I have taken to painting to express some of the experiences I had in my destructive marriage. I hope these paintings will help others to have a greater understanding of domestic abuse. YouTube Link
top of page
My Blog
Updated: Sep 25
Answer: by recognizing the behaviors of toxic cultures and leadership
Recently, I began reading Narcissism in the Church: A Heart of Stone in Christian Relationships by David Orrison, PhD. I realized about two chapters in, that I could take the word "church" and change it out for "school", and it would explain a lot of systemic problems inherent in the Texas public schools today. The reason this is true is that the perpetrators of abuse in the church – embezzlers, intimate partner predators, child predators, etc. – are also attracted to the environment of the schools. These oppressors gravitate to highly empathetic environments where there is high trust without accountability.
Character disordered persons are said to take up between 10 to 15 percent of the population. So, whether or not we know we have encountered these people, we have. It is just that most likely for you, they did not drop their mask in front of you. It would not have helped their intent to deceive you. The people who know these abusers closely are in therapy to break trauma bonds, battered wife syndrome or Stockholm syndrome. It is said that sociopaths and psychopaths are diagnosed by what they do to their victims. These abusers rarely get treatment because they cannot admit that they have done anything wrong. I was told by a doctor that there is less than one percent chance of change in the abuser I knew. I do understand that the terms wolves in sheep’s clothing, psychopath, oppressor, bully, sociopath, intimate partner predator, con artist, embezzler, child predator and narcissist, all describe the same character disorder on a spectrum. But for the purpose of this blog post, I am going to use the word “abuser”.
Many of the people around an abuser do not see the mask fall and when the perpetrator is outed, it is so disturbing to admit you were duped. Many abusers claim to be Christian. The abuser often knows the Bible well. Our pride and reluctance to understand that there is this kind of evil in this world masquerading as an angel of light, keeps us from walking in truth. But whether you believe a survivor’s experience or not, that does not change the truth. Ninety-five percent of claims of abuse are true.
One of the main tactics of an abusive personality is to use coercive control to condition the victims (those on the lowest levels of accountability -church members and teachers) that there is no escape. There is no way out. This is the same thing that happens in the public schools. This is the way it is for all teachers in all districts – relentless paperwork, standardized testing, and objectification of women and students.
Abusers use different tactics to coercively control their victims. But because the abuser’s conscience-less thoughts reveal a pattern, we can use this information to hold these people accountable in our schools and protect our teachers and children. Abusers are also recognizable by the decisions they make and the way people respond to them. Abusers do not allow themselves to feel shame or guilt. Their consciences are seared. But they are adept at picking a persona that produces a stellar reputation. This reputation must be always maintained.
Here are some ways you can tell that you may have toxic leadership in your school district.
A large cabinet. Abusers do not like to be held accountable for things that go wrong. Therefore, a padded circle of employees around them is needed. This allows them to escape the fallout from bad decisions from their top administrators. It also allows them to pretend to “give mercy from on high” to those that do make bad decisions. This serves the purpose of protecting the abuser and engrains that idea of “holy” leadership in the eyes of those coercively controlled in the system.
A follow the chain of command policy. The toxic superintendent cannot hear a complaint from a parent/teacher before they have spoken to those “lower on the chain”. This keeps the abuser from having opportunities to accidentally drop their mask. They are not in control of the conversation. They don’t know what is going to come out of the mouths of those reporting something bad in the system. They cannot take this risk of exposing themselves.
A second purpose of this policy is to create the “I am up here, and you are down there” environment. It is easier to coercively control parents and teachers when you have set this kind of environment in policy.
Obstacles to following the chain of command. There are ways to find documentation to prove this. Look for board meeting minutes where the signup times for public speaking at board meetings change. Sign up may be during the day hours before the meeting - strategically set while most people are at work.
Board meetings may also be scheduled to have long presentations of awards at the beginning of a meeting to tire out those that came to speak. It is also a mind trick on those who are amped up to express their disappointments. To see a room full of onlookers disappear before they are given the chance to speak is often disheartening.
