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How Perpetrator's 'groom' Victims To Make Them Feel Like Its Their Fault

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(There is a psychologist present and the molesters have been in treatment for at least four years so its based on them taking responsibilty and trying to attempt to remotely repay some of their debt, they do apologise whole heartedly and some of them cry and confess their own cycles of abuse and decision to perpetuate that cycle etc then Oprah talks to them about her sexual abuse)

I watched part of this and I do have respect for Oprah and the information that she brings to the table, knowing she, herself is a Survivor of childhood abuse; however I admit I could not watch it all. So yes, I'm underinformed.

(There is a psychologist present and the molesters have been in treatment for at least four years so its based on them taking responsibilty and trying to attempt to remotely repay some of their debt, they do apologise whole heartedly and some of them cry and confess their own cycles of abuse and decision to perpetuate that cycle etc then Oprah talks to them about her sexual abuse)

My feeling, they SHOULD apologize, they SHOULD cry, they have ruined countless lives of children! Generations of lives. I don't feel anything close to empathy for them. I don't care what their background is. I don't.

My father was a pedaphile, he was a family therapist, a professor who went on to "groom" other therapists in his inner circle, God knows how many victims before he was stopped. I have no doubt my father has a horrid story to tell, his brother murdered, my grandmother a cold woman, etc.

I get that I'm reacting, I do, but I don't for one second believe that these monster, once they have felt that power, can ever be around children again, EVER. They have no way of repaying their debt to society.
 
I don't for one second believe that these monster, once they have felt that power, can ever be around children again, EVER. They have no way of repaying their debt to society.
I agree that it's not worth the risk to ever let a pedophile - no matter if they have acted out or not - in the company of children. However, I feel strongly that we have to remove the taboo from the illness itself, so that it becomes possible to talk about pedophilia to kids and teens. Most pedophiles start molesting when they're between 10 and 20 years old! We have to reach them und put them in therapy while they're still kids themselves, and hopefully before they hurt someone.

EDIT: There's this rather definitive study that looks at three different populations of child molesters and the development of their pedophilia; it's pretty interesting: Abel and Harlow Child Molestation Prevention Study.
 
This is very interesting post.

The thing to remember or realise is here we all are doing the work and trying to get well, taking responsibilty for our mental health regardless of our pasts, of how hard it is. Look at how we choose to respond to an awful past compared to the person they have chosen to be! My point: Not everyone whos had a shocking life chooses to victimize other people. Because we know we have a choice not to be that kind of person. Just like every abuser, every sociopath, every psychopath has a choice. If you choose to relinquish your freedom to choose how you respond, who you become as a result youve still made a choice. Every time you come on this site to talk about this you make a decision to deal with it head on. Even in captivity one always has a universal freedom to choose: the freedom to choose one's attitude to one's situation/ how one will respond to it/who you will become as a result.

I find this part particularly helpful. Ive excused others abuse of me for years, and much of my attitude and thinking remains there. I get very maternal and very protective over children, but when I'm with people who are abusive to me, I almost see them like hurt children and want to protect them. Its messed up and I think it makes me a danger to myself.
 
This is more on the off-shoots of your post, than the main part... But my ex also used the "it's ok, you don't have to be scared, it happened to me too..." bit. I tend to believe of his many lies that that part was true, (certainly I would rather that was the case) even though he did use it to get access to me, and worked hard at that. But because of how he was, I just think it was consistent with a history of CSA. And how there is a difference between "us" and "them".

I was shown this quite distinctly at one point in our relationship, when he asked me to spit on him during s**. I tried, for his sake, because he insisted, and I just could not bring myself to do it. I COULDN'T. Him? The other way around? Not that particular behaviour, and definitely cannot go into it, but suffice to say he enjoyed it and found it exciting. He had similar experiences, I believe, but something got twisted in there at some point, something that no matter how twisted I was, how messed up I was, never got twisted in me. I took it out on myself... He took it out on others. (And that right there says volumes about our relationship.)

It is also why he will never, ever have a relationship with my daughter.
 
Very triggering thread for me.

Because my dad was a psychopath, my response to sociopaths was always to work much harder at pleasing them. I always felt their lack of empathy as something wrong with me.

My sisters and I all ended up in relationships with sociopaths. We were well-trained to be food for narcissists.
 
BloomIn is right. This is a triggering thread.

I have such feelings of disgust, shame, and humiliation for the things I "agreed" to do as a child. Since then I have done so many self-destructive things to punish myself for the sexual abuse I suffered. And to re-enact the combination of disgust and arousal I felt back then.
 
I keep getting the sense from the way people write that people view PTSD as a disease similar to say a bacterial infection, with possibilities of mutations and if you take the right meds, do the proper steps, you can rid yourself of the infection. Like it's a foreign contaminant physically eating away at your brain or something.

PTSD invariably reflects the person's fear, shame, lack of self-worth, anger because of those, and invariably, they don't feel safe. This is a giant hint as to the nature of PTSD. The fact that most of the treatments deal with those things, another one.

Predators are looking to satisfy their inner desire, the bad ones, this isn't stealing for survival, for whatever reason they have abandoned morals, and now, be it reliving their trauma from a position of control, enjoying the wide array of reactions that can be achieved from pain, the rather intoxicating power of control itself, because they think the world has no morals (which it doesn't lol) and that the "strong" deserve to control the weak, or that we are all animals, and as such, predators have a right to hunt their prey, any other myriad of decisions.

Also, empathy, is largely dependent on whether the individual cares about whatever there is to empathize about.
So if someone gets punished over and over and over again violently, they may take it into their head that since they had to go through it, why should another child be spared? What makes this child the predator wants to prey on any better than him/her??!?! Why should they be denied what they want when anybody else can just take it? Doesn't their pain mean anything?
These are some thoughts a person could use to not care about the child to feel any empathy.

You will notice that there's usually something they DO care about.

(This does not include brain damage and autism, though still debatable to an extent, considering you can lose the entire left side of your brain and still be a functioning human being, and your mind can use other parts of the brain to fill the functions of the missing parts)

Anyway, just opinions.

P.S. the research I was looking at about the brain hemispheres also showed that people who lose the right half of their brain lose the perspective of Left. Like this subject would invariably eat all the food on the right side of her plate, and not touch the other side, or could recognize herself when shown the right side of her, but when shown the left side, she didn't. It was like the whole left side of her world is just gone, and the other subjects exhibited the same type of behavior
 
I too have a mother who is at the least has Narcissistic Personality disorder but perhaps is anti social as well. I always wonder if she knew what she was doing was wrong, immoral, destructive or illegal. The fact that she makes up excuses--tells me yes, she does know. I do know that had she been told that she would be arrested for conducting such behavior or if she thought she would be caught, she would not have done what she did. Don't know what difference it makes to me--the outcome is the same but for some reason, I am obsessed with this!

Do parents really groom us or do they just slowly mold us to do whatever they say? After all, we are dependent on them for our lives.
 
Grooming is a neutral term, I "groom" people to see if they will accept me, parents "groom" their kids as part of the learning process, to teach them the things they need to succeed in life, the school system is grooming, society grooms.

A better word for this bad type of grooming imo is brainwashing. Brainwash the prey to make them subservient to you. That is the objective.

Of course, on the other hand, you could argue that grooming makes sense because it's sorta like grooming a turkey, or a show pet, making them all pretty (in the predator's eyes) before they partake.
 
Great post and it really hits home for me because a friend of mine is struggling with the guilt of it being her fault. This will reinforce what I have been telling her.
 
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