Clare’s blog, aka rantspace

There’s a very incisive article at New Matilda about the power imbalance in the NRL/Matthew Johns/”Clare” episode (Disclaimer: In that case, Clare is a pseudonym, and I am not 19 years old ) and how that power imbalance affects the issue of “Clare”‘s consent. However, I think there are a couple of points that the writers fail to make.

Firstly, that when consent is apparently given in an environment of coercion and/or power imbalance, it is, by definition, only after the event that the victim can really say whether she consented or not. And understanding that is crucial to appreciating why “Clare” did not object at the time, but only afterwards. In other words, only complaining afterwards is not necessarily an indication of a changed mind, but of a victim freed from the power imbalance or coercion and understanding properly just how that power imbalance prevented an informed consent at the time.

The other point that I feel the writers do not adequately explore is the label “group sex”. They rightly point out that “group sex” is a bad term for what happened, but fail to say why, or what would have been a more accurate description. Extrapolating from the rest of the article, I think that their perspective would be that “group sex” implies a degree of mutuality that is contradicted by the circumstances being the presence of several high-profile men and one young woman. A more accurately descriptive term might be “pack sex”.

According to Matthew Johns’ account, after it was over, he went to “Clare” and apologised about the others coming into the room. (According to quotes from Johns, initially “Clare” went to the room after an agreement to have sex with him and one other player, and he was unaware when others entered the room, and stepped away from the bed when he became aware of them.) However, that fact alone makes it very clear that “Clare” had NOT consented to their presence beforehand. But since “Clare” says there were six male participants and another half-dozen or so spectators, (and this number has not been denied by the police, who investigated the allegation at the time, or the club, who must also know the names of those involved), and given the public behaviour of footy players in the context of their sport (an emphasis on group activity, spurring each other on, on-field brawling, and egos fed by cheering), it seems very likely that whatever “Clare” consented to initially became something completely different when an extra 10 or so men entered the room. In such a situation (and particularly if the young woman had previously suffered some abuse), it is extremely unlikely that she would have been able to call a halt at the point where she felt that things had gone further than she wanted.

I think it highly likely that it was the cheering (each other) of the first few men that drew the others’ attention to what was happening in the room and caused them to enter and so “join in the fun”. And I also think it likely that if “Clare” had objected at some point, the guys would simply have ignored her, or possibly even have prevented her from leaving.

I’ve been musing on PSTD and its symptoms, and this may turn out to be a multiple-entry thread, hence the no.1 in the title. But this first entry I want to explain a rather obscure symptom described in the DSM as “a sense of foreshortened future”. Now that doesn’t mean that I can’t visualise a tomorrow. But someone once put it this way: suppose you thought that your life would end tomorrow, or the next day, or even in a week’s time, what would you do differently? Ironically, that question is often used by christians to spur them to greater obedience and witnessing activity (though it’s not usually asked as one’s own life ending, but Jesus returning). And the point is not dissimilar. It is this – that your priorities would change. You would do things differently, and you would place emphasis on different things. And that is the reality that PTSD sufferers live with. One might almost say their priorities are skewed, and in a way they are. Some things seem pointless, while others take on a disproportionate urgency.

From this skewed perspective, and looking at one side of its coin – why push yourself to do the vacuuming if you’re not going to be here to enjoy the result (or suffer the consequences)? Why make an effort to keep yourself healthy, or looking good, if in a week’s time it isn’t going to matter? But the second side of the coin is an urgency to getting things done. When a PTSD sufferer thinks that something needs doing (in other words, something moves to the top of their priority list), that sense of foreshortened future compels them to do it NOW.

And that’s what a “sense of foreshortened future” means. On the one hand, it brings a lethargy, an apathy, over doing things that would otherwise be merely part of life’s routine, or part of self-care, because the ongoing sense of purpose in them that would see them done is simply not there. But on the other hand, it brings an urgency to dealing with things – often very small matters – that can push the imbalance even further off-centre, as normal priorities make way for a compulsion that often makes little sense, even to the sufferer themselves.

