Dirty preachers target young people who are easy to silence: lower socioeconomic class, broken family structure, and an eagerness to please the Divine. They lure them in, step by step, with a mixture of praise, pious gestures, and the steady crossing of taboos, until they trap their victims. You are trapped when you are too frightened to say “no,” too frightened to run, and too frightened to tell anyone anything. I have worked on cases involving as many adult victims as children, and the formula that predators use to pursue adult prey is the same.
In the film, the attorney Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci) comments that it takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to abuse a child. The most common statement from victims in my work has been, “I told [X] and they did not do anything.” In the movie, one victim comments that his mother made cookies for the preacher.
Circles of people around the perpetrators recognize that something is wrong. Some ease their consciences with, “I am just doing my job;” some ignore the hints of corruption; some hide it behind pleasantries. The end result is a long trail of survivors struggling to live long enough to see sunlight the next morning, knowing they might destroy themselves as a way to cope with has been done to them.
Then, the self-appointed pundits haunt you.
In any community of believers, most worshipers are upright, humble people seeking ways to navigate what the world hits them with. All religions provide a well-tread path of healing for wounds. News of a corrupt preacher, thus, paralyzes a community. On top of that, you have to deal with politicians and sycophants.
If the only problem of exposing misconduct was that autodidacts decided to conduct their own investigation, it would be manageable. That happens, but so many others become political activists, using your case, using the victim’s story, using their own personal ambitions as the soapbox upon which they pontificate. Some of these people are sincere, trying to cope by pointing fingers. Others, however, are heartless, using any stepping stone they can—even if those steps are abused children—to elevate their own selves.
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