The Republic of T.

Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand
Workin’ in the dark against your fellow man
But as sure as God made black and white
What’s done in the dark will be brought to the light

~ “Run On (For A Long Time)”

The last line in the quote above is one my mother repeated often when I was growing up. She meant that those things we tried to hide, out of shame or deceit, would be found out eventually. Thus, it behooved us to live honest lives, with nothing “done in the dark” that we feared would come into the light.

My mother’s phrase came to mind this weekend, as I caught up on the sexual misconduct allegations against Eddie Long, minister of a black mega-church in the Atlanta area.

Spencer LaGrande, 22, filed suit against Long and his New Birth Missionary Baptist Church and, like the other three alleged victims, accused the powerhouse pastor of forcing him into a sexual relationship while treating him to trips around the world, travel in private planes and stays in luxury hotels.

…LaGrande’s lawsuit alleges he met Long in March 2003 during the very first service at a branch Long’s Georgia-based church that opened in a suburb of Charlotte, N.C.

LeGrande said Long agreed to be a father figure for him because his own father was an absentee father, according to court documents, and that Long began asking LaGrande to call him “dad.”

LaGrande was 17 when, according to the lawsuit, Long first made sexual contact with him during a trip to Nairobi, Kenya. The lawsuit alleges several more instances of sexual contact, both before and after LaGrande graduated from high school.

Long’s accusers have said they believe the bishop abused more young men that eventually will come forward. Many people at the church knew what was going on but covered for Long, victims claimed.

Maurice Robinson and Anthony Flagg were the first two accusers, followed a short time later by Jamal Parris.

Parris alleged in the documents, obtained by ABC News, that the bishop would request he be nude while in his presence and would request “sexual massages” and “oral sodomy” when they traveled.

Eddie Long would probably say that my life — a suburban life, with a husband and two children — is one lived in darkness. He would probably invite me to live in the “light.” That is, the “light” as he defines it.

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The sex scandal swirling around Eddie Long is the kind of story that the media and consumers of media (in other words, nearly everybody) tend to find irresistible. As Joshua Alston wrote in Newsweek, it’s got everything: secrets, money, sex, and religion. Plus it hits to “hot button” topic — homosexuality and race — and adds a heaping dose of politics to top it off.

But all of the above can blind us to what’s really in front of us, beyond the lights and cameras, the ink spilled and bandwidth burned covering the story. The allegations against Long — that he coerced young men over whom he had authority into sexual relationships — leaves raises more questions than answers; both concerning the specifics of the case against long, and the much larger phenomena the allegations represent.

In the case of the former, the courts will determine what truth there is in the accusations against Long. But the rest of us have to grapple with the latter.

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Classic Predator

Statements to the media and details of in the lawsuits filed by the four men paint the picture a man who qualifies not only as an “emotional predator” (a term I wasn’t aware of until just now), but show several characteristics of a classic sexual predator.

Intimacy

As documented in a study done in an Irish prison, many sexual predators are frightened or extremely uncomfortable with adult intimacy. For some, this stems from being abused as a child, which leads to a distorted view of sexual intimacy. That is not to say that intimacy in this case is purely sexual in nature; rather, it includes emotional intimacy such as meaningful relationships. Sexual predators often report having few close friends or confidantes and coming from strained families where nurturing support was rare or completely absent.

Control and Power

The Irish study also dealt with the predators feelings concerning control. Many reported feeling a lack of control in their own lives due to socioeconomic or emotional factors. For sexual predators, sexual crimes are seen as a way of exerting control, resulting in pleasurable feelings of power that are less concerned with sexual gratification, and more with emotional validation. By forcing their advances on other people, they experience one area of their lives where they were the controlling factor.

Knowing Victims

A study conducted by the Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety in West Virginia reported that 88.5 percent of all studied sex offenders knew their victims prior to violating them. 48.7 percent of these victims were simple acquaintances that the sexual predators admitted to having built relationships with for the purpose of assaulting them. Typically, predators seek out women or children who are vulnerable and lacking a strong support network of family or friends. Oftentimes, they build some levels of trust or familiarities with the people before victimizing them.

Responsibility

The West Virginia study reported that over 36 percent of victims blamed their actions at least partially upon drugs while over half did the same with alcohol. This is evidence of an overall trend that points to the fact that sexual predators often do not take full, if any, responsibility for their actions. Often, they blame outside forces or the victim themselves. This tendency of blaming others frequently extends to other areas of their lives where failures at work, school and personal lives are viewed as the fault of other people and not their own.

While I haven’t found much published about his childhood, the court filings, the public statements of the four men, and some of Long’s own statements provide details that fill in the picture painted in broad broad strokes by the quote above.

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