Clara Hinton – a modern day Heroine

It’s because of comments like this that I continue to write….Never would I consider myself a heroine of any sort, but I consider every one of you that has lived under the hand of abuse my hero. Every time God uses my words in some small way to help a person break free fom the cycle of abuse — whether physical, emotiona, or spiritual — I know that my past now is being used for good.
Let’s continue to speak out. Let’s continue to break free. Let’s continue to be advocates against abuse!
Love,
Clara

Miss Spirit

 For the past few months I have been avidly following the blog of Clara Hinton – Married to a Pedophile.  And although I have never met Clara in person, I am so in awe and inspired by her courage and spirit. She is also an amazing mother to eleven children – her son Chris, described her as a saint! She also has lots more grand children. Over the years, Clara suffered terrible psychological abuse at the hands of her preacher/pedophile husband, John. At the same time, he led a secret life which involved sexually abusing children in his parish. Clara’s abuse lasted for around 40 years until she plucked up the courage to leave. Of course that was not the end of the story because controlling, abusive men never just let their wives walk away peacefully or seek a win: win compromise. They just can’t do it and it is…

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Clara Hinton – a modern day Heroine

Never in a million years would I consider myself a heroine — ever, but it is humbling to know that God is using my past to help others.

Thank you all for continuing to read my story and thank you for expressing your stories, your journeys, and your questions about what to do now.  I’ll be adding resources and ways for you to get help to the blog.

You all are my heroes!!!!  Someone I’ve never met — someone I don’t know has written this story — sharing part of her life.  Please read, and hopefully her words will encourage you to speak out — even a little bit.  Every time that you speak out, you dilute the power an abuser has over you!

Clara Hinton – a modern day Heroine.

It’s because of things like this happening that I continue to write — praying over every word asking God to help me speak the truth in a way that will help others break free from the iron hand of abuse — whether it is emotional, physical, sexual, or all of different ways a person can be abused!

Love,

Clara

We’ve Moved! I Promise You…..this is the last time!

Dear Readers, I promise you this is the last time I will move this blog.  Thanks for your patience and understanding!   You won’t want to miss even one post!

“Finding A Healing Place” can now be found here:

See you at our new location!  

Clara

Married to a Pedophile: Our First New Year’s Eve

A very warm welcome to those of you who are here.  I appreciate the continued interest and response coming from so many people who are interested in keeping our children safe from child molesters.  While I do not ever claim to be an expert on this topic, I do have years of experience with knowing how a pedophile plans and works so hard to groom, manipulate, and eventually molest children.  Unknown to me until two years ago, I was married to a practicing pedophile.  There were definitely “red flags” all throughout our marriage, but I didn’t have a clue what these indicators meant.  The sole purpose of this blog is to educate you so that you can be aware of things to look out for that might be red flags that you’re seeing, too, so that we can keep our children safe.  Education is the most powerful first step we can take against child predators!

If you are new to this blog, I suggest you begin by reading from the very beginning of my story.

Last week we took a bit of a break from the sequence of this story to interject some important information about a letter I recently received from John while he currently is serving time in prison.  Most of you “got it” — you understood that even as a pedophile sits in prison aware that he is there because he has committed the most vile acts against a child, his mind is still on one thing:  little children.  In fact, as I shared with you, John was bold in his request for photos of little children, promising “not to have those naughty thoughts” because he has been forgiven and is now “free.”  Hopefully and prayerfully, nobody will fall into this trap of manipulation that he continues to use.  Please, do NOT send this man photos of any children to be exploited, shared, and used for self-stimulation and gratification!

Now, to continue on with our story, let’s pick up where we left off.  Christmas was a disaster — lots of heartache and tears.  But, I really believed that redemption would come with New Year’s Eve.

By this time, I was just days away from our first baby being born.  In fact, our due date was January 23.  As is true for almost every woman alive, I was looking forward to spending a wonderful New Year’s Eve with my husband.  This was our very first time to bring in the New Year as a married couple so I planned a special Pennsylvania “good luck” meal — mashed potatoes, pork roast, and sauer kraut. I wanted to make this a super, extra special night for John to remember!  Since we were living below poverty level at the time, I knew there wouldn’t be anything real festive, but….I thought it would be so much fun after our meal together to drive around Oklahoma City and look at the last of the Christmas lights and tinsel and simply enjoy spending some time together talking about the coming year and the addition of our baby.  You have no idea how happy just the thought of spending this time together meant to me!

Two nights before New Year’s eve John hit me with the news.  “Dear, I have to tell you something and you’re probably not going to be happy.”  *Note:  I hated to be called “Dear” — I don’t know why, but I didn’t like it.  Maybe it’s because I knew it almost always was followed by some sort of bad news.

“There’s going to be a big New Year’s Eve party for the teens at church.  I’ve been working on the plans for this party for several weeks now, and I think it’s best if you don’t go.  It’s going to be all night long, and your back will be killing you.  You won’t feel good and I won’t have time to run you home and then go back to the party.”

Honestly, I can still remember when John had “the talk” with me un-inviting me to spend New Year’s Eve with him.  I know what dress I had on, and I can tell you where I was standing in the tiny kitchen when he threw that dart ever so swiftly at me.

“What do you mean?  Why can’t I be with you?  I want to spend New Year’s Eve with YOU!!!  This is our first one together, and I don’t want to sit here in this apartment by myself.  Please can’t I go?”

I feel humiliated telling this story.  I really do.  Somehow it makes me feel so unattractive and repulsive.  I’m actually sweating and I can feel my heart racing as I’m writing this.  It’s a horrible feeling to know this kind of rejection.

John didn’t flinch.  “I told you that you can’t go.  I have too many games planned and it’s my job to keep things going at this youth activity.  It’s my job as youth minister.  You know that.  I can’t be babysitting you and taking care of the party, too.”

I was quickly learning not to fight the inevitable.  John was a quiet man — very rarely in all of our forty years together did I ever hear him raise his voice.  But, he was immovable in what he said.  Once he said he was doing something, there was no changing his mind.  I learned that very quickly in this first year of marriage.

There would be no need to make the pork roast and sauer kraut.  John wouldn’t be home.  He was eating with the church kids.  There would be no driving around the city to see the lights.  There would be no wearing the dime-store party hat on New Year’s Eve.  Instead, I would be spending this first New Year’s Eve alone.

It’s embarrassing to say this, but I went to bed crying that night.  Instead of fighting back, I whimpered like a dog that had been kicked in the gut and sent outside for being a bad dog.  There were no hugs from John.  No apologies.  No saying he’d make it up to me.  A saying I used over and over in my life was true, “It is what it is.”  He would be leaving me home on our first New Year’s Eve.

All day December 31, I kept hoping and praying that John would change his mind. Better yet, I kept praying that somehow he was teasing me.  I don’t know why I always thought that way — a coping mechanism for heartbreak, I guess.  I got dressed that day and put on a fake happy face hoping beyond all hope that sometime during the day he’d say, “I was only kidding.  You know that.  How in the world could I ever leave you home alone on New Year’s Eve?”

But, that moment never came.  Instead, he spent hours in the locked bathroom (his usual habit that I finally accepted) with the “party planning book” and his notebook of games they were going to play.  He got all spiffed up, put on extra cologne (he used Old Spice — funny how I can still remember the smell), and clipped his finger nails.  Isn’t it strange how much we can remember when we’ve either experienced a life-changing wonderful moment or a moment of trauma that has been imprinted forever in our subconscious?

I held back the tears….I fought so hard to hold back the tears as John drove away for the party.  I watched from the upstairs apartment window, waving good-bye, and then running to the bedroom where I buried my face in a pillow and sobbed through the entire night!

I remember sobbing so hard that I thought I’d go into labor.  I remember thinking, “I didn’t even get a phone number of where he’ll be if I need him.”  I remember not even having the strength or desire to turn on the TV to watch New Year’s Eve celebrations across the country.  I wanted one thing — to be with my husband.  That’s all.  I just wanted to be near him.  I would have been happy to just sit in the same room where he was, and he knew it.  Instead, he pushed me away and made me feel ugly, disgusting, and worthless.

