Editor’s note: The following list was compiled by Carolyn Waterstradt, who holds a masters degree in theology and will graduate with masters degree in social work in April 2012. Carolyn owns Inner Quest Healing, where she works with survivors of clergy sexual abuse. This partial list of grooming techniques was compiled from her research with 18 women who were abused by a member of the clergy. Her book, “Fighting the Good Fight: Healing and Advocacy after Clergy Sexual Assault,” is a compilation of this research and will be available in spring 2012.Â
This article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.
10 Grooming Techniques Commonly Used in Clergy Sexual Abuse of Adults
By Carolyn Waterstradt, M.A., MSW Candidate
Whenever members of the clergy cross sexual boundaries with someone who attends his congregation, it is considered a boundary violation. In fact, some US states consider such behavior to be a form of criminal sexual assault. The reason the clergyperson is always at fault in such a relationship is because he holds all the power in the relationship rendering it impossible for the other person to truly give consent.
When this type of boundary violation takes place, a period of grooming often precedes it. During the grooming period the clergyperson chooses a vulnerable victim and works closely with her, gradually wearing down her boundaries in anticipation of sexually assaulting her. Grooming often begins with small boundary violations that gradually progress.
Violations include:
- Inviting the victim to do special things alone with him such as attending a seminar.
- Sharing confidential information about other members of the community or about his wife.
- Accidently brushing up against the victim.
- Scheduling counseling sessions when no one is around.
- Touching the victim in a counseling session.
- Expressing love for the victim. Usually this is first said in the context of brotherly, agape, courtly, or spiritual love.
- Saying things like, “No one has ever understood me like you do.” or “God sent you to me.”
- Making an obscene gesture or remark.
- Asking for details regarding a victim’s marriage, especially if the victim is not being seen for marriage counseling.
- Asking for information about the victim’s sex life or giving her material that is sexual in nature. Clergy are not trained to ask such questions.
There are other grooming techniques. What ones can you think of?
© 2012 Inner Quest Healing
movingon,
congrats on having a son with a spine.
But please, don’t have too much faith in american law. It’s a hit or miss situation. It all depends on the judge and the jury, spaths do infiltrate both. Check the statute of limitations on crimes. If he waits too long, it could be too late.
We are building an army against spaths, the tide is turning. Every victim will become a soldier. The spaths can’t help themselves, they are creating more soldiers every day.
It’s not just clergy that GROOM. I had a lead worker that did the same, and continues to. He’s PROTECTED because he’s NOT in management, and thus the union protects his rights to have a “relationship” with who ever he pleases.
It was a WOW moment when I read the following:
The reason the clergyperson is always at fault in such a relationship is because he holds all the power in the relationship rendering it impossible for the other person to truly give consent.
A team lead, “TRAINING” up a new employee, does hold ALL THE POWER in the relationship. I totally avoided this one employee for the longest time because he gave me the creeps, as he did many of the women in my office. However, when he was promoted to LEAD, and started coming to my desk to “TRAIN” me, the grooming began. I have NO recourse because it was consensual. Consensual! Excuse me, I was groomed, and carefully manipulated by someone I would have avoided if I’d had the RIGHT to do so.
I see him continue to use this behavior on certain women in the office. My “crying wolf” has discouraged some of his more obvious behavior, but being more subtle only means it takes him longer. For a man who is willing to take years grooming a one night stand that can be considered a “win”, how long it takes really doesn’t matter, but rather adds to the bonus points for scoring with a hard catch.
I’ve been looking for a job some where else for years now, but when you start crying when the interview panel asks you how you get along with your co-workers… or if you’ve just come from work and a bullying session by your ex,and you say…. “I can get along with any one, I have proof, I work with satans bastard son!” Getting HIRED to a new job is a challenge!
I’ve finally gotten past the CRYING at interviews with the help and practice with a good friend. I still blow other questions at interviews because of the emotional damage of having been GROOMED by someone in authority over me, but I’m hopeful.