A second way this occurs is within the system for filing grievances. Are the time limits for alerting the school of a problem tied to the occurrence of the event or when you found out about the problem? Are the time limits reasonable? Do the people involved answer emails quickly and return your calls? Is the law firm hired to investigate also representing the school district? Are independent investigators outside the district called in?
Using the term “A Team of Eight”. The term “a team of eight” refers to the usual seven board members and the superintendent making decisions in unison. You know your district does this if the superintendent sits on the podium with the school board during meetings. It is possible for the board and superintendent to discuss a topic ad nauseum until everyone agrees with the outcome and many decisions are common sense. It would be healthy if the environment was such that board members were free to vote “no”, without being type-cast as the “problem-child”. Abusers live under the rule of all or nothing thinking. Victims get trapped in this thinking because it is tied to their perception of survival. You are either on “Team Narcissist” or your future in this district will be short-lived. The abuser will claim to be a victim of your “lies”, if you make a complaint. And since the abuser is pretending every single day to be a person they are not, they often outlast any employee or board member who is an independent thinker.
A second reason the Team of Eight is proposed is that it removes the superintendent from accountability and the step through the superintendent to the board is removed. So, if your complaint is about the superintendent, there is no recourse, because instead of going straight to the board with your complaint, your abuser is in on the decision about the outcome. I cannot think of any healthy Human Resources Department that would let the abuser decide about whether the offense goes forward to the next step or how an investigation will be conducted. But in our Texas public schools, this is common. You really are kicking an ant hill if you choose to go against the ”team of eight”.
Never publishing their own dissertation. Does your school superintendent have a PhD? Have you ever read their dissertation? I thought this was an interesting correlation from the church world. Abusers have scant real credentials. What they have done is purposely make what they have accomplished sound way more appealing than the truth. Once abusers make it into the “system”, they are well adapted to using the time they have spent coercively controlling a school district into evidence of character. But if you go back and read things they wrote before they got into the system, then you can see their true value.
Little to no teaching experience. This is another example from the world of toxic churches. Abusers spend little time engaging with people they cannot benefit from – unless it’s to gather information to use in deception. Many pastors go from undergraduate degree to master’s program to being a pastor, starting off with no experience in the “real world” of relational discipleship. This also applies to school leaders who bypass the requirement of having spent at least 3 to 5 years in the classroom in Texas schools. This is a problem perpetuated by search firms who pass these abusers around. They are the ones to look closely at the resume. It is often after the superintendent is hired that someone notices little to no teaching experience.
Any history of abuse and investigations. While it does take time, it is prudent for both churches and schools to ask a lot of questions from former school districts, employees and churches. Domestic violence, child abuse, sexual misconduct and misuse of district funds are often topics people know about, but in the past have been afraid to speak about out loud. The system of protecting “the image” of the district does not allow victims to warn others. This is why abusive school administrators fight the idea of their name being floated as a candidate for another district before they are voted as the final candidate. Twenty-one days on an obscure website doesn’t give victims enough time to warn the next district. Search teams and law firms don’t want to have their candidate not measure up. Instead of doing due diligence, they opt for not giving people the time to figure out what is being handed to them.
Churches have learned this mistake the hard way. As I write this, multiple mega church pastors in north Texas have been outed for long term abuse and deception representing over 100,000 church members. It is a sad but necessary outcome. And if they are truly abusers, you will know because they will be back in the pulpit within 18 months. Abusers only know to deceive, because they live double lives. In the abusive school leader world, this is taking a job with the state or a job at the ESC after your contract is not renewed. Then you can infect these coercive controlling ideas into the next generation of school administrators.
From what I have witnessed, most administrator investigations happen six to eighteen months before a new school district gets their application. This is because when a board realizes they have an abuser as a superintendent, they may choose to wait for the abuser’s contract renewal to come up and give the superintendent the “kiss of death”. This is when the board takes no action on the abuser’s contract. It gives the clear message; we want you gone. But abusers will not allow the public to understand this fact and will quickly fabricate a story providing plausible deniability and portraying themselves as the victim. Search firms would need to look back at least two years to see if there were any investigations concerning the administrator. Often these are not in the news.
