sort of forgiveness but not

[jacats]

I have a question...
If you found out your abuser person had moved on (and lets assume you can somehow be sure they arent abusing anyone now) and was having a good life, however you gonna define that, maybe a job or kids or whatever, would you be okay with that? Angry? Happy? Would you want them to be suffering? Would you not care or want to know what they were up to?
Would it make a difference how old they were when they abused you? Would 12 be different from 20 be different from 50?
Would you rather they sort of uhhhhh reform? Or would you rather eternal misery for them?
I know forgiving isn't the same as wanting good things for someone, but maybe I mean do you or would you actively resent the fact that life has gone on for your abuser and maybe they are happy?
I'm not sure if the thought pisses me off or not, but i was considering it today. So my answer is I Don't Know lol

 

[Joshua Growing]

I think it is such an individual thing forgiveness, its tough call

 

[LoneWolfX]

-

 

[Greg56]

One of the things we can't assume or judge is that they don't live their life without any guilt or shame. The reason I say this, is that I was abused by my brother. I had contact(sometimes daily) with him until his death(40 some odd years later). I never knew or could tell what his thoughts were regarding the abuse. I personally hope that they feel at least some regret and/or shame. Otherwise I don't think about and couldn't care less about them.

Perhaps in their mind it was "normal". Perhaps they live their life in denial. Perhaps if they've gone to therapy and they've been ask to write one of those absurd letters not to be sent. You know the one...the same letter therapist ask us to write. Giving themselves some kind of redemption. Who knows?

Greg

 

[SubtleStuff]

Hi Jacats,

I have a question...
I know forgiving isn't the same as wanting good things for someone, but maybe I mean do you or would you actively resent the fact that life has gone on for your abuser and maybe they are happy?

I think if they were to just go happily on their way without fully realizing the extent of the damage they've done to me, I would resent that. Part of my healing process has been to communicate what happened to me to the person who did it and those who were indirectly involved by sharing the same values.

I suppose if I didn't feel safe relaying that information to them, then I would resent it if I hadn't yet fully recovered myself.

If I had fully recovered and was living a satisfied life, then there would be no resentment on my part.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

S

 

[genedebs]

My older brother, my first abuser, is very sick. He always thought it was normal because, though he could not remember the experience, he must have been abused before he began abusing me and my younger brother.

He had a successful life as a lawyer. Made lots of money. was quite self satisfied. In addition to the sexual abuse there were many acts of physical abuse.

His life was troubled he had grand mal siezures. He had his thyroid removed nd he had a borderline persoality disorder. He did not ever think about what it did to us, only how it was not traumatic for him, and "normal."

He finds whores to be with, he once told me how pleased he was that he had fucked 53 different women in a year. He spends most of his life in Asia I think with the same whore. I don't think he sees his grand children, daughter is dead.

I have tried to forgive him. But during my 9th step he told me that the many of the accidents were purposeful and how he inticed me to start smoking because it would hurt me.

So WTF

 

[Barkabus]

Wow Gene,

It doesn't get much worse than that. Total denial. I'd say there is some egomaniac narcissism and a complete lack of empathy going on there too. Your brother sounds like a dangerous man.

I'm so sorry,
Mike

 

[Esterio]

Hi Gene

I am sorry that you and your brothers experience abuse from your older brother and he doesn't see it the same way. Isn't that the way the abusers have a good life while we struggle. Then they continue to abuse people until one day there time is up and the world gets to be a little better place. I am sorry if that is a little harsh I believe it is the way I would have felt if my older brother had been that way with me. I would have a hard time to forgive someone that has continuing to abuse through his whole life. He should have been there to help and protect his younger brothers.

Esterio

 

[Tom E.]

I hope my abusers "saw the light" so to speak. The sexual bullies & especially the "therapist". I wonder how many other scared & sensitive boys & young men he assaulted, using his position as a caring trustworthy gay counselor.I have to try & completely forgive them if I am to get any better... gotta forgive myself too, even though I'm not really to blame for being shy, introverted & easily intimidated & manipulated.

 

[Dan99]

Interesting topic. I don't think much about the molester who abused me any more. He's disappeared. He may be dead, I suppose. I suspect he'd found a hiding hole in the church. I know he molested many other boys besides me. I know at least two of them killed themselves.

I hope if he's alive he has been stopped or found a way himself to stop hurting children, even if it's meant killing himself, which I know he thought about. I don't hope that he has killed himself out of some sense of justice or revenge, because there will never be justice. It can't happen. You can't undo or make up for what's been done. So I really have no wishes for him personally, either for good or ill.

In the last year or so, I've really come to understand forgiveness much better. It's not for him, that I forgive, it's for me. For a long time I had a notion about revenge. If I got terminal cancer and had six months to live, I might track him down and kill him. But what does that do? It makes me into a murderer. Provoked, perhaps, but still a murderer. It reduces my humanity.

