During the two recent Friday broadcasts of Oprah's "200 Men Come Forward About Sexual Molestation", the men made a number of comments about their sexual abuse that I felt were particularly noteworthy, in terms of my personal experience of sexual child abuse.
As such, in this second of two blogs, I have continued to quote those statements and then expand upon them, with further examples and discussion.
"Fear of being around children, given the abuse that was perpetrated upon me during my childhood." When I was a younger man, I was often confronted by women with the statement that I was simply irresponsible and immature for not wanting to have children and a family. Yet, from early in my adulthood, I had been quite queasy about even being around children, much less participating in the production and raising of children of my own. My own childhood was so thoroughly traumatized, due to the overt levels of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, that I wanted to forget and 'run away' from those memories as quickly as possible. Of course, it was rather impossible (short of amnesia) to actually forget about the abuse, and for reasons of achieving mental health, I came to realize that 'forgetting' was not the same as 'forgiving', primarily forgiving myself. (I particularly liked Oprah's quote, during the show, about forgiving: Giving up hope that the past could have been any different -- and using this moment, this time to move forward with your life.) But moving beyond an intensely negative memory about my childhood -- about childhood as a dependent, unprotected stage of life -- was very difficult, even after many years of psychotherapy. And that, apparently, is the experience of other men who were physically and sexually traumatized as children [as evidenced by the above comment].
From my own negative experience (which I will assume may be true for some other abuse survivors) I both was concerned that I might abuse any children that I helped produce [perpetrating abuse upon other children as had been done to me] and I was hyperaware of how incredibly dependent children are on the good graces of adults. And the combination of those two factors [combined, further, with relative poverty most of my adult life and hence some question whether I could afford to have children] generated a 'fear of being around children', a fear which is still as true now as it was when I was younger.
Even though I have more than 25 years of mental health therapy behind me now -- and am considerably more healed from the PTSD of my childhood -- I continue to be uncomfortable around children, and have never had, at any time in my life, a strong desire to have children of my own. The 'paternal instinct' simply isn't there. I have two brothers, both of whom have children, but for me the memories of my profoundly negative experiences in childhood have produced and maintained that lifelong discomfort.
"Men 'don't know' because they are so ashamed. We're supposed to be 'in control', we're supposed to be strong." "I had the feeling that, as a boy, I had allowed it to happen, I was complicit [in my abuse]." The messages that our society gives to boys -- and later adult men -- about 'being in control' tend to overtly color their ability to come to terms with the limits of being human, especially the limits of being a dependent human child. The larger reality is that 'stuff happens' in life that is simply beyond anyone's control, and that 'control' is rather an elusive and transient quality that few individuals, if anyone, really have the continuous ability to manifest. Yet, there is this cultural message directed at men, however forlorn it may be to actually accomplish.
One of the primary illusions that adult males have about themselves -- and that the larger society has about males -- is that, all along, they should have been 'strong' and 'able to take care of' themselves. But the reality that they often forget is that when one was a child, they were highly dependent upon the 'caregiving' of adults who they hoped (and believed, until and unless other evidence made it clear this was not the case) would have our 'best interests' at heart. And the larger reality for males who were traumatized as children is that they often are not 'strong' or 'in control' as adults either.
Oh, they may be good a maintaining an outward 'appearance' of those qualities, but if one is a product of profound physical and sexual trauma as a child [depending on a number of factors, including the amount and kinds of abuse, ability to escape the abuse at least temporarily, and the veracity and effectiveness of intervention by other, more mentally healthy adults], they often have multiple addictions -- alcohol, drug [legal and illicit], sexual, self-abuse, etc. -- or significant intimate and/or employment problems. The PTSD affects their life in often quite obtuse ways, and in ways that are difficult to have any 'realistic control' over, unless and until the men engage in competent mental health recovery programs. Working through the internalized emotional pain and anger is necessary if one is ever to have a chance to 'come out on the other side' of such a traumatized life.
Indeed, there is real hope for recovery, but it often takes long-term therapy and hard work on self-development. Men [and women] who have been severely traumatized as children must often re-learn what 'love' is whole-cloth, from the ground up. They must -- hopefully with the assistance of competent mental health providers, mentally healthy friends, and trustworthy intimate relationships -- come to grips with the dynamics of their abuse and with new, more healthy 'tools' at their disposal, move down the pathway to recovery. They may even reach a state of inner strength, but it is unlikely they will ever again have an illusion about being able to be 'in control' of all of their life -- no matter how often the society around them continues to perpetuate such an illusion about males. Hopefully, they will come to see how they could not have been 'in control' as children -- and yet be able to forgive themselves for that failing.
