Grooming!

I was asked recently  to discuss if, and how, I was "groomed" by the priest that abused me?
Well of course there was grooming! 
But grooming  is not always what people imagine. There was no lost "puppy" to go and look for, no sweeties, or being made to feel like a "special friend".
In fact the dirty, fat, greedy, sweaty, drunken little inadequate rapist with the dog collar didn't really have to do very much at all, it was all pretty much done for him.

I wasn't  “groomed” so much by this pedophile; that was already made easy for him  by my mother and her family and by their blind faith in a narcissistic, unfeeling church that covers up all of its faults and hides its perpetrators. 
It is that church which  has  been grooming children for centuries. I must have been like "manna from heaven " for him, I was a sitting duck!

Often victims of these criminals are vulnerable in some way, either by their isolation, their disabilities  by threats or by their fear of exclusion. I was a prime target, I was  a vulnerable disturbed child, obsessed with trying to be "good" terrified of committing sin, and desperately afraid of being cast out by the only pack I knew.

I had been adopted into this fear filled church obsessed family, bought and paid for, and because it was handled badly, and I was older than I perhaps should have been,  I had definite "abandonment" issues, as well as the other signs and symptoms of distress. 

Later, when my story was discussed in "church circles" they said "that it may have been my adoption that was probably the cause of some of my later damage" -  in an attempt to wriggle out of their part in my destruction.

But the pedophile priest knew all about me! He stayed in my home! He knew my background, my fears and vulnerabilities, he had listened to my obsessive over scrupulous child's confessions,  and he also knew that in my priest obsessed household he would be protected. That is exactly  why he singled me out! I was the perfect sort of  weak wildebeest that pedophiles prey on, and that was directly because of  fear filled indoctrination.

I have always found from my dealings with the catholic church that they have no concept of the severity of abuse committed by them, and absolutely no concerns about it either. I have found them to be profoundly unskilled, monumentally condescending and disgustingly evasive.

The collusions and cover-ups are further abuse. I have met hundreds of survivors who have been

tormented for more than half  a century, and are still very damaged;  trying desperately to find a voice.

Of course, pedophiles can be found everywhere, as can repressed celibates, but that is NOT the 

problem.

The problem is the environment that the church provides, that allows these crimes to fester. They

create demigods out of inadequates and protect them when they inevitably commit their atrocities.

When each young boy goes into the seminary, he has already been told he is “special", chosen by

god, and way above all others. He is fed that daily line for years as he lives with other repressed boys

in an unnatural and unwholesome environment. By the time he is ordained, he is full of his own

superiority, even told his hands are "sacred"  and has a frighteningly  distorted view of life. 

He is then let loose on the unsuspecting “sheep”he is to shepherd!

Years and years of cruel fearful indoctrination of human beings have provided the church with a

bottomless supply of prey.THAT is how children have been groomed! Far more powerful and cruel than any lost puppy!

The church will not change. Nor does it see there is any necessity for it to change! It considers

itʼs role simply as being for the “glory of god”.(If they actually believe in god!)

They have never been, or even pretended to be, a philanthropic organisation. 

Human beings are, in their eyes, here on this earth simply to serve that god in order to gain a

reward in the next life. Of course they will also say that the only route to that next life is through the church. What an incredibly clever way of keeping people afraid and subservient!

Individual happiness is not their agenda, and therefore individual unhappiness is of no consequence.

The catholic church is like a gigantic Petri dish filled with agar, in which bacteria can grow

unhindered. It would be hard to get an antibiotic to deal with such a proliferation of nasties. With

such aggressive bacteria, I would suggest the only answer would be to burn the Petri dish along with its toxic contents!