Child Sexual Abuse - Abuser Tactics - Survivor Shares - (Part 3)
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This post includes personal reflections on child sexual abuse. The content may be distressing for some. Please take care as you read; step back and take a break if you need. Your well-being matters.
A Note to our Readers:
This personal story is shared with courage and vulnerability. We invite you to read it with the mind of Christ, slow to speak, quick to listen, and full of mercy. If what you read stirs discomfort, let it move you to prayer, humility, and a willingness to listen and learn.
If you carry pain of your own, know that Christ sees you. He is a refuge for the brokenhearted and near to those who are crushed in spirit.
This account is not given for debate or dissection, rather it is a cry for truth and should be met with humility and the heart of Christ.
In Part 1 of this survivor's story we listened as this survivor shared both a definition of and his experience of child sexual abuse. Child Sexual Abuse is a crime and it destroys.
In Part 2 of this survivor's story we heard his experience of being groomed.. Grooming is the preparatory stage that a pedophile uses to gain (but in the end destroys) the trust of a child.
Today, in part 3, the survivor explains the tactics he personally experienced as a young boy at the hands of his Christian School Teacher. Keep Listening -- Keep Learning
The tactics that pedophiles use to reach their evil goal to control and sexually abuse a child are varied, and I would not be able to enumerate nor would I even dare to try to name them all. Pedophiles and their tactics vary from one pedophile to another, but the one thing they do have in common is that they are all very calculated and designed to deceive the victim and the surrounding community.
What I can tell you with no uncertainty are the tactics that my 6th grade Christian school teacher used on me beginning when I was 11 years old.
I wrote about grooming in another post, but I also bring it up here because I view grooming as one of the main tactics that sexual abusers use to get the control that they seek. The grooming tactic is used to blind not just the victim, but also the entire community in which the abuser operates.
My abuser was a member in the same church that I attended. She was also my teacher, as mentioned, and she lived in the same neighborhood of my childhood home. She made herself out to be very religious and as one not to be fooled with. There were very few people who dared to stand up to her. In this way she groomed her coworkers at school and the members of the church into wholeheartedly believing that she would be the absolutely last person in the world to be raping a young child.
An especially devious tactic she used to gain access to me was to gain access to my family. She befriended my mom and dad and others within their social circles. In this way she was invited to attend their social gatherings and presented herself as one who had nothing but the best interests of our family and friends in mind. So, when she began to ask my mom if my sister and I could come to her house to help her in the yard, my mom sent us over there without hesitation. Notice how my abuser cloaked this by requesting both my sister and me in the beginning, devious tactic indeed.
This leads me to the tactic of isolation. Isolating the victim was of utmost importance to my abuser. There are other abusers who will abuse their victims within plain sight of others. My abuser, however, focused on isolating me. She would pull me out of the classroom to the school library, janitor’s room, or even the principal’s office when he was away. Having successfully groomed her coworkers at the school into believing she would never be capable of such horrific crimes; she had full reign to move about the school isolating me at will.
I have often wondered what the school office manager thought when she would observe my abuser taking me into the principal’s office. Apparently, this raised no red flags for her or anyone else. That is what successful grooming of a community accomplishes.
Another tactic my abuser used was her car. She would volunteer to drive me back home from school events so my parents would not have to bother to pick me up. This was convenient for my parents, and having been bamboozled by my abuser, they never suspected anything nefarious.
She used her own family to gain access to me. At the age of 13, I was best friends with my abuser’s nephew. His house was also in the same neighborhood and within biking distance from mine. We liked to play tennis together and did so quite often. My abuser approached my friend’s mother (her sister) and suggested to her how nice it would be for them to play doubles with her nephew and me. Of course, my abuser volunteered to drive me from my house to the tennis court and back home. It was those trips back home where my abuser could “play the game” she was really interested in. It was on one of those occasions that the first rape occurred.
As I mentioned earlier, the grooming/tactics began at age 11. Two years of these tactics were utilized to bring her to her ultimate goal – sex with a child.
Had the proper abuse prevention policies been in place at my school and my church (there were none in those years) and with a properly educated community who might have noticed all of the red flags, perhaps my life course could have taken a different direction.
Tom VanderWoude
In the final part of this series shared by a survivor of Child Sexual Abuse, we will look at the lasting and life changing effects this abuse has on a survivor. The reality is that this ugliness that is done in secret has life long effects on the children who experienced it. We may not minimize, deny, or ignore this.
Thanks to the survivor for boldly sharing his story for our benefit, so that we may learn and do better, so that one more child can be saved from this horrible reality, and so that we as a community can lament and cry out in repentance to God for our part in this evil. Come Lord Jesus, come quickly.
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