There are many military/war metaphors in christianity, and I want to take issue with them on a number of counts.  Firstly, though, let me list some:

In the bible-
1) the “armour of god” passage in Ephesians 6:10-17.
2) the “fight the good fight” reference in 1 Tim 6:12.
3) “put on the armour of light”, Rom 13:12.
4) “with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left” 2 Cor 6:7  (Note: Normally, one would have an offensive weapon in the right hand and a defensive protection in the left, but not in this metaphor!)
5) “like a good soldier of Jesus Christ” 2 Tim 2:3-4  (Note: v.3 includes the quoted text, v.4 defines the good soldier as obedient to his commanding officer)
6) “the weapons we fight with…have divine power… We demolish…we take captive…and we will be ready to punish” 2 Cor 10:4-6

In songs and hymns-
1) I’m in the Lord’s Army (Sunday School chorus for children)
2) Onward Christian Soldiers
3) We are Marching in the Light of God (originally an African anti-apartheid protest song, but adapted as a militant expression of christian witness)
4) Fight the Good Fight

And why is this army/soldier metaphor so disturbing?  Because it encourages the kind of thinking that facilitates abuse and abusive structures.  Successful soldiers possess the following qualities:
1) obedience to their superior officers (and that’s not primarily to the general commanding the army, it’s to their immediately superior rankings)
2) unquestioning allegiance to the cause being fought for
3) a willingness – one might even say an agreed contract – to sacrifice themselves without question on the orders of their commander
4) a vision of themselves as the solution to the dissension and salvation of those on the right side
5) the ability to dehumanise (one might even say demonise, but certainly to depersonalise) the enemy in order to justify one’s own aggressive behaviour and one’s side’s policies
6) the mass-thinking and loss of individualism that comes from army discipline and structures

(Here’s something worth noting – christians define disciples as “followers”, a legitimate definition according to modern usage, but the etymology makes it clear that the word really means “those who accept being disciplined”)

And all the “good soldier qualities” listed above are also the qualities that comprise the setting for spiritual abuse, and foster the possibility of other forms of abuse, including sexual abuse.  That’s why militant christianity is really an oxymoron, and metaphors of battle and war have no place in a religion supposedly based on love.

I blogged at Christmas-time about the difficulty of church-festival times of year for clergy abuse victims, and back then I said that Christmas was the worst, because it’s so all-pervasive.  But Easter has its own reasons for being considered the worst – primarily the intensity of feeling associated with it, and also the fact that it is (at least on Good Friday) a festival of grief as well as joy.  And the combination of intensity, grief and church is exactly what makes it a trigger time for abuse victims, because that’s the combination they faced daily throughout their abuse.

But for me there’s an added element – my first marriage ended dramatically and painfully on Good Friday (2001).  And what compounds the pain of that memory is that Good Friday is, year by year, a movable feast.  Which means that some years the anniversary of date and festival closely coincide, but other years there can be two weeks or more between the two, making the painful memories a long-drawn-out process indeed.  But what got me musing (and blogging) is something I’ve often said to others: if you want the religious parallels of that experience, it’s that I was so exhausted by the event that I lay down on Good Friday, and didn’t rise from my bed till Easter Sunday.  On the other hand, if you want the superstitious parallels, it’s that it happened on Friday 13th in the 13th year of our marriage!

So I was musing on the irony of being able to offer such alternative interpretations (christian or superstitious) of that event, and the pain of swinging between the two – particularly of being drawn to think church thoughts at a time which is painfully inclined to that anyway – and realised that this is the struggle I carry with me all the time.  Having grown up in a very conservative christian-oriented world/life, my interpretation of nearly everything was cast within that framework, and it’s often a struggle to find an alternative.  Yet Easter itself (not to mention every other church festival) is simply a christian overlay forced onto a much older “pagan” festival.

[There's an interesting aside here, that pagan means "of the country", and first came into use as a derogatory term when christianity became the state religion under the Emperor Constantine.  As the newly authorised religion pervaded the educated cities, "pagan" rites and beliefs referred to those of the uneducated rural dwellers, and only over time did it come to mean specifically non (or anti)-christian.]

