I’m a member of a number of shrinking niche communities. One common thread is that there is a steady stream of posts about how a member has died. Recently there was one such post that makes a great example for the purposes of this essay.
Someone I had never heard of died. I only heard about it because another member posted about how they were grieving the loss of their good friend, mentor and benefactor. It was after this that the post became noteworthy. They acknowledged that the deceased was a rapacious and rather evil predator with many victims in the community. However, they wanted the victims silenced, at lease in the context of the post, so that they could publicly grieve the deceased’s suicide as the police closed in, without having to deal with victims interfering with their eulogizing the predator.
After all, to the grieving high status person, the victims were ones who were worthless.
It was both surreal and illustrative. It was surreal in that a predator who rarely did anyone favors was being lauded. Illustrative because it highlighted in a very raw fashion, how predators work.
First, order to succeed as a predator, the perpetrator needs enablers and social connections. Invariably they befriend enablers who are of high social status, making themselves valuable. As a result, they are seen as valuable.
Second, as I noticed over forty years ago as I began to encounter victims in my legal practice, the victims are generally those of lower status who “just don’t count” to those at the top.
That has been the case for a very long time. After all, the Old Testament warns against abusing widows, orphans, strangers in the land and the friendless. It doesn’t need to warn against abusing the rich or the kings. Christ stated “in as much as you have done this unto the least of these …” not ” in as much as you treat kings, judges and prophets …”
While my example was a niche, non-LDS community, the same rules apply to our community.
It is a very human dynamic, but one we need to do better with.
What do you think?
Wheat & Tares 
All too often, it seems, institutions are inclined to protect the predators and attack the victims. Individuals who over-identify with institutions and who follow institutional directives rather than a sense of personal morality (that is, most Mormons) then follow the institution’s lead.
Do you remember M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled? He wrote another book titled People of the Lie. Everyone should read it.
Did you ever read Ender’s Game or the many spin-off novels from Orson Scott Card?
The main character, Ender, writes a book about the alien insect-like species that he fought against and about his brother that became a world leader even though he was kind of a psychopath. The book within the book – The hive queen and the Hegemon, became kind of a religion where the adherents hire a speaker for the dead to tell the good and the bad at a funeral. To help the people grieve by understanding the whole story of the person that died.
I have always loved this concept and wished I could have had a speaker for the dead when my own father died. He abandoned my family when I was quite young and disappeared almost completely for more than 20 years. there were many unanswered questions and old wounds that were left open.
The few conversations I had with him before he died did not explain his absence or betrayal. I was able to get glimpses of his life after – years of homelessness and the hints of mental illness and substance abuse.
I think something like the speaker for the dead would be better in the case you reference where someone was at the same time someone’s parent and loved one with I am sure tender and loving moments of kindness along side the horrors of their predatory and destructive crimes. To me, mourning such a person means facing both the good and the bad. The venue for that is not the comment section on social media I would think though or in the comments on a funeral home website. It is a tough and hard thing to do and the trite and mean and rude comment sections are not the place for it.
I think your post may prove timely when the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s associates is released on January 1.
The doctor that delivered my wife over 40 years ago was a member of a stake presidency, a temple president, and a mission president. As far as I know, his behavior with my MIL was fine, but his behavior elsewhere was not. While a doctor, he told a couple who were having trouble conceiving that he’d provide an anonymous sperm donor. He used his own sperm for the job. He then delivered his own biological daughter, with no one the wiser that it was actually his.
Obviously, there are major ethical issues at stake here, and obviously, the family who was told the sperm donor was anonymous are the most affected. I imagine it must come as a shock to the missionaries he presided over, and to the individuals who’d lived in his stake. I imagine he probably had other victims too–in his deposition he admitted as much.
He’s 80 years old now, and I imagine when he dies there will be a nice obituary written up and he’ll have a nice LDS funeral and his family and church leaders will praise him. He was a successful doctor, after all, and a leader in the church. Surely all of that trumps the fact that he was a major creep.
I think what ordinary people fail to understand about predators is that they will manipulate others, by being flattering to those in power, by doing favors for them, and it is all fake, just an act to allow the predator to get what he wants. They are really good at using flattery, twisted logic, and their position as an important person to manipulate and get people believing them instead of their victim.
And what the church fails to understand about sexual predators is that they will act all humble and repentant, so they can get out of the nasty consequences of their behavior. It is not repentance. It is manipulation. So the bishop listens to the “confession” of the “poor guy” who is sexually abusing his child, and the bishop thinks there is a good chance the guy will never do it again, so no need to report. But he fails to understand that the “chance” of the guy stopping is a snowball’s chance in hell.
