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

[gregometer]

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 would be interested in his church colleague who also had the 'porn' addiction (was it porn or CSA?) - that they had confided in each other and were keeping each other 'accountable' from 'temptation'.

Have you ever heard of men doing that?

More likely they were sharing this 'porn' as part of a paedophile ring.

Yes confiding in each other in this way is very normalised in some intense evangelical churches. It is very weird behaviour but was seen as a good way to stop sinning. Being accountable to someone was meant to stop you from sinning. I feel sick when I think of the intensely personal things I used to tell friends at church. All the boundaries are so wrong and friendships are over intense. It’s really messed up and is done to control you.

@TriptoTipp yes @Cushionsandals is correct in that this is normal in those circles.

Although the whole situation was not right, it was absolutely not a peadophile ring. It's important for me not to get carried away here.
Lots of people we're 'accountability buddies' and in this instance it meant that they had installed software on their computers which meant it would send th other a message if either of them viewed porn. Obviously that's intense and unhealthy, but they wernt sex criminals.

His sole drive was sexually orientated.

He specifically targeted you. It wasnt an accident you were vulnerable with distant/disengaged adults at home.

He was a predator and he achieved this through grooming hidden as a church mentor. He was also mirroring you with his 'youthful' energy - standard grooming technique.

Maybe his sexual gratification was achieved from sexual conversations with a child rather than physical molestation. This is still CSA.

You were not the first and wont have been the last in his paedophile career.

The grooming was so effective and intense over many years that you are left with warm and trusting feelings whilst your head and gut know his behaviour is abhorrent. Its cognitive dissonance - its possible that he made you feel great, helped in your life AND groomed you / sexually abused you at the same time. Thats the whole point of grooming - nudging the boundaries / boiling the frog.

The accountability stuff is more akin to being AA buddies.

OK I understand the accountability stuff now and I understand the emotional and personal intensity of the (misguided) spiritual mentoring.

But it still stands that this grown man was having sexualised conversations with a child whilst hiding his relationship with her from her family - so I would suggest that the spiritual mentoring was a cover.

@gregometer I understand that you want to latch onto the one or two posters who have said things like “ Yeah I was a youth worker at that time and I was just the same , it’s nothing to worry about “.

I appreciate that might feel reassuring to you and validate your feelings that he did nothing wrong and it’s you that’s over reacting. But I’d urge you to trust your own instincts, consider the facts as well as your feelings and seek some expert advice .

Some people are pushing their own agendas here - either the “ all Christians are perverts “ or the abuse apologists. Or the “ I did a shit job as a youth worker and now I’m going to use your threads to validate or exonerate myself “ agenda.

The sad fact that other men have acted badly doesn’t make what he did Ok. It makes them both wrong.

OP, think about it this way, because I see you are still struggling with this (and I can completely understand why). If this man behaved like this in the workplace - isolating you in the stationery cupboard, where he talked about sexual matters to you, then insisted you left separately so nobody would know - he would be guilty of sexual harassment, and be investigated for gross misconduct. It is no less serious or inappropriate when done under the guise of religion - indeed, I would expect it to be taken even more seriously, touching as it does on matters of morality, which churches see as their domain. However, given the scandals in churches, I am not surprised to see it was accepted as the norm. It is not the norm, however, and in no other sphere would this sort of behaviour be seen as acceptable.

@B0RING

Thank you. I think both can be true. I think this behaviour is, or was, somewhat more normal in Christian circles. So that reassures me in that I don't think he was a child molester. But just because it's normalised, it doesn't make it right or not inappropriate.

After thinking about this for most of the day, I've sort of come to a conclusion that it doesn't matter. What good will ruminating do? My life now is wonderful so it obviously hasn't done me any damage and I'll never get any answers to his intentions so what's the point

Yes but he didn't necessarily purposely isolate me in his car. We'd be having conversation and get to my street and just carry on the talk for a long time. I did not feel trapped or uncomfortable. It did not feel like he was in control.

There are so many "others" though. Everything i see a man working, or leading children at church it's natural to think its dodgy. I want to see a system where men who work with children in a church setting are partnered with a trusted women because them this wouldn't happen.

Those trusted women could be Myra Hindley, Beverley Allott or Rose West, no harm at all there.

It might of not done damage but it’s made you aware and to safeguard others because you’ll notice it for what it is.

you're right in that in most senses it doesn’t matter.

but in one or two ways it does - perhaps you’re still vulnerable to feeling that you’re a bit of a pushover to someone who gives you their time and attention? Reading between the lines it sounds like your childhood was difficult and you now work with children, maybe you want to figure this out so that you know how best to protect your own children or those you work with?

There must be a reason why you’re puzzling it out.

I hate to tell you this but the whole “feeling like we’re the same age” thing is I’m pretty sure classic abuser shtick, he probably emphasised how mature you were and how young for his age he was.

