Sometimes you just know…..you know something is wrong, but you don’t know what it is!  That’s how I felt for most of my married life.  I knew there was something really big that was wrong, but I could never put my finger on it.  I just couldn’t figure it out.  And, at times that about drove me crazy!

If you’re new to this blog, please start here so that you get the complete details of my story.  I was married to one man for almost forty years.  He was the love of my life — the one I prayed for God to send me.  And, when we exchanged our vows, I intended for that to be forever.

Sadly, life doesn’t always turn out how we’d like.  What I didn’t know finally came to light in a most horrible way almost forty years into our marriage.      I was married to a man I didn’t know.  My husband, the father of our eleven children, was a practicing pedophile since the age of fourteen.  He is now serving a sentence of 30 – 60 years in prison for crimes of child molestation he committed.

To pick up where we left off in my story…….About nine years into our marriage, John decided to take a course in public speaking.  He chose the Dale Carnegie course that was being offered in a city about an hour’s drive away from the church parsonage where we lived.  That was a good thing, I thought.  John was not a good communicator with adults.  He had no problems whatsoever getting along with children or teens.  In fact, as I’ve mentioned time and time again, kids loved him.  He was the jolly-ho-ho-ho man that kids always wanted to be around.  He was fun!  He was a tease!  He always had some kind of new trick up his sleeve!  He knew how to keep kids laughing!

But, put him in a room with adults, and he’d clam up.  Worse yet, put him in a room alone with me, and he didn’t know how to act or what to say.  It wasn’t unusual for him to sit in total silence and just stare off in the wild blue yonder after not seeing me for an entire week.  If I’d ask how his day or week was, he’d mumble, “Okay.”  And, that was it.  He was a terrible adult communicator, so naturally I was more than pleased when he told me he was taking this course in communications.

It was so weird to me, though, that he never got home until very, very late at night.  And, when he did come home, he would say the same thing.  “I’m beat.  I’m ready for bed.”

Much to my disappointment, he was not gaining skills in communicating any better — at least not with me!  Instead, it was like he was cowering, hiding something — just acting so strange.  He couldn’t look me in the eyes.  He’d just go upstairs and climb into bed in total silence following these classes.

My sister was living with us at the time, and her bedroom was down the hallway from ours.  She still talks to me about the hours on end she’d hear me crying (sobbing) myself to sleep.  John would come home from class (I guess that’s where he was, but I have no proof), and it was if he tried hard to run from me so he wouldn’t have to talk!

Something was very, very wrong, but I couldn’t figure it out!

Things quickly changed with his preaching, though.  He was now a dramatist!  It was downright embarrassing!  He’d read self-help books (I suppose recommended in the course he was taking) and rip pages out of these books, highlight them in bright yellow and neon pink, place the pages from these books in his Bible, and read straight from those pages for his Sunday morning sermons! These were not Bible lessons or lessons from the word of God.  These were lessons on how to read body language, how to persuade people to do what you wanted, how to use imagery in order to convince people to make purchases.

It was freaky!  It was wrong!  It was strange!  And, most of all, it was working!  There were a few people who commented negatively on the lessons he was giving jumping up and down on the stage like a wild actor, but NOBODY questioned him enough to call him out on it!  NOBODY!  He was supposed to be the spiritual leader of this congregation!

Instead, John was practicing how to manipulate children and adults right there in church and nobody — not one of us — questioned what he was doing!  We were being used as his puppets! 

Are you digesting what I’m saying?  Here was a man who had been sought to feed a group of people spiritual food from God’s word.  Instead, he was using everyone in the congregation as his guinea pigs to practice manipulation techniques which would ultimately be used for molesting children!

You might wonder if I ever talked to John about these crazy “sermons” of his, and I did time and time again.  I told him it was shameful.  He wasn’t studying the Bible.  He was tearing pages out of books and hiding them IN his Bible.  These weren’t sermons.  These “lessons” were used “on us” — not “for our edification spiritually” and he didn’t care.  Honestly, he laughed it off.  He said, “This stuff will help me in my insurance sales.  I need to know how to read people in order to close sales.”  And, close the sales, he did!  He was the top salesman in insurance to elderly people for several years in a row! 

