Hi friends. Part of healing from parental narcissistic abuse and CPTSD means looking at my various experiences with it, and why and how it occurred. Two side sources for me, beyond but also stemming from what was happening with my four parents, were church youth groups and Christian summer camps. Both of these situations can be (and often are) breeding grounds for child abuse.
As I write this, I'm hearing voices of former friends, clergy and youth leaders, scolding. "How dare you, Marilisa?! Christian youth groups and summer camps are wonderful experiences for kids and youth leaders are spirit filled people preaching the word of God!!" That's what I was force-fed to believe too. And toxic shame and Christian gaslighting kept me quiet all these years about what really happened. What I see as an adult who has worked in the helping professions, is that summer camps and youth groups are a pedophile's playground and bloody dangerous for kids. This is my story and about damn time I told it.
To begin with, let's look at the structure of youth groups and summer camps. Generally, they are led by a volunteer (or very low paid) staff of teens and young adults not that much older than the kids they are "ministering" to. And then there are the hangers-on, older teens and young adults who've graduated but just can't seem to make the break from youth. They are just old enough to make the age difference weird.
Many are incredibly immature themselves, obviously. Most of the ones I knew (ages 19 to 22 or so) (when I was young, but also when my kids were young) didn't have real jobs or at least anything demanding. They weren't in college. They had no social life outside youth group or camp. They didn't fill any function within the group and were in fact more liability than asset. They were allowed to just hang out with kids, welcome to participate in sleepovers and group outings. Most were known to be psychologically disturbed, unstable and even violent. They'd had run-ins with the law. But no one saw anything wrong with this AND THEY WEREN'T MONITORED.
In a school, they wouldn't not be allowed on the premises without a good reason. I don't like it either, that youth leaders are allowed into public schools to meet with kids. At summer camp where the child is there for a week or more, being around all this, it's just an accident looking for a place to happen. Now you might argue that the leaders were going into youth ministry as a career. Camp is like their student teaching. Ehh, no. Been a student teacher. We were monitored by a supervising teacher and the entire school staff. Camps are just open, poorly structured free-for-alls that allowed adults 24-7 access to children.
And that doesn't even start to cover the fully-fledged adult ministers, camp directors, and leaders involved. Christian camps and youth groups have a bad habit of deifying these people. Most of the ones I knew didn't do anything except walk around in Jesus sandals and big beards, collecting admirers. I can still hear my personal creeper, Pastor Will (not even sure if he was ordained) singing in his big baritone voice, "There is a balm in Gilead" and all the campers wetting themselves like star-struck groupies. It's nauseating how he got off on that adulation. When I told my older son about my experiences, he said "Mom, you're describing a cult."
Couldn't have said it better. Trouble is, I didn't understand it at the time. His attention felt icky-groom-y. All the weirdos that latched on to me, made me uncomfortable. At the time, I guess I sort of liked the attention because I didn't get it at home. But no, that's not it. I was TOLD that I liked attention. But what it really was, was my damn empath in charge. I felt sorry for them. I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Not even when they tried to paw and kiss me. Blech. And I got in trouble for "making out" on the bus!! 13 year-old me was made to sit in the little exit well of the bus (that's not even legal) while the effing 19-year-old remained in the seat.
So how about the "youth leaders" actually acting like leaders and putting that perv off the damn bus! And maybe instead of shaming me, they could, I don't know, find out if I was okay??? That's what I'd have done as an adult. But then, I'd not have let a 19-year-old near a 13-year-old. And he wasn't the only one. But no, they just turned a blind eye to all the sick stuff these guys were doing, letting me be the damn sacrificial goat. Probably glad someone else was dealing with them.
And don't get me started on the shit that can occur at a campfire under cover of darkness. Did it really take "Friday the 13th" to teach us that? It gives "ministry" a whole new meaning. But it's all just ignored. Hell, even I ignored it. "Boys will be boys" shit. Feeling you up means they like you. Small problem, though. These "boys" were grown-ass adults leching on a vulnerable kid being held hostage by her own sense of compassion and fucking useless "leaders" ignoring it. Pass the marshmallows and lets' all sing another verse of Kumbyah.
And why was I such a target anyway? It wasn't for my incredible good looks. I was just a frizzy-haired, bespectacled teen. In fact, if I had been very hot, they'd have left me alone. Out of their league. Because Christian youth groups are no different than any other. They put wayyyy too much stock in looks and affluence. So was family money or lack thereof the issue?
True I wasn't the richest kid there. Actually the stalkers all came from very wealthy families whom I now believe shunted their adult kids onto church groups to distance from the embarrassment. I laugh now to think of families donating a pew with the proviso that Camp Happy Christian take Randy and Preston and Jim and John and Chuck and other Jim, off their hands. The other wealthier kids (and you'd be surprised at how many really wealthy kids there were) wanted nothing to do with the creeps. So they hung out on the fringe, let to other nobodys like me to deal with. Like goes with like, I guess.
And who's gonna believe the poor nobody if she were to report them, if she even got up the nerve to? The leaders who were turning a blind eye in the first place? Not bloody likely. The irony was and still is that the victim of molesting is made to feel like the problem. Look how I was slut-ified and segregated from the precious baby boys on the bus? Not going to risk THAT happening again, ta very much. And I know broken record. But regardless of how often you may have heard it, the person experiencing feels like the only one.
I may have looked "easy" but only because I was trying too hard to be too nice to these guys. Why the devil did no one see that? Why were they so quick to believe and treat me as if I was trash? Cuz now I look back, I was modest, moral and quite innocent. Naive, actually. Which made me an easy target. None of my four parent knew, let alone cared, where I was or what was happening to me. Unless I was late to do one of my many chores or babysit their kids. And all four had subjected me to super nasty, disturbing sexual exploitation before and pretended that it never happened and if it did, I brought it on myself. So they had me conditioned to feel like the dirty one.
I never wanted any of this. All I wanted was to be a kid with normal kid experiences. But it was in my parents' self-interests to keep me ashamed and cowed. So needless to say, I never told anyone any of the things that happened. I only just started revisiting the experiences a few years ago. Too ashamed that I'd be faulted and resigned to the fact that nobody gave a shit. Too afraid to find, as so often happened in my nightmares that I was a disgusting, deviated, morally depraved person not fit to live.
And that's what marked me. Pedos can smell shamed, neglected, abused, gaslit, uncared-about kids like a BBQ. They have an unerring sense about who they can molest, terrify, gaslight and mentally eff up, unchecked. And the narcissistic megalomanic "preachers" are the dead worst. A 21 year old acting creepy is bad enough. A 45-year-old pastor with a wife and teens of his own, is a menace. It's even worse than pedo priests, which don't get me wrong are sick enough. The minister has family who will suffer and whom empaths like me work like hell to protect.
If I didn't dare to report a 21-year-old, I wouldn't dream of reporting Pastor Will. Who am I going to tell, his wife? His kids? His many followers who believed he walked on water and raised the dead? Nope. I would and did assume the problem was me. I somehow came on to him, led him astray, etc. I didn't even acknowledge to myself just how really gross he made me feel. And how he made me a pariah among the other camp counselors. (That's the isolation and grooming part of pedophilia).
But that's a story for another post. I'm too drained to write more.
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