But back to the point: the Easter festival is overlaid on a very old (more than 1500 years before Christ) fertility festival dedicated to Ishtar (Assyrian) or Astarte (Babylonian), goddess of fertility.  And the eggs, Easter bunny, hot cross buns, and even the practice of Lent, are borrowed from this much earlier tradition.  And an echo of that earlier “pagan” festival can be found in the Easter date controversies of the 3rd and 4th centuries – some christians still followed the Jewish calendar, celebrating Easter according to the date set for Passover, and some celebrated it on the immediately following Sunday, to commemorate the day of Jesus’ resurrection.  But dissatisfaction arose because in some years the Jewish date for Passover fell before the spring equinox!!  Now if religious/cultural events are all that’s important in setting the date, then the equinox has no relevance at all.  It’s precisely because the old fertility festival still carried some echoes in their thinking that the equinox was important.

I have no quibble with that; religions seeking to convert whole communities have always adopted prior-practised festivals and overlaid them with a new meaning – as, indeed, christians did with the Passover. But when the religion then promotes their own interpretation of the festival as the only right one, and denigrates other parts of it, which they borrowed in the first place, as unacceptable, they really mess with our heads

The church I grew up in went through a phase of seeking to separate themselves from the pagan associations of Easter (which name is derived from Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon fertility goddess, unlike most European languages where the word for Easter is derived from the Latin pasch, in turn derived from Pesach, the Jewish word for Passover) by calling it “The Festival of the Resurrection” instead of Easter.  And, of course, rejecting the Easter bunny and Easter eggs (but not chocolate!).  But what I think would be better is to see these traditions blended rather than separated – and not only to blend them, but celebrate the blending.  In a larger sense, to blend religious practices rather than emphasise the separatenesses.

My struggle, though – returning to my starting point – is to find a way to blend interpretations as well as practices.  And part of the struggle is that it’s hard to blend interpretations without being swept back into a conservative christian mindset (which is, perhaps, the reason why religions tend to insist on single-minded adherence). It’s hard to embrace parts of the beliefs/words/practices without taking along with them all the baggage that one grew up with as an intrinsic part of them.  And therein lies the basic trigger dilemma of a clergy abuse victim – that one can’t just dabble one’s toes in the edge of church waters, without also having to fight an internal battle against the parts of doctrine one no longer assents to.  So one gets forced into being “in” or “out” by one’s own limitations, as much as by the expectations or definitions of others.

But where I’d like to sit is somewhere where superstition and religion are equally valid.  Where miracles and magic are seen as the same.  And where love and truth and justice are recognised as just as good (ie. life-giving, or what christians would call godly) whether one finds them in Jesus or in any other person, and that selfishness and lies and injustice are just as evil (ie. life-destroying, or what christians would call sinful) whether one finds them in the worst criminal or in the church.

Many people think that spiritual abuse only happens in cults, and if they belong to a mainstream denomination they complacently assume that it doesn’t happen at their church.  And I’ve certainly never known of or heard about a sermon being preached on it, even in more liberal churches.  As a result, the average person in the pews has no idea what constitutes spiritual abuse, and thus doesn’t recognise it when they see (or hear) it.   And, out of that ignorance, clergy abuse victims who proceed to a complaint find themselves at a loss as to how to deal with spiritual abuse when it’s used against them, as it all too often is.

One of the books recommended on my website is an excellent treatise on this subject – “The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse” (Johnson and vanVonderen).  Here is a quick checklist from it:
1. Power-posturing – does the leader assert their own authority?  eg. “I am the pastor of this flock”, with the implication (or overt assertion) that his word is final, or the opinion which everyone should heed most.  Sometimes this power-posturing is not actually expressed verbally, but if those who disagree with the minister are frozen out or otherwise victimised for doing so, that equates to the same thing.

2. Performance preoccupation – or “doing God’s will”.  If emphasis is placed primarily on what people do or don’t do, and particularly if this is equated with salvation or grace, this is performance preoccupation.  Obedience and submission are key words in this characteristic.  Johnson and vanVonderen make the point that obedience itself is not the problem, it’s keeping track of it that is, because that turns obedience to God into a means of earning spiritual brownie points.  Again, this can be unexpressed rather than overt, if shame is inherent in admitting to failing to measure up to a particular standard of obedience (for example, where doing “quiet times” [personal bible study and prayer] is used as a measure of a person’s holiness, and particularly if a set minimum amount of time is insisted upon.  Church attendance is another likely point).

