(The following is the 11th in a series of posts related to my re-reading of Miss America by Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayal and Unconditional Love, by Marilyn Van Derbur.)

Continuing from my two previous posts on the matter of the abuser’s “facade” and of the “facade” of the abuser’s family, another thought:

That it would be far more comforting if the abuser’s “facade” were bogus—were, in fact, a facade. That is to say that people can find it quite disturbing that a person who is so authentically, genuinely engaged in various normal aspects of their lives—regarding their work, religious/spiritual activities, or normal aspects of their family life—could be sexually abusing children, particularly their own. The more people realize that a great many child sexual abusers are, in many aspects of their lives, entirely normal, the more difficult it is to demonize them; to place them in the category of “monster” and exclude them from the category of “human.”