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Author's note: When one is writing a blog, it is often questionable whether anyone is reading the information. If any of my readers wishes to provide feedback or at least acknowledgement about reading and hopefully enjoying the information provided and learning new concepts, I would appreciate such constructive observations and comments!
Monday, November 29, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
Perceptions of Male Sexual Child Abuse Survivors About Their Molestation (Part 1)
During the previous two Friday broadcasts of Oprah's "200 Men Come Forward About Sexual Molestation", the men made a number of comments about their sexual abuse that I felt were particularly noteworthy, in terms of my personal experience of sexual child abuse. As such, I will quote the statements and then expand upon them, with further examples and discussion.
"Worse than the abuse was not being believed by those we tell about the abuse." In part, I addressed this last week, when I asked "to whom can these men safely tell their story?" This is an incredibly important issue. My own experience was that, when I finally started to come to grips with my childhood incest (at around 40 years of age, which is the age Mike Lew in Victims No Longer says is the age at which many men come to realize their abuse), my mother refused to believe what I told her -- but then she was in denial about a lot of the childhood violence. One of my brothers believed me, because he had started to have memories of his own incest at the hands of our father. This is, apparently, the experience shared by a lot of males (and females) who were sexually abused by family members. Often, the abuse is a 'family secret', one which members may or may not know about, but to the extent that they do know, they often want to keep it 'quiet' and 'out of the public view'. Additionally, they may do little to intervene when it is occurring, in part out of a fear that intervention will only hurt themselves (by subjecting them to similar molestation or violence directed at them by the perpetrator), or a feeling that their efforts will bear little fruit in the family structure.
I talked with a fellow many years ago in whose family he was the subject of incredible physical violence from his father (he was an only child). His father, in fits of rage, would beat him bloody with a wire coat hanger, from the age of 9 until around 16, when he finally could take no more of it -- and was big enough to fight back. One day, when he was 16, he had the 'presence of mind' to hold his father's arms, and stop him from beating him. As his father was turning beet-red and straining to break the grip and continue the torture, his mother screamed at him to stop holding his father's arms 'because he might have a heart attack'. In other words, his mother had never done anything to stop the abuse in the past, and now that he had enough strength to stop the abuse, she was far more worried about the safety of her economic partner than about the safety and care of her child.
That was an intense point of clarity for this fellow, who realized that he had to get out of that house as quickly as possible, out into the world that had to be more safe than it was in his own home. This is the experience of boys who either are beaten and/or sexually molested in their own home by one or both of the parents: that, as unsafe as the 'outside world' may be, it has to be safer than what they are experiencing within the supposed safety of their own home. Not that it is, but the terror within the home is so over-the-top that anything else 'just has to be' better, or so they hope.
"You become 'the problem'; the shame says you 'asked for it'." This is a common dilemma faced by children. Since adults are supposed to be 'caregivers' and 'protectors', children naturally assume that if they are sexualized by adults, they must have unconsciously encouraged the behavior. And, of course, many perpetrators actively encourage this way of thinking, so that they can delude themselves into believing that the burden of the behavior will not fall on their shoulders.
The story told by the two brothers who were sexually abused by the parish priest -- who, as the abuse continued, forced the boys to have sex with each other and then invited his fellow priests to engage in gang-rape of the children -- exposed this lie in the 'full light of the day'. When they told their parents about it, at least at first no one believed them because, after all, the priest was a respected member of the community. They and the other men interviewed noted that the internalized shame 'told them' that they had 'asked for the abuse' -- when, of course, those of us who sit outside of the circumstance know full well that no child asks to be abused, not sexually, not physically, not emotionally. But shame is an insidious emotional culprit and it makes victims believe things which, though wholly untrue, make 'sense' within the terror they are experiencing. It is difficult for children to come to the realization that they weren't the cause of the abuse, but rather that the abuse was done to them by others. It serves the abusive interests of their perpetrators to encourage the children to believe that 'they are the problem', not the adult.