3. Unspoken rules – often these contradict the bible, and because they’re unspoken you don’t find out about them until you break them.  Then you suffer the consequences of breaking them, whether that be open censure, or surreptitious condemnation, or ostracism.  For example, abuse victims who disclose their abuse get criticised for “not leaving it to God to deal with” or for “damaging the pastor’s ministry” or for “telling lies about the minister, who’s such a good man”.  In this case, the unspoken rules are a) don’t tell the truth if it confronts or threatens our security, b) don’t act as an instrument of God’s justice if it means asserting your own right to individual conscience, and c) if everything’s ok on the surface, then don’t tell about anything rotten underneath.
According to Johnson and vanVonderen, the most powerful unspoken rule is the “can’t talk” rule – which can be otherwise expressed as: “if you talk about the problem, you are the problem”.  They say that two typical responses to someone who exposes a problem are “everything was fine until you started stirring things up”, or (to sound super-spiritual) “you didn’t deal with it in a loving [or, mature Christian] way”.  The blame which ensues on exposure of a problem pressures the talker back into silence.  In a spiritually abusive dynamic, noticing and speaking about problems is seen as disloyal, unsubmissive, divisive and a challenge to authority (or the system), and the talker is characterised as ungodly, vengeful, a liar, or being used by Satan.

4. Lack of balance – that is, an unbalanced approach to living a Christian life.  Johnson and vanVonderen say this shows itself in either of two extremes: extreme objectivism, where the authority of the biblical text and/or theological education is elevated to the exclusion of valid subjective experience (they neatly summarise this as the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Bible!); or extreme subjectivism, where truth is given to the members solely or primarily through “revelations” or “God’s word to me for you”.  Both are used by those in authority in a church (and those who would like to be in authority!) to manipulate and control.

Other contenders for spritually abusive characteristics:
1) Loyalty to the group/minister is equated to loyalty to God.
2) Using biblical texts to assert control.
3) Pressure to convert – for example “we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, and it’s important you make a decision NOW”.
4) Guilt giving – that is, intimidation to give, such as “giving less than X is withholding yourself from God [or, stealing from God, according to Malachi 3:8]“.
5) Inherited leadership – such as the minister’s son becoming the youth leader, without any form of selection process.  This, in itself, is not abusive, but it certainly allows for the perpetuation of abuse by keeping the already-established patterns of behaviour in-house.  Unfortunately, in a congregation that is being systematically spiritually abused, such inherited leadership is often celebrated rather than questioned.

Abuse may be defined as “using power to control another’s actions”.  Physical abuse uses physical power, sexual abuse uses sexual power, financial abuse uses financial power, and spiritual abuse uses spiritual power.  Any time that someone is pressured into doing something by the use of religious doctrine or faith community pressure, they are being spiritually abused.

Many people find it hard to understand the longterm effects of clergy sexual abuse on a victim, and particularly what effect it has on the practice of their faith.  In 20 years of telling my story to hundreds of churchgoers, only once have I ever had enthusiastic encouragement not to go to church when I described how painful it is.  The following was written by me as part of an email discussion with churchgoers, and seemed to be worth posting here.  As an Anglican victim, some of the things that bother me will be different to what is painful for a Catholic victim, and different again for members of other denominations and faiths, but I offer this as a small insight into the retraumatisation that happens when a clergy abuse victim goes to church.

There are two main problems for me in going to church: one is the language, building, atmosphere – the whole “church” experience – that makes it impossible for me to walk into church without feeling terror (literally).  The second problem is the attitude (which is intertwined with the theology).