I kept getting up to use the bathroom — my bladder was not in the best shape due to being so pregnant.  At one point Vashti (one of the sisters that lived beneath us) called up the steps, “Are you okay, Mrs. Hinton?”  I know that she heard me crying (okay, sobbing — loudly!), and the toilet kept flushing.  I walked to the steps and just said, “I’m okay.  Thanks for asking.”  I’m sure that Vashti and her sister wondered the same as I was wondering.  Why was I left home alone on New Year’s Eve?

I’ve thought long and hard over the years about that one question.  Why would any husband do this to his wife?  Why would a Christian husband to this to his wife?  Why would a newly married man do this to his wife?  Why would a decent human being (even if just friends) do this to anyone?

As I’ve studied more about the minds of pedophiles, I’ve learned that “control” and “manipulation” are their driving forces.  It’s not initially about the sex, although that comes into play later on (terrifyingly so).  But, initially, it’s about control.  A mad, almost savage need to be in total control.  And, I now better understand why John treated me the way he did.  He had total control without ever raising his voice or his hand.  He could never be labeled a “wife abuser” by anyone in the outside world because he never did anything that even came close to looking like abuse.  And, in fact, I was made to feel rather crazy.  I was confused.  I couldn’t understand what I had done to “deserve” being treated this way.  Just as a child often wonders why a parent pushed aside a child — I was that child.  I didn’t understand why I was being pushed away.  What I have come to understand now is that I was being purposefully mistreated.  I was being crushed in spirit.  I was being belittled.  I was being manipulated.  And, my abuser (John) was seeing just how far he could go before I would tell.

Much to his delight I never told.  Just as the abused children very rarely ever tell.  I was forced into such a broken, confused state of being that I would never tell.  I craved his love and blamed myself for not getting it. Can you understand a bit more why little children who have been molested never tell?  Can you imagine how confused their young minds are?

What did John do that New Year’s Eve?  I don’t know.  I know he put on quite a show for the teens at church.  He was the center of attention, so I heard in church on Sunday.  He was a comic. I heard the teens saying he was the funniest guy they ever met! He planned all kinds of fun games.  He ate great food. He was happy to tell me of all of the good food he ate!  And, he planned a wonderful midnight devotional where several kids from the youth group gave their lives to Christ.  From what others could see, John was one amazing young man!

However, while John was being a “Christian” and converting others, I was at home alone begging and pleading God to somehow teach me how to become a better wife so that my husband would love me.

REMEMBER THIS:  Child molesters know what they are doing!  They hurt on purpose.  They do not care.  They lie.  They cheat.  They will steal your heart and tramp on it.  They will take the innocence away from a small child and feel jubilant over their success!  And, they groom and manipulate adults prior to grooming and manipulating the children. Why?  So that they are never suspected of such heinous wrong doing!

I will close this by saying that John came home about 2:30 a.m. New Year’s Day.  I was wide awake waiting for him.  I pretended to be so happy that “his party” was such a success. He had to know how much I was broken because there was no hiding my swollen eyes that had been crying all night.  And, any person with an ounce of common sense or a shred or love would never have left his wife home alone on New Year’s Eve.  He was happy.  Another notch of victory  for John! 

Next week we will talk about the arrival of our first child.  Until then, please read the words I’ve written carefully.  Read them again and again until it sinks in as to how demeaning a pedophile is.  Read these words and understand how calculated every action of a child molester is.  Nothing is done randomly.  Every action is well thought out — planned ahead with much thought.  Do you see yourself in such a situation?  If so — RUN as fast as you can and if you have children take them with you!!!

If you are the victim of any abuse, learn the strategies of these abusers and don’t allow yourself to be beaten down ever again!  Pedophiles are on a power trip and they use their power to beat others down emotionally.  They use children for their sexual and emotional gratification.  And, by so doing, they cause a lifetime of terror and pain for these children!

For the children — let’s get smarter and stop this abuse now!

Thank you for reading.  And, thank you so very much for caring.  Together we can get educated about pedophiles and the way their minds work so that we can stop them in their tracks well before they reach our children.  Our children deserve a carefree, innocent childhood!  Every child deserves to be treated respectually and with love!  Help me in this mission to educate!  Spread the word.  Be on the lookout.  Speak out when you suspect any kind of abuse.  And, please hold your children just a bit closer to you every day and tell them how much you love them.  They are precious and they depend on us to take care of them.  Let’s get educated and empowered — for the children! 

Love,

Clara

PS  John’s case was said to be one of the most “complicated cases” of child molestation in a long time.  To this day, I do not know if he also abused older children.  He said his “favored age” was young, prepubescent girls, but I know for a fact that he also molested older girls.  I’ll never know for sure how wide the net of his molestation went, but that’s not the purpose of this blog.  The purpose of this is to educate you of the cunning ways of pedophiles and how they also groom adults into thinking they are wonderful people.  John, to this day, is a wonderful person to many.  Hardly a week goes by that I don’t get a call or an email saying, “I know John did this stuff, BUT — he was so good to me and my family.  He will always be a pillar of strength to me.”  That’s manipulation at its best! 

As always, I welcome your comments!

 

 

 

Married to a Pedophile: A Letter from Prison

Thanks so much for the overwhelming interest and response to this blog.  It makes me so happy to see so many people getting involved in this serious issue of protecting our children from predators and eventual molestation of innocent children.  If you are new to this blog, I would suggest that you begin reading here.  Please remember that this is my story.  I do not claim to be an expert on all the different aspects of a pedophile and the behavior of a pedophile.  What I do know is this:  I know how my life was affected and changed living for almost forty years with a practicing pedophile. And, I want to share that with you so that you can learn from me.  I want you to know what red flags to look for so that you don’t fall into the same trap that I did!

Last week, I had the privilege of being a guest blogger, and I thank Loony (Erica) for giving me an opportunity to voice my opinion on her blog, “Thoughts of a Lunatic”  on the very complex topic of whether or not a pedophile can be rehabilitated.  This post is going to go in a different direction just for today because I feel it’s so important for you to understand the way a pedophile thinks long-term.  At least the way the pedophile in my life is thinking.

A couple of weeks ago, I received my third letter from John since he has been in prison.  I have not spoken to him since he was under investigation.  I have chosen to remain silent with him for a number of reasons, and one of the reasons will become apparent to you when I share just a few lines from a letter from him to me.

John’s letter was two pages, hand written front and back.  The first line that grabbed my heart and began to shred it was this:  “Dear Clara, I’m sorry I have ruined your life.”  That’s as far as I read until the tears came pouring from my eyes — actually, the tears came pouring from my heart.  Those words — “ruined your life” — felt like I was being stabbed with a knife over and over and over again.  Cold, hard stabs.  My first response was to sob, then curl up in a ball and cry for the next several hours.  It’s still so hard for me to grasp this whole thing.  I gave my heart, my very soul to a man that I loved and little by little my heart was kicked, beaten, and bruised until the final chapter when this letter arrived from prison and simply said, “I’m sorry I ruined your life.”

As you are reading these words, please think back to the post about rehabilitating a pedophile.  I don’t think it’s possible, and when I read further on down through the letter I’m convinced that the pedophile I was married to can never be rehabilitated.

As his words continued, he said, “I’m sorry that you had to see my dark side.  This has hurt you, I’m sure, but you’ve always been strong, and I have a favor to ask of you.”  Ah, I knew it!  I knew he could never leave it simply being sorry and asking forgiveness.  Here we go to the real John.  He’s going to ask (which really means “tell”) me what I’m supposed to do!

 

My tears continued to fall like pouring rain.  How?  How could this man be asking me to do something for him when he had caused so much destruction in my life, the lives of each of his children, his grandchildren, and so many others who knew him?  If this has been me, I honestly believe I would have taken my life.  I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.  But, the mind of a pedophile doesn’t work that way.  John was thinking about John.

What did he want?  He wanted me to talk to the kids and ask them why they weren’t all writing him.  Why can’t they forgive him and have a normal relationship with him?  I almost came out of my skin at that point!  Are you kidding me?  You’ve wrecked so many people in so many different ways and you want me to fix it? 