I have only read a few chapters of David Orrison’s book. I imagine I will recognize more subversive and covertly controlling behaviors. But in the end, I sincerely hope for the next generation of Texas teachers and students, we choose to do better and start holding these abusers accountable.
** I do know some great people who work in Texas public schools. Some may have inherited a large cabinet or a toxic environment. It takes time to make changes when employees have been traumatized. These are only my personal observations as I study narcissistic abuse.
On the morning show “Live with Kelly and Mark”, they often play a game called “Stump Mark”. Mark Consuelos listens to a caller tell of two events or skills they have in their life. Only one of the statements is true. It’s all fun and games.
But what if you were married to a person where this was how they live, only you have no idea? What happens to you when someone you have committed your life to in marriage thinks it is normal to lie to you daily – about everything.
Plausible deniability in relationships is when a person does something intentionally, but they do it in such a way that the victim(s) has no way of knowing whether it was done deliberately, and the perpetrator claims it did not happen at all or was unintentional.
One form of this lying that has been talked about a lot lately is gaslighting. This is after the movie Gaslight (1944) where the evil husband has murdered his aunt and is secretly searching for priceless pearls in the next-door apartment. The wife sees the gaslight turn down and up and the husband tells her it is not happening. This denial of the truth is a deliberate attempt on the part of the predator to make the victim question her reality. Normally, this type of psychological abuse causes the victim to feel confused and have fog-brain. This is greatly enjoyed by the perpetrator as she is slower to confront him in his lies.
But what if the game is changed a little to be “Two Truths and a Lie”. Sometimes we play this game at dinner parties to get to know one another. But in the hands of someone with a seared conscience, the effects on the victim are devastating. This happens in destructive marriages where the husband logs into his wife’s Facebook account and looks for prostitutes. When she confronts him about it, he denies that they are prostitutes and says they are antagonistic toward his place of employment. But the wife can see they don’t even live in the same town, and they all have the same “look”.
These character-disordered individuals are also capable of pulling in “minions” – supporters who have not seen the mask drop on the liar and want to think the best of him. Sometimes, you have been groomed to be a “minion” and you have no idea. For example, let’s say a CEO that has a corner office gives all the secretaries on that side of the building permission to go to lunch together while he answers the phones. It sounds great to the ladies that want to lunch together. But the boss knows this allows him to be ‘alone’ and undetected in his office. The secretaries think he is great for letting them lunch together, but he got to do what he wanted for hours undetected.
Also on a large scale, spiritual abuse occurs with plausible deniability. One way is when the predator writes a big check to the office housekeeper and drops it in the pool for their Christmas gift. It looks so generous. Everyone now knows what he gave (the first purpose of the check) and the housekeeper will also know that the gift was from him. It might even be the largest check the predator boss wrote the entire Christmas. But the second purpose is to ingratiate himself to the housekeeper. So, if anything odd is seen or found in his office, then the housekeeper feels obligated to keep her mouth shut and not expose the boss.
Another way the pathological liar combines lying with spiritual abuse is on mission trips. There are many experiences of Christian women in destructive marriages finding out that their spouse was trafficking women on a foreign mission trip. This is easy to hide as many hotels provide the women and the predator only needs to say they are tired and retiring to the room to sleep early. You know, the whole jet lag thing.
The most egregious example of this was Ravi Zacharias who raped women all over the globe as he wrote books and spoke about the Bible. One of his former employees, Sam Allberry, now a pastor, stated in a YouTube interview, that it was quite possible Ravi created the entire ministry to hide how he raped women. The ultimate “plausible deniability” for sure.
If you are married to someone who is a pathological liar, the chances that they will change are less than 1%. Know that this type of psychological abuse is very insidious and has lasting effects on your health. Please consider this as you plan your escape. Godspeed.
bottom of page