I believe one way we can create a safer future is to understand the various tactics abusers use to deceive. I hope the last year has increased our discernment and courage to confront. To that end, here's a thread of deceptive tactics abusers might use to groom their targets:
Abusers might use their position of power to grant favors and give gifts to those with less power. Attached to the favors and gifts is the unspoken expectation to do whatever is asked of you. Past favors are used as guilt trips when demands are not met.
Abusers can use their power to offer help in ways that are beyond necessary. This over-helping can be a form of manipulation in which you and others are made to believe that the only way you can succeed is with their help, which makes you dependent upon their help.
Abusers sometimes highlight their pain, helplessness, or difficult circumstances to illicit feelings of sympathy from their targets. This rushed vulnerability causes the target to extend help. The help is praised which reinforces feelings of concern and a need to keep helping.
Abusers are often highly skilled at flattery. They use compliments and shows of affection in order to increase the level of liking within their target. These obsequious compliments typically mix truths with exaggerations. Great evil can wear the disguise of a friend.
Abusers might ingratiate their targets by telling them they are exemplary in some way. This exemplification of the target makes them feel special, likely in ways that others do not, perhaps because the abuser is telling a lie which the target wants to believe is true.
Abusers can be shameless self-promoters. They use their celebrity to enamor targets, creating a culture of fandom where cheerleaders are rewarded and favored. This also produces blind spots as others feel they can't challenge the over-inflated view people have of the abuser.
Abusers who flatter you, grant favors, conform you to their opinions or agendas by appearing to conform to yours, overhelp in order to take credit for your success, praise your loyalty, or promote themselves, are likely trying to control your behavior so you serve their goals.
Abusers want you to like them, so they flatter you. They want you to be in their debt, so they do you favors. They want you to be dependent, so they overhelp. They want you to remain on their side, so they appear to be on your side. It's easy to comply with such messages.
Abusers who engage in this complex process of managing the impressions others form of them will always confuse their targets. It is easier to manipulate and control confused people. The abuser will then influence their thoughts so that they voluntarily act according to his plan.
Abusers then exploit the trust, compliance, and confusion of their targets to test boundaries, often in isolation, but sometimes around others. Risks are taken that fall just shy of being seen as clear violations knowing that they'll likely receive the benefit of the doubt.
If called out, they might give the impression that the action was unintentional. We tend to excuse someone who accidentally or unknowingly crosses a line. This is part of the reason for testing boundaries. If exposed, the abuser can easily claim ignorance or innocence.
An abuser who works with children might begin to isolate a target by giving rides home, meeting in private places, or through texting, Snapchat, KiK Messenger, etc. Even though policies are likely being broken, the abuser is trusted by those who want to believe the best.
Whenever abusers are allowed to get away with crossing boundaries, a buffer is created between what is overlooked and what is penalized. This buffer is then learned by other abusers, creating a culture in which abusers can repeatedly cross boundaries without consequence.
The abuser takes greater risks as the target becomes increasingly isolated. Eventually lines are clearly crossed. This produces more confusion (“what’s happening?”) and a sense of captivity (“what do I do?”). The abuser then uses different tactics to maintain that captivity.
Intimidation might be used to replace a climate of trust with a climate of fear. The abuser now wants to be seen as equally dangerous and powerful, perhaps demanding that you forever carry a dark secret and promising to ruin you if you tell. Nobody can know of the disguise.
Sometimes supplication is used instead of intimidation. The abuser doesn't threaten to harm the target, but threatens to harm themselves. This might happen if there has been a lot of favors, gifts, and overhelping. The abuser can still exploit the dependency that was formed.
Because only the victim has observed this deviant behavior, if they report the abuse to others, it's possible that others will view the alleged abuse through the lens of their personal experience with the abuser, one in which only kindness, generosity, and likability was present.
When someone is assaulted by a person in a position of trust, it is not just that they have been assaulted; they have also been terribly betrayed. This makes it difficult for the victim to speak out because the perpetrator is likely to already have the trust of many others.
An entire community can turn a blind eye to grooming behavior. This collective inattention chooses keeping the peace over protection and accountability. Families, organizations, and communities can choose to shun a victim's story because they cannot face their own complicity.
These tactics are used to groom, isolate, and silence. When abusers are exposed and asked to give an account, they will use dozens of additional deceptive tactics, tactics that most are ill-equipped to see through or counter.
We must begin to see these powers of deception.
We must begin to see these powers of deception.