Note:  Pedophiles do not take responsibility for their actions.  They find an escape and someone else to blame. 

John said, and I quote, “I have been forgiven by Abba Father.  The minute I asked Abba, I was forgiven.  Now, I want you to get the kids to forgive me so that we can be a family again.”  Really?  Really, John?  You want ME to fix this for you?  It’s not going to happen! 

Reading his letter made me feel like I had been swallowed up by some giant lie and I was trapped and suffocating and needed to get out — needed to run away — break loose, so I could get some air.  I didn’t finish that letter that night.  Instead, I sobbed deep, hard sobs into my pillow for hours and hours.

Those words, “ruined your life” and “you’re strong……you need to get the kids to forgive me” kept playing over in my head again and again and again until finally I bolted upright around 4:00 a.m., and it was like a light bulb went on!  He was at it again!  He was using me from prison!  Or, let’s rephrase that — he was trying to use me from prison.  But it wasn’t going to work.  Not this time!  Never, ever again will I give that man permission to manipulate me, to use me, and to trick me into doing anything for him.  NEVER!  This is his responsibility to win back his kids’ respect, love, and forgiveness.  Not mine!  I will not be the enabler — the fixer — any more again! 

It took me about two weeks to open up that letter again and finish reading it.  What I read stirred feelings that I don’t think I’ve ever had before.  It was a mixture of horror, anger to the point of rage, heart pain that felt like my chest was going to explode, and a sadness that felt like I had fallen into a deep, bottomless pit.

There it was.  In writing.  Right before my eyes.  “I’ve been forgiven.  I know I did wrong, but I’ve never felt more freedom in all of my life.  I’m teaching Bible studies in prison — like the Apostle Paul.  I’m in the church choir.  And, I’m doing a lot of one-on-one teaching.  I’m evangelizing from inside these prison walls.  But, I miss seeing everyone.  Can you tell ________________ to send me pictures of the kids?  I really need to see them.  I’ve been made whole, and I know I won’t ‘those thoughts’ again.”

In this letter, he specifically asked for photos of little girls.  Not parents.  Not photos of their families.  But, of the little girls.

And, I knew.  At that moment, I knew that all of the crying.  All of the brokenness.  All of the wishing things were different was for naught.  John says he is forgiven.  Maybe he is.  Maybe he isn’t.  But, I can tell you one thing.  He is not changed.  Not at all.  He is trying to manipulate me (and others) into sending him pictures of little children.  He is masking his motives.  He is trying hard.  He is being persistent.  He is using religion.  He is lying.  He is the same.  He is a practicing pedophile.  Only now, thankfully, he is kept away from children.

And, I thank God that the children are safe from this child molester.  Every day, I thank God that many, many children are safe because this one man has been taken away from the children!

Sometimes it’s easy to fall into this trap of, “God has forgiven me, why can’t you?  And, by the way, send me some pictures of little kids because I’m all okay now.”  Do NOT fall for it!  Please, be on your guard.  Pay attention.  Stay alert at all times!  Pedophiles are lurking, watching, planning, wanting, desiring, and acting.  They take innocent lives and hurt them — causing deep, lasting pain.  Please, for the children, let’s continue to stay alert and on guard so that we can protect our children!

Next week, I’ll go back to my regular writing.  I’ll be talking about our first New Year’s Eve together.  Let’s just say it was a party like none other!  But, for today I felt it was important to update you on the ongoing thoughts of a pedophile — even when caught, proven guilty with tons of evidence, claiming forgiveness and a new, clean slate, yet still……wanting the children and boldly asking — demanding, manipulating — for those selfish, hurtful, evil desires to be fulfilled. 

Keep alert.  If someone doesn’t seem right around your children, call that person out.  So what if you’re wrong?  It’s better to speak up and be wrong than to keep quiet and back off and always wonder if you could have possibly stopped a predator in his tracks! 

Thanks for hanging in here with me.  I know this is hard reading, but it’s important for us to know — to really understand how a pedophile works.

 

As always, I appreciate your comments and your thoughts.  And, I thank you for caring for the well-being of innocent children!

Love,

Clara

Married to a Pedophile: Is Rehabilitation Possible?

A few weeks ago, the question was posed on another blog I follow as to whether or not it was possible for pedophiles to be rehabilitated.  That’s a difficult question, but a necessary one for us to think about.  Using the information I’ve gathered from many different sources as well as from my own experience of living almost forty years with a practicing pedophile, I’ve formed an opinion.

The blogger, “Loony” (Erica)  from “Thoughts of a Lunatic” accepted my thoughts to be used as a guest blogger today.  I’d like to share these thoughts with you, also.  Please be sure to visit “Thoughts of a Lunatic” to see what I said as my response to this question about rehabilitation.

I welcome your comments, and ask that you keep them respectful.  I know this can become quite a controversial issue, especially when bringing God and His forgiveness into the picture.  Have you given it much thought?  Can pedophiles be rehabilitated?  If so, to what degree?  When they say, “I’ve been through a counseling program.  I’ll never do this again”, do you believe that’s the truth?  What about when they say, “I’ve been forgiven by God, and I’ll never do this again”?

Can pedophiles be 100% rehabilitated — enough that you would allow a pedophile back into your home living with children, into your church interacting with children, and into your community where there would be interaction with children?  What about the internet?  Can a pedophile be rehabilitated to stay away from child pornography and the triggers that will lead to actions of molestation?  These are hard questions — tough questions, but they need to be addressed.

My blog post later on this week is going to be somewhat different as I’ll be sharing with you excerpts from a letter that John recently sent to me.  I want you to draw your own conclusions.  I think you will be both enlightened and very surprised!

Thanks so much for reading.  I know this isn’t easy reading, but it is necessary reading.

Always, always — we have one goal in mind:  to protect our children!

Love,

Clara

Married to a Pedophile: Our First Christmas

Thanks so much for visiting this blog!  I appreciate the love, support, and interest shown in the message here.  I am not an expert in the field of child sex molestation.  I am, however, a woman who was married to a practicing pedophile for almost forty years without knowing it.  It is my hope and my prayer that I can use my experience to help educate you so that you will know what signs to look for and what to do should you suspect actions of pedophilia.

If you are new to this blog, I suggest you begin by reading my story from the very beginning.

The months seemed to be moving along smoothly — the baby was growing inside of me and that was a feeling like I can’t explain. There were little bursts of excitement from John about becoming a father. In fact, I could say he was very excited for him. He wasn’t normally one to show a lot of emotion, but he did like telling others that we were having a baby!

We’re skipping quickly through the months of August through December because life remained “normal” in most respects. John was back in college and continued to work part-time at the cemetery as well as continued his volunteer work at church. I was happy being a working mom-to-be. In fact, all that filled my mind most days was the fact that soon I’d have a little one to snuggle with and that thought excited me so much! Sadly, I had to stop working in November due to the work laws at that time. Women who were beyond seven months of pregnancy weren’t permitted to work.   I worked as a secretary for Kerr-McGee Corporation. The people I worked with were wonderful and saying good-bye wasn’t easy. They had become like family to me. My bosses visited in our tiny apartment which was so funny as I think back now. They were multimillionaire oil men and John and I were as poor as church mice. I’ll never forget the look on their faces when they saw where we lived! I fixed them tacos and chocolate chip cookies. Isn’t it funny how you can remember details like that? I’ve always been so appreciative of the way they accepted my invitation to dinner and they and their wives were so gracious to me!

I made the decision to quit my job and stay at home to take care of the new baby when he/she arrived. John encouraged me to do this even though I was offered a big fat raise to come back to work, and Lord knows we needed the money. “Stay home and enjoy this baby. I have everything under control. The elders are going to start paying me for being the youth minister. They finally agreed I was ready to be put on as staff!”

Note:  Can you see the insidious workings of control?  If I stayed at home, I didn’t have access to the outside world.  My world was suddenly growing smaller and smaller. 

That news of John getting extra pay was music to my ears, and so I began planning for Christmas. ( As an aside, Thanksgiving was a disaster — I ended up throwing out the turkey. It tasted like burned rubber!)