The first problem – of language, building, atmosphere, etc – encompasses so much that church people take for granted.  A few examples:
1) the building itself.  Obviously, the more similar a church is to the one where I was abused, the more dangerous it feels, but it goes for any church.  Have you ever had a car accident, and been extra nervous at that spot the next few times you went through it, or even other spots like it? Multiply that a million times and you’ll begin to have a faint idea of what I mean.
2) closing my eyes to pray (and bowing my head, and kneeling [in churches where that happens]) are all danger signals for me.  This one sometimes isn’t too bad, because everyone else has their eyes closed so they don’t see that I don’t
3) the collection (or offering, if you want to call it that).  I choose not to financially support a system that abused me.  But when the plate, or bag, or what-have-you is passed along the pews, it is very obvious to those around you that you aren’t contributing.  And those who don’t contribute, by definition, are considered to be outside the clique that is the parish family.
4) passing the peace is a danger time.  I’m VERY protective of my physical and psychological boundaries when I’m in an unsafe space to start with, but it’s incredibly hard to make that point to people who think passing the peace is good.  I can’t shake hands, or say the formatted response.  I can manage a half-smile and a thankyou sometimes, but that’s it.  Mostly, the feeling of threat it carries for me will put me in tears anyway.  So I sit there, hoping people won’t approach me, and having to be rude and ignore their outstretched hand when they do come up to me.  (For churchgoers reading this – try it sometime!  Sit in your pew when everyone starts to move around to pass the peace, imagine feeling utterly terrified and profoundly vulnerable, and when people come up with outstretched hand, keep your arms folded, and don’t reply.  And remember that you’re doing it someplace where everyone already knows your character and won’t just assume you’re rude!)
5) the language – this is a much harder one to describe, but is partly about what I have learnt since to be dangerous (in predisposing a system to allow abuse within it) and partly about the forms of words that specifically remind me of the disparity between what I believed and what happened to me.  Hymns are good examples.  Ones that refer to god rescuing us from all ills, or god as father (my abuser was fatherly), or even particular hymns that I only ever really sang at the abusive church, will all leave me undone and crying, which is pretty damn embarrassing in a place where no-one understands, and mostly where they don’t want to know…
6) …which leads into the last thing: church people often (dare I say mostly?) have a huge emotional/spiritual investment in their beliefs and the system which undergirds it.  In fact, many many church people depend far more on the system than on the theology.  So if you threaten that system (either actually, by – for instance – going public with an abuse complaint, or in their mind, by telling one’s history of abuse by a minister) many of them are sufficiently turned off that at best they merely murmur a few platitudes and then make their excuses to leave you alone.  That’s a pretty powerful rejection.  Or worse, they try to talk you into coming back to church because “god can heal you if you just let him” (thereby subtly placing the blame for you not being healed squarely on your perceived resistance to god).

That’s a very longwinded, but still short, summary of the first problem.  The second problem, of attitude/theology is simpler to express: christians in general believe that Jesus is the way to god.  The degree to which they assert he is the ONLY way varies.  But the more they believe that, the harder it is for them to see that any variation on their belief is equally legitimate christianity.  In other words, they end up in a “so-and-so is in, but the other guy’s out” kind of mentality.  And the more important it is for them to define what constitutes acceptability, the less open they are to accepting those who, by their definition, are “out”.  And abuse victims, who by their own actions are perceived by the church community as threatening to the system, are deemed “out”, and are therefore excluded.

And this kind of defensiveness ends up being blind faith in the system and what it teaches, rather than blind faith in god.  A brief example: when I went public with my story, I was teaching scripture in the same school as some of the abuser’s congregants.  One of them, who was also a member of the abuser’s parish council, took me to task over going public (as most christians do – they’d rather not know!).  I challenged him to discuss my claims, and he said “it’s your word against his, and I’ll give double honour to an elder”.  Now, he hadn’t asked me what proof I had (sworn statements by other people of admissions the abuser had made to them, including another minister) and even when I told him, he preferred to defend the abuser.  That’s not faith in god, because god is about justice and integrity and honesty – it’s faith in the system and the system’s endorsement of the abuser as an ordained minister.

(And as for the system… in my case the abuser admitted it to the archbishop, but the archbishop never made that admission public, and then the church spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting me in court when they knew it to be true… and it took 10 years of being in the public eye and a change of archbishop before I even got an apology!)

If all this was only my experience, or if it had only been one short experience, I might still be in the church.  But it’s the experience of countless clergy abuse victims, in every denomination, and sustained over an unbelievable length of time.  Leaving ends up being a result of a) seeing that most church theology breeds that kind of person, plus b) choosing not to support that system, plus c) choosing to avoid hurtful people and situations.