To a lesser degree, wasting time wishing him ill also reduces my humanity. I do wish he'd been caught and stopped. But if I fill myself up with hatred for him, I'm just extending his power and amplifying the damage he's already done. Imagine what I can do with all that energy if I just quit hating and say, I forgive. I reclaim that energy and redirect in a way I want, rather than letting it be directed by a rotten pedophile.

 

[Esterio]

I know some that are doing well that have abused or raped others. It does not seem fair to me that they have a good life and those that they attacked are screwed for life. I would think at one time death was to good for them. Now I have change my thoughts regarding them.

I watch a house burn to the ground with the most violent person I ever met. I was celebrating his death in the street as the house burnt to the ground and was asked by a cop to leave. Now I feel bad for being glad he died an awful death. Hard to figure out why, maybe I just shouldn't be as bad as he was.

I am a better person than he ever was. On the other hand I went to visit a man that was a steady trick for me from about the age off 15 till into my 20's in hospital where he was dying. He was about 20 years my senior and never hurt me or did anything i was not wanting. We became friends after. He was happy I came to say good bye to him.

Life is confusing
Esterio

 

[JamesM]

D

 

[Lenz]

For me, forgivenesss means something like:

giveness unto the ends of things.

 

[Ceremony]

The boy who molested me is the one I wonder about? I'm not sure that he was really aware. He must have seen my feme appearance as an invitation. So many have tested me for that. This is the young me, but men, and women still wonder if I'm gay. My meekness, my demure to conflict.


...........



I know there was a cultural thing that my rapists deludedly applied toward their actions. I've never told that before, I have sought to avoid a sweeping statement about men from the country they're from. The problem is, it's prevelant, to accept relations with boys and men in their culture, but not as if they're partners.

It hurt me for all my adult life, that the above is true. I'm sorry for their boys. I think it's what they do, so they do it. To Them, I was just another feme looking boy, one like they've had in their experiences.



I hadn't any, so the rape made my situation into survival.


I have thought, I wish them very bad lives. I still do.

 

[tbkkfile]

I was speaking to someone recently online who understood that for me forgiveness was how I dealt with my abuse, and in turn I understood that hatred and anger was how he dealt with his. Neither of us judged each other as we both understood how differently we each dealt with our past.

 

[Lenz]

In a legal way, I agree with what you are saying. Abusers have rights, even as they breach the rights of others.

But I would rather predators and pederasts be called out one by one than have their crimes undervalued or unenforced. I believe in a legal, evidence based process because the shame of the act is so much more base than the standing these criminals exploit.

I believe in operating by the law, and supporting a system that will not flinch before the rights of children to their own bodies because, as things go, this legal and lawful apparatus is currently insufficient, never proactive, and generally unable to prevent this sort of crime. Nor has it ever been sufficient, and the burden rests with the victim, always and finally, who are made familiar when they would be distant and different had they been free.

It is the victim's by definition to receive the punishment that the other ought to endure, but isn't. This is what they continue to experience in suffering, and which weakens them at the soul. And so it is not okay to say, as my mother said to me, "Millions of children have been raped as you have, what can I do about it?"

It is not okay to say that another's act of violence upon me is merely nature, nor is it okay that there are the corresponding millions and millions of rapists in the world, nor would it be okay to normalize the healing path of survivors given whatever statistics ... 1 in 5 = Millions and Millions. It would only be a coping path.

Without looking at this sort of crime as an absolute sovereign breach of authority, one is arguing for a lower definition of the very human species, and a more base understanding of the human experience that would effect all humankind, even the innocent and unaffected. We would all shrug off the status of Homo Sapien Sapien, and accept the rank of homo rapien.

I know that's harsh, but these "people" would be deniers of the consenting bond in matters of (identity), sexuality and reproduction. It would change everything about the "human experience" to forgive or normalize incest, rape, or abduction simply because these cultural limitations continue to be defied.

These are the limits of forgiveness too, and forgiveness beyond may be in itself unforgivable because the only justice for such experience should not be to accept that it is a normal experience, that other's have been through what I have been through. So oftten, life itself (after a soul affliction or csa) can seem to only a matter of coping strategies.

I don't mean to sound in anyway coarse or hostile, but I can't be too forgiving either. I have been forced now to flesh out the paradigm of the fallen, and I think civilization demands more than original sin to explain the acts of the giants and monsters who lurk in the forest, and drink from the river Eden.

That's the perspective I hold but I was raped by a man who created maybe hundreds of victims like myself under the cover of his peity and zeal before "jesus".

If there be a God, I say, may this man be damned.


(*thanks for the time to edit..)