I LOVE Christmas! It was going to be so much fun with a baby due on January 23 — just one month away! John and I decided we were too poor to buy anything for the baby, and we’d just exchange cards for our gifts and have a nice meal together. That being said, anybody who knows me knows that I love giving surprise gifts. And, this Christmas was super special! This was our first Christmas together! So, I had begun giving up my lunches way back in June to start saving for a Christmas gift for John — well before we said we’d only exchange cards. It was so much fun watching my stash of money add up. When the other girls at the office bought barbecue beef for lunch, I’d pull out my packed lunch — two slices of bread and one piece of bologna. It didn’t matter because I knew that the money I would have spent was being saved for something super special.

I made a surprise visit to the church and visited the minister and asked him what his best study books were. “That’s easy! I study from the Bible and my ISBE’s — International Standard Bible Encyclopedias. John will love them!” Yikes, they were expensive, but……I could do it! I knew what gift I would be buying John!

My belly was growing and I only had one maternity outfit to my name other than baggy shirts.  I would have loved something new to wear, but……it was Christmas! I could not wait to see the look on John’s face when he opened up his gift! While I was at it, I decided to buy one more gift — a basketball that he could have so that he didn’t always have to borrow one from the church when he wanted to play ball with the kids he brought home. Oh, I cannot tell you how excited I was wrapping up those gifts and hiding them until Christmas morning!!!

Christmas eve arrived. We went to church, came home and lit a candle, watched a little TV and called it a day. I was too excited to sleep. We had a small tree that sat on top of a desk in the living room (yes, it was a tossed out shrub from the cemetery, but I didn’t even care this time around. At least it was a tree!). I watched the flickering candlelight and counted the minutes until morning!

Finally, morning arrived. We were  away from all family — living in Oklahoma City. We didn’t get to go home because the doctor wouldn’t give the okay for me to travel being so close to my due date. This was going to be so ROMANTIC! Our first Christmas together!!! Let’s face it, anything could be better than the honeymoon we had!

I fixed an awesome breakfast for John, handed him his card and inside it had a little note saying where he could find his surprise. My heart is pumping faster as I’m telling this story! Can you tell I get like a little kid at Christmas time? “I thought we weren’t giving gifts?” “I know…but I couldn’t let this be our first Christmas and not give you a gift! I’ve been saving up since June! I can’t wait for you to see what you got!”

The look on his face was different than I expected.  He looked like he was hearing a melody that went sour. He didn’t look at all happy. In fact, he looked rather perturbed. “I really wish you hadn’t gotten a gift. A card would have been fine.” I felt disappointed a bit, but who cared? I wanted HIM to be happy! I wanted to see him open his gifts!

Instead, he went off to the bathroom. He said, “I’ll be back in a while. I have to do something. I have a big surprise for you.”

Woo hoo! I knew it! I knew he was tricking me! I knew he wouldn’t forget me on Christmas!!!!! I sat in the living room sipping some tea while he was in the bathroom. (Remember last week’s post about those hours in the bathroom? Well, Christmas morning was no different.)

Finally, John unlocked the bathroom door and had something hidden behind his back. Oh, I couldn’t wait! I had his gifts sitting under the tree, and now I would get to open my gift from him! I was so happy!!!

John walked over to me, and said, “Pick a hand. Your gift is small but I put a lot of thought into it.” I LOVE gifts that are thoughtful! Maybe a necklace or a bracelet. No, too expensive. Maybe a little teeny stuffed bear. No, that wouldn’t be like him. Maybe a tiny bottle of perfume! Oh, that would be wonderful!

I picked a hand, and out came my surprise………….. I looked, and then I looked again. I didn’t know what to say! I still don’t know what to say.  I could suddenly feel the hot tears streaming down my face. I began to shake and he just looked at me with the most bizarre expression. “What’s wrong? Don’t you like it? I’ll bet you’re the only person in the entire world to get a gift like this!

He was right. He was so very right. Nobody that I know of in my lifetime has ever gotten a Christmas gift like this. He sat in the bathroom on the toilet and took two sheets of toilet paper and drew a picture of two deer — a buck and a doe. And, above the deer it said, “Merry Christmas, Dear.” My heart broke that day — it really, really broke. He hadn’t even gotten me a card. Instead, he wrote a message on toilet paper. That was my gift.

I’d like to say this was a joke, but it wasn’t. This was it. My body is shaking as I am writing this and it is now forty plus years later. That hurt me worse than if he had taken a kitchen knife and stabbed me right in the center of my heart.

Why did he do that? I’ve thought about that a million times over the years.   He said he thought it would be “unique” — something I’d remember always. I spent the remainder of the day in bed sobbing. He didn’t really like the encyclopedias. He said I should return them and get the money back, and he didn’t need a basketball when he could take anything he needed from the church.

NOTE:   As I’ve now learned, pedophiles are all about “control” — they must be in charge. In order to do that, they will find ways to beat you into submission. John didn’t physically beat me — he never even came close. But, emotionally, he was killing me. He was slowly beating me into submission for the years to come.  Once you beat a person down to a very low point emotionally, you can gain full control.  The person no longer feels worthy of being treated any other way.  And, I was slowly but surely descending into the dark pit of manipulation and isolation.

Thank you so much for reading. Thank you for trying to grasp what I’m saying. I know it’s not easy reading about sad experiences.  But, in order to learn what makes child molesters tick, I think we need to see the whole picture.  Pedophiles are calculating liars. They care about one thing — themselves. They don’t “get it” when it comes to hurting others. They are out to fulfill their mission and that is ultimately to get what they want.

I believe John was molesting children frequently at this time. I can’t “prove” it, but I now have reason to believe it was going on quite often at this period in our lives.  He had many, many opportunities. Two BIG red flags were there, but I didn’t know how to recognize them as such.   Johns spent so much time away from me with young children.  He always had a reason.  He was building relationships.  He was getting to know the families at church better.  He was encouraging the youth to love church and church activities more.  And, on and on it went.

Another strange thing was happening.  Many Sundays John wouldn’t take communion in church. I asked him why, and he would never say. In our church communion is taken weekly.  But, if you have wronged someone or if you have not confessed the sins in your life, it is considered “not worthy to partake.”

John apparently thought he was worthy to partake on many Sundays.

Note:  When a pedophile molests a child, he knows it is wrong!  Molesters absolutely know that it is wrong, yet they continue to do these vile acts on children! 

By the way, I never told anyone about my first Christmas gift until many, many years later. Why? It was too painful. And, John knew that I wouldn’t tell.   I believe this was one more test to see how far he could go with me. How much could he do? Abused victims rarely tell. It’s just too hard.

My abuse was horrible, but it was nothing compared to what John did to little children. Please stick with me and let’s continue on with this story……learn what goes on inside the home where a pedophile lives. Learn about how they manipulate others into being enablers. Let’s learn together how other family members can be manipulated and controlled into thinking the molester is a wonderful, caring person — right while committing acts that are hard to speak about.

For the children, let’s stop these predators!  Let’s work hard to stop them in their tracks!  Let’s educate ourselves about what to look for, and let’s be on guard at all times.  For the children, let’s stop this terrible, painful cycle of abuse!

Love,
Clara

Married to a Pedophile: Weird Behavior

If you’re new to this blog, I’d like to say “welcome” and I’m glad you have found this place of education and hopefully some healing.  This is my story of what it was like being married to a practicing pedophile for almost forty years — without knowing it!  There were red flags — things that I should have picked up on — but I didn’t know anything about pedophilia.  So, out of my painful experience I hope to bring about some good by educating others so that this wave of child molestation can be stopped! 

If you’re new to this blog, I suggest you begin reading at the beginning. 

Let’s pick up where we left off last week.  John’s behavior was becoming more and more odd to me as the weeks passed by.  He was so very different to others than he was to me.  Put him in a mix with his beloved church people and he was the clown, the jokester, the laughing person, and the one with endless energy.  Put him home with me, and I hate to use this word, but he was a deadbeat.  It was like there was no life in him.  I had to pick and pry to get a simple sentence out of him.  “How was your day?”  “Good.”  “What did you do?”  “Nothing much.”  “Are you hungry for anything special?”  “Not really.  Anything you fix will be good.”

