Tag Archives: emotional abuse

Married to a Pedophile: The Worst Thanksgiving Ever!

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Thanksgiving was always among my top three most favorite of all holidays, but there is one Thanksgiving that will forever be a total nightmare — a disaster — and the one that will always stand out as the absolute worst.

It was always our family tradition to have a time of “giving thanks” prior to eating our meal.  We would go around the table and say the things we were most thankful for, and then we would end with a prayer.  This is a beautiful tradition, I think, and one that brings a family closer together and helps us all to appreciate one another more.

However, there is one Thanksgiving that was horrid, and that is putting it mildly.  As you know by now, our marriage was far from thriving.  In fact, it was pretty evident that our marriage was crumbling.  So, this was going to be a sad Thanksgiving, and    Continue reading →

Married to a Pedophile: Bars, Mice, and Women!

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This blog is about what it was like being married to a practicing pedophile for almost forty years — and not knowing it.  Look at the signs with me — the red flags — that were there all of those years waving at me begging me to look inside.  Get educated with me so that you can learn how to identify child predators before they stop grooming and close in on the child and molest.  If you’re new to this blog, please start here.

By now our house was filled with children, and I loved it!  I was so happy to be a mom that it was easy for me to get caught up in the wonderfulness of motherhood and push aside the lingering pain of so many years of odd happenings, hurtful experiences, and negligence that made up such a large part of our lives as husband and wife.  Sadly, as the years clicked on, I could sense the separation between us growing wider   Continue reading →

Married to a Pedophile: Why I Stayed in an Abusive Relationship

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Today I’m going to veer off the highway just a bit and talk about something that has cropped up time and time again in my writings about being married to a pedophile.  There was never any physical abuse to me in this relationship, but there was a high level of emotional abuse.  And, the question has come up over and over again asking me why I stayed in this marriage.  In fact, the question is a nagging one to a lot of people as to why so many women stay in abusive relationships.

I don’t claim to have all of the answers, but I do have the answers that are mine, so I’ll speak to you from my heart.  Why?  Why did I stay in a relationship that I knew was abusive almost from our wedding day?    Continue reading →

Married to a Pedophile: The Most Unique Gift — Better Than Pinterest!

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Pinterest is the big craze right now, and I admit that I love visiting there, too.  Fashion, cooking, and DIY crafts, and my favorite of all — flowers!  Anything to do with flowers brightens up my day!

Ten years into our marriage, many years before anyone ever heard of Pinterest, John was a person who was “creative” with his gifts.  We didn’t have much money at all for gift-giving with our growing family, so we often did things like searched at auctions for a piece of furniture, sanded it, and stained it and that was a “together” gift.  I like that — a lot!  Those were the kinds of gifts that had meaning and purpose!

I’m going to tell you about a gift that I received from John that is the most unique gift ever, and I feel fairly safe in saying that it was a one-of-a-kind never to be duplicated!

If you are new to this blog, I would strongly suggest you begin reading here in order to get the complete meaning of John’s gifts, his planning strategies for gifts, and to understand more completely the thought processes of this man who was a preacher, teacher, father, husband, insurance salesman, outdoorsman, and child molester.  Yes, I did say child molester.  For almost forty years (while we were married) John hid a very dark secret from me and countless others.  He had begun molesting children at the age of fourteen and continued to do so until his arrest and conviction at age sixty-three.

Let me give a little bit of background to set the stage for this particular gift — a Mother’s Day gift.  I was eleven days away from the due date of delivering my sixth child on Mother’s Day.  My oldest daughter was now ten, and following her birth I now had five healthy, active little boys — stair steppers.  They were fireballs full of energy, and I thank God for that!

We had just moved from the church parsonage to our home in the country that we were renting.  We finally had a yard — a BIG yard for the kids to play in, and the house was far more than I could have ever asked for.  It was lovely, and I remain living there to this day.