I have an interview this afternoon, I would LOVE for every one to send GOOD VIBES! It’s a BIG PROMOTION, but what really matters to me is it’s out of the office where the evil ex is. There is nothing worse then going to work every day, and being accursed by those in authority over you for imagining the abuse you endured. For a while I was hopeful that I could just be promoted so that I wasn’t directly under the evil one’s authority, however every time I would start to be noticed for my work and intelligence, he’d be sure to bully me in plain site where there would be witnesses that he hadn’t done anything wrong. This of course would send me into an tail spin, and put me out of the running for the promotion, since I’d once again IMAGINED an abuse!
My only OUT is to get a job some where else, and having been looking for 5 yrs, it’s discouraging. I have interviewed for demotions to get out, but my level and below there few jobs, and higher levels abound. I am more then qualified, I have 10 times more training and education then those I work with, and I continue to spend my OWN DOLLARS to get training, while those around me don’t, or are FORCED by management so they can do their job properly. However, in this job market, there are LOTS of people with more WORK experience then me… AND it’s hard to sell yourself, when you know that your own BOSS wouldn’t hire you!
PLEASE send good vibes. I’m smart, I’m friendly, I am one awesome programmer! I can program in Java, Cobol, CICS, EZTrive, HTML, VB, and two or three other languages… most the programmers I know can only do two languages at the most! I’m only two classes away from my DBA certificate. I’m a CATCH! But when you’ve been GROOMED, and abused by someone in authority over you, and then had you congregation/workplace turn their back on you and BLAME YOU, it’s really hard to feel good enough about yourself, to sell yourself in an interview.
Lillie’s Redemption by Lydia Waring Meyer is a novel I recently read about clergy sexual abuse. It does a great job capturing the emotions of primary and secondary victims as well as the emotions of those in the church who want to “hush up” the situation. The book fits perfectly with this conversation and I’ve included a link to it in case anyone is interested.
http://www.amazon.com/Lillies-Redemption-ebook/dp/B0050CPWC4
Sherry, you are so right that it is not just clergy who groom and abuse. This behavior can be perpetrated by anyone who is in a position of power. And it seems common when the abuse is reported that the community whether it is a church, workplace, family, whatever tends to blame the victim.
Good luck on your interview this afternoon. May today be the start of a new direction in your life!
Pastoral abuse takes many forms!
Years ago I was preyed upon and then sexaully abused by a Pastor….when he saw the abusive marriage I was in and that my then husband had taken me to the ends of the earth (Chile) to “minister” 12-15 hour days all while living in lies,emotional and physical abuse. He was a N and that was before I knew what that was. I just kept praying and loving him…….We met a Pastor there who worked closely with our ministry, and saw all that my husband was doing to me. He told me I could go to him, and he would “councel” me, because no one else saw what was going on but him and how badly I was abused. Then it moved to he was my “best friend” and “brother” and then he said it was like a David and Jonathan relationship from the Bible, that God had given him to me……. I was so burnt out and abused at home that I actually fell for the lie that God had sent him to help me. My spiritual discernment was so low…..then he used me. To get me to give in there was so many words and promises…..then when it was over he said not ONE word. He drove me to a curb and let me out, never saying one word or giving any comfort. The he had some kind of hold on me, i was still being abused at home terribly, actually totllay hated and ignored and I just wanted someone to love me, help me and care for me….. sio I did not fight what I knew was wrong. The sexual stuff got more and more ugly, him mansturbating in the most grotesque way in front of me! For me I was so abused that to be held, even in that way was what I needed…… I wanted escape but didn’t know where to go. He would watch my husband physically abuse me then he would come pick me up to “councel me” and drive me to somewhere, take advantage of me and then drop me back off without saying a word…… How could this happen? Because I had already died inside. I was totally dead. Since then I divorced the husband who was physically abusing me…..after i found child porn,and discovered so much deciet, and realized it was his abuse that caused me to do the very “thing” i would NEVER had done!! …..and then I met a Spath who I entrused everything to……. and when I discovered he was a pedophile on the computer, he used everything I had told him and went to another Pastor to paint me as crazy and as having had an Affair………even though I told him how everything had happened BEFORE we were married. Then he drugged me and when I tried to tell my children what he had done to me, he went to my children and told them I had, had an “affair” with a Pastor…….Many know on here that he then went to a female Pastor and convinced her I was terrible, and all these abusers are fine. She used her title and position as a Pastor to tell my children and the congregation to have nothing to do with me. I am treated as though dead,when I had given my entire life to them and endured the abuse of the first husband because I wanted them to have their Dad.
