Thoughts on how we were groomed

Thoughts on how we were groomed
Jeff,

you know how much I care about you. It should show in that today is my wedding day and I'm taking the time to focus on you and post my thoughts and feelings.

sharing your story out in this forum had moose, and myself, smiling from ear to ear. Why would we be smiling over such a tragic story? Because we know how HUGE of a incredibly brave step it was for you. We always believed in you and supported you the best that we could. We are extremely proud of you!

you are going to make it Jeff. You are going to make it.

love ya, brother.
 
Hey Obi

CONGRATULATIONS on your wedding day and what should be the happiest day of your life. You should both have a long and happy life together. Thanks for taking the time out on such a hectic day.

Send my love to Pete.

Thanks

Peace, Rainbows, Love, Healing & Hope
 
I had a session with my T today and we talked about a very important subject that a lot of people might not consider or thought of as grooming. What was happening in our lives as a child that we should fall victim to the perp or the person we loved (which was my judo instructor). In my case the grooming was the way I was treated at home. There was no love from my parents and life with my mother was always an argument or beating and my father never mixed in to anything, he just sat and read his books. We never played ball or rolled around on the grass, we did none of that. Over the years they never came to any judo tournaments, never came to any important school tournaments. I didn't have to be beaten bloody to go find a perp, just leave out the love was enough to get me looking for an alternative. Basically they were grooming me that I should not be part of their lives and therefore I did not want to be part of theirs. So I went and found someone who would spend time with me, see me as a child and not an object to have around the house, to be seen and not heard. I sought out that someone who had interest in me, would play with me, would take me places and love me.

If I would have had a loving relationship with my parents I would have never gone hunting for a replacement and I would have learnt from my parents what was right and what was wrong. Instead I learnt what was right and wrong from my judo instructor. He taught me that a father had sex with his son and that if I loved him I would go to the johns and go to the orgies that he would take me to. I loved him and part of me still loves him, that is why I cannot call him an abuser. He is two people to me, the one I loved and the other that sold me.

We see again and again that there is usually something wrong with life at home, the real grooming starts at home. This is so true when one or both of the parents are not available in the child's life. Not only does the perp seek out vulnerable children but the child will in some way seek out someone that will fill the void in his life.

Peace, Rainbows, Love, Healing & Hope
 
As Jay had mentioned is that he came from a loving family, but this was the good part. the bad part of this is that due to the culture or environment of the day the parents unknowingly gave the permission to groom and abuse the child where authority rules. It doesn't matter whether private, parochial or public school is involved. The parent is under the impression that their child is safe.

I would hope that today parents can enlighten their children to know more about when the line of authority is crossed and personal privacy is entered then it was in previous generations.

Peace, Rainbows, Love, Healing & Hope
 
Hey Jeff,

I really agree with what you have been posting. As I said, nothing ever happens in isolation, and that goes for CSA. The circumstances can be due to something specific like living with a perpetrator, or the path to CSA can be made up of a lot many elements that create a scenario in which a child might become the target of a pedophile.

I know in my case, I lived with my first perpetrator who was my biological father, so there really wasnt any escape. I was in the immediate environment, and he took advantage of that.

When I was abused by my coach, there were a lot of internal and external elements that came into play. I had already been abused, so it created a lot of internal dynamics that would determine my interactions with men and what I would perceive as normal would be already skewed. After my biological father abused me, he terminated parental rights and left the picture. My mother remarried, but my stepfather was not the sort to play a lot with kids. He was a provider and very generous, but not the type to spend a lot of time with a young boy or nurture him in any way. So, even though I had a stepfather, I was in many ways still searching for a father figure that might spend time with me or do things with me. My coach sensed that and moved into that role in order to take advantage of me.

Another thing that really played a large part in my abuse was where we lived. After my biological father left and my mother remarried my stepfather, we moved out of the country. In many ways it was a clean break, a reboot of sorts. Things werent perfect, but I was able to leave the monster that was my father behind. In a new country, in a new world, I really flourished. I made easy friends, did well in school, and had a great life in many ways. I still had my issues due to the abuse of my father, but I was able to move forward and put a lot of my problems on the shelf.