Let me be clear that I’m referring to churchgoers in general here, not just clergy.  Though different denominations have different structures, and different ways of co-ordinating those structures, and even differing theologies, they all function in very much the same ways when it comes to crushing those who presume to question their goal/aim/theology/methods.  Shoot the messenger, discredit the messenger, stonewall the messenger, and silence anyone they can.  In the course of my life, I’d say the nastiest, most manipulative people I’ve met have been within the church, and the nicest, most compassionate people I’ve met have been outside the church.  That doesn’t mean I’ve met no-one good in the church, and no-one bad outside the church, but the sum total of good people in each has been heavily on the side of the non-churchgoers.  And I truly believe that much of the reason for that is the fear of churchgoers when I threaten their security, resulting in antagonism and bullying behaviour towards me.

One last point: staying in the system and working for change from within is a viable alternative for some.  I’m certainly not wanting to decry that option – in fact, I am tremendously encouraged by the few clergy I know who are doing just that.  But most of them, if you talk to them for any length of time, will admit that they too have become victims of the viciousness of the system-supporters, so it’s a very stressful option, and certainly one that most clergy abuse victims, with all the church-related pain they carry, can’t undertake.

I recently heard of an instance of adult abuse (not clergy related), which was particularly interesting to me because of the grooming dynamic that occurred. A woman in her early thirties was invited to a threesome by a colleague and his wife. She declined, not being in the least interested. Next thing was, she’d changed jobs, but the ex-colleague found out (not from her) what hours she was working and when she would be arriving home. He met her as she got off the train, walked her home, invited himself in for a drink and then urged her to draw him naked. She ended up with pencil and sketchbook in her hand, having not known at what point to stop this process (or more specifically, not knowing how to do it without being rude).

And this is the essence of the grooming technique – that the stages of boundary invasion come in small enough steps that the rudeness required to repel them seems extreme for the level of offence, yet by the time one is beyond all point of going along with it, one feels complicit for not having called a halt at an earlier stage. And all our upbringing and training is geared to politeness and avoidance of being rude, which effectively constrains us from acting self-protectively in such circumstances.

In this instance, the woman probably had the following options along the way (all of them rude to some degree):
1) when she saw the guy at the station, and he began to walk her home, to say “I’m sorry, but I don’t want you to walk with me.” And if he persisted, to walk to the police station instead and (assuming he followed) to accuse him of harrassing her.
2) When she got to her front door, and he invited himself in, to say “I’m sorry, but I don’t want you to come in.” And if he persisted, to say “look, I really don’t like you, and you’re not welcome here.”
3) When he suggested drawing him naked, to tell him to leave the house. And if he refused, to insist, with the threat of calling the police if he didn’t go.
4) And if he continued to the point of undressing himself (which, if she did the previous options, is fairly unlikely), the best option, in my opinion, would be to go to the fridge, get a glass of nice cold water, and throw it on him!

One further option, the threat of which could be used at any stage, but the actuality most certainly should be used afterwards, is to tell his wife. Naturally, though, if one has been drawn in by the grooming process, the feeling of complicity makes that an extremely difficult option. Groomers count on that, of course. And in this case, it is further complicated by his wife having been party to the original threesome suggestion. All the same, it seems quite likely that she wouldn’t approve of him acting independently, and probably didn’t know he did it. And the only way, when it’s a past event, to break the secrecy of complicity (and make it obvious that you didn’t want it or ask for it) is to tell.

But the point of this musing is that there is no way to repel grooming approaches without being ruder than seems warranted by the circumstances. So the training we give our children MUST include teaching that when the need arises to act self-protectively, rudeness is not only ok, it’s mandatory.
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Note: For more info on grooming and what we should teach our children, check out the “dynamics of abuse” and “protecting children” sections of my website.

Fairy tales are recognised by sociologists and psychologists as a vital part of children’s growth and development, particularly in the context of their understanding of the adult world. And those of us who remember the pre-Disney, unsanitised versions of old fairy tales (the wolf eats Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother and the woodcutter slits him open to get them out; Cinderella’s stepsisters cut off portions of their feet to fit into the glass slipper; and Hansl and Gretel push the witch into the fire rather than just running away) know that the sanitisation is a reflection of our increasingly sanitised life. Gone are the days when children had to understand that life was fraught with danger and death. Danger is greatly reduced by our urban and heavily circumscribed lives, and death is pushed into nursing homes and hospitals, where children rarely see it.