On this particular Sunday morning, I got up and got the younger kids ready for church while the older ones got dressed and ready for Sunday School.  John was up at his usual time of 4:30 a.m. to study his lesson, but on this day he was dressed and showered early and was outside doing something.  He popped his head into the kitchen to ask the three oldest kids to come outside with him, and that’s when my heart began racing.  I was hoping upon all hope that he had somehow managed to get me a used rocking chair — the one we had looked at when we went to a second-hand shop.  I fell in love with that rocker immediately, and my heart was dancing as I imagined rocking my new baby, in our new home, in that rocking chair!

solid-wood-rocking-chair-furniture-design-924x1024I began putting the ham for lunch into the oven.  I had already made the potatoes and salad.  But, I didn’t make dessert this particular Sunday.  Okay, I admit it.  I was hoping that John would have bought a cake for dessert.  Being this far along in my pregnancy, I didn’t feel much like cooking!  And, it was Mother’s Day!  I would have loved a day off from cooking!

The three older kids came running inside all out of breath!  “Mom!  Dad said to sit down in the livingroom.  We have a Mother’s Day gift for you, and it’s gonna be great!  Just wait until you see it!”

Can you feel my heart racing as you’re reading this?  Honestly, I was so excited I could hardly contain myself.  I was feeling so special — so blessed.  It was Sunday — a beautiful day to begin with, plus it was Mother’s Day.  And, here I was blessed with so many beautiful children, and another one about to be born.  And, now this —– a surprise gift (that I was still praying would be that rocking chair)!

“Close your eyes, Mom!  No peeking!  Dad is finishing wrapping the gift and he wants all of us around you when you open it so he can take a picture.”

Can I just say that I was dying from the anticipation?  This was about to be the happiest day of my life!  I knew it!  I absolutely knew it!  I sat in the chair and gathered the kids around me.  I even dabbed on some lipstick for the picture about to be taken.  Every pregnant mom wants to look her best for a picture!

John called for the three oldest kids to come get the gift.  “The gift is ready for Mother!  You can come get it now!”

wrapped gift“Open your eyes, Mom!  It’s time to open your gift!”

Ahhhh….ohhh…..I sighed with so much joy.  The box was wrapped beautifully.  I knew it wasn’t the rocking chair, but who cared?  I knew this lovely surprise had been chosen just for me and that’s all that mattered.

I took my time untying the ribbons as the kids were jumping up and down with excitement yelling, “Open it faster!  C’mon, faster, Mom!”

Finally, it was time to lift the lid to the box, and I could feel the happy, thankful tears begin to stream from my emotional face.  Maybe this was the outfit the baby would wear home from the hospital.  Maybe it was a lovely blouse for me to wear home from the hospital.  No, maybe this was a delicious Mother’s Day cake with fluffy white frosting with “I love you” written across it.

I smiled softly at John as he stood nearby with the camera in his hand to capture this moment for us as a keepsake that we would have forever!

It was time to reveal the gift!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

On Sunday, May 10, 1981 part of my heart died when I lifted the lid of that box.  And, that part of my heart will forever remain dead. There is nothing or no one that could ever bring life back to the part of me that died that Mother’s Day morning.

Sitting inside of a beautifully wrapped box amid pure white tissue paper was the skull of an animal.  Inside of the eye sockets of that skull John had placed purple wildflowers that he picked in the yard that morning.  Because of the heat and humidity of that mid-May morning, the skull attracted flies and bugs.  When the lid to the box was lifted, those bugs swarmed at my face.

I will never, ever forget that moment — ever.  I cannot explain in human terms how much that hurt.  I could never express to you the pain I felt that morning.  I sat trance-like as the kids jumped up and down yelling, “Ewww…..where’d you find this skull, Dad? Is it a dead dog?  A fox?  A possum?  What is it, Dad?”

Dog_SkullThe kids were young.  A skull is exciting to a little boy, and I had five very excited little boys.  They thought it was a really “cool” gift that their dad got me.  How would they know any different?

 I remember looking up at John and he had the most horrifying sneer on his face — almost scary.  He enjoyed seeing me hurt.  I could feel it.  I saw it on his face.  And, I knew on that day in May that I no longer loved this man with all of my being.  This time the pain had gone too deep.  He cut out a piece of my heart, stomped on it, and killed it.  He killed part of my spirit that day and that part of my heart has never come back to life.