"When I was in the shower, I wanted to peel off my skin, given how horribly uncomfortable I was within my own skin." From my own abuse, I know this one well. I've spent a lifetime trying to feel any sense of comfort 'within my own skin'. The sexual abuse poisons an individual's comfort with their own body, and destroys a desire to continue 'in the bodily form that invited the abuse'. Boy children sometimes fantasize that if they only had been girls, they would not have been abused, but this is only the 'magical answer' to their bewilderment; girls sometimes have the alternate fantasy, that if they had only been boys, they would not have been molested. But, as we now know, many many children, of both sexes, are sexually abused on a regular basis by biological relatives, step-parents and step-siblings, sexual partners of single parents, babysitters, and complete strangers, and whatever is their sex-of-origin does not inhibit the desire of the perpetrators to abuse them.
It is the children's vulnerability that makes them 'desirable' in the eyes of the perpetrators. Many perpetrators are clumsy, inept, or socially immature and lack the skills needed to manifest sexual relations with other adults; hence, their 'sexual desires' are dysfunctionally directed toward children (often, as in the case of biological parents, their own children). For the children, the experience is sufficiently terrifying and shame-filled that they often end up wanting to be anyone, or anything, or anywhere else than who or where they are. And as they grow up, they are uncomfortable with their own bodies and quite uncomfortable when engaging in sexuality with other people, given their own intensely negative feelings about 'sex' or 'love-making' (especially given that many perpetrators say they 'love' the children and are 'making love to them').
Additionally, a child who has been sexually abused begins to question their own sexuality. Boys often feel like they 'must really be girls', because why else would their perpetrators have wanted to have intercourse [sodomy] with them? Whether they had homosexual or transsexual desires as children becomes rather problematic; being sexually abused doesn't make a child gay or a transsexual individual, because it is not sex -- it is abuse!
As Mike Lew notes in Victims No Longer (p. 41): Since men "are not supposed to be victims," abuse (and particularly sexual abuse) becomes a process of demasculinization (or emasculation). If men aren't supposed to be victims (the equation reads), then victims aren't men. The victimized male wonders and worries about what the abuse has turned him into. Believing that he is no longer an adequate man, he may see himself as a child, a woman, gay, or less than human -- an irreparably damaged freak.
As a result, the child is quite unclear whether later sexual desires toward members of their own sex-of-birth are 'natural' or 'abuse-driven' desires, especially when the abuse has occurred in infancy. On top of it all, if their sexual molestation and/or rape first occurred before the age of 2, the memories of the abuse are 'locked away' in a dissociative part of the memory that has no words attached to it, since children don't begin using full sentences until after that age.
"Worse than the abuse was not being believed by those we tell about the abuse." In part, I addressed this last week, when I asked "to whom can these men safely tell their story?" This is an incredibly important issue. My own experience was that, when I finally started to come to grips with my childhood incest (at around 40 years of age, which is the age Mike Lew in Victims No Longer says is the age at which many men come to realize their abuse), my mother refused to believe what I told her -- but then she was in denial about a lot of the childhood violence. One of my brothers believed me, because he had started to have memories of his own incest at the hands of our father. This is, apparently, the experience shared by a lot of males (and females) who were sexually abused by family members. Often, the abuse is a 'family secret', one which members may or may not know about, but to the extent that they do know, they often want to keep it 'quiet' and 'out of the public view'. Additionally, they may do little to intervene when it is occurring, in part out of a fear that intervention will only hurt themselves (by subjecting them to similar molestation or violence directed at them by the perpetrator), or a feeling that their efforts will bear little fruit in the family structure.
I talked with a fellow many years ago in whose family he was the subject of incredible physical violence from his father (he was an only child). His father, in fits of rage, would beat him bloody with a wire coat hanger, from the age of 9 until around 16, when he finally could take no more of it -- and was big enough to fight back. One day, when he was 16, he had the 'presence of mind' to hold his father's arms, and stop him from beating him. As his father was turning beet-red and straining to break the grip and continue the torture, his mother screamed at him to stop holding his father's arms 'because he might have a heart attack'. In other words, his mother had never done anything to stop the abuse in the past, and now that he had enough strength to stop the abuse, she was far more worried about the safety of her economic partner than about the safety and care of her child.
That was an intense point of clarity for this fellow, who realized that he had to get out of that house as quickly as possible, out into the world that had to be more safe than it was in his own home. This is the experience of boys who either are beaten and/or sexually molested in their own home by one or both of the parents: that, as unsafe as the 'outside world' may be, it has to be safer than what they are experiencing within the supposed safety of their own home. Not that it is, but the terror within the home is so over-the-top that anything else 'just has to be' better, or so they hope.
