My Pastor Used Counselling to Control Me — Then I Realised He Did This to Other Women Too

The church office door clicked shut behind me, and Pastor Danilo's hand stayed on my wrist, warm and firm, like a padlock. Through the thin wall, I heard the choir practising in the main hall, bright voices rising as my stomach turned to water. "Mariel," he said softly, "do not embarrass yourself with panic."

I stood there at thirty-four, palm sweating around my phone, ready to record him, prepared to run, ready to pretend I had imagined everything.

He moved closer and lowered his voice. "You know this is counselling. Grounding. You asked for help."

"No," I said. My throat shook. "I asked for healing. I did not ask for… this."

He smiled like a man correcting a child. "You always twist it when fear rises. Sit. Breathe. Let me guide you."

I looked at the religious paintings and certificates on his wall, the cross above his desk, the same desk where I had cried at twenty-seven and thanked God for sending me a pastor who understood grief. I remembered how he had once called me "emotionally disciplined" and told me I had "a rare heart".

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I remembered how I had recommended the Bagong Umaga Fellowship in Quezon City to my colleagues at San Isidro High School, how I had defended him whenever people whispered about "favourite women".

Then I heard the whisper outside the office door: a woman's voice, tense and apologetic.

"Pastor, I am here," she said. "You said I should come after service."

Pastor Danilo's eyes flicked to the door. He did not look surprised. He looked prepared.

And in that second, I realised I had never stood alone in this room. Not once.

I joined Bagong Umaga Fellowship at twenty-six, the month after my mother died, when my life felt like a room with the lights turned off. I had also just left a relationship that drained me until I could not recognise my own voice. In Tandang Sora, my small rented room sat close to a busy road, and every night the horns and motorbikes threaded into my dreams like needles.

I taught literature at San Isidro High School, and I built my days from lesson notes, set books, and the steady rhythm of marking scripts.

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At night, the rhythm collapsed. Insomnia sat on my chest. Panic attacks arrived without warning, sharp as a slap. Some mornings, I woke with tears already on my face, and I couldn't explain why.

A colleague, Tita Lorna, invited me to the Bagong Umaga Fellowship. The church felt warm and organised, the kind of place where people called you "my sister" and actually meant it. They spoke about purpose, community, and healing. They also talked about women like me, wounded women, with the confidence of people describing a problem they believed they could solve.

Pastor Danilo Villanueva stood at the centre of it all. He was forty-two, admired, polished, and endlessly calm. The church presented him as a trained Christian counsellor, a man who could "restore foundations". One Sunday, he preached about "unhealed women blocking their own futures", and I felt every word strike my ribs.

After the service, an usher handed me a counselling form. "Thursday evenings," she said, smiling. "Pastor will help you."

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The early sessions felt structured and safe. Pastor Danilo prayed. He gave me journaling exercises. He asked about my grief, my mother's voice, the day we buried her at La Loma Cemetery. He questioned me about self-worth. When I answered well, he praised me.

"You think deeply," he told me. "Most people do not do the work."

In those weeks, I slept a little better. I laughed again at school. I started to believe God had sent me a guide. I invited friends to church. I carried my small hope like a fragile glass and guarded it with both hands.

The shift started with something that sounded kind.

"You need longer sessions," Pastor Danilo said one Thursday. "So the work is not rushed."

I hesitated. "I have school in the morning."

"You cannot timetable healing," he replied, still gentle. "You came here because you want freedom."

He introduced a rule, calling it wisdom. "Do not discuss our sessions with others," he said. "People can poison what God is building in you."

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I nodded because I did not want to be the woman who argued with her pastor. I grew up in a home where the pulpit commanded respect. I clung to the steadiness I had just begun to feel. At first, the changes were minimal. He moved his chair closer during prayer. He held my hands longer than necessary, palms pressed tight, as if he needed to anchor me to the earth. When I pulled back, he noticed.

"Do not run from care," he said. "Let it settle."

He started speaking in phrases that sounded like scripture but felt like a private language. "What we are building here is rare." "Not everyone is ready for this level of trust." "God will use your obedience."

