Silenced has a great blog entry about creepy men in the Churches of God. Those were the single guys over 35 that stood around with their tongues hanging out watching all the single women.
Pasadena was full of these creeps. Because Pasadena was the HQ for the Church it attracted a lot of really weird and sick people. Most were men. There were a few women in the mix, but mostly it was men. The auditorium attracted most of these guys because the students were assigned to attend there, so it was a young and nubile smorgasbord.
They would stand in the lobby of the auditorium and stare at coeds and well dressed women. Some would then follow these women into the auditorium and sit behind them so they could stare at them all through services. Others, would have typed lists of expectations on how women were to act if they ever accepted a date from one of these guys. It was all about being submissive and knowing who was in charge.
Church dances were a favorite venue for these creepers to come out of the wood work. They would gather up the courage to ask the single women to dance with them and then the touching would start in. You could see it in the women's eyes as they returned to their seats with their friends.
Sadly the ministry never did much about these guys. However they would tell women to go out with them, sometimes even commanding women to date certain of these creeps.
Silenced goes further into the topic relating how women were molested by these men.
Creepers and terminally single males
There weren’t many men to choose from anyway, and the remaining single, unattached males tended to be older and mentally unstable, as they had been trapped by COG dating prohibitions to keep their sights within the church. They sunk into loneliness, depression and instability as their opportunities and years passed them by.
The “terminally single males” as we jokingly called them tended to be 35 or older and socially awkward with the tendency to stalk. They would single-out women they liked at dances and social gatherings, despite their obvious disinterest, glare at them, make them uncomfortable and even sometimes make crude or harassing remarks.
These “creepers” were pervasive across COG groups, and the ministry did nothing about them. After all, they were men and tithe-paying members. Drop-kicking them out of the congregation would hurt the COG’s bottom line.
There were hundreds of tales of older men stalking and hitting-on women half their age or younger. These women are powerless and often frightened to bring this before COG pastors, who would simply be negligent to do anything about it anyway.
Many of these men ended up being sexual predators. Silenced relates how a man in United Church of God called Mr. H preyed on women in the church and STILL does to this day because UCG will not do anything about him.
One illustrative example of a sexual predator online and in real life was a COG member we’ll call Mr. H.
Most of these men jumped ship during the changes and went with the various splinter groups. LCG, UCG and PCG took in a lot of them. These guys have to be in their 60's now which makes it even creepier!He was a young man, late teens/early twenties, who was an infamous stalker of UCG women, teens and young adults. He would send them salacious, sexually charged messages, harass them before and after church, made lewd and suggestive phonecalls, and do things that would usually get people arrested.
However, his victims were afraid to speak out against him, because he was a “member in good standing,” his profile’s gallery was full of pictures of him and prominent church pastors shaking hands and smiling, and he outwardly was one of the pious and self-righteous church sheep ever produced, and that hid a very dark side that was gaining fear and infamy throughout the young people in UCG.
Mr. H is still a member in good standing, as the ministry has done nothing about him.
A horror story related to Mr. H was recently left on one of our posts by a current member of COGWA:
I will say that I completely agree 100% with Silence/et al, who point out the creepers/stalkers. I know exactly who you are referring to with Mr. H – I have had my own experiences with him, and after he sent salacious messages to a MINOR, I had him reported.Mr. H was not reprimanded by the COG for this.
Read the entire entry here: I wept for my sisters
6 comments:
While I understand the intent and perspective of this posting, I find it a bit harsh on what, in my experience and view, are simply lonely people searching for the human contact that is pretty normal.
I am not saying it always is proper in its expression. It is not and there are rules of conduct and engagement when with others, but the core problem is you are dealing and attracting very lonely human beings who also want some hope in this life and the next.
Sexuality and sex was not often spoken of in the COG's. If it was, it was the sinful stuff , lust and "perversion," of humans. I always found that when I spent time getting to know that loner and being honest and forthright , they got honest and forthright and I discovered a regular human being . (This is not to negate the few that I knew who had genuine mental issues and difficulties or who were odd enough to be an uncomfortable "threat" to others). I took more than one to get some outside the church help.
All organizations attract all kinds of humans for all kinds of reasons. The problem, to me, was not the person, but the skill level or lack of skills the organization had in seeing and helping. After all, the story tells us Jesus was able to be around "demon infested humans" and help the man out. (Probably Schizophrenic in reality) and work with the foaming, throw me in the fire boy, who probably had an epileptic seizure which would have been a spectacular demon manifestation in the day easily cured by waiting twenty minutes.
Anyway, a healthier group does not repress more those who are already repressed or marginalize the already marginalized.