After a few years, my family moved back to the US. I was excited, but it was not a good homecoming. I had developed an accent from the move and my young age. At the school I went to, it was not an asset. I was isolated, made fun of, and tormented because of it. I had absolutely no friends in school, and was really lonely and dejected. I also had a teacher that had an attitude about my education. I was a bit ahead of the other students because I had learned a lot of what she was teaching in the other countrys school system. It was just a fact. But, she treated me like I thought I was special because of it, like it was a personal insult to her. I was just a kid, but she made it seem like I was implying that she was a bad teacher. She put me at a table in the back of the room, isolating me from my peers and making fun of me if I ever got an answer wrong.

At home, I was quiet and reserved and did not mention the stuff with my friends or my teacher. It really impacts you when a parent leaves you, even if that parent is a monster like my biological father was. You start to get the idea that if you cant make a person as bad as your abusive father love you or want you around, then surely nobody else could. So, I didnt make any waves. I never argued, never talked back. I was a model kid for a long time. I didnt want my mother to leave me. This was a very deeply rooted fear for me at this point. My mother didnt know what was going on. They both worked and life was busy. Plus it was 70s and people let their kids go in ways they dont these days. There wasnt a national dialogue forming around abuse at all.

So, it was with this combination of issues, and others, that I first entered the gymnasium. I made no effort to make friends, because I was conditioned at that point to think no one would like me because of school. I laid low and did my routines and exercises. I am sure to an adult, it was easy to see that I had problems. But, I didnt know that. I just kept focused and had started a journey to a very internalized world. So, I probably was very visible to a perpetrator that I didnt have a lot of fatherly attention, no connections with any peers or friends, had no self-esteem, and was begging for adult attention.

Once the abuse started, I went deeper and deeper into myself, and have not fully emerged yet, after all of these years. It was like I was one of those people buried by the dust of the eruption of Vesuvius in Pompeii. The me that was was buried under years and years of dust and sediment from a blast that completely destroyed my world.

After my abuse by coach, we again moved rather quickly to a new state. That move I still count as a blessing. Again, like when we left the country years before, I was presented with a new life, a new world. Another chance to reboot. I was still a mess. I left the town of my abuse with a shattered psyche, demolished self-esteem and sense of trust, and a chronic bedwetter. But, my mind was able to put it on the shelf again. Life returned to as much a sense of normalcy as it could. I still lived under the rubble caused by the abuse, but the ash had stopped falling. I think that is what allowed me to bury it deep down inside, not to surface again until decades later.

So, I agree with you Jeff, there is so much more to grooming than some of the things we encountered from our perpetrator. There are so many factors that go into setting the stage for this to happen. They were all out of my control. Asking it to be any different is like asking that kid I was to stop the volcano from erupting. Quite an impossible task. As I have said before, some things just cannot be stopped. Be they natural disasters, illness and disease, or things that other people do to us that we are powerless to stop.

I have stopped blaming myself because if I really think about it, there is no way I could have stopped it. I was just up against something way bigger than myself. And I can take some of these rocks and rubble off my back as I work through that.
 
Hey Todd,

Yeah it seems that your bio didn't have to groom you at all. You belonged to him and he did what he wanted.

I see all the events from your bio to your stepfather to your teacher and peers groomed you into isolation and the need for fatherly attention and that's how your coach was able to step into your life so easily.

Then grooming can also be a list of events or the child's environment that sets him up for the perp to step in. The perp doesn't even have to work hard to get the child.

This is what happened to me, I also needed a father figure and the first time my judo instructor acknowledged that I existed I would do anything to be with him. All he had to do was open up his arms and I was his. I wasn't going to let a little thing like turning tricks make me leave him.

Peace, Rainbows, Love, Healing & Hope
 
Todd,

Your story is painful to read, but so important in getting out the message of how evil some people are. It took a great deal of courage to write it, and you must possess great strength in order to compose your story.

The fact that you're able to remember so many details is indicative of how the CSA burns itself into one's brain, never to leave. I've heard of survivors being told to get over it, but your story shows that is impossible. You just have to learn to live with it. I wish you the best. You are helping so many people by telling your story. I hope, in some way, that knowing that is a source of comfort to you. You deserve our admiration for speaking out about CSA and helping others to heal. Good luck to you.