The problem with discussing sexual things with kids (not in a sex ed way, which is healthy and positive, but in a 'this is my sex life' 'this is what I'm dealing with sexually') is that it turns the relationship into an 'adult' relationship when it's not. It means that the child is encouraged to view the adult in a sexual light, which is a problem. Adults should never be encouraging children to view them sexually, it's never ok. Even if it didn't 'lead to anything', the issue is that the dynamic was already set up and there.

I think the problem here is that grooming/abuse of power/ sexual abuse can absolutely occur unintentionally, which is why it still occurs today. People who say that rape/SA/grooming is an intentional act are wrong, and that view actually allows such violations to continue, because it means that people who don't have bad intentions don't think that they can hurt another person. It isn't just malice that leads humans to hurt others - the job can be done just as well through negligence and ignorance. It doesn't sound like he intended to predate upon you (although I don't know for sure, as others have said, pedos are good at hiding their intentions), but this doesn't mean that he didn't harm you. I get the complex feelings you're having - 'he didn't intend to harm me or be inappropriate means he wasn't inappropriate/I'm not allowed to feel violated'. But this isn't the case. You are allowed to feel violated and recognise that he didn't intend to violate you. Whether he meant it or not, he sexualised an innocent teen and exposed you to his sexuality, which is definitely going to mess with your boundaries and make you feel messed up.

I'm really sorry you're experiencing this. It might be worthwhile to speak to a therapist about this, or even, if you feel up to it, have a conversation with him about it.

Thank you for this response. I think it's helpful because it's quite balanced.
I think I'd get a lot of closure from discussing it with him, but i have no contact details for him and it's highly unlikely I would see him. Our conversation was always quite candid and honest, I do think he'd give me a proper answer, even if it didn't paint him in a good light.

Stockholm syndrome is a coping mechanism to a captive or abusive situation. People develop positive feelings toward their captors or abusers over time. This condition applies to situations including child abuse, coach-athlete abuse, relationship abuse and sex trafficking.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22387-stockholm-syndrome

Do you think the attached link is relevent?

I'm starting to be concerned that this guy has done such a number on you that you are unlikely to have good judgement when it comes to safeguarding the children that you work with.

It is alarming that you believe yourself to have had an honest, candid relationship with a 30 odd year old married man who creepily dropped you up the road so that your family wouldn't know you were hanging out in his car. What was honest and candid about that?

You don’t know that he and others did not / are not committing crimes. Nor do you know whether his conversations with you were ‘candid and honest’ - seems obvious it wasn’t!

His behaviour towards you would, if known. have raised red flags even decades ago. Awful.

Personally I think that it would be a very big error of judgement on his part to ever have such a conversation with you.

And I agree with @Wallacewhite that it’s alarming you still need him to tell you if your feelings about his conduct were right or wrong.

If you honestly want to do this, I suggest speaking to a counsellor or therapist first.

I have similar 'non-event' things from my teenage hood by adult men in a place of authority at youth groups / cadets, nothing actually happened (although I also don't think they would have said no if a move was made) but as an adult I look back and think WTF were they actually thinking. Why the fuck were they hanging around teenagers when they had wives and kids at home (probably because they had wives and kids at home). I as a 35 year old would not be going to the pub after an event with a load of 18/19 year olds it's just weird, a little bit different in a workplace but if I was the only proper adult I still wouldn't be going.

@TriptoTipp

Whilst I appreciate what you're getting at, it doesn't feel relevant to me because I didn't feel abused or captured by him.
I can see that it completely inappropriate and could well likely have had bad intentions and a potential abuser. But it didn't feel like that, so I don't think I have/had Stockholm syndrome.

I may appear like im making excuses for him but I'm just exploring all avenues in my head as I don't want to jump the gun or be dramatic.

@Wallacewhite

I certainly have a blind spot for this particular situation. But professionally and regarding other people, I'm very clear headed.

Some men will dangle themselves so that they're within easy reach if the other party wants to make the first move. They won't do that first as they know it's wrong. If the other person makes a move on them, they can twist it around later and claim it was their fault (thereby increasing the chance the other person will remain silent).

I don't think it was a good sign that he was dropping you off in secret (even though some groomers make a point of building trust and a relationship with parents), but it was this that showed him for who he was -

probably someone you've had sex with

That is such a random, inappropriate thing to say . It sexualises something that wasn't sexual, and it let's you into his way of thinking. I don't think it was jokey. Many a groomer, bully and abuser get away with so much by claiming everything's a 'joke' when it's bloody well not. Very manipulative.

@B0RING

In the past when I've not confronted situations, I've assumed all sorts and kind of made my own narrative up in my head and filled in the blanks. And been off the mark. Which is human nature I think.
By speaking to him I would perhaps get some of the truth and not have to ruminate about it or fill in the blanks/assume.
I won't actually do it, because I have no contact details for him, and also would hate to cause any type of drama for his family. But I do think it would be somewhat helpful for me.

Yes I think you're right.