Was my relationship with my youth worker as a teenager weird?

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When I was 15 I was part of a youth group associated with the church that i attended since childhood. I became very close with one of the male leaders who I'd known since I was very small. Nothing actually sexual happened between us and I actually have warm feeling towards him when I think of him now. However when I look at it all as an adult, through the lense of an married women with children, it feels so inappropriate and I need help knowing how to feel about it.
He was very kind to me and did extremely sweet things for me. With it being a church youth group, he was invested in me becoming Christian, although no one in my family was particularly religious even though id gone to church regularly since childhood with my nanna. I think this could be used as an excuse as to why he was so invested in spending time with me, because he wanted to convert me.

But we'd spend so much time together, in his car, chatting for hours after he'd dropped me off. And he told me he would purposely drop me off a little bit away from my house so my grandad and dad wouldn't see us in the car together. He said he knew there was nothing untoward going on but was concerned about how it looked to others.
He'd tell me not to sleep with other boys, when I was around 16/17. This would be framed in a 'it's not what's in gods plan for you' way. And he never hinted that he wanted to sleep with me but i remember going to a boys house one night after he'd tried to persuade me not to and he text me on the night saying 'have fun'. Which in hindsight seems a little off.
When I was a fair bit older and had moved away and came back to visit, I was walking with him, and a boy that I didn't recognise said hello to me, I didn't know who it was and my youth leader said 'probably someone you've had sex with'. Which was all very jokey at the time but again now, seems weird.

This was a man in his 30s, married with 5 children. I was friends with his wife. I'd baby sit for them, clean their house, take their kids to school once of week. Again he was a gentle soul, we had a laugh and a loved spending time with him. But we were incredibly intense together and he was my closest relationship at that time. Now my husband is a dad in his 30s and I'm trying to picture him spending that amount of time with a teenage girl and I can't! I think it would break our marriage. I'd feel sick to my stomach. I'm having a hard time knowing how to think about all this, maybe someone has some wisdom?

I have heard that paedophiles in particular think of grooming as a team effort, if they are prevented from taking the action they want to, the grooming they have already done will make it easier for the next one to get a bit further because the victim has been pre-prepared.

Yes this is well established. Abusers act in a way to lower boundaries across the board, not just with one victim in mind.

But I reacted in a 'good' way to him. As in, it never spooked me and I'd engage in all the chat. If he had bad intentions you'd have thought he'd have seen that I wasn't spooked and then tried something on with me? Or pushed it further, over a time period of around 4 whole years before I moved away. But he never did.
This is why I'm conflicted and wonder if I'm being dramatic about it all.

Without being inside his head it’s hard to know why this didn’t progress but it could have been for any number of reasons.

Felt bad about previously cheating on his wife and didn’t want to again, was waiting until you were over x age, was waiting for you to make a move, was trying to be ‘moral’ and follow church teachings etc etc.

But I think that it’s unlikely that you were equal adult friends with him having no ulterior motive. Even if you take any sexual aspect out of the equation- can you imagine an equal balanced friendship where you discuss your problems with a 15 year old?

I do get why you are conflicted here. Pre kids I had a couple of older friends who were flirty / pushed boundaries / handsy etc and who I found funny and endearing not at all threatening. Now I have a preteen girl who they have no contact with - I wouldn’t be happy with her having the same dynamic which I was fine with at the time.

The fact that you had an ED means you were potentially vulnerable. Both myself and my sister had ED and I know we came across as younger , and if I'm honest I was also pretty naive. I also had very low self esteem so someone taking an interest in me would have felt good. I'm not saying that you were but there are other more suitable ways he could have helped and supported you through that, than intimate meetings in his car.

It sounds as if he felt like someone safe, and supportive at a time you were struggling, and it's probably really uncomfortable to question his motives, or consider it maybe wasn't appropriate looking back with more adult perspective.

So you gave him validation by discussing it, you don’t have to be spooked for him to make a move, in fact that would have put him off if you did. He wants it all on his terms so he could blame you for feeling sorry for him and misunderstood it all when the move was made but you moved away. Think on that what would have happened if you stayed.

your feelings of why, what and ifs are valid here he isn’t like a dorky older uncle (🤮) he was a predatory adult and he’d would have moved onto the nest girl after you left you just didn’t hear about it.

You are assuming that his only bad motivation must have been to “ try something on with you “. And because he didn’t, you assume that his motivation was therefore pure .

But it’s not a binary option

bad man who sexually assaults underage girls OR
good man whose only motivation for doing youth work is the welfare of young people

There are other things in between. Man who

engages in sexual conversations
discusses his own sex life, his struggles with porn and infidelity
prompts for details of young girls sex life
has secret, hours long one on one talks in cars that he knows “ look bad “
Subtlety encourages a teen to hide things from their family
inappropriately confides in young girl
has an intense, best friend type relationship with underage girl
uses a teen for free cleaning and babysitting
lies to ( or omitted to tell the truth to ) his supervisor about what he was doing

All of these things are objective bad things, they are against all safeguarding rules now and most of them were against the rules 20 years ago. He knew that and yet he still did them.

Even if it felt good to you.
Even if he also was kind to you.
Even if you were flattered by the attention
Even if everyone thought he was a great guy
Even if he never laid a finger on you

He was very wrong to do what he did.

I think he was just a creepy weirdo who was obsessed with you.
Thankfully you didnt get molested, but its probably unsettling because a lot of us have so many near misses at that age.

Even twenty years ago (post 2003 basically) grooming was a potentially arrestable offence.