Honestly, it was like he had a split personality — and I often cried myself to sleep because of this.  As a newlywed, I felt like very early on my husband was no longer interested in me, and that’s a horrible feeling.

To add insult to injury, he purposefully avoided me by his schedule  that was so strange.  Very, very strange.  He got up religiously at 4:00 a.m (as I mentioned in last week’s blog), which is fine, I guess.  A lot of people like to get up real early.  But, the hurtful thing was that he said he had to get up to “study” and not only did I not have a clue what he was studying, BUT he would continue with his “studying” in the bathroom a minimum of two hours every morning, and most evenings at least two hours.  With the door locked. That’s just plain weird for a newly married couple! 

I’ve done a lot of thinking about this over the years, and this should have been a huge red flag.  This “secrecy in the bathroom” was always baffling to me.  What in heaven’s name does anyone do in a bathroom for two solid hours at a clip two times a day every day?!?!?

His answer was simple:  “I’m studying.  I like my private time.  That’s my time on the throne and that’s where I can do a lot of my thinking.”

Okay — so you’re up at 4:00 a.m. and study from 4:00 to 6:00, then you eat a bit of breakfast, then you go lock yourself in the bathroom for two more hours from 6:30 – 8:30 and study more?  NOTE:  If something doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t!  Much later on I would find that John used this time many days as his “list making time” — his time to go over and over all of the details of his day — which included his masterful studying of the female mind, what makes young girls attracted to men, and how to read body language.  (I found countless books in his private library on these topics!)

 Pay attention!  If you live with someone being “secretive” in their daily routine, beware!  There is a reason for this!  If you are living with someone who loses interest in you, but is totally, completely fascinated with others, then you have a real problem on your hands!  Yes, I had a real problem!  I was living with the “fun John” and the “secret John” and I didn’t know what to think of this!  None of this made sense to me at the time, but later on in years to come it would become more and more of a problem in the marriage, and once the real John was known, it all made perfect sense.  John was consumed with studying others.  Learning about them.  Watching their every move.  He didn’t need to pay attention to me.  I was his.  I married him.  I was  carrying his baby, for Pete’s sake!  He knew I wasn’t going anywhere!  Besides, I wasn’t the topic of his thoughts — unknown to me at the time  little children were his focus! 

I’m going to interject something here because I know it’s a question that you have.  Many have asked me — others have hinted that they wanted to know.  Yes, pedophiles do have sex with their wives/adult women, although their fascination is with a child’s prepubescent body.  I’ll be very honest here because I think it will shed some light on what John was doing in his “private time.”  If I didn’t initiate sex, we didn’t have it.  And, many, many times, he’d turn his back to me and flat-out say “no.”  Period. End of discussion.  He also said something I’ve never forgotten because it hurt me clear to the core of my soul.

“I can’t stand looking at you when you’re pregnant.  It gives me the creeps.  I think pregnant bodies are ugly.”  Yes, he used the harsh, hurtful word “UGLY” and it made me feel lower than dirt.  My own husband didn’t want to look at me because I was “ugly” — and he maintained that stand all through our married lives.  Of course it makes perfect sense to me now!  He loved looking at little girls’ bodies.  At the time, I curled up in a ball at night and cried myself to sleep.  (Later on, I wouldn’t give him the chance to hurt me that way.  I stopped initiating sex and that part of our relationship came to a near halt.  Yes, I did have eleven children, but even the doctor commented, “You’d get pregnant if a man sneezed on you!” )

NOTE:  If your husband loses interest in sex — especially when you are wanting that part of your relationship to thrive and be enjoyed — there is something very, very wrong! 

I felt that this was something that needed to be addressed because lack of an intimate relationship became a huge barrier in years to come.  Little did I know that John was getting his fulfillment from little girls (by his own admission).  Pedophiles also stimulate themselves and I had the terrible experience of seeing John do this many years down the road.  I was shocked, I was hurt, I was confused, but I kept quiet.  I thought maybe that’s what all guys did — married or not.  I wanted to be the only one to satisfy his needs, but that wasn’t going to happy. Not in the first year of marriage.  Not ever!

 More strange stuff!  John was still a “volunteer” at the church waiting to take the place of Jim as the full-time youth minister in an “unpaid” position.  I was a nervous wreck because we weren’t cutting it on my salary.  So, I begged, pleaded, encouraged, and sobbed, “Please get a part-time job.  We really, really need the money.” 

One evening, he surprised me with the news, “I have a job!  You’re never going to believe this, but I found some part-time work at the cemetery.”  (Yes, it was the same one where he stole the flowers for my table setting.)

Okay, I’m not picky.  A job is a job.  And, we needed the money.  He was going to help with the landscaping, as well as help cover the caskets after a burial.    John loved this job!  In fact, he was giddy over it!  The reason?  He made best friends with a guy named, “Salt.”  Salt was an old man who lived in a shack with his little seven year-old-grandson  who used to run around the house naked.  How do I know this?  Because John would get home from work, fill up the bathtub, soak in the tub for his two hours and hee-haw on the phone with Salt and his little grandson while in the bathroom. 

I was getting sick of being treated like a piece of furniture or a lamp-post — something to sit on or lean on for convenience.  I threatened to pull the plug on the phone if he didn’t stop with that nonsense.  It never stopped!  He visited Salt on weekends, and played with the little boy.  Although he said under oath  that his preference was little girls, I do believe he at least experimented with little boys.  (His investigation brought out evidence of the same!)

Note:  It’s not  normal to toss aside your new bride for a relationship with a 70-year-old man and a little boy!    Yes, I was jealous and so hurt, but it did no good!  Salt won out over me every time!  I never met Salt, I didn’t want to meet Salt, but I do have pictures of him.  John could talk endlessly with Salt.  With me, I got nothing more than a grunt.

Caution:  If an adult relates better to little children than with adults beware!  In this case, I do believe John was getting some thrills from Salt’s grandson.   I think there was a thrill in hearing about this boy running around naked and using vulgar language to describe it.  I could hear John talking, but it was so confusing to me.  With me, he NEVER talked any kind of sex talk.  But, he sure could with  Salt!   

One more thing before we close today.  Pedophiles are known to make detailed lists about everything.  John fits this to a “T”!  Very rarely was there a day in our near forty years together that he didn’t leave me a list on the kitchen table.  “Get groceries at the Piggly Wiggly, aisle 5, near the back, towards the top, left side — you’ll find the baked beans.”  I’m not kidding one bit about this.  It would take forever to read his lists, and it made me feel like a little girl with no brains when he did that.  I think I have the know-how to find the baked beans in the store! 

Please pay careful attention to the list making part!  This is a biggie, and I didn’t know it.  Everything John did revolved around lists!  Everything!  He planned detailed kids’ parties with lists.  He planned visits to people with lists.  He planned everything and anything with lists.  Always, always he had his pockets stuffed, his car, his bible, stuffed with very detailed lists. 

Pedophiles make lists.  They will plan details about winning over adults so that they can molest a child using lists.  They will use list making to write down every detail so that nothing is left out.  A great book enlightening me on this (since John’s conviction) was “Not With My Child.” Honestly, it was like a blaring red flag being waved at me!  All of our lives lists dominated our daily living.  Lists about stupid stuff.  Endless details.  Now it makes sense!  It takes a lot of detailed planning to win over the trust of adults so that eventually there comes the climactic thrill of molesting their child!

Individually, none of this “odd behavior” is too crazy.  It’s hurtful.  It is neglectful.  But nothing so far is more than “odd.”  Odd.  Very, very odd.  Certainly not enough to go running to others about.  But, it was enough to make for a very sad, very broken relationship which began forming early on.