It all started with the 1st Pastor seeing my vulnerability and preying upon it. The second Pastor without the spiritual discernment and training in Psycopaths believed his drama, tears and lies…..and now……I am all alone in the world……and it is all because of 2 Pastors. Please understand: I take responsibility for my actions and allowing myself to do the very things I would never do. But I went to Pasotrs for help and they used it all against me….
Pastoral abuse takes many forms.
So let me clarify the forms “Pastoral Abuse” I have endured:
!. Married to a man for 28 years who became a Pastor to hide his double-life. Who I discovered after 25 years was a porn addict but for all those years had me loving and serving him, my family and the “church” while I was being physically, emotionally and spiritually abused. I had to walk behind him, he was a totally different person to me in public than in person and would leave for 1-3 nights and just “disappear” while I held down the family and the ministries for Years…..until I discovered it was for a porn addiciton. I covered for him and exhausted myself for my children and totally ignored any needs of my own…believing I was to ‘lay down my life for my firend’
2. That belief brought me to a mission field loving my husband and praying for him but being terribly abused, ignored and hated. Then a Pastor there used what he saw in my vulnerability to emotionally and sexually abuse me. He was a P who saw his opportunity to take advantage of our entire family. He took our ministry, $15,000 dollars, and took advantage fo me as stated above. then……after I divorced the 1st and was healing and forgave myself for all that I had done and taken responsibility for my actions I married……
3. A man who posed himself as called to “minstry” to children when he came into my life. He is a very dangerous P…. i discovered now….. but he posed to be everything godly to me…love bombing me and deceiving me until the wedding night. Then 9 months later I found child pedophile stuff on the computer. He worked an entire year….not holding a job…but working my family, friends and church to believe him and turn against me. so that his mask remains in tact…..
4. …..The P went to a female Pastor and cried to her, and used everything I ever entrusted to the P against me, to convince her that I am not who she believed I was! She was also my best friend!! He drugged me and she called a mtg. where I could not speak or defend myself! There the P used all the above to say it was me all along….. To say the 28 years of abuse from my husband never happened. That the Pastor in Chile’s sexual abuse was my fault! That this man was GODLY and i was crazy,….. and then convinced her to cover my children from me.
#5. My daughter is married to a Pastor…..she continues to minister and together they have a great ministry but have not spoken to me in 2 years, and will not listen to me when I try to tell them what has really happened. My texts and emails blocked since the day I was drugged and the mtg. called with the Pastor and the P.
I think these a 5 FORM OF SPIRITUAL ABUSE….. Do you agree or IS IT me??? I need an honest answer.
I have not stepped into a church in 2 years……I still believe in God, but I find myself angry at him too because His word says He will not let “a weapon formed against you to prosper, and your will refute every tongue that accuses you”. That has not happened. I have finally come to believe God is juging me for MY actions with #2 Pastor even though his was abuse.
….my life reads like a Steven Spielberg movie. Anyone know someone to help me write a book????
So where do I start to heal? Abuse form #1. #2,#3, #4 or #5??????
Bella,
you are doing the right thing by not going near a church. The pattern I see is that you are drawn to people in positions of authority in your congregations. The P’s can read this and use this to abuse you.
Begin by looking at your childhood and see what you might uncover there which brought you to P#1.
Bellaangel,
Your pain is REAL….I do not doubt that you were abused. I do not doubt that you’re being shunned by your children and others. II do not doubt that that being shunned is extremely painful.
The shunning is nothing that you can do anything about. You can’t make people listen to you.
Can you imagine how Columbus must have felt when he told people that the world was round and he could sail around it but they thought it was flat? Their disbelief didn’t change the truth, or the shape of the world. But he could not change the people’s opinion.
You can’t change the opinions of others who shun you, even unfairly.
The ONLY thing you have power to change is YOURSELF and that is what you must do.
I can’t change the way my egg donor feels or acts or the fact that she is giving money and help to the man who tried to have me (and her) killed. I can’t make her believe the TRUTH.
I caution you to not spend the rest of your life with bitterness in your heart toward these people and to continue to grieve over the fact that your children unfairly will not listen to you or the fact that thye do not understand the pain you were in or that you were abused.