But the still-present danger of fairy tales (and other similarly simplistic stories), in my opinion, is the portrayal of the good guys as always the good guys, and the bad guys as always the bad guys. And the more sanitised the stories are, the easier it is to recognise which is which. The bad guys are instantly dislikeable (think fairytale stepmothers). Or they’re ugly (bad witches always have hooked chins and warts on their noses, right? And good ones are beautiful, naturally).

The danger of all this lies in the subtle teaching to children that they’ll always be able to tell a bad guy when they see one. That, of course, puts them at risk because they can fail to exercise prudent caution about someone they decide is a good guy. And it seems that adults suffer from the same misapprehension. How often is a clergy abuse (or incest, or child pornography) disclosure about a “respectable” person greeted with the response “but I know him and he’s not like that”. Or “he’s such a nice guy, it couldn’t possibly be true”. These adults don’t seem to realise that they are still bound by the simplistic format of fairy tales, where the good guys and the bad guys are both easy to pick, and uncompromisingly good (or bad) all through.

And while this reaction has also been touched on in my blog entry on compartmentalism (3rd May), I think it’s important to see how little it’s recognised for what it is – a reliance on one’s own personal assessment of a person based on the image they present, which may be vastly different to what they’re like underneath.

So how do you tell a good guy from a bad guy? The simple answer is, of course, that you can’t. The essence of humanity is that we’re not good all through, or bad all through. And our surface image is governed, to a good extent, by what’s acceptable in society. So the more bad we are, the more the surface image can be discrepant from our actions, and it behoves us all to recognise that. So next time you’re reading a fairy tale (aka fiction story), take a moment to check your own reactions – do you know who the bad guy is from the start? If you do, welcome to the UNreal world!

When a person (and especially a priest) is charged with child sex offences, which most people find abhorrent, you often hear said “but he’s such a nice guy; it can’t possibly be true.” And leaving aside the theory that the reason he’s such a nice guy is because it enables him to prey on children unsuspected, this raises something I think needs to be better understood. Compartmentalism is the psycho-jargon term for not letting your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Or, to put it another way, being one kind of person in one part of your life, and a different kind of person in another part of your life, and keeping them so separate in your own psyche that the contradiction between the two is never admitted or faced. And sexual abusers are particularly practised at this, apparently – witness the fact that many convicted abusers have campaigned against pornography or other so-called moral evils, and that the second most common factor among abusers is conservative religious belief (Sexual Abuse in Christian Homes and Churches, Carolyn Holderread Heggen).

And without an understanding of compartmentalism, people will, of course, figure that “a nice guy like that” could never do such abhorrent things. If, however, you understand that someone you experience as a nice guy may not be a nice guy at all in another aspect of his life, then the contradiction becomes less incredible. Sure, it’s still hard to fathom, because most of us don’t exercise that large a degree of compartmentalism. But it’s crucial that society as a whole begins to understand that someone who seems nice on the surface may not be nice all through – may, in fact, be a very sick person whose survival mechanism lies in concealing the extent of his sickness.

Perhaps the most extreme case, currently in the news, is the “Austrian cellar monster” (see here and related links). Despite his almost unbelievable crimes, neighbours found Fritzl polite and quiet, and generally likeable. As one neighbour said, “I’m good friends with Mrs Fritzl. Both she and her husband are lovely people … they are well dressed, polite and very nice.” Yet, from DNA tests, direct evidence, and Fritzl’s own confession, there is no doubt that the man who seemed so nice on the surface was, in reality, a horrific abuser underneath.

That’s compartmentalism to the nth degree!

There’s one further point to make about the Austrian story: Fritzl had a conviction for rape 41 years ago, and another for attempted rape the same year. (Other later charges of arson and insurance fraud were dropped.) Yet, because the crimes were so long ago, when he applied to adopt his children/grandchildren less than 20 years ago, his record appeared clean. The point being that when a person is accused of sexual abuse, we can’t sit back complacently and say “this guy’s never been in trouble before; it can’t be true”. Far more likely, if the diclosure dates back decades, is that he has abused many victims, and the one who comes forward is simply the first one who has dared to do so.