One of the words that frequently occurs in discussions about church abuse or cult entrapment is the word ‘grooming’. This word is an important one as it tells us something about the early stages of an abusive relationship. Grooming is the process whereby an individual is flattered, bribed or coerced in some way into a relationship with a perpetrator who wants to take advantage of him or her. In a typical case the victim is being led to a point where s/he becomes able to be sexually exploited by a powerful predator. The grooming process may also be the prelude to a financial fraud. This may leave a victim nursing massive financial losses. A faux friendship or situation of trust has been built up so that victims become ready to entrust either their bodies or their life savings to the conman or abuser. Whether force is used or not in the sexually abusive act, the build up to it has normally involved extensive, even elaborate, preparation.
Looking at the relationship of grooming from the outside, we can see contrasting expectations on each side of the relationship. From the perspective of the exploiter the victim is ultimately a disposable object. They are to be used, abused and then discarded. The objectifying of the victim is in sharp contrast to the way that the victim has, through the process of grooming, been opened up to his/her abuser. They have been invited to trust, to respect, even to love the trickster. The relationship from the victim’s perspective is thought to be genuine and heartfelt on both sides. The abuser has tapped into their subjectivity and has used the readiness in all of us to trust another. Grooming seems to activate in each of us a fundamental readiness to trust another person. That, after all, was imprinted in each of us as small children. The close protection by parental figures in the early years is also what enabled us to flourish in the long hard path of growing up towards maturity and independence.
The experience of having been groomed with the subsequent experience of abuse of some kind will arouse a multitude of feelings in a victim. First there may be anger perhaps accompanied by self-blame and shame. How did I get myself into that situation? The supporter of any victim of grooming will know that the dark arts involved in this process are practised against millions of people every day. Against the skill of a practised practitioner, it is surprisingly difficult to defend ourselves. To be open to a person who appears to be friendly and persuasive is not a fault; it is probably far better than the opposite which is to be cynical and ‘hard boiled’ in every encounter with another person. A failure to read the motives of another person may constitute naivety and even carelessness but the experience of being abused sexually or financially seldom involves any guilt on the part of the victim.
I want to return to the point I made earlier about the difference in the grooming relationship between abuser and victim. I suggested that to cheat or abuse an individual required a perpetrator to have the ability to make the victim into a thing or an object. Most of us would find this level of cynical exploitation of another quite hard to do. Possibly the abuser has had to steel him/herself to shut down any respect or feeling for the victim. You cannot abuse a person whose subjectivity you have learned to respect. Another word for objectifying the chosen victim is to ‘other’ them. They thus remain outside any orbit of care you might feel. From the victim’s point of view this part of the abuse process, the experience of being made a thing, is possibly the most difficult aspect to overcome. The sense of being used as a means to gratify another formerly trusted person is deeply wounding. This betrayal requires a great deal of work to overcome and restore in an abused victim a capacity to trust again.
All this talk of the objectified victim leads me into a final reflection relevant to the current church situation which is grappling with Singleton and IICSA. At a time when victims are coming forward to be heard by an audience outside the safety of a therapist’s office or a caring supporter, those who speak out are still extremely vulnerable. They are still vulnerable to the objectivization, the ‘othering’ process which was part of the original grooming. One story I have heard which fills me with horror is that a victim was told that a bishop was heard discussing his case in a loud voice in a public place. This, combined with a sense of being somehow the enemy to the Church because they are speaking out, is always going to be deeply traumatic. Whenever a victim is subsequently treated badly by the same institution that was the context of the original abuse, he or she will be experiencing abuse all over again. Once again, they become the object, the ‘other’, without any right to respect or dignity.
As the Church slowly and painfully tries to get its act together over the way forward to help survivors, it must learn that those who make their voices heard as victims of past crimes are not the enemy. Treating any abuse survivor as an enemy of the Church is simply compounding the original abuse that had made them into objects. Their abusers attacked them at many levels. They undermined their sense of self, their social confidence and their sexual identity. No doubt this list can be greatly extended. The last thing survivors/victims need is to be considered as nuisances or inconveniences because they remind bishops and others of what happened in the past. There will be opportunities in the future for the leaders of the Church of England to help rebuild the trust which has been severely damaged. I could make several suggestions over how this should be done. Respecting another person will always involve honouring their subjectivity, talking to them, listening to them without interruption and providing space for stories to be told and maybe retold. On the part of the bishops and others this process might involve admissions of guilt, failures and past neglect. Surely this process must be better than the continued atmosphere of defensiveness and irritated brush-offs?
When the IICSA process is finally completed, the Church may need to make a public statement of reconciliation with survivors and admit the mistakes and betrayals of the past. Whether it should be in the context of a Falklands scale service is for others to determine, but I can see the safeguarding issue will continue to dog the church and hold it back until bold action is taken. So many visions for the future will be compromised or made less than effective as long as the Church fails to address the present crisis. We need the Church to be alert and awake to the magnitude of the task that is ahead of it.
Yes, being treated as “the enemy”, a nuisance or inconvenience by church leaders (or others) for speaking out is deeply traumatic.
Only last December I wrote to a diocesan bishop, suggesting that we meet, so I could explain the effect of what he was (not) doing on me and me family. He refused and in his reply stated that he did not intend to respond to any further correspondence from me about the issues.
Unless this continued refusal by senior church leaders to engage with survivors of abuse is properly recognised there can be no reconciliation.
If any bishops would like to respond to this I’m still here.
