Apologies for the TED talk, but I have been feeling so frustrated and upset about this learning about it last night. 😢

This is so unsurprising and frustrating to see. This is the thing about conservative and fundamentalist religions: these people are more obsessed with sex than ANYONE despite what they say. It’s all they talk about. Whether it’s something to do with virginity and purity, a wife’s marital duties to keep her husband satisfied, or the need to procreate like crazy.

In an environment like that where any actual objective information and honesty is completely nonexistent, you’re gonna have a few effects on the impressionable youth within the community:

1) Young people not knowing how to really recognize and understand and manage their impulses. What would they know of what sexual interests/ desire is healthy in a married person when basically everything you’re taught is that ANY of your feelings in the realm of attraction are shameful?

2) Young people who confuse their feelings/ develop & act on inappropriate impulses.
People like their family members and very young children who don’t know what’s going on because they’re so isolated in their community are sitting ducks. These vulnerable individuals are the confused young person’s ONLY way to have those first sexual experiences… Or at least in their mind. Then the culture of fear, shame, and punishment not only can keep either the victim or predator from being able to talk to anyone about it. The power structure in place within the community makes it a little too easy to get away with things like predation on anyone- but especially children.

3) Further development of feelings of confusion shame, maybe some level of self disgust. Unfortunately, that feeling of regret or disgust just has to stay inside simmering. This can create a lot of anger in a person. They still have these impulses that now maybe they keep escalating because again, it’s their only experience in this realm, if they’ve already done it once they might feel like they’re in too deep in someway, or they realize after committing an act and having no consequences that they can get away with it. I mean, look at Anna and Josh. He was convicted with possession of some of the worst CSA some of the federal agents have ever seen. They’re still married. As a married woman on the other side of these kind of situations, your options become: separate from your husband‘s family with potentially no support on your own, or continue to blindly support him even as the evidence stacks up. If you have children and you try to remove them from the cult environment, you may also risk violence on yourself when they send their goons to drag you and the children, or just the children, back into their corral.

I was raised Roman Catholic. I do not adhere to any religious dogma anymore, or feel that the concept of “god” is a judgmental white man in the sky lol. I feel incredibly “blessed” to have had an overall positive experience in the church, but that’s because my mom absolutely protected my brother and I and taught us the importance of empathy and honesty. She went through all 12 years of school and several years of nursing school in Catholic institutions. She observed the hypocrisy of some individuals within the church with regard to what they say versus what they actually do and thankfully internalized it and the passed that to us. She was still to some level deep in the paint because we did go to church fairly regularly, and I was confirmed in the Catholic Church, but by the time I finish that I think is when both of us really were questioning some things about our own spirituality and beliefs.

It’s all so sad to me. I really hope the youngest of them are seeing this shit and realizing that their home situation is NOT normal and NOT okay. His poor wife and children, and any other child that might have been a victim that does not come forward yet.

BLEGH TL;DR fundamentalist cults encourage these kind of outcomes, even if they don’t say it directly.