The ride to church was quiet on that Sunday, Mother’s Day morning.  I looked out the car window and softly cried.  I wanted to scream and sob and punch in a wall but I held a tissue over my mouth and muffled my voice so the kids wouldn’t hear me crying. I didn’t want them telling everyone at church that I had been crying.

Somehow, I prayed to God that it was all a big, ugly joke.  I prayed that when we went home there would miraculously be the rocking chair sitting in the middle of the room.  Of course you and I know that wasn’t so.  My gift was a rotting skull with flies flying from the eye sockets.  And, I knew from that moment on that I was nothing more than a convenience for John.  Love doesn’t hurt like that.  Love would never hurt like that!

It was years until I shared that story with a counselor and I remember the odd look on her face.  She simply said, “Maybe he has a personality disorder.”  And, it was dismissed.  That left me feeling a bit crazy.  Maybe I was overly emotional because of the pregnancy on that particular day.  Maybe it was just meant to be a funny kind of joke. Victims of abuse always have a thousand reasons why it’s always their fault.  Victims of abuse never want to hold the abuser accountable.  Victims feel ashamed and powerless. 

The red flags of manipulation and control that are part of a practicing pedophile’s profile were there!  The kids thought their dad was the absolute best!  He told funny stories that made them laugh so hard they would cry.  He loved playing basketball with them.  He built campfires and told scary stories.  He took them on nature hikes.  He was, in their words, “the best dad in the world.”

I was the one who disciplined.  I was the one who made them pick up their dirty laundry, clear away their dinner plates, make their beds.  I was the mean mother who lost her temper and was never fun.  I was the cranky one.  The one who didn’t have a sense of humor.

John was building up his airtight support system!  He used “shock” methods in front of the kids to desensitize them to the wrong he was doing to me, and later on to the children in the community.  Why would his kids ever believe wrong about their dad who was their hero?  Besides, I was the perfect enabler.  I didn’t call him on the carpet for things such as the skull gift, so they didn’t really see anything too wrong with that. I didn’t speak badly of John to the kids.  In fact, this story never got out.  Isn’t it amazing how this was an “understood” thing that none of us would talk about in public?  As young as the kids were nobody told them not to say anything at church.  And, believe me, tons of people were asking me what I got for Mother’s Day.  I just said through dripping eyes, “John got me a special surprise.”  And, their response — “You’re the luckiest woman I know!  My husband would never get me anything for Mother’s Day — not even a card!”  If only they had known………..

Pedophiles who molest children are liars.  They manipulate.  They control.  They build a wall of support so that nobody — and I mean nobody — would ever suspect them of molesting a child! John was loved and adored by his children.  He was cherished by the people of the church where he served as minister.  He was a servant to people in the community.  He went out of his way to show love to others.  He was a practicing pedophile and he was masterful at grooming his victims! 

Memorize this quote  and keep saying it until you really understand and believe it:   After a molester is exposed, it is common for adults to say things like, “He was the last guy I would suspect to do something like this.” Molesters become friends to adults, helping them out, being friendly and nice, and just doing things that friends would do. They don’t do this out of kindness; they do this to get to your children. 

 

For the sake of the children, let’s speak out!  It’s time to bring these actions to a halt! 

 

Thank you so much for your comments, for following along with this blog, and for continuing to share it with many!  Be sure to put your email where it says to “subscribe” if you want to receive a brief notification of each blog entry.  I assure you that you will not want to miss even one of these posts.

Again, thank you!  Together we are making a difference!

 

 

Married to a Pedophile: “The Top Ten List of Most Desired Men”

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If I had a dime for every time I was told how lucky I was to be married to John, I’d probably have a stack of dimes a mile high.  He was most definitely on the “top ten list of most desired men.”    He was charming.  He was kind.  He had good manners.  And, he did things that were romantic.  But, there’s just one little downside to this.  That’s what other people saw.  I know the inside scoop, and it wasn’t quite what met the public eye.

This story is my story about what it was like to be married for almost forty years to a man who molested children.  I didn’t have a clue of this dark side of his life.  I did, however, see odd behavior.  I knew the pain of emotional abuse.  I understood what it meant to be so controlled by someone who I found myself asking permission to be   excused  from a room if I had to go get a drink of water  in the kitchen.