I felt lost.  I felt alone. I felt confused.  I felt betrayed.  I felt ugly. And, I now feel  like our entire marriage was a big, fat lie.  I feel like my life as a wife was a joke.  I feel like I was used as a ploy — a decoy.  I’m finally getting answers after all of those years, and that part feels good.  What doesn’t feel good is knowing that while I tried everything I could to be a better wife, it didn’t matter.  A better wife isn’t what John wanted.  He wanted to fulfil his growing appetite for manipulation, pornography, and the ultimate thrill of winning a parent and child’s trust enough to molest that child — and keep that child from ever telling!!!!! 

Please stick with me through this series on my life with a pedophile.  Next week we will talk about more red flags — the red flags that went up in church.  BIG red flags!  Keep in mind, churches are known as “playgrounds for pedophiles” and such was true in John’s case.

Keep your eyes open.  Stay alert.  Watch people with odd behavior who target you or your children.   Don’t allow yourself to be swept away by someone’s overkill of kindness — especially if it’s making you feel even the slightest bit uncomfortable.  If it doesn’t feel right, then it probably isn’t!

Pedophiles are cunning.  They are smart.  They study body language.  They study people.  They make lists.  They never rush with their plan to molest a child.  It’s time for us to smarten up and get educated enough to spot them BEFORE they can draw children and adults into their evil snare of manipulation. 

For the children, let’s get educated!

   

Your comments are always appreciated!

Clara

PS  My sister lived with us through the end of that summer.  John continued with his church teen parties, the cemetery work, and spending countless hours at the church building (if that’s where he really was). Our relationship was never right from the very beginning. 

 

Married to a Pedophile: Odd Behavior

If you are new to this blog, I’d suggest you begin by reading at the very beginning. This is not a story about my beliefs on child sexual molestation, but rather my personal story of how I came to be married to a pedophile for almost forty years without knowing.  My story is being shared so that others can be saved.  My story is for the children.

As time moved on, I began to notice some behavior that I thought was a bit odd.  Keep in mind that my twelve-year-old sister was living with us for the summer, so she and I had ample opportunity to talk in the evenings when John wasn’t home.  But, what she said to me often flew right past my head.  She was a kid, and I was the recently married, newly pregnant wife and mother.  What did she know?  Well, come to find out, she had some pretty good insights.  If only I had listened more closely!

Every night coming home from work was a new experience.  There were often strangers in the house — people I didn’t know.   And,  these unfamiliar faces were invited for dinner by John .  I was hot, tired, sick from being pregnant and did NOT want to entertain strangers, yet here they were.  My sister would frequently tell me that she just sat back in our bedroom while John brought these people to the house.  Who were they?  “Church friends.”  That’s the only answer I got.  Because there were three or four different church services on a Sunday, I didn’t have a chance of getting to know a lot of different people.  But, here in our tiny apartment, were strange “church people” waiting to be fed and wanting to hang out with John.  To this day I don’t know who these people were — some men in their 20’s, some guys in their teens, and some younger who needed to be driven to and from their homes.  I was told that, “It’s part of my job.  I need to get to know all these people if I’m going to be working with them as their youth minister.”  I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Pay attention:  “Know your house guests!  Don’t ever be so accommodating as to back off and be quiet and just do as you’re told!  This is your home, too, and marriage is a partnership.  You have every right to know details about who is sitting at your table, who is occupying your home when you’re not there, and who is spending more time with your husband than you!”  Manipulation in this tiny apartment was well underway!

I can’t tell you how many pool parties for the teens John planned that summer and as God sits above I will tell you this — not once — NEVER ONCE — was I invited to go, nor was my sister invited to go!  Why?  Again, I was told, “This is part of my job.  I have to spend lots of time with these young people and get to know their parents.  The elders are really watching me, and they want me to mingle with the kids every spare minute I have.”

Can you imagine how this was?  All day John was back and forth between the church building and our apartment with different people of all ages.  Pool parties in the evenings, along with basketball, bible studies, youth activity meetings, and on and on it went!  I honestly felt like my husband was avoiding me on purpose!  I cried often, and in a tiny apartment, there’s no hiding anything.  My sister would ask me the next day why I was crying.  “I don’t know.  I just thought it would be different.  We’re married but we never get to spend any time together.”

My sister might have been young, but she was observant.  “John’s like a different person when he’s around those church kids.  He teases and laughs and jokes with them.  He’s so funny.  Then, when he’s with you, he never talks. ”  Those words hit me like a ton of bricks.  She was right, you know.

And, something else was beginning to happen.  The first couple of times I didn’t say anything.  I just looked away.  But, I was sure.  Well, maybe not.  Well, yes, I was sure…….

While I was laying in bed, I could often see John from the bedroom.  I would be day dreaming about the baby — our baby — wishing so much that he would come lay by my side and dream with me. But he never really wanted to go to bed the same time as I did even though he got up religiously at 4:00 a.m. every day which is far earlier than I got up for work.  My sister slept on a little fold away cot in the room off to the bedroom that was used as the dining room or “whatever” room.  We had a teeny kitchen, so there was an old card table and cot set up in this room which was used as John’s study room and for Ruth’s room while she lived with us. Not an ideal set-up, to say the least!

I thought I saw him quickly tug at her shorts when she walked by to go to the kitchen or bathroom.  Pretending I was asleep, I would watch night after night and sure enough — yes, it was true — he was doing that! Or was he?  Was I just seeing things that weren’t really happening?  Was I imagining everything? 

One Saturday while she and I were walking to the deli a few blocks away I got the nerve to ask her.  “He’s so weird, Clara.  He’s always pulling at my shirt or my shorts.  I try to run past him, but he’s always doing it.”  And, then she burst into tears.

I decided I’d confront him — the first time I really acted like I had a back bone.  That night I was not a happy camper, and I said we needed to talk.  It seems so “not real” as I’m writing these words.   His response?  “Your sister needs to learn how to dress.  She wears shorts that are way too short for her, and she wears those tops that have her belly hanging out.  Why do you think I never have her come to the youth meetings?  Adults have made comments about her.  It’s embarrassing.  She’s a problem child, and the way she dresses doesn’t help.  I’m trying to tell her to dress in a way that won’t make her look like a slut.”

A slut?  Yes, he used that word when describing her.  I’m hanging my head right now because it stings and hurts so bad to remember.  I took to heart what John had said, and believed him.  He was right.  She didn’t dress right.  But those were the only clothes she brought with her.  Maybe she was at fault.  Maybe he was just trying to tell her the length her shorts and shirt should be.  Maybe she flat out did lie to me when she said he was pulling and tugging at her. Maybe I didn’t really see what I thought I saw.  Oh, how much the mind plays tricks on you when you want to believe the one you love and trust! 

He was my husband, and I believed him.  Three weeks later I called my mother and father and said my sister had to go home.  She and I have had many, many conversations since throughout the years about his behavior towards her.  I witnessed on many other times him pulling at her breasts, talking to her about how “your boobs sure did stick out in that shirt.”  And, yes, he often made those comments to her in front of me.  Hearing that is dehumanizing.  Seeing it with your own eyes is worse.  And, being the recipient of those acts is the absolute worst.  That is child molestation!!!

If you were to talk to a pedophile right now, you would be told that the little children make advances to them.  The children aren’t dressed properly.  (We’re talking about children as young as one year old.)  They come onto the pedophile making it impossible for the pedophile to resist.  Pedophiles do NOT see a child as an innocent little one.  They look at them with lust.  They look at them with eyes that are vile.  They look at them with distorted images and messed up minds.  They look at them with one thing in mind — “that child will be mine!”

Let me insert something very important here.  Pedophiles like younger children and John was arrested for molesting young children, the oldest being 8.  He stated in court that he has always had a fascination with the young female body of small girls.  So, why did he also touch, grope, feel, and say crude things to teenage girls? (In the coming weeks, I’ll share stories of how he often pulled down his pants and bared his bottom to friends of my daughters!  It makes me sick to say this!)  I have no answer for that except he was very involved with adult pornography as well as child pornography as came out during his arrest and conviction.  I do believe he also had a fascination with the female body as it was developing in teenage girls, and I believe with everything in me that he committed many more acts of molestation that the ones for which there was evidence.