OP I really think you should consider speaking to your local police force about this, a 30 odd year old youth leader striking up an intense relationship with a vulnerable teenager knows EXACTLY what he was doing - god knows what else he's got up to in the years since.

I was in a pentecostal evangelical church in my late teens and this level of control/mentoring/whatever was rife. Teenaged girls were sent out into town centres on Saturday nights to 'outreach' to other young people. To 'witness'. To get converts basically.

It was male-led. The women/wives ('church wives') were all twinset and pearls, behind the scenes trad-style. Looking at it now, it was deeply off.This was in the UK in the late 80s.

Grooming is a process and it takes time. Who knows what or why a groomer moves from grooming to physical abuse other than opportunity. Maybe he was abusing someone else op. Maybe he liked the thought he could abuse you at any time. Nothing that man said or did was for your benefit op, it was all for him. It makes it grooming that it is confusing and he was nice to you.

I did a lot of training in online grooming and when caught offenders would have 100s of young people they were grooming at any one time, looking for the opportunity to strike, I don’t see why irl groomers would be much different.

For the Op and anyone else who might find this helpful - here are the safeguarding contact details for some of the main Christian denominations in the UK.

Such calls are always confidential and you don’t have to give your name.

https://www.churchofengland.org/safeguarding/reporting-abuse

https://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/about-us/safeguarding-service/about-us

https://www.churchinwales.org.uk/en/clergy-and-members/safeguarding/reporting-safeguarding-concern/

https://safeguarding.ireland.anglican.org/

https://www.methodist.org.uk/safeguarding/safeguarding-contacts/

https://catholicsafeguarding.org.uk/

https://www.baptist.org.uk/Groups/330131/Reporting_a_concern.aspx

https://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/about-us/policies/safeguarding

https://www.nazarenebisd.org.uk/whistleblowing-safeguarding

@Wallacewhite

Thank you for your response and concern.

I sincerely hope it was a
One off thing and he has become wiser since then. We haven't been close since i was about 18 now, nearly 15 years ago, in a different city, and nothing illegal happened. So I think the police might be over kill.
I guess I'll never know, if I ever saw him again, I think id be comfortable enough to ask him.

That sounds very strange.

It was nothing like this. It was a fairly average church, with a big youth movement. There was no trad wide/male led evangelism or anything like that. We did normal stuff with the youth group like laser quest and cinema. Our relationship just went further than it should have. By the time I was a young adult I was going to the pub with him and others together and it was more even. I think when I was 15/16/17 it was highly inappropriate just because of my age, but started to become more acceptable as I got older perhaps.

Thank you

You just reminded me of something similar.

At school, my friend had a banterous relationship with the school mentor and I met him through her. He was an older man. I was 14. If I saw him outside of school eg 3pm, he would always approach me, beep his car, stop his car, speak to me and offer to drive me home, which I thought was odd as I lived next to school. The drive would have been pointless.

It meant if I was with friends I’d have to tell him what we were doing and essentially answer to him why I wasn’t going straight home. Felt it overstepped.

It would be a frequent occurrence to the point I found the constant beeps and having to chat at his car irritating. It was embarrassing as other people from school would watch this happen.

In school, I said I had no confidence or didn’t feel pretty and he would say that any guy would be lucky to have me, I’m so pretty etc.

Once, I was late to school, when I got into school I told this same mentor and he wrote a letter saying I was with him the whole time, so I didn’t get in trouble for being late. Looking back that was probably inappropriate for safeguarding.

When I left school for 6th form at 16, he got my phone number from that same friend who introduced us. I didn’t like this so I blocked him. Like you nothing “happened” but I felt uncomfortable.

Beware of those who come dressed as sheep for inside their as ravenous as wolves.

This quote popped up in my mind after reading your post.

It sounds like you had a lucky escape just about, he sounds like a wrongen, just like you say, you wouldn’t imagine your husband in his 30’s socialising with a fifteen year old child so now in hindsight you look back and probably shiver at the reality.

Sending you love 💐

I say this gently, but I don't think you understand the law. A professional in a position of trust isolating a young person, taking them out in a car without a legitimate reason for doing so, striking up an intense relationship with them and commenting on their sexual relationships is a potential offence in and of itself - it doesn't matter that you weren't assaulted at the end of it, it's the process before that is considered 'grooming'.

This kind of behaviour isn't an indicator of immaturity either, so I wouldn't be confident that he has grown out of it.

If you don't feel comfortable speaking to the police then please at least consider speaking to the NSPCC (who have some expertise around non-recent and/ or faith based abuse) or one of the church related resources shared by a previous poster.

That sounds completely unacceptable and abusive. I'm disgusted that he was prepared to get you to join him in doing something your caregivers didn't know about, his inappropriate references to sex, his involvement in your decision to go to a boy's house, the inappropriately long chats with you. I don't know much about these things but he sounds like someone priming you to make a move on him or a very sad and pathetic individual who gets kicks from this and could end up being a full blown rapist.

Yes, the OP said this was 15 years ago so post the 2003 Sexual Offences Act.

Yeah I would be.
He absolutely should have known better.

My husband has a full time job and kids just like him, and doesn't have a spare minuite of the day. When he's not working he's dedicated to our young family.
I can't imagine his wife being happy that he was gone so much when she had 5 very young kids. I honestly don't know.

We talked mainly about life, what we both found hard. Things that we struggled with. He'd tell me examples from his life too, current and from his childhood. We talked a lot about Christianity too. It absolutely seemed like he wanted to best for me and just wanted me to live a better life that would make me happier. It was incredibly unwise of him of course and he must have gained something from me.