I began writing this blog as a means to educate others of the extreme manipulative power a pedophile holds over his victims.  Not only does the pedophile groom the children he chooses to molest, but there is also a very targeted grooming of adults, too.  It is the molester’s goal to have such an air-tight wall of trust built that absolutely nobody would ever suspect he is committing such harmful, evil actions.

I want you to get deep inside the mind of a pedophile so that you can see it — really see just how controlling they are.  I want you to understand without a doubt just how this manipulation works.  I want you to take some deep breaths and live with me through this journey so that you can understand clearly enough to protect yourself and your children from the harmful actions of pedophiles.

John and I had a difficult marriage from the very beginning, and there’s no doubt about that.  He didn’t seem to see it that way, though.  He would often apologize for hurting me, but his eyes would never look at me when he tried to apologize.  He would divert his eyes to the side of me, but he’d never look straight into my eyes, and that always bothered me.  In fact, I cried time and time again begging him to simply look at me.  Hold my hand and look at me when he talked.

tissues

He didn’t.  Instead, he’d stare as though he was in some kind of strange trance and mutter the same words time and time again, “I’m really sorry I hurt you.  I’ll try to do better.  I’ll really try.”

The biggest thing that made me cry was the way he treated me — more like the way he “didn’t” treat me.  He could go for days on end without talking to me or touching me.  After a sobbing session, all I ever wanted was for him to come hold me close.  In fact, I’d often cry saying, “Can’t you just hug me?  You make me feel like I’m poison!  I feel like I have some kind of sickness and you don’t want to be near me.  I just want you to hold me.  Hug me.  Touch me.”  Those words seemed to be foreign to him. John would look at me with hollow eyes — like he had no clue what I was talking about.

Our fifth year anniversary was coming up and I dreaded it.  People from church were asking, “Are you doing something special to celebrate?  Where are you going?  Do you want me to babysit the kids for the night?  What does John have planned for you?  I know it will be something wonderful!”

Let’s just say that our anniversary was different — far, far different than I expected.  April 18 fell on a Wednesday that year — and of course we had bible study that evening, so there was nothing planned.  I kept hoping that John would have a surprise date night planned.  It would be so nice to go out — just the two of us — and be like a young couple in love again!

Saturday came, and I was losing hope.  There was nothing.  Not even a card.  I had done my usual gift shopping.  Don’t tell me why except I love to give gifts.  I still love to give gifts, and I hope I always will!  I bought John a new suit, shirt, and tie.  He wore dress clothes six days a week, and he absolutely hated going shopping (can you believe we only went Christmas shopping together one time in our entire married lives?????).   All I wanted was a simple card.  Okay, maybe a long-stemmed red rose, too.  I think that would have been so romantic! And, yes, I even told John what I wanted.  Because he was a list-maker and lived by his lists, his words to me, “Tell me what to get, and I’ll get it.  Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.  But, don’t expect me to be a mind reader.”

I was crushed by the time Saturday evening rolled around and there was no card.  And, no date night.  No rose.  Five years of marriage and no kind of special recognition.  That hurt.

I knew something was brewing, though.  He was on the phone whispering for two days.  And, he kept going into the church auditorium from our livingroom (remember that we lived in the parsonage).  He seemed especially happy on Sunday morning — an excited kind of happy, and that usually meant one thing.  He had some kind of crazy antic up his sleeve for a sermon and I dreaded that.  I never knew if he was going to throw a glass of water into the audience, jump on the pew to bring home a point, or cry.  He was getting good at turning on the waterworks while preaching and I’m going to be honest with you.  It seemed so fake to me that it was hard to handle.

On this morning, though, the sermon was different.  It was all about honoring women.  Interesting for a man who showed so much dishonor in his own home! He quoted scripture after scripture and I don’t think there was a woman in the audience who wasn’t poking her husband in the ribs as if to say, “Are you listening to what John is saying?  This is how you’re supposed to treat me!”

As for me — a felt hollow inside.  I knew the real John.  I knew the John who wasn’t that same person who adored his wife with all of his heart and who shared mutual respect and adoration of her.  His words stung and I could feel the tears falling from my eyes.