Why didn’t I do anything, say anything, or put a stop to this behavior when I actually became aware of it with my sister?  Why?  Because I somehow equated church work with goodness.  If John was doing so much work with the elders and church people, then he must be close to being  a saint, and it was my duty as his wife to support him, honor him, and to believe him!  [Ask me if I believe that now, and I’ll tell you something quite different!]  I wanted to badly to believe I had married a good, honest Christian man that he could have done almost anything and I would have stood by him one hundred percent, and he knew it! 

Why didn’t my sister do anything?  She did!  She told me, and I basically called her a liar and then chose to see through tainted eyes.  Listen carefully — when someone is abused, manipulated, lied to, and made to feel like a second class person, they will do anything to receive “crumbs of love.”  And, that is where both my sister and I were in life — we were happy with crumbs.  And, John knew it!  Oh, how well he knew it!  He had the perfect set-up!

I’ll stop here  for now– there was more “odd behavior — odd bathroom behavior” that we can use as a lead-in to next week’s continuation of my story. It was odd behavior, but very telling behavior.  I just didn’t know how to identify it, and that’s why I’m educating you.

I’d like to emphasize over and over again how smart pedophiles are.  Every move they make is very calculated.  Very well thought out.  Very well planned.  The grooming process — getting people (both children and adults)  to love and trust you — is very detailed.  I’ve read in numerous publications where pedophiles were interviewed that they would often write out detailed plans for months on end about how they would win the love and support of the child they chose to molest. It could take years of detailed planning and winning over everyone’s trust.   Then, the big bang — the big moment arrived — when the molesting could be done right in the house in another room with the parents there.  There is no greater thrill for the molester!!!

John is not unique in his planning, prepping, and grooming.  He’s one of millions who have molested children, and this is how they began most of the time.  You will find that most child molesters know the children they molest.  And, unfortunately, adults have been tricked into believing the molester over the child.  Just look what happened with me and my sister.  I even saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, and I still chose not to believe my sister.  I believed John — the preacher, the youth pastor, the man of faith.

Warning:  If you see an adult who chooses spending time with another person’s  children over his own OR if he spends more time showing acts of kindness outside of his own home than in his own home, then you need to open up your eyes real wide!  At the very least, this is wrong behavior.  At the very worst, there is an ulterior motive going on — quite possibly with the goal of molesting a child for the thrill of getting away with it right under the parents’ noses!

In the next session together, we’ll talk about how John was a beloved youth pastor.  We’ll talk about one very strange behavior that was part of John from the very beginning of our marriage clear up until the last day we were together.  This one thing makes me cringe now — I find it hard to think about without wanting to vomit.

Red flags were everywhere, but if you don’t know what to look for, you won’t see it!  Thanks for sticking with me through the hard stuff.  It will get us to a place where we’ll be smarter, wiser, more alert.  It will get us to a place where we can pick up on things children tell us and we will know that something is wrong.  It will get us educated, and education is empowerment!

Let’s get educated!  Let’s learn how to stop these molesters in their tracks!  Let’s learn how to back them in a corner and make it so difficult for them that they cannot get to our precious ones — our children — any more!

Love,

Clara

 

 

Married to a Pedophile: They Say Things Come in Threes — and They Did!

If you have been visiting this blog, you already know that I’m telling my story — my story of being married to a practicing pedophile for almost forty years, how I was groomed to be this man’s enabler, and how I continued to unknowingly shelter him for many years thereby giving him thousands of opportunities to molest children.

If you are new to this blog,  please begin here.  I welcome you and hope that you will stay around and become educated on how crafty pedophiles are when it comes to grooming and victimizing.  They will stop at nothing!  Because of my personal experience with a life-long pedophile, I want to equip you with the education you need to stop them before they harm your child or a child you know!

Today is an especially hard day for me.  On Saturday, June 5, 1965 my sister Carmella died.  She was thirteen years old.  It has been 48 years — 576 months to be exact — since I last saw her alive.  And, the pain is still there.  She was not just my sister, but she was my best friend in all the world.  She suffered from asthma from the age of six, and a day after her thirteenth birthday, January 24, the doctors decided her young heart would not survive another major asthma attack. So, a decision was made to send Carmella away to the Betty Bacharach Home by the Sea — a place along the beach in Atlantic City where children were sent to die.  Unlike today, we did not have hospice care.   

I don’t remember much about the day she left other than helping her pack a small suitcase of clothes and a few things like paper and pen and stamps. We promised to write each other every day that she was gone — and we did!  I cried an awful lot from that time forward because I missed her so!  By this time in my life my parents had divorced, my mother was drinking heavily every day, and my father was very absent in our lives. I didn’t know that my sister went away to die.  God, I wish my parents had told me because I could have absorbed a bit of what was happening.  Instead, they told me she was going away to breathe in the ocean air and would get better and come home soon.  I believed them.  I was always the believer.  Always believing, never questioning.  She didn’t make it six months. 

This is the last school picture taken of Mellie, as we called her.  She was little for her age because of the medications she was taking to help her breathe.  But, look at those big, brown eyes!  God, I really, really miss her!  She and I shared our souls and some day I will put into print the book I’ve written about her.  She was a special little girl!  She didn’t cry when she left to go live at the Bacharach Home, but every week when we went to visit her she’d stand at that huge iron door like you’d see at a prison and wave good-bye.  She looked so little and so alone. I would sob the entire drive home and get so sick that I often vomited. 

I learned early on that life isn’t fair.  Not at all!  I’ll never understand why children have to suffer!

 

 I have very few pictures of me and Mellie together.  She was a cutie, wasn’t she?  We were 2 1/2 years apart in age.  I always felt like I was so much bigger and older than her — the protector.  Only, when she needed protected the most I wasn’t there.  She died alone in the Atlantic City Hospital on the night of June 5.  I won’t to into details here, but her enlarged heart couldn’t take all of the strain from so many brutal asthma attacks and her little body finally wore out. She put up a fight, though, the nurses said.  She tried with all of her might to live but the air just couldn’t get into her lungs!  

By the way, that’s my mom and dad in this picture and sadly both of them are gone, too.  I do have one living sister who was born  seven years after Mellie.  

What’s all of this have to do with marrying a pedophile you might ask?  Well, it has everything to do with why and how John chose me to be his wife.  

When Mellie died, I was a few days shy of sixteen.  People don’t understand yet to this day how children suffer when one of their siblings die, but I can tell you that the day Mellie died I entered the gates of hell.  The separation from her was something I can’t explain, and I’ll never be able to put it into human terms so that you will be able to understand.  I lost myself.  I lost my identity.  I lost a lot of my life that day. I lost my sister.   And, those losses changed me. Part of me died and it would take a long, long time before healing would come.  It would take years to learn how to smile — really smile again! 

I was afraid.  Death wasn’t talked about like it is now.  There were no support groups.  There really were no books to read, and I can’t think of any kind of help that was offered other than to read Psalm 23.  Death was death.  Back then you died inside but you didn’t talk about it, and so for a long time I was only a shadow of a living person.

When I entered college I was quiet, and very focused on one thing — finding a way to become happy again.  I thought (mistakenly) that if I just could marry a Christian man and begin a family with this person life would be wonderful again.  

Enter John Hinton. As mentioned before, I truly believed he was the answer to my prayers!    

Pedophiles prey on the lonely because they are so easy to victimize.  I’ll repeat — pedophiles prey on the lonely because they are so easy to victimize.  When I was in my second year of college, John and I had a family living class together, and in that class I wrote about the loss of my sister.  I bared my soul, and later on he asked me about it.  Since Mellie’s death was so fresh yet, I had millions more tears to shed over her loss, and it was obvious to anyone that I was in a fragile state at that time. As is true with any broken, insecure person, I craved one thing — love.   

John didn’t “get it” about her death, but he did get it that I was weak and vulnerable.  I had no dad in the picture.  He was grieving his own losses — the loss of his marriage, the loss of his farm, the loss of his daughter, and all of the other multiple accompanying losses.  My mother was an alcoholic, and I don’t say that disrespectfully.  Her life was one broken mess after another! She was very ill, had gone through a painful divorce, lost our home, and now lost a daughter.  And, she had watched her daughter suffer for seven years a slow, painful death.  Watching a little child struggle for her every breath isn’t easy to see!  Layers and layers of pain covered my family.  

