Examining The Empathy Trap Book 11

This is one post in a series about The Empathy Trap Book by Dr Jane McGregor and Tim McGregor. Unless stated otherwise all quotes used here are from that book. It is recommended that the series be read in order from the first post on. 

The authors continued to focus on dealing with complex family situations and I wanted to give this more attention because it has such strong bearing on so many topics that matter to me and relate to understanding human predators, and the effects of abusive relationships, particularly between caregivers and children, and these translate into useful parallels between the family situations and cultic relationships. 

I have found similarities between Scientology and my experience in that group and the ways that human predators treat children and the more we examine the common ground of these types of relationships the better we can become at both understanding them and also seeing unhealthy aspects of other relationships.

 "Children need to feel wanted, loved and safe; they also need consistency and boundaries. No parent or carer gets it right every time, and everyone has a bad day with their children, but emotional or physical abuse is different. Severe and persistent ill-treatment undermines a child's confidence and self-worth. Trauma survival specialist Judith Herman argues that as long as the target (in this case the child) maintains strong relationships with others, the perpetrator's power is limited; therefore, the sociopath seeks to isolate the child. The sociopath will not only attempt to prohibit communication and material support, but will also try to destroy child's emotional ties to others. When the child is isolated, he increasingly becomes dependent on the sociopath, not only for survival and basic needs but for emotional sustenance. Prolonged confinement in fear and isolation reliably produces a bond of identification between the sociopath and the victim. This is another form of traumatic bonding and may occur between a battered partner and her abuser or between an abused child and an abusive parent." (page 109-110)

This particular aspect of the abusive relationship is quite similar to how Alexandra Stein described the cultic relationship in her book Terror, Love and Brainwashing. Stein described how the cult tries to remove any other relationships that could serve as an escape valve and be a way the cult member could have a method to escape from the cult. It is well worth examining.

 "Adult survivors of childhood abuse often form intense unstable relationships. Some find it very hard to tolerate being alone, but are also extremely wary of others. Terrified of being abandoned on the one hand, and of being dominated on the other, they fluctuate between extremes of submisseveness and rebellion. This has been termed 'sitting duck syndrome'. In the most extreme cases, survivors of childhood abuse may find themselves as involved in abuse of others, either in the role of passive bystander or, more rarely, as a perpetrator."

 (page 110)

This description unfortunately applies to some people who are raised in cults like Scientology. The tragic results include many people who as adults are saddled with difficulties in forming and maintaining relationships. Obviously not everyone has the same outcomes and this is a vital fact. 

The description given by Alexandra Stein regarding attachment theory and cults in Terror, Love and Brainwashing is also useful regarding this issue.

 "Assisting a child in overcoming abuse is a challenge, but children can and do overcome trauma. Helping children make sense of things by listening to them and acting on their behalf when necessary will make a lot of difference to their ability to recover from their childhood traumas. Apathy should not be tolerated by society; and it is part of the problem. A recent example of the way in which apathy itself can form part of the abuse is the sex abuse cases within the Catholic Church which began coming to light in the mid-1980s. The cases involved sexual abuse of minors by priests and received significant media attention. Sadly, cases occurring over many decades have since been reported in numerous countries throughout the world. Much of the scandal focused on members of the church's hierarchy who didn't report allegations of abuse to the civil authorities. In many cases they reassigned those accused to other locations, where they continued to have contact with minors." (page 110-111)

The rampant abuse of children in Scientology and my own experience has convinced me that we really should not tolerate the abuse of children, not even a little bit, not even from our most cherished religious or secular leaders and groups.

Plainly the groups like Scientology and the Catholic Church that hid and protected child abusers, including sexual abusers, should face significant and severe consequences for their part in the abuse of children. They made it possible for abusers to keep abusing children for decades, despite numerous credible accusations of abuse being brought to them, which they squashed while protecting the offenders from prosecution.

They should not be able to merely pay a fine or settlement. They have real people who really conspired to obstruct justice who actually belong in prison. In some cases for the rest of their lives.