Dave
 
lapchinj -

You are to be commended for your courage and bravery to put the whole horrible story out here. It's so alarming to read and to realize the depravity of some humans, and to think that we are in the same human species as them.
Reading is so depressing, but at the same time thanks for sharing it with us.

As I see the sheer horror of it all that something like this could happen to an innocent child just trying to cope with the situation you're faced with, two thoughts keep coming to me. How fortunate, (even though I didn't think so when it was happening), I was that the abusers didn't resort to such gruesome physical force. But also, as you mentioned that grooming actually begins in the home with absent or uncaring parents, I'm so glad I was involved in my two boys lives. If there was a game, or practice, or event to go to I wanted to be a part of their lives. If this prevented the possibility of any future grooming of them I'm glad I inserted myself in their lives so much even if, as they got older, they thought I was too involved.

Thanks for your story. It's certainly been a revelation, and a great help to me,

CJ
 
Hey CJ

If my parents were involved with me then they would have seen a change in me by 14. That year of my life really fucked me up, they would have had to see that there was something wrong with me. I know I would have been able to tell if one of my kids were as involved with drugs as I was, that is something impossible to miss. I think that it was November just shy of my 15th birthday that I tried a second time to kill myself within a 3 month period. I had gone to sleep with a knife tied to my wrist figuring that while I was sleeping I would roll over onto it or something and kill myself. What happened was that it cut me on my wrist and I woke up from the pain. There was a great deal of blood all over the sheet and mattress. When my mother came home that spring and found the bloody sheet and looked at the mattress (I tried cleaning both) she blew a gut, all she did was yell at me for staining the bed and not going into the bathroom. She didn't ask me how I cut myself or what I did to stop the bleeding. I had called my judo instructor and he took care of me, I didn't call my mother in Florida to help me. It is impossible that if my parents looked into my eyes when I was 14-15 that they wouldn't have seen something wrong. I was all doped up, I weighed around 100 pounds.

You can see from both Todd's and my stories that the home environment groomed us both and is one of the main reasons that we were able to be picked up by pedophiles. The kid is looking for the love that the pedophile is offering him. I stayed with my judo instructor for 7 years. And I even turned tricks for him when I came home on leave from the USAF, he was my parent. If a child is in little league go watch the games, if it's the boy scouts then go to whatever gathering they have. Parents have to be in the lives of their children. And you are a great parent for being in your kids lives. I guess to love your kid is the reason we have them.

Peace, Rainbows, Love, Healing & Hope
 
Dave - Thanks for the strong show of support. It is hard to tell the story, but harder over the years to keep it inside only. So, giving voice to it in this forum has been very healing.

There is no "getting over it" in my opinion. I hate that phrase. There is just "getting better living with it." We do our work, we build our strength, we build a support network, we learn coping strategies. And we heal as we do all of this.

CJ - You bring up an interesting point about parental involvement in youth sports. One of the things about gymnastics back when I took it in the mid-70s is that parents were never allowed at gymnastics practice. The rule is that they are too much of a distraction, and that they often cannot handle seeing their children in pretty precarious and potentially dangerous routines on the equipment. Also, if a kid were to see his parent out of the corner of his eye during practice, it could really cause an accident if it was distracting enough.

Such was the philosophy then. So, that is what my mother was told when she took me to lessons. That she couldn't stay. It all makes logical sense in a world without predators. And I have looked around online at gymnastics studio's rules, and some of them practice this rule to this day. Some of them have guarantees that kids will never be left alone with an adult. I have seen those disclaimers as well, which is really good to see in terms of awareness and dialogue about CSA. But, that did not exist back in the days I was in the sport as a young boy. This practice made gymnastics back in the day such an effective place for a pedophile like my coach to hide.

It does my heart good to hear about your involvement in your boys' lives to such a positive extent. Always better to err on the side of too much involvement than too little. I love to hear stories about survivors that are good parents. That is really putting your experience to work in a really positive way. That has to feel good.