The structured exercises faded. The journal prompts disappeared. Pastor Danilo asked more personal questions, and when I answered, he leaned in as my words fed him.

One evening, I spoke about my panic attacks. My breathing shortened and my fingers shook. Pastor Danilo stood up and came around the desk.

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"Stand," he instructed.

I stood, confused.

He placed his hand on my upper back. "Breathe with me," he said. "This is grounding."

My breathing steadied, but his hand stayed. It spread as if to claim space.

I stepped forward. "I am okay."

He smiled. "You see? You always want to manage yourself. That pride blocks healing."

The following week, he touched my shoulder during prayer, then my forearm, then the side of my waist as he "guided" me back into my chair. Each time, he explained it as reassurance, a spiritual tool, a mark of care. Each time, my body tightened, and I told myself I overreacted.

I started chasing his approval without admitting it. When he praised me, I floated through my week. When he sounded disappointed, my stomach twisted, and I tried harder.

He also began to isolate me from questions.

After church service one Sunday, I told Aira with a laugh that counselling left me so drained I could barely stay awake. Pastor Danilo appeared beside us like a shadow.

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"Mariel," he said, still smiling, "guard your healing. Do not turn sacred work into small talk."

Aira laughed awkwardly. I apologised too quickly.

Later that evening, my phone buzzed with a message from him.

You exposed yourself today. Do not do that again.

My cheeks burned as if he had slapped me in public. I typed back, I am sorry.

His reply arrived at once.

Good. You are learning.

After that, I began to measure my words at church. I stopped sharing with women in the fellowship. I arrived early on Thursdays and left late. I told myself I acted mature. I told myself I acted disciplined. In truth, I acted afraid.

The touching progressed in slow steps, so slow that my mind kept trying to normalise it. During prayer, Pastor Danilo held my hands and pressed his thumb into my palm. He brushed my hair away from my face as if I belonged to him. When I flinched, he whispered, "Do not shame the anointing."

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One night, I finally said it.

"Pastor, I do not feel comfortable."

His face stayed calm, but his voice cooled. "Then you do not trust me."

"I trust God," I said. "I just…"

"You still carry rebellion," he cut in. "I can only help women who submit to the process."

I sat there, heart punching my ribs, and I heard my own fear translate his words into a threat: obey, or lose what you came here to receive. I swallowed my discomfort and nodded, because I had made him my doorway back to peace.

The first crack appeared in the women's restroom after midweek service. I washed my hands and heard Evelyn, a woman from the choir, speaking in a low voice near the mirror.

"I cannot explain it," she said to another woman. "Pastor says what we are building is rare. He says not everyone is ready for that level of trust."

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My stomach dropped so hard I felt it in my knees. Evelyn was thirty-two, confident, always neatly dressed, always close to the front. I had assumed she lived above gossip and weakness. Yet her words sounded like mine, rehearsed from the same script.

I dried my hands too slowly, listening.

"He told me not to discuss the sessions," Evelyn continued. "He said people will poison my healing."

The other woman, Bea, nodded without surprise. "Just obey," she murmured. "Pastor knows."

That night, as I walked towards the car park, I saw Evelyn waiting outside Pastor Danilo's office. The corridor lights had dimmed. The church had mostly emptied. Evelyn stood with her handbag clutched to her chest, the same way I used to stand, pretending my presence looked normal.

A week later, I noticed Kaye, a twenty-four-year-old who had recently joined, suddenly moving through church leadership like she had been fast-tracked. She carried the pastor's books. She sat near his wife. She spoke with the confidence of someone who believed she held special access.

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Then Pastor Danilo began to pull away from me.

When I asked about my next Thursday session, he leaned back and said, "You have outgrown this season."

The phrase hit me like cold water, because I had heard it before. Danilo had said it to another woman who stopped attending counselling, word for word.

I walked home to Tandang Sora with my chest tight, replaying every compliment, every warning, every touch. A sick clarity rose inside me. He had not chosen me. He had used me. My story never claimed intimacy; his pattern owned it.