Skillful abusers can easily provide the lonely victim with seemingly genuine attention, companionship, and love. I’ll say it again, I was an easy target to become the enabler he needed.  I was vulnerable in every way you could think of craving only one thing — a wee bit of love and attention.  That’s all I needed.  Just a wee bit would do!  When you’re already so broken, you have no clue when abuse is part of your life!  

Now, we can pick up where we left off last week…….John and I had been married, gone on our strangely different honeymoon, survived a tornado, and now we moved into a new apartment!  Okay, it wasn’t a “new” apartment, but it was a teeny one bedroom apartment. We rented the top floor of a house where two little old sisters lived.  I was thrilled, to say the least, that we were setting up “home” — my dream come true!

Fast forward eight weeks into the marriage, and guess what?  John still didn’t have a job!!!   His words were, “It’s impossible to land a decent paying job, so I’ve been going over to the church building doing some volunteer work with the kids while you’re at work.”

Not only was he doing volunteer work, but he had a big surprise waiting for me!  One evening I came home from work to find a stranger in our apartment with John.  I never met the guy before, and had no clue who he was.  John said all cheerily, “Meet Jim!  He’s the youth minister.  Well, actually, he’s the ‘past’ youth minister!  I’ve talked to the elders and they’re letting me take over Jim’s job!”  

Finally!  Finally, I thought there was some light at the end of this dark path!  This meant that John would finally get paid! My little secretary’s income wasn’t enough to keep us going much longer!  After Jim left that night (he stayed for dinner — I cooked in the sweltering heat while those two sat in the living room and whispered and giggled like little school girls) I asked John how much the job was going to pay.

“What are you talking about?  I never said I was going to get paid!  I’m a volunteer.  The elders love me!  I’ve been letting Jim train me while you’ve been at work.  He’s leaving next week and I’ll slide right into the position as youth minister.  Do you know how great this is going to look on my resume when I graduate?” Do you see what I’m seeing?  As I look back, I can see how perfectly his plans were falling into place. 

 If you’ve done any reading on pedophiles and how they work, you’ve read over and over again that churches are playgrounds for pedophiles.  John had found his playground! 

I was sick.  Actually I was really sick in more ways than one.  You know how things usually come in threes?  Well, surprise number two was about to show up at our doorstep!

I don’t know why.  I don’t know what the circumstances were, but exactly eight weeks after we got married, my living sister Ruthie called crying hysterically.  She couldn’t catch her breath!  “Clara, I have to talk to you.  Mom is in some kind of a hospital, and dad said he can’t take care of me.  He bought me a plane ticket and said I have to come live with you!”  

No job for John.  Married eight weeks and barely even know each other.  And, now a sister coming to live with us.  You’ve got to be kidding!  I called my dad and he was blunt.  “Your sister is more than I can handle.  Your mother tried to kill herself.  So, I’m sending Ruth out to live with you.”  And, that was that.

Living in Oklahoma — a thousand miles away from what used to be home.  And, all of these changes in just a few brief weeks!

Oh, hold on because there’s more!!!!  

I thought it was the stress of the first weeks of marriage.  Or, it could have been the stress of moving, hardly enough money to live off of, and trying to take in the idea of my sister arriving bag and baggage in a few days to come live with us, but….I was feeling really sick and nauseous in my stomach.  I was so tired I felt like I was going to die.  I was too shy to tell anyone (including John) that I missed my period the second month in a row.  But, I would soon get over my shyness and talk to one of the ladies at work.

Lucille, a lady in her fifties and my boss at the time, exclaimed, “Well, kid!  You’re pregnant!”  

And, so I was.  Pregnant.  Very, very pregnant.  I felt like I was on a wild ride and didn’t know where this ride was taking me! I had gotten pregnant on our honeymoon.   

Life was spinning out of control real fast!  But, the thing that blew me away was this — John never flinched. He was perfectly fine with it all!  He loved the fact that my sister would be living with us!  Why not?  I needed company while he was all but living at the church building with the “youth” planning nightly outings such as swimming parties, picnics, and game nights.  By the way, I was told I was NOT invited to any of those events.  Why?  Because John said he had to concentrate on running the games and keeping everything organized!

Alert!!!!  Pay attention, please!  If your mate tells you “stay away” there is something wrong!  Any kind of healthy marriage will make time to be together.  Everyone should have hobbies and an occasional night out with the girls or guys, but to say, “no time for you” is a huge red flag!  John was in his glory!  He was gone literally seven nights a week!

Alert again!  It’s not okay for somebody to just move in with a newly married couple.  I was the sister and I was terribly upset about this!  I wanted to be with my husband, not my sister!  I wanted our relationship to grow as husband and wife, not play mother to a troubled sister!  As much as I loved her, I felt she needed to be with my father or an aunt or my grandparents.  John welcomed her with open arms!  Why not?  She would occupy my time and that would get me off his back about a job!

Triple alert!!!!  I was terribly shy when it came to talking about intimacy.  I had seen nothing role-modeled in my home.  I did, however, ask John if we should see a doctor before we got married.  I wanted to talk about preventing pregnancy while he was still in college.  “We don’t need to see a doctor.  Everything’s under control.  Where’s your faith?  If God wants us to get pregnant, we will.  If He doesn’t want us to get pregnant, we won’t.”  And, so I never brought it up again. After all, John had things under control — and he did!  Notice how he used my weak spot — my faith — as a means of twisting my thinking!  That would happen time and time again!

 I was beaten down by life at a very early age, and very much used by my father.  I could speak hours and hours about the guilt he made me feel for leaving to go to college.  He said it was my responsibility to stay home and take care of my sister. 

I had a mother who was grieving the loss of so many things and had fallen so deep into depression that she tried to kill herself.  And, now….a baby on the way and I didn’t know a thing about what in the world I was going to do!

I was perfect — absolutely perfect — for John.  Remember that he had molested his first little girl when he was fourteen.  That was brought out in his investigation prior to his arrest.  He was deeply ingrained in pornography when he was in grade school.  He was experienced with sex, porn, and God knows what else!  I was as naive about sex, porn, manipulation, and molestation as he was smart! 

The plan for “pedophile heaven” was falling into place quicker and better than John could imagine.  Honestly, when I think back, I laid in bed night after night sobbing into my pillow as I heard him in the living room laughing and joking with his church buddies.  Life was awesome for him, and he didn’t have a clue why I cried so much of the time.  

I was sick, confused, tired, worried, and felt so alone.  Is this how marriage is supposed to be?  Is this the answer to my prayers?  

Hang on….because the story thickens and sickens.  I would soon see strange behavior in John.  And, even though my sister was only twelve, she would see the same strange behavior.  Something wasn’t adding up.  Nothing was adding up.  Everything seemed so out of control and mixed up so fast.  I prayed and prayed for happiness and a good marriage, but it sure didn’t feel like answers to my prayers!

NOTE:  If you have been through a painful trauma in your life, you are vulnerable to people who are abusers and manipulators.  Seek help for yourself.  Get into counseling.  Talk with friends.  Go to a support group.  And, remember, if something doesn’t feel right deep inside, then it probably isn’t!

Thanks for sticking with me as I tell my story.  I want to open your eyes up as to how abuse can occur so easily.  Adults can be groomed and victimized just as easily as the children if we don’t have the education we need to recognize the abuse.  

Next week we will continue on this journey.  You will see how well everything fell into place and you will begin to see a pattern of abuse developing within the marriage.  This abuse continued to weaken me, and strengthen the abuser.  He felt powerful over me.  I felt lonely and depressed.  That combination makes a very viable atmosphere for pedophiles to continue merrily on their way!  

Please help me stop this cycle of abuse!  For the children, let’s open our eyes and see the truth!  Let’s make life incredibly difficult for child predators!  Let’s protect our children!

 Your comments are always appreciated — always!  Please help me to spread the word!  Pedophiles prey on the lonely.  They are smart and cunning and they are harming children right now.  It’s time for this to stop!

Love,

Clara