Jeff - It is clear you did not have any meaningful involvement with you parents. I am so sorry to hear that. You deserved better than the family you got. I can see how your feelings for your abuser are really reinforced by the lack of a better home life. Both your parents and your judo instructor did horrible things to you. The difference is your judo instructor also showed you love and cared for you in the absence of your parents. I can see how you would drift toward him as a parental figure based on the attention he gave you and how he adopted you into his world. I did the same thing, putting up with the gradual grooming and initial abuse by coach with the snippets of love and affection he offered to an attention-starved boy. Yeah, I really get where you are coming from with that one. I wish I didn't, but I do.

I echo your advice that parents should be involved in the lives of their kids. Show up at meetings, show up unexpectedly, and ask a lot of questions. That would really help.
 
Hey Todd

...show up unexpectedly...
This is really very important and easy to do

Peace, Rainbows, Love, Healing & Hope
 
Howdy, my fraternal brothers.

My brother, Jeff, once again you show your courage in trying to come to terms with yourself.
The more we talk about it, it seems to release all our shame, guilt & pain.

Here's something from a few years back when i was in the healing circle GBTLQ.

I was talking about Ralph, the man that i chose to be the parent(s) that i didn't have.
I genuinely fell in love with him & i feel that he did love me too. I call it tainted love from him.

Anyway one of the guys there put it to me this way.

Pete, you got love from Ralph.
Ralph, got your body.
You both got what you were looking for.
So how could you call that abuse? WTF?

I've never forgotten that safe room encounter.

Wishing all my fraternal brothers here well in healing.

"I will take that lost boys hand, and i will lead him from the depths of darkness, into the sunshine, forever into eternity."
As he is me.

Pete..Irishmoose
 
Hey Pete

Pete, you got love from Ralph.
Ralph, got your body.
You both got what you were looking for.
So how could you call that abuse? WTF?
Yeah WTF!!!! That was here on MS????? :mad:

Peace, Rainbows, Love, Healing & Hope
 
Pete,

Pete, you got love from Ralph
Ralph, got your body
You both got what you're looking for
So how could you call that abuse? WTF?



:mad: :mad: I've got to add my own WTF. :mad: :mad:
 
This might seem weird but grooming didn't have to be a long drawn out process taking months or years but rather a very short process taking only a few minutes. Even though I was taken to many johns in the 7 years I was in the game I was recently thinking that each time I was taken to a john's apartment or he took me someplace there was some type of grooming going on so I would be more at ease. Yes there were johns that just took my clothes off and went to do whatever he wanted without caring about if I was calm or not. If I was taken to a john's apartment he might have something appetizing to eat. When I was younger (12-14) that might mean pizza and coke in which some type of drugs were mixed in. When I was a little older that might mean doing weed, hash or some pills. But there would always be some way that a john would come on to me so that I would not be scared or apprehensive of what was going to happen. That grooming might just be as simple as him relaying to me that there would not be any anal or rough sex. There might be something as simple as sitting next to me while we watched TV and he would start playing with my hair and telling me how beautiful a boy I am.

Peace, Rainbows, Love, Healing & Hope
 
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I was thinking for a very long time that the fact that I'm gay had a lot to do with me being groomed. Did being gay make it easier or did it not make any difference? If I wasn't gay would I have hated the things that I loved? I loved papasan who was my surrogate father and lover. My gay friends were in the same game as I was, either with papasan or another pimp. Even though I realize today that papasan was a pimp I still loved him and I still have a very deep feeling for him.

Was it the fact that I was gay that made it easier for me to be groomed or was it that I needed the father figure I found in papasan.

Was it the fact that I was gay that made it possible to stay a prostitute for 7 years starting at age 12?

Was it the fact that I was gay that made me stay in the game and even liked the way I was treated by some johns?

Was it the fact that I was gay the reason that I thought kids had sex with their fathers?

These thoughts and similar ones have been on my mind for a quit a long time. Would I have hated being with papasan if I was straight? I see that most people here hate their abusers. I really don't think of papasan as an abuser but rather my father and someone I looked up to.

If I wasn't gay would my past be any different?

Peace, Rainbows, Love, Healing & Hope
 
Jeff,

I def cannot answer these questions for you but they prey on my mind, a lot.

here is what I know about me.

The fact I needed someone to pay any sort of attention to me allowed me to be groomed.

The fact I was gay and did not know what that meant but KNEW being a faggot was bad allowed what happened to me happen.

The fact I was gay, the fact my sexuality was manipulated by the mechanism of abuse, allowed my abuse to continue.