My "rare" place in his office collapsed into something ordinary and ugly.

I realised I could name what happened without arguing with myself. Pastor Danilo controlled me with spiritual language, and he trained my silence like a habit.

I stopped attending Bagong Umaga Fellowship quietly at first. I did not stage a dramatic exit. I did not return.

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The first Sundays felt strange. I woke early, ready to dress, then remembered I no longer had to perform peace in a place that harmed me. I started private therapy in Diliman, with a counsellor who did not wear a collar and did not ask for my obedience. In that room, I learned to call my body's warnings wisdom, not weakness.

I also began to write. I wrote dates. I wrote phrases. I wrote what happened in that office on those Thursdays, and how the touch moved from "comfort" to control. I wrote about the way he used my faith as a leash.

With shaking hands, I texted Evelyn. I kept my message simple: I think Pastor Danilo used counselling to cross my boundaries. If you've experienced something similar, I will listen.

She replied hours later. I thought it was only me.

We met in a small carinderia near Cubao market, both of us scanning faces like guilty people, even though we had done nothing wrong. Then we compared timelines. The similarities lined up with frightening precision: the longer sessions, the secrecy, the praise, the warnings, the same repeated phrases, the same gradual blurring of physical boundaries.

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We contacted Kaye next, gently, without pressure. She cried and denied it at first, then admitted pieces that sounded like echoes of our own stories.

Together, we submitted a formal written complaint to the church board. I expected shock. I expected urgency. I met politeness and delay.

One board member sighed and said, "Let us not destroy the work of God with accusations."

Another asked, "Are you sure you did not misunderstand fatherly care?"

Their questions aimed at our dignity, not his behaviour. They treated reputation as if it outranked safety.

So I chose a different kind of courage. I spoke publicly, anonymously at first, through a women's group in Quezon City. When more women reached out, I stopped hiding behind a blurred name. I told my story plainly, without theatrics, without insults, with dates and details.

Pastor Danilo resigned "for personal reasons". The church did not hold a loud public reckoning. No courtroom drama arrived to tidy up the ending. The real change happened inside me.

I stopped framing the harm as my failure. I understood I had not fallen short. Pastor Danilo had targeted me.

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For years, I carried the shame like a secret bruise. I replayed every moment and asked myself why I stayed, why I kept returning on Thursdays, why I let my faith silence my discomfort. I used to believe strong women never get manipulated. Therapy taught me a truer lesson: strong women can still get targeted when someone studies their pain and disguises control as care.

Pastor Danilo did not start with a crime scene. He began with kindness, structure, and praise. He made me feel seen, then made me feel responsible for protecting what he called "healing". He trained my silence with spiritual language, and he used my hunger for peace against me.

That is how manipulation works. It moves in small steps, so the victim spends all her strength doubting herself instead of naming the harm.

If you sit in a counselling room and the helper asks you to keep secrets that isolate you, pay attention. If they frame your boundaries as rebellion, pay attention. If they blur professional lines and tell you it is spiritual, pay attention. True care does not need your fear to survive. True guidance does not punish questions. A safe leader welcomes accountability.

I still love God. I still pray. I still believe the church can hold wounded people with dignity. But I think that faith should never ask you to ignore your body's warning signals. You can respect the pulpit and still protect yourself. You can seek spiritual support while insisting on professional boundaries.

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Now, when I stand before my students and teach poetry about power, voice, and silence, I feel my own words land differently. I reclaimed my narrative, not by rewriting the past, but by finally telling the truth about it.

So I ask you the question I wish someone had asked me earlier: when 'care' makes you uneasy, do you trust that feeling or do you explain it away to stay connected?

This story is inspired by the real experiences of our readers. We believe that every story carries a lesson that can bring light to others. To protect everyone's privacy, our editors may change names, locations, and certain details while keeping the heart of the story true. Images are for illustration only. If you'd like to share your own experience, please contact us via email.

Source: KAMI.com.gh