Tag Archives: Pedophile

Married to a Pedophile: Games Pedophiles Play

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Thanks so much for continuing to read my story of what it was like being married for almost forty years to a practicing pedophile without knowing it.  This continues to be the most difficult journey of my life to date.  Every time I think that progress in the realm of grief is being made, there’s some kind of trigger – a setback – that puts my mind in a place where I question everything and everyone – the trust issues are horrible.  I look at people and in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “You’re such a fake.  How can I ever believe you?”  And, then I feel terrible for thinking this way, but………there’s a reason for my lack of trust.  Living with a man who had a “secret dark side” as he himself described it to me in a letter from prison does horrible things to you.

And, so it was that I found myself sinking into that dark place of mistrust and grief this holiday weekend.  Thank God for family and friends who called me (not at all knowing how I was feeling).  They were my life-lines.  They pulled me back to a place of feeling somewhat normal – somewhat okay.  A place where I wasn’t so alone with my thoughts.  Sometimes that’s the only way to cope with the pain that’s left behind.

That being said, let’s pick up where we left off last week.  John’s office became his secret hideaway.  As I said, never had I been given the liberty to enter his office unannounced, and never, ever was I allowed to enter in the mornings, nor did I ever hold a key to his office the entire time we were married.  Looking back on this one thing, I can see how fully John controlled me.  I wasn’t “allowed” to enter his secret place.  How absurd is that?  Now I can see the control; then I didn’t.  

Note:  When a person is being abused, often they don’t understand the concept of control as being abuse.  You become conditioned to it, and after you get worn down emotionally, there is a feeling of defeat – no desire to fight back, and then there is a feeling of dependency on the abuser. The thought of making the simplest of decisions on your own isn’t in your realm of thinking.  Why?  Because the abuser has enforced this idea into your head in a million different ways:  “You cannot live without me.  You cannot think without me.  You cannot make decisions without me.”  And, so the victim stays and allows the abuse to continue.  There is a paralysis of sorts — a total feeling of helplessness and the inability to survive away from the abusive situation.

John was all-consumed in planning for this church New Year’s Eve party for kids. Continue reading →

Married to a Pedophile: The Secret Chamber

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Thanks so much for visiting this blog!  You have no idea how much your presence means to me.  I feel like I’m connecting with friends and people who understand, and we share a common goal – protecting our children and helping stop this horrible cycle of child molestation.

If you’re new here, please be sure to start here.  This is an easy read – I write straight from my heart and you won’t find any fluff.  “It is what it is.”  I’ve found that’s the only way I can write.

We left off with our move to Pennsylvania following John being fired from his job as youth minister in Oklahoma.  I’ll be upfront with you and let it be known right off the bat that this was not a place where I wanted to be.  This area of the country is known as snow country.  It has mountains and long, cold, dreary winters.  I grew up in Southern Jersey right along the shore and my heart will always be connected to the ocean.

Worse, though, than the location was the situation.  I was sickened at the thought of being a preacher’s wife.  I struggled so much with low self-esteem issues and now I knew without a doubt that I was going to live under the scope of eyes watching my every move as well as every move of my children.

John’s one promise to me had been that we’d never be a preacher’s family, yet here we were – committed to doing just that.  We were now officially part of this thing called “ministry.” John had not prepared for ministry.  He was a business major gone sour.  He couldn’t keep up with the math classes.  So he changed his major, and then persuaded his professors to create a title for his specialized course — Religious Education.  He was the first student at Oklahoma Christian College to graduate with this degree.  Talk about manipulation! Continue reading →

Married to a Pedophile: We’re Off to Pennsylvania!

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The last post I wrote about did me in.  It drained me.  So many of you that I know personally ask me the question, “How do you do it?  How do you keep it all together?”.  Well, the honest answer is sometimes I don’t.  Some weeks I go to work and work as long and as hard as I can to avoid alone time with my thoughts.  It’s too painful to go there.  This life that I’m now living — alone, and the father of my children in prison for the remainder of his days on this earth — is definitely not the life that I prayed about since I was a kid. It’s not the life I asked God to bless my children with — not even close to my prayers for them or for myself. And, yet the harsh reality of it all is that this is the life we now have.  It’s up to me to learn how to pick up the broken pieces and go on with some kind of grace and strength.  It’s up to me to try my best to keep it together for my kids and grandkids that I love with every ounce of my being.  It’s up to me to love myself enough to build some kind of a life that can serve as an example to others who also are going through the fires of hell on this earth — and I am convinced there are many who suffer through horrible pain every day of their lives.

That being said, thank you so much for continuing on in this journey with me.  What was it like?  What was it like living with a man who was a practicing pedophile for almost forty years?  How does it feel to know now what I didn’t know then?  Continue reading →

Married to a Pedophile: Year Two is Harder Than Year One!

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This week has been a horribly heavy week of grief.  Rather than picking up where I left off last week in this journey of being married to a practicing pedophile for almost forty years without knowing it, I thought I’d get a few things off of my heart.  Sometimes the pain gets so bad that we just have to release some of it.

This week was bad.  The tears would not stop.  I work in the field of supporting families who are going through the grief of child loss, so I knew that year two would be worse than year one in this grief of finding out that the father of my children — the man I was married to– was a practicing pedophile for almost fifty years.  But I wasn’t prepared for the flood of emotions that would come pouring from deep within my soul.