JayKay8 I am so sorry you have had this response. It highlights an issue I have with the Singleton report which suggests that at least one Diocesan bishop was obstructive in the past, but did not name the individual. These Bishops need to be named. I suppose it is partly a matter of ‘naming and shaming’, but more importantly we need to know when to find an alternative person to contact. If your Bishop is known to be obstructive or just unwilling to engage, there has to be an alternative person who can be contacted, even if it is a Bishop in a neighbouring Diocese.
You are making an important point about grooming. But there is another aspect which we need to address. Abusers, especially serial abusers, groom the other people around too. So that if/when it comes out that somebody has been abused, there is an outcry because the perpetrator is such a ‘nice’ person they can’t possibly be an abuser. This came up in the IICSA proceedings re the Diocese of Chichester in Colin Perkin’s evidence to the Inquiry. It also came up at General Synod when a member said that his church had split even though the abuser was now in prison, because so many people could/would not believe that the perpetrator was guilty. This, too, is the result of grooming. When a child is abused, the parents are groomed in order to lull them into a sense of security, allowing the abuser access to the child. But we need to remember that whole congregations can be groomed and to be alert to this possibility. Next week IICSA is looking at Peter Ball. We can see quite clearly how people in positions of authority/responsibility were groomed, thus allowing PB to continue his activities with more people being abused, but also people who were trying to disclose their abuse at his hands had an even greater difficulty in being heard.
Thank you Anne. I take your point about the abuser ‘grooming’ the people around them. Being a bear of not much brain, I can only focus on a single idea at a time. The charismatic dynamic is sometimes a mass grooming that uses charm. You could say that America is divided because half the population has been seduced by the grooming actions of its president. This idea can run and run and this post is me thinking out loud. Much of it was written on the train from Newcastle to London and so it lacks completion and polish. I am glad JayKay was helped by the post.
Good post, Stephen. “Providing space for stories to be told and retold”. Precisely what doesn’t happen. This is totally true for bullying and spiritual abuse, too. And of course, the grooming of congregations. And also, fear. I know of one situation where the congregation was so scared of having a long vacancy, they just put up with what wad going on and said nothing. The Moonies’ methods of entrapping new members by getting them to lie in order to fundraise are grooming, too. I’m afraid it’s everywhere.
I agree with English Athena, in that a great many narcissistic bullies start out friendly and charming. But if you experience bullying and stick up for yourself, you quickly become public enemy number 1. And the abuser, often clergy, will stop at nothing when it comes to the smear campaigns and other antics he unleashes—at which point you see that person’s true nature: Vile, vicious, vindictive.
I met someone on holiday who turned out to know someone we know. They had been bullied as a Reader, were eventually ordained, and then retired early because of the situation in the church!
The item is 2 Thessalonians 2:9&10! It’s a Business to the False Leaders and you are NOT going to mess with the way they have $ coming in; worse it’s NOT a church as we know it; we DO NOT know what a TRUE CHURCH looks like so sorry to say. Been written for years you are not going to mess with their name and their reputation and again the way they have $ coming in to protect their Dynasty at any cost and hope it doesn’t die nasty. I’m sorry to say i see the church as a whole as a Smarmy Bull Sh_t Pyramid Scheme and it’s a Business. God doesn’t get any money but the prostituting and the whoring of his name and who he is. The only thing these dead preaching to the dead evil men/women understand is if you hit then in the pocket book meaning quit giving, tithing and attending and let it dry up and go defunct. Revelations 18: covers it well “to come out of her”. We as “sheeple” don’t want to see our Pastors/Priests etc as Evil. The false church is more satanic than it is for God and much of it’s Galatians 3:all Matthew 7:13-14 (spoken of the number as few and the Bible already written).
Podcast, Radio Internet where the speaker was right, people do NOT want to know or research truth. Speaker said have nothing to do with the Charismatic Movement as it’s been taken over by Warlocks and Witches and the Pastors are satanist and he should have included Pentecostal Movements also. We are NOT reading our Bibles and judging fruit! Amazing how many stupid people come across that want me to compromise the message and only want feel good words; they just revealed who and what they are=God is watching it all. Art Katz would write it great in “Prophetic Call” along with Leonard Ravenhill written works. The Church is a Non-Profit Organization=NO PROPHETS all right! I would Exit, Run from all these false institutions and big names like used car salesmen/women selling their dead religion. Amazing to me all these inept, inane, fake preachers, fake gospel that they’re so stupid that someone might write a book about and expose the corruption like Thieves by Trey Smith; The Fleecing of Christianity by Jackie Alnor, Losing My Religion by William Lobdell, People in Glass Houses by Tanya Levin, Don’t Call Me Brother by Austin Miles, Ungodly Fear by Stephen Parsons, 10 Lies Church Tells Women/Lies Men Believe by J. Lee Grady and articles like: Does Benny Hinn Deserve More Consideration Than Jesus by cultnews or How Benny Hinn Became Our Wacky Neighbor by John Bloom or donaldelley.wordpress.com exposing an over 60 year HORRIFIC pedophile, homosexual, child predator in Hillsong (sin over everybody and NOT making it right by the victims exposing Assemblies of god for being more of a Cult than Christian); Coming Out Alive by Beth Cavete or How IHOP Made Me Hate God/Carpe the Hell out of the Diem by Caris Adel. We need to research who founded our Denominations and our Pastor’s early years. Like House2House movement as more accountability and can truly help/serve people NOT the one man show=circus! Study Wolves, Hucksters, Con-Artist, False Shepherds, Snake Oil Salesmen, Liars, False Teachers, vs. True, Truth!