As I’m writing this, I’m so ashamed of who he was as a minister.  I really and truly am.  He wasn’t an honest man!  Nobody knew the real John, including me!  He most definitely should not have been in the position as a minister — a man of God leading a congregation who was seeking to have a relationship with God. This will always pain me.  And, in all truthfulness, this has made it very, very difficult for me to trust ministers in general (except for my son Jimmy — I know his heart and he is truly a man of God!).

So, what were the red flags in this brief chapter from my life?  Honestly, nothing would have been a tip-off and that’s what’s so disturbing about trying to identify a pedophile.  Knowing what I now know….there are several red flags, though!

1.  The course John took was not being used to better his communication with adults.  He used this course to learn how to better manipulate and use people.  He used this course to learn how to get money out of people.  He used this course to learn how to read body language!  He used this course to learn how to get what he wanted!

2.  John’s wrongful behavior was tolerated by an entire congregation.  The people knew he wasn’t using the Bible for preaching and teaching, yet this was tolerated.  Why?  Because he had people mentally trapped!  He was sly as a fox when it came to getting people to like him. He knew how to turn on the charm and it worked!  He got paid to practice manipulation techniques — right in church!  Pretty sick, isn’t it?  I don’t know about you, but I feel really used!  It’s no wonder that church didn’t grow during the years John served as the minister! 

3.  John was a master liar as are all pedophiles!  I will always have my suspicions where he went after class.  Always!  I do know one thing — he sure didn’t want to be around me!  I waited up for him time and time again, only to be given the cold shoulder in bed.  We didn’t have a marriage that was normal!  He didn’t talk to me.  He didn’t share things with me.  He didn’t laugh with me.  He didn’t eat with me.  He didn’t want to be intimate with me.  Something was wrong!  I know one thing now — he was being satisfied elsewhere and that’s a fact! 

4.  John had no remorse, guilt, or conscience about lying and cheating.  When I tried talking to him about his spiritual responsibilities, it went in one ear and out the other.  He was not a spiritual minded man!  Oh, he had his moments later on in his preaching career (and we’ll talk about that later on as this blog continues), but I will always, always doubt his sincerity.  Pedophiles are liars and they pre-plan their actions with one thing in mind — molesting children.  Believe it or not, that’s what their focus in life is — to gain control and to molest!

Listen to these words taken from the book, “Conversations With a Pedophile.”  These words are from the mouth of a pedophile who is also serving a life sentence for his crimes.

“My high was not just getting the final sexual gratification but getting it according to an increasingly precise plan.  In these early years, I was already discovering that while I loved the ultimate sexual act, the real thrill lay in the planning — a thrill that equaled that of the final sexual release.” 

This is real.  This is the world and the mind of a pedophile.  I lived with a practicing pedophile for forty years. He was masterful at hiding his “other life” from me and thousands of other people.  To this day I still have people tell me, “I can’t believe this.  Not John.  Not the John I loved so much.”

Yes.  This is John.  Yes, this is the mind of a pedophile.  These molesters are alive.  They are living among us.  They are harming our children.  They have harmed many of you who are my readers.  And, it’s time to stop them!  It’s time to step out, be smarter than they are, call them out on their actions, back them into a corner and make it impossible for them to get to our children!

I have a wonderful opportunity to share with you.  My son Jimmy is holding a workshop on February 22, 2014 about Child Sex Abuse:  Detection and Prevention.  With a lot of hard work and planning, Jimmy is able to offer this workshop (for free) live via a webinar to those who cannot make it in person.  Spaces are limited, so I urge you to register now.  Please don’t miss this workshop as it’s going to be invaluable!

Jimmy is also bringing in Les Ferguson, Jr. whose son was molested then murdered by a pedophile. Tragically, his wife was also murdered by the molester.  This is the real world in which we live!  We must do something to stop things like this from continuing to happen!

Please register for this workshop and get more educated!  For the sake and safety of our children, let’s do all we can to keep our children safe!

If you have questions, please post them on this blog or email me at clarahintonspeaker@gmail.com .  And be sure to share this blog with as many people as you know who will benefit from this!

My love to all,

Clara

PS  The next time we meet at this blog, I will be talking about our move to the country and the doors that opened for John’s pedophilia.  You won’t want to miss this post!