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