Focus on building a NEW life with good things in it for YOU.
You said that you feel like God is judging you for your own sins, well, GOD is also a forgiving God and a loving father who opens His arms to you like the prodigal son, and covers you with the fine coats, puts a ring on your finger and kills the fatted calf upon your return to his love. You may never be able to recover your children’s companionship, but that doesn’t mean that you, like Job, won’t be able to have the love of children in your life.
Get up and go out and volunteer to read to children at the library, or at a school, get some therapy to help you over come the bitterness in your heart toward all these hateful people. They were hateful people, and God will deal with them. But build up YOUR life in happiness and goodness and moments of joy! Minister to YOURSELF. (((hugs))) and my prayers for you my dear.
sherry-
do you have a personnel department where you work? is there any way you can see- just ask- if there is a possibility of requesting a “personal incompatibility” status with this person? and see if there is a man in personnel you can deal with; men sometimes can see this type of behavior being used on women whereas women cannot..
i had a similar type of experience in the mid-90’s, when there was no mainstream awareness of this type of personality. i too had overwhelming emotional reactions in all the wrong places, it was just exactly what they go for, too.
i started visualizing God as being my own personal guide there, a little hard to explain probably but i also had one at home (a spath) so i was really spinning..i tried everything… i became overtly hostile without asking permission from anyone. caustic answers to all his pfishing in the office, mocking answers. i basically visualized myself as immune, and sexually superior to him…and began treating him in a somewhat kindly and slightly pitying manner.
we are, fundamentally, whoever we THINK we are, and their main weapon against us is to make us feel/believe that we are helpless. you are not helpless. fix in your mind that you belong to your Own Self and no one else, neither your employer, nor him. ( i myself, envisioned myself as belonging to God..not some preacher or priest or religion, but just to God, owing nothing to any human being but only Him, and kept in mind that good trumps evil – always.)
you are not helpless. you are not his, to play with or to toy with. you belong to yourself, and no one else. you have to learn to delineate your boundaries. and these are about the hardest circumstances in which to do that, but the mere fact that you are aware of his spider’s web is big advantage, even tho i’m sure it does not feel like that at this point…
the one thing i learned, the MOST important thing that i learned there, is that this is NOT a competition for making those around you aware of all this. this is some random other person making you feel like shit, all the time….and all you primarily have to do, is not feel badly. just like that. you have to be happy.
for me, it was this huge epiphany related to something my little old country grandmother told me…”it’s all in how you hold your mouth”; which had never made so much sense as the day i suddenly realized that this evil person was taking away all my joy in life, all my love and happiness, and sucking my life away from me. and in order to “beat” them, all i really had to do was just be happy, despite all their attempts to make me otherwise.
i turned my mouth from “down”, to “up”. and i focussed on the simple fact of “being joyful”.
i sort of put this invisible bubble around my self, pretending– and visualized that as where i actually was, and everyone there as slightly apart from me; and dealt with them as kindly as i could, while maintaining my own function there…but no one was allowed to permeate that “bubble” in my mind.
when they attempted anything to make me unhappy this remoteness helped a great deal, as i was able to see it as their own weakness, needing someone else’s unhappiness to “feed” upon…and this is the primary, bottomline dynamic in these situations, you know; these are extremely weak people feeding upon other people’s emotional energy because they have nothing of their own self to give them strength.
you have strength of your own or you wouldn’t be on this site. you have strength of your own, clearly, because you are attempting to fight him off…and a little of that strength is all you need, in actuality. just a trace– for your own self…because it is yours. it is for your happiness. focus on this: one molecule of light banishes all darkness…
do not indulge in all that “he said, she said” schtuff, that is a big part of that whole trap. smile enigmatically whenever possible and move on…..do your coding. go to the bathroom when you need an excuse to escape the conversation….if nothing else, knock over your (or their?) coffee, all accidentally…: ) become “mischievous”…with a little smile… do your work–but..play. laugh. be happy. in their face. just try this. : ) see how it goes.
Bellaangel,
What you have described is spiritual abuse. Clergy abuse at its core is spiritual abuse.
You have mentioned your desire to heal. How do you imagine your life would look when you picture yourself as healed from this?