Part of the problem also was that "God's Spirit" was supposed to cure all personality problems and make one everything they weren't. When it was obvious someone was not falling into that cure, they were judged, not encouraged.
Also, disfellowshipping is not encouraging and for some was just more rejection. Encouragement should actually be encouraging to those who are needed to be encouraged. In the COG's encouragement was depressing all too often. Bible encouragement can be that way.
"A word fitly spoken..." an all that goes a long way.
Big topic.
PS I have a student in my massage class that has been pretty trashed by her Bob Jones University/kindergarten to high school experience. Shy, unsure, marginalized by most, etc. It is a joy to see her light up when we talk about her experience and I share my views on what was not helpful or even true about what she was programmed to be and think.
She hangs around just to talk and a hug seems to go a long way. The other day she got teary saying thanks for just listening and not making her feel like she didn't exist. That works for me.
Of course, I have to be a bit more wary of the drug dealer in the class..
This is appalling.
There are both male and female stalkers.
In the Pacific Northwest, one man stalked a married woman in the WCG and then the UCG for seven years until she and her husband took him to court and got a restraining order. The UCG deacons, deaconness and elders supported the stalker in court. The judge had none of it. I believe the court transcript and recording is still online at The Painful Truth. I sat in court in the back and watched the entire disgusting event unfold. Dennis Luker was the Senior Pastor.
A young man married and the Sabbath after his honeymoon when he returned, the female stalker accosted him and told him, “You are mine!”. This woman is really creepy and has stalked several other men. The Senior Pastor was Dennis Luker.
Over a couple of decades back in the Midwest in the WCG, a professional woman attended services and a creepy man much older than her told her that she needed to submit to him. The minister supported this arrangement. He stalked her. He was in her apartment building. Then one day, she got a call from an insurance agent. She was puzzled. The agent was checking on her marriage to this man because he was named beneficiary if she died. She made it clear that she was NOT married to him. She moved to a secured facility with 24 by 7 armed guards. Fortunately, by this time he was far enough away that his stalking was too much for him to maintain anyway. The minister’s name? Dennis Luker.
This pales in the face of Chuck Harris. He actually showed me his revolver after services one day. He was trying to get Brenda James to marry him. He was a black man and he was a white woman. Dennis Luker told them that they could not even date because race issues. In his anger, Chuck shot and killed Brenda and several others in her apartment complex. I guess the fact that he was already married to his wife in Canada never came up to Luker. What profoundly bad judgment — the same judgment he can utilize as President of United. There are winners and losers. The UCG… well, history has already spoken.
Stalking is illegal.
What is it with the ACoGs? They seem to think they are the civil authorities.
Call the Sheriff!
No, no, the real one!
And the blog entry?
Not harsh enough.
Did someone say stalker in the UCG? Here is the link and sound track of the proceeding's.
"There are both male and female stalkers."
Yes, some of those cult sluts and liars and wicked old hags were as bad as anyone. And it seems like some of the worst ones went to the WCG splinter groups.
Interestingly, the WCG splinter groups seem to be places where predators are free to go and pursue their agendas. If anyone resists or complains, the predators just go to the "ministers" and get their victims kicked out. This seems backwards and wrong, but then, welcome to the reality of the WCG splinter groups.
I remember reading that transcript on the PT site some time back, and it still makes me angry that the local ministers and deacons decided to defend the stalker and not help his victim.
If someone treated one of my sisters in this fashion, I'd find a couple of reliable friends and pay a visit to Mr. Stalker. We'd get a bag over his head before he knew we were around and give him 12 points to ponder before we left. Seems a shame that there were no "spiritual brothers" around to do the same thing - but then again, being in WCG was an emasculating experience.
Those friends would really have to be reliable too. In my WCG experience you could pretty much depend on someone to rat out another person's behavior - sinful, illegal, or none of the above. Then you'd get a call from the likes of a minister like Luker, full of sound and fury and declaring you guilty before even hearing your side of the event.
As for bad behavior among WCG singles, I've seen it happen from both sexes. There was always a handful of men at a dance that women tried to avoid like the plague. Some lessons in being polite, but firm, in declining a second or third dance might have been in order. Then there were the women that were picking out their bridesmaids after one date. (That's personal experience. Twice.)
I think Dennis has the right of it - most of it was people trying to make a connection and being socially inept. One bad experience breeds a lot of fear of the next one. And the whole WCG culture stressed family and marriage, while at the same time restricting the dating pool severely.
One of the saddest accounts I've read about the WCG/XCG experience was written by a woman post train wreck (1995). The gist of it was that everything was available to her, she now had freedom in Christ - all except love and intimacy. Somehow that had been left out of the XCG life.
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