The norm of my existence influenced my thoughts on the norms of the existences of others.

If I wasn't gay I think I'd have had a much easier time.

Don't know about you. But, the above are my truths.
 
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Hey Cthulhu

It's interesting that you mention that you knew being called a faggot was bad. Growing up in the '60s I thought that a faggot was a curse word or just plain name calling. I thought the definition of faggot was an anti war protester with long hair. I had long hair but I never thought about the war in Vietnam so I figured it was just a bunch of name calling.

Being pimped for 7 years starting at the age of 12 and the fact that I was gay created an environment that let me stay in the game longer than if I wasn't gay. I don't know if you mean something like this where you hung around longer than you would have if you weren't gay. Or just the opposite that you were persecuted for being gay. I was madly in love with my judo instructor and considered him to be my surrogate father. Being sexualized since I was 9 (I don't remember my life before that) I thought that normal fathers had sex with their kids. I thought that liking other boys and men and having sex with them was normal.

There were johns that I liked, there were johns that were gross and of course there were johns that were just plain rough. I figure that if I wasn't gay then I would have thought of it all as gross and never have gotten involved with him. So being gay opened the way to being pimped.

I remember being bullied in high school along with my best friend there. I do remember another 2 kids but I don't remember their names or what they looked like. we thought that as we got older we would start to get interested in girls and the bullying would stop.

So my being gay was both good and bad for me. I had a great relationship with my judo instructor and the other where I was bullied in high school.

Thanks for your input :)

Peace, Rainbows, Love, Healing & Hope
 
I was thinking about the whole subject of being groomed. What I came up with is not that, in my case, that papasan was good to me or that he had given me love that was missing in my life. I think that the main grooming was that my parents were not interested in me. My mother was always an argument and my father was like talking to a door knob. I think that this was the major ingredient that let papasan into my life. He was good to me and we never had an argument.

I always felt that I was never part of a family, I always felt that I was an object that was needed to show how great my parents were. Whenever my mother would kiss me I wondered why she would do something like that. There must have been a reason because she never really got to close to me. My father was in his own world.

I think that it was my parents that drove me to find papasan. He was what a parent was supposed to be. Life was not an argument anymore it was enjoyable with papasan. So I look at the grooming not so much as papasan loving me but that my parents were cold or always an argument. I would rather look at grooming as my parents throwing me out the window and papasan catching me.

As for sex I think that at 9 years old I was sleeping with my friend Lanny and his sister was taking pictures of us. I saw nothing wrong with being with Lanny in the same bed.

I don't think that papasan had to do too much to groom me because my parents were responsible for pushing me further and further away from them. I had to find an alternative and I found that in papasan. Easy, a no brainer. My father never kissed me and my mother I had to kiss because that was what was expected of me. If I didn't it was an argument that I was "not a nice kid". Papasan was the first person to kiss and hug me and I really think that he meant every bit of it.

Grooming wasn't papasan taking me away from my parents by rather my parents pushing me away into the hands of papasan. Papasan was always super nice to me and I still believe that we loved each other as a father and son should love each other. It was never that papasan was taking me away from my parent but rather my parents pushing me into papasans hands. I loved him and I still think that he plays a big part in my life. He is the first person that ever showed a true interest in my life. I loved him and I thought that being naked with him was natural, still do.

I know that people will ask me what about him setting me up with johns for seven years. I still have to sort that out but the johns were never abusive to me in that I would get a beating or be raped. I know it's hard to explain. Looking into this deeper would bring me into a twilight zone that I'm not prepared to answer except for the fact that the johns never beat me or anything like that. I didn't feel obligated to papasan to be with the johns it came sort of naturally.

Peace, Rainbows, Love, Healing & Hope
 
Jeff,
After reading your post, I almost can't breathe. I am in the midst of a criminal trial against my perp and although he didn't film me, he was found to have thousands of pics of boys on his computer. I haven't been able to shirk my own sense of responsibility in my own abuse, but when I read others posts, like yours, I say to myself, "that guy Jeff can't blame himself at all". Thanks for your post. I haven't been feeling all that great about my situation, but I am feeling better about taking down a child porn user/perpetrator. Keep your head up man.
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