"You become 'the problem'; the shame says you 'asked for it'." This is a common dilemma faced by children. Since adults are supposed to be 'caregivers' and 'protectors', children naturally assume that if they are sexualized by adults, they must have unconsciously encouraged the behavior. And, of course, many perpetrators actively encourage this way of thinking, so that they can delude themselves into believing that the burden of the behavior will not fall on their shoulders.
The story told by the two brothers who were sexually abused by the parish priest -- who, as the abuse continued, forced the boys to have sex with each other and then invited his fellow priests to engage in gang-rape of the children -- exposed this lie in the 'full light of the day'. When they told their parents about it, at least at first no one believed them because, after all, the priest was a respected member of the community. They and the other men interviewed noted that the internalized shame 'told them' that they had 'asked for the abuse' -- when, of course, those of us who sit outside of the circumstance know full well that no child asks to be abused, not sexually, not physically, not emotionally. But shame is an insidious emotional culprit and it makes victims believe things which, though wholly untrue, make 'sense' within the terror they are experiencing. It is difficult for children to come to the realization that they weren't the cause of the abuse, but rather that the abuse was done to them by others. It serves the abusive interests of their perpetrators to encourage the children to believe that 'they are the problem', not the adult.
"When I was in the shower, I wanted to peel off my skin, given how horribly uncomfortable I was within my own skin." From my own abuse, I know this one well. I've spent a lifetime trying to feel any sense of comfort 'within my own skin'. The sexual abuse poisons an individual's comfort with their own body, and destroys a desire to continue 'in the bodily form that invited the abuse'. Boy children sometimes fantasize that if they only had been girls, they would not have been abused, but this is only the 'magical answer' to their bewilderment; girls sometimes have the alternate fantasy, that if they had only been boys, they would not have been molested. But, as we now know, many many children, of both sexes, are sexually abused on a regular basis by biological relatives, step-parents and step-siblings, sexual partners of single parents, babysitters, and complete strangers, and whatever is their sex-of-origin does not inhibit the desire of the perpetrators to abuse them.
It is the children's vulnerability that makes them 'desirable' in the eyes of the perpetrators. Many perpetrators are clumsy, inept, or socially immature and lack the skills needed to manifest sexual relations with other adults; hence, their 'sexual desires' are dysfunctionally directed toward children (often, as in the case of biological parents, their own children). For the children, the experience is sufficiently terrifying and shame-filled that they often end up wanting to be anyone, or anything, or anywhere else than who or where they are. And as they grow up, they are uncomfortable with their own bodies and quite uncomfortable when engaging in sexuality with other people, given their own intensely negative feelings about 'sex' or 'love-making' (especially given that many perpetrators say they 'love' the children and are 'making love to them').
Additionally, a child who has been sexually abused begins to question their own sexuality. Boys often feel like they 'must really be girls', because why else would their perpetrators have wanted to have intercourse [sodomy] with them? Whether they had homosexual or transsexual desires as children becomes rather problematic; being sexually abused doesn't make a child gay or a transsexual individual, because it is not sex -- it is abuse!
As Mike Lew notes in Victims No Longer (p. 41): Since men "are not supposed to be victims," abuse (and particularly sexual abuse) becomes a process of demasculinization (or emasculation). If men aren't supposed to be victims (the equation reads), then victims aren't men. The victimized male wonders and worries about what the abuse has turned him into. Believing that he is no longer an adequate man, he may see himself as a child, a woman, gay, or less than human -- an irreparably damaged freak.
As a result, the child is quite unclear whether later sexual desires toward members of their own sex-of-birth are 'natural' or 'abuse-driven' desires, especially when the abuse has occurred in infancy. On top of it all, if their sexual molestation and/or rape first occurred before the age of 2, the memories of the abuse are 'locked away' in a dissociative part of the memory that has no words attached to it, since children don't begin using full sentences until after that age.
Monday, November 15, 2010
If Oprah Convinces Men To "Come Forward About Sexual Molestation", To Whom Do They Tell Their Story?
Last Friday, the second installment of Oprah's show focused upon '200 Men Come Forward About Sexual Molestation' was broadcast. The program was advertised as being an opportunity for the "spouses and partners of the male survivors, who have been listening backstage, to come forward and tell their side of the story." Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way. While the program was, indeed, another powerful evocation for informing the nation about the prevalence and extent of the sexual child abuse of males, there was very little focus upon the spouses and partners of these men telling their side of the story. In fact, only two women spoke on the program (though those two women told painful stories). Frankly, I was a bit disheartened by that, since both I and my intimate partner (who is a wonderful supporter of my work on this subject and who was hoping to see how other women and men faced issues similar to hers) were looking forward to 'hearing the other side' of the intimate relationship issues.
