Bringing Abuse Out of the Darkness
- hoadleyc70
- Apr 7
- 4 min read
A young teen in my family was groomed for sexual abuse by a relative in-law. If you’ve ever read or heard an account of sexual abuse grooming those closest to the victim might say something like, “There were some things that seemed a little odd, but we didn’t think about it too much because this was a long-time trusted adult in the child’s life. We would have never guessed these things were going on.” Abuse, especially when children are involved, is a tough and uncomfortable topic to think about. For parents, it is on the short list of parents’ worst nightmare. Family members not directly involved and society in general has a difficult time processing stories of abuse. Again, worst nightmare scenario and no one wants to believe that such a deception and harmful actions can happen to them or theirs. Most of all, no one wants to believe that a person THEY trust could possibly be an abusive person. Denial and avoidance is common. Unfortunately, this works for perpetrators and against victims. That’s bad. Really bad.
Abuse is always about power over another for personal gain, not necessarily physically or materially. It disregards any possible harm to the targeted person. The harm is part of satisfying the need for power. It’s what makes it abuse. The harm can by physical, but it can also be psychological, financial, sexual, digital, verbal, intellectual or spiritual, etc. The adjective that precedes “abuse” is the method. Perpetrators of any type of abuse either gain people’s trust or use the trust given them along with a great deal of deception and coercion to enact and hide the abuse. I can’t emphasize enough the amount of deception used to avoid discovery. Identity of abusers run the gamut and come from all demographics. You can’t tell who they are based on how they look. Grooming for abuse can take place for years. It’s the gradual process that sets the stage for increasingly harmful behaviors. It is part of the abuse.
Deception is an important component of grooming and abuse. A huge deception is giving the impression that certain activities are taking place that are represented as beneficial to the victim while at the same time engaging in other activities that benefit the perpetrator but causes great harm to the other person. Along the way there are lots of other deceptions to create the opportunities and to hide the underlying story from everyone. The deception is so ingrained, a therapist told me they have a difficult time knowing if what perpetrators say is real or subconscious deception.
Abuse will go as long it is allowed by the victim or outside entities. It is only when those things in darkness or shadows are brought into the light can they be seen and addressed. Only then do those odd things begin to make sense and all the pieces start falling into place. Information that doesn’t connect with anything else in the brain just sits there, waiting to connect to some neuro path. Only after the grooming for sexual abuse of my young relative came into the light did all the pieces of the understory connect and the problem truly addressed. The young person tried to handle it on their own but finally went to an actual trustworthy adult when things were escalating and rapidly getting worse. Something to be thankful for! Still, the psychological damage was significant with touch and trust becoming long-term issues.
Some people believe you would prevent abuse by not trusting anyone but distrusting everyone is mentally unhealthy. We can be aware though of what is said by a person and those around them and be aware of their actions. We can pay attention and listen to people who are on the receiving end of words and actions who might be demonstrating distress.
Going back to Trump’s 1st campaign and presidency, survivors of abuse recognized and were often triggered by the behaviors they heard and saw in Trump. Their ability to recognize this because of a personal experience of abuse is an unfortunately fortunate benefit. Those being groomed by Trump were people whose needs and innermost desires matched what they heard from the candidate and president. We entrust our elected officials with power to work on our behalf. People’s trust of Donald Trump went to the level of ignoring inappropriate, immoral, illegal things brought into the light. That was likely part of the grooming process. It was Trump’s deceptions. It was easy for them to accept what many of us saw as wrong when it was explained away or re-assigned as someone else’s fault. What we see on the surface seems so good to some he obviously has people’s interests at heart. We naturally do not want to face difficult truths. It is very tempting to use denial to avoid having to deal with uncomfortable truths but at what cost?
Eventually everything that happens in darkness is brought into the light. Let’s deal with it. We can also be thankful for expanding our understanding of abuse so we can recognize it better in the future.
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