This week was John’s birthday.  I thought I had worked through most of the emotional wreckage of John’s arrest and conviction for child molestation.  But, I was so very wrong!

It’s strange to say, but prior to hearing about John’s investigation, I honestly didn’t know what a pedophile was.  I had never spoken the word, nor did I ever talk about child molestation.  It was a topic that was foreign to me.  So, when I first learned that John was under investigation for child molestation I went into a state of shock.  I couldn’t imagine in my wildest dreams that he would commit such acts.  Deep in my heart I knew it was true.  The red flags as we’ve been discussing for several weeks were there.  In fact, by the time of his arrest, he might as well have been wearing a sign that said, “Child Molester.”  He was so caught up in what he was doing that he got sloppy.  He didn’t cover all of his tracks.  Several of the children he was molesting began speaking out.  They were telling. But, he was so deep into this perverse, dark life that he didn’t notice. And, he didn’t care.

Thank God he was arrested and stopped!

But, the thing that is so hard to grasp is the level of pain that my children are feeling and the way John treated them as well as all of his church family and the community as a whole.  He was wonderful to them!  He really, really was!  He was kind.  He was compassionate.  I’ve watched him cry over the hurt and pain of others.  I saw him wrestle with how to help families who were hurting financially and emotionally.  I’ve seen him sacrifice so much for his children.

And, yet…..this same man….this kind, generous, caring man was also the emotional abuser, all-controlling husband, and the one whose very heart, mind, and body abused countless young children throughout his lifetime.

It’s so hard to try to balance the scales.  So much kindness on one side, and so much evil on the other.  How can this be?  How does this happen?

ScalesAs I struggled through this birthday week, flashes of the “good John” kept sweeping through my mind.  I saw him at the beach with the kids, taking them on walks finding salamanders, barbecuing chicken and burgers for summer picnics. I saw him laughing with the kids and I remembered past family birthday parties — we had so many wonderful family traditions that we carried out for birthdays!

I woke up several times this week in a drenching sweat as I saw him in the courtroom looking at me with a smirk on his face showing no shame whatsoever over what he had done to so many little girls.  And, I cried.  I sobbed.  I buried my head into my pillow and cried until I thought my insides were falling out.

How can so much evil and good come from one person? It just doesn’t make sense!  I try to understand it, but it’s so big — so hard — to try to grasp!

I felt lonely and dark and blue this week.  I struggled with what to say to  my children when I talked with them.  Do you say it’s going to be okay when you know it’s not?  It’s never, ever going to be okay in the sense of family life as we once knew it.

house 156I felt like screaming so many different times this week, “Where’s the help? Who knows how to do this?  How do you travel this journey?”  And, so I cried more, and begged God to please feel real to me and to my family and to every little child who is struggling day after day with emotions that are so scarred and broken brought on by the abuse of this man — this kind man and this  very evil man.

Brokenness.  It’s not a hard word to type out on paper, but when you think about its meaning, it’s one of the most difficult words of all to say.

bro·ken
[ brṓkən ]
  1. no longer whole: in two or more pieces, e.g. after having been dropped or struck with something hard
  2. out of order: no longer in working condition
  3. not kept: not honored or fulfilled
Synonyms: wrecked, fragmented, shattered, cracked, smashed, damaged, ruined, destroyed

And, so I write these words.  I did not send them, but I felt them.  Continue reading →

Married to a Pedophile: Is Rehabilitation Possible?

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A few weeks ago, the question was posed on another blog I follow as to whether or not it was possible for pedophiles to be rehabilitated.  That’s a difficult question, but a necessary one for us to think about.  Using the information I’ve gathered from many different sources as well as from my own experience of living almost forty years with a practicing pedophile, I’ve formed an opinion.

The blogger, “Loony” (Erica)  from “Thoughts of a Lunatic” accepted my thoughts to be used as a guest blogger today.  I’d like to share these thoughts with you, also.  Please be sure to visit “Thoughts of a Lunatic” to see what I said as my response to this question about rehabilitation.

I welcome your comments, and ask that you keep them respectful.  I know this can become quite a controversial issue, especially when bringing God and His forgiveness into the picture.  Have you given it much thought?  Can pedophiles be rehabilitated?  If so, to what degree?  When they say, “I’ve been through a counseling program.  I’ll never do this again”, do you believe that’s the truth?  What about when they say, “I’ve been forgiven by God, and I’ll never do this again”?

Can pedophiles be 100% rehabilitated — enough that you would allow a pedophile back into your home living with children, into your church interacting with children, and into your community where there would be interaction with children?  What about the internet?  Can a pedophile be rehabilitated to stay away from child pornography and the triggers that will lead to actions of molestation?  These are hard questions — tough questions, but they need to be addressed.

My blog post later on this week is going to be somewhat different as I’ll be sharing with you excerpts from a letter that John recently sent to me.  I want you to draw your own conclusions.  I think you will be both enlightened and very surprised!

Thanks so much for reading.  I know this isn’t easy reading, but it is necessary reading.

Always, always — we have one goal in mind:  to protect our children!

Love,

Clara