This all leaves the child feeling that nobody cares about what is happening to her, the bishop doesn’t care, even God must not care because “God’s servant” knows about the abuse and does nothing to stop it. It is not the sexual abuse that is most damaging to the child, it is the betrayal. First, the betrayal of the relationship with the abuser who is supposed to love her, but treats her as a throwaway. Then even more hurtful is the fact that people take her abuser’s side of things, as if she is totally worthless and they only care about the abuser. The mother, in an effort to not send her husband to prison, fails to protect the child. The bishop, blinded by the “repentant” act, fails to protect her. The police or other official protectors sometimes even fail to believe her because the abuser is just as good at manipulating them, and he is an important member of the community, and she is just a kid, and even her own father suggests she is a pathological liar. They never stop to ask themselves about the source of the idea that this child is making it all up.
I used to counsel the adult survivors of child sexual abuse, and the most hurtful part wasn’t the abuse, but that the evil abuser was more worthwhile and “loved” than she was by her mother, siblings, and seemingly everyone including God.
This happened to my friend. In spite of her father’s sexual abuse she was able to forgive him (while of course having nothing to do with him). She struggled to forgive her mother for allowing it to happen, leaving him and divorcing him, and then remarrying him as suggested by her bishop.
This one of the bad side effects of treating women like children that can’t know what’s right for themselves, and idealizing the family to such an extreme level.
Dave B: Thanks for the book recommendation–I immediately bought it based on your say so. It sounds fascinating.
I’ve known quite a few women (mostly people I met in the church) who were sexually abused by their fathers or other older male relatives, and by far the most damaging aspect was that their mothers failed to believe them and support them. Instead they were treated as liars, as if they were the ones hurting others (their poor father, with their damning accusations), or as the promiscuous harlots, seductresses (as children) of their own fathers. Usually words like “troubled” and “difficult” were applied to them, to gaslight them into submission. It’s sickening.
There was a great Sarah Marshall podcast about the rise in horror movies in the 70s and 80s in which serial killers like Freddy Kruger preyed on children, but the real threat that was coming to light at that time wasn’t from outside the home; it was the rise in reported sexual abuse of children by their fathers and male relatives. As she pointed out in the podcast (You’re Wrong About), they specifically called Freddy Kruger a “child murderer” which had the same syllables as “child molester.” Rather than deal with the real threats, which would undermine the resurging commitment to patriarchal nuclear families (in Reagan America, natch), media like this portrayed the threats as coming from outside the home, targeting vulnerable children.
Most horror films specifically punished attractive and promiscuous coming-of-age teens as a trope. These movies were really popular in my home stake, and we would often run into kids we only saw at Youth Conferences among the audience members. As soon as you saw an attractive young woman in the film pair off with her boyfriend in the woods, basement, attic, wherever, especially early in the film, you knew they were toast. People would start yelling at the screen, trying in vain to prevent the inevitable bloodbath. (This was before the PG-13 Strength of Youth guidelines, in case anyone is scandalized that a bunch of Mormon kids were all going to slasher films).
Another thumbs up for M. Scott Peck’s “People of the Lie.” It really helped me deal with some individuals in my area. Yes, a few held positions of power over e in the church. I also enjoyed his “Glimpses of the Devil.” The latter is about an exorcism Peck was involved with. But read the first before you tackle the latter.
I’ve seen some instances of evil in the human heart and in human interaction during my lifetime. But the closest thing to unmitigated evil was a case of child sexual abuse I became aware of while a young missionary. That was horrifying.
To put that into perspective, on a global scale, the U.S. ranks 34th for intentional female homicides at a rate of 2.6 killings per 100,000 women. Moreover, in the US, almost three women are killed by an intimate partner every day.
Perhaps different predators? I just can’t imagine what life must be like day to day leading up to murder by your intimate partner. In Australia we have one woman a week, or 0.3/100,000, and there is still much discussion on how to reduce it. This article from todays news https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-22/house-of-reps-male-mps-domestic-violence/103224064
I also think Ukraine is bein attacked by a predator. The same with palistinians and Israel. America needs to cut off aid to Israel or risk being supporters of evil. 20,000 deaths by munitions made in usa in 7 weeks. One third women, one third children.
With a rate of 2.6/100000 if you have 2 million women, 50 of them will be killed by their husbands each year. Killing your wife is the extreme end of a bad relationship. One in 3 women are physically abused at some point in their relationship, and one in 7 injured. Never heard a conference talk on reducing this behaviour by men/predators.