At the close of his sermon, instead of saying the usual words of asking if there were those who wanted to give their lives to Christ in baptism, John began walking down the aisle towards me.  He looked over his shoulder and simply said, “Now, Ruth!”

Suddenly, there was love music filling the air of the auditorium, and my sister walked out from behind the baptistry door with a package, and came and handed it to John.  I could tell she was embarrassed and nervous.  He took this box with everyone in the auditorium watching his every move.

He walked up to me, got down on a knee, opened up the box, and handed me the most beautiful bouquet of roses ever!  I was stunned!!!  Never had he done anything like this ever before!!  “Happy anniversary to the one and only person I will ever love!” 

Red Roses

Please pay close attention!  Do you see what was being done?  This was such a show!  What should have been a simple act of love and kindness between a husband and wife turned into a big elaborate show for the entire church to see!  This wasn’t a moment between the two of us.  It was a staged act that would forever seal the love and adoration of John with the women of the church — the mothers of the children!

John about drove my sister crazy, she later told me.  That entire week, he had her practicing how she would hide behind the baptistry and pop out at the just right time when he said the right word.  She was the one who went to pick up the roses and hid them.  He used her to gain her trust, too.  She thought this was the most romantic thing she’d ever witnessed — just like something out of a love novel.

Trust me when I say that when we stepped through the door into our livingroom that Sunday afternoon the romance was all over.  John sat back in his chair while I fixed lunch, he ate, and then he basked in the sunshine of his day.  Mission accomplished!

For years after that grand event, women would talk to me about how I was the luckiest person they knew to have such a caring, loving husband.  Inside, I died a little more each time they said this.  If only they knew!  If only they knew what really went on inside our marriage.  How many times I went to bed sobbing because of the hurtful things John said.  “Don’t rub your hammerhead toes up against me.  That’s disgusting.  Don’t hug me.  I can’t stand that feeling — it’s too smothering.”  And, he would always — always — put his back to me when we went to bed!  He made it very clear that he was shunning me!

I was like a puppy craving some affection. John was now a traveling insurance salesman so I rarely got to see him at all during the week.  Most of the time I only got to see him on Friday nights, a bit on Saturday, and Sundays while he was preaching.  It was a lonely, lonely life, but he was shining!  Not only shining, but he was thriving!  He was a happy, happy man — freedom, no accountability, a church that loved him, kids that loved him, a community that was growing to love him.  But, his wife?  Not so much.  But never would I tell.  Never.  Why?  Because deep down I still felt it was my Christian duty to uphold him in whatever he did.  I felt I should never question him or make his life uncomfortable.  I wanted to be the best wife and mother I could be and I thought that by keeping quiet, by pretending to be happy, by accepting the crumbs of time he gave me that one day — one day he really and truly would want to do the thing that I most wanted out of our marriage.  I wanted him to enjoy spending time with me! 

I can see now how John set the stage for molesting children.  I can see how me made certain nobody would ever question his motives or actions when around children.  I can see how the abuse was able to continue!

Child molesters do something called grooming. Grooming is how a predator develops a friendship with the child, creating a bond, preparing them for sexual assault. Predators start by choosing the parents. They will push the boundaries of acceptable behavior to test parents and see if they can take advantage of them. They literally seduce the parents into allowing them access to their children. By charming parents and gaining their trust, the predator gains access to the family and is not suspected of inappropriate behavior. 

This quote is taken from NotWithMyChild.Org .  Pay attention to the words.  Examine what is going on in your own life.  Think.  Watch.  Listen.  Pay attention!!!!  Please, for the sake of the children pay attention!  If it doesn’t feel right, then it probably isn’t!!!  Abuse is never right — not emotional abuse.  Not physical abuse!  Not spiritual abuse!  Abuse hurts.  It leaves wounds cause a lifetime of pain!

Be smart!  Look for the red flags that are waving and don’t allow the abuse to continue.  And, please…………..if you suspect that you are being set up or your child is being targeted, get out of that situation fast!  Confront the person.  Set boundaries and stick to them.  Grooming is the first and most important phase of molesting.  Once you’re in the trap, you may never get out!

Love,

Clara