yes, they are very cleaver. Yes, they are in the churches, work offices, fields, your favorite shopping mall, etc. What we are all learning is they say and do whatever they please. That is just another … out there that lives in their EGO instead of being humble.
Peace to your heart and soul. You got through the worst part of this … acknowledging and accepting what is. Be kind to yourself as you heal. Pray to God to guide you towards forgiveness. Pray to God in good times and Bad. He loves to hear from us every day, any time, any place we are.
I just remember this: Oprah says she writes down on a piece of paper every night before she goes to bed every thing she is grateful for from the day.
The P I was involved with was a ‘good’ muslim. He professed to pray 5 times a day and never drank alchohol. This myth was portrayed not just by himself but the OW and they fooled many people. What I did not know at the time was that he slept around with anything that moved and sold drugs.
Not being a religeous person myself and not familiar with Shariah law I didn’t realise just how ridiculous his behaviour was – he was having an affair with a married woman (me). When I did eventually question him about it, he covered it up by saying it was his “destiny” to fall in love with me even though it was against his religeon. In the honeymoon phase, that was very believable and of course, if I had known about the OW (also married), I would have smelt a rat much sooner.
As so many have said – if I had not been blinded by his flattery and charm and looked at his actions, I may not have been sucked into the whirlpool.
Swallow
The xs didn’t use religion much on me- it wasn’t a very good tool of manipulation with me.
After I threw him out and he was living at his mother’s Christian bookstore, he was telling people, of course, that HE owned it and she worked for him. He was also touting himself as a Christian as a come on on singles sites. He was signing emails “Your Friend in Christ, xxxx”
Maybe he did find religion- witnesses say they saw him snorting coke off bible pages.
I have known may N/S/P through church/religion. I worked for Catholic Charaties and reported to a priest, who I thought at the time was a clasisc N. He may have been more than that. He did create a wonderful umbrella of services and would turn on the Irish charm when he needed to, sipped Johnnie Walker Red from his tea cup, then scream, and cuss at those that worked for him for the tiniest of issues. He took items for himself that were given to the agencies for the poor, even dog food for homeless dogs so that he could feed all of his large dogs.
An elder in the church I attend now, murdered his wife years ago and now in their 60’s lives with and controls his very passive sister.
An ex- co-worker married her “prophet” husband after knowing him two weeks, has a web-site, tapes and books on what God reveals to him, counsels people about relationships while he moved her from her family and is abusive. He also had a door to door cable scam stealing money from refugees.
“My” S. was in the airforce (kicked out), has always wanted to be a police officer (has an application in hand today), facilitates men’s recovery groups, and speaks to women’s groups about his higher power (gets more than his EGO stroked this way.)
Yuk! This really makes me sick as I re-read it. I just wish I could keep this disgust fresh 24/7 and I might be able to have NC.
That’s what LoveFraud is for, Lib. We write down our innermost thoughts, feelings in an effort to purge ourselves of the extensive damage caused by PDIs.
I have reread many of my original comments hoping that maybe I’ve come further along in my healing/recovery and just maybe I’m liberated from the past hurt. I realize I am so much better emotionally and spiritually than I was 2 months ago.
I no longer ruminate, ponder, drudge up memories of not only the X Music Man, but the other 4 PDI bfs I’ve been involved with in the past 15 years. My latest X wasn’t the worse of the bunch (he never hit me or called me foul names) but he is what I consider the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
He was the mentally ill guy who literally caused me to confront my terrible choices in men. Why did I continue to be involved with bad dudes? What was wrong with me that I seriously thought I didn’t deserve any better than the itty bitty crumbs they sparingly scattered my way?
Well, my introduction to LF cleared up massive flaws in my stubborn thinking and actions. Yes, I do take responsibility for allowing PDIs in my life but No, I did not deserve the harsh, cruel treatment that was inflicted upon me.
And wanting to stay on topic of the post, my X Music Man knew that I was a spiritual Christian and that I also incorporated Buddhist religion/philosophy in my daily life. He knew that I was striving to be more disciplined in walking the “path of mindfulness” He knew that I was working on trying to transmute my negative emotions into much more productive, beneficial ones and he exploited my beliefs and ideas constantly. He actually started quoting my statements as if they were his own! It causes me to laugh now, but then I considered it flat out robbery!
One day, he went off on a tangent, crazy making, and I tried to understand what great infraction I had done to create such disharmony in him. Well, to make a stupid long story short, he left and it was me who ended up calling him and apologizing for the words I had said to him in self defense. I asked him to forgive me and then I said to him…God bless you. He responded by saying…”I forgive you as does God”
Now, how in the universe does he know what, why, when, where, how the Lord does what he does? I sure don’t, so how could he? His arrogance was just too darn much for me and that “tone” he would use when he was thinking he was superior to me was annoying.
I really loved the guy, though I don’t any more. But at least I can say I am able to love.
Tell me about it! I met my ex sociopath on an online religious site. When he left me, he left all of his religious books behind with me. Last I heard, he has now converted to another religion, the religion of his current love interest. When he left me he said he was no longer going to try to be the man he thought he was. So, I guess now he is trying to be the “new man” with the “new religion” for the “new women”. It is like the man doesn’t exist. He is mimicking whatever his current love interest is into. It is not like the two religions are at all similar either. They are night and day. What a fraud.
My Ex attended service with me as well as other events held in churches. Now that we know what we are dealing with (the spiritually stunted/challenged for the political correct folks out there) such a shame that he (or any of them) couldn’t feel those great feelings while attending special occasions with family and friends … always going through the motions. Sad, sad, sad. Besides stealing $$thousands$$ of dollars worth of my possessions when he left, top on the list of stolen items is my Bible. When I did talk with him (a few times after he left and pretending that I still didn’t know about him) I told him that I bought the Bible in memory of my father (that it had special meaning to me). Of course he denied, denied, denied … and then I told him I hope you read it.
Peace.