Now that Oprah has encouraged male survivors across America to 'come forward' and 'tell their stories of sexual child abuse', the overriding question is: to whom can these men safely tell their stories? As I've noted before, most people, whether they be heterosexual female or gay male partners (or the families of origin) of these men, are generally not equipped to deal with the information that would be presented. There are, though, a number of great books available to help in that process. For anyone needing resources, I would suggest starting with Allies in Healing: When the Person You Love Was Sexually Abused as a Child by Laura Davis and If The Man You Love Was Abused: A Couple's Guide to Healing by Marie H. and Marlene M. Browne. (There are a host of other resources listed in the bibliography of the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute website.)
Whether your partner is willing to read these excellent guides is, though, a problematic issue. It both depends on the couple's level of mutual respect and intimacy, and your partner's willingness to hear the kind of deep male pain that most people aren't used to hearing from men and which, given the narrow cultural construct of 'manhood', leads many women to question their male partner's masculinity in spite of any amount of their otherwise active encouragement to display his more 'sensitive' side. [For a further exploration of this contradiction, see The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks]. Additionally, as I have pointed out in many of my blogs -- and will continue to do so until substantive change occurs -- there are very few social service or nonprofit agencies which have mental health services or personnel trained to cope with the special kinds of issues faced by male sexual abuse survivors (such as the cultural prohibition that 'males aren't supposed to be victims', etc.).
Nonetheless, the willingness of Oprah to present these programs on a major network channel is truly to be commended. Hopefully, funders will take notice. The kind of information that she conveyed, especially the statistics that approximately 1 out of 6 boys are sexually abused as children and that 90% of perpetrators are known by their victims, is the very kind of data that I have been trying to disseminate, since 2003, via the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute website (www.mmwi-stl.org). Therapists throughout the nation should be heartened by these broadcasts and the associated links to Male Survivor, 1 in 6, Men Thriving, and other resources promoted on the program and on Oprah's website. My concern is not that there aren't some great websites to which male survivors and their partners can turn for assistance; rather it is that online information is only a start. One-on-one mental health therapy is the next quite important step that needs to be taken, and there is a profound dearth of those programs. Maybe [hopefully] this program will encourage other broadcasters to address this subject and funding for such mental health services will eventually be in the offing. However, until then, male survivors who have the courage to come to grips with their childhood sexual abuse will be, in many cases, left 'high and dry' when they seek out competent and affordable mental health services.
In any case, the programs did provide survivors and the general public with a view of 'the world around them' of which most citizens are profoundly unaware. Least we forget, the knowledge about the sexual child abuse of females is only a quite recent phenomenon; until the mid-1970's, many mental health studies had continued to perpetuate the myth that females were 'only sexually abused as children at the rate of one in a million'. So, even though there is a greater cultural allowance to seeing women as victims (which, though, doesn't in may respects help women, because such a viewpoint also continues to encourage the cultural view that very few women are -- or can be -- potential successes), this perspective, as it relates to females being sexually abused as children, is only of quite recent vintage.
Hence, it should hardly be surprising that the culture is largely unaware of the sexual child abuse of males, given the greater and more pervasive reluctance of the culture to view males, even male children, as potential victims, nor that it has taken so long for such a program, like what Oprah broadcast in the last couple of weeks, to appear on network television. This is profound emotional and psychic pain and its existence challenges many deeply held assumptions in our culture. That it will continue to be a while before sufficient social service and/or mental health agencies 'take notice' of this change in the mental health landscape should not surprise anyone. It's one thing to be aware that some boys were sexually molested by some Catholic priests (or ministers or politicians); it's quite another to come to grips with the reality that such trauma is not an isolated dysfunctional 'acting out' behavior exhibited by a small percentage of the population, but a much more widespread problem.
Again, Oprah is to be commended on the hard hitting and no-holds-barred issues raised by the men who were interviewed, and by Tyler Perry and Dr. Howard Fradkin of Male Survivor. Next week, and in the weeks to come, I will continue addressing, more directly, some of the comments made by the male survivors on the Oprah broadcasts.
Now that Oprah has encouraged male survivors across America to 'come forward' and 'tell their stories of sexual child abuse', the overriding question is: to whom can these men safely tell their stories? As I've noted before, most people, whether they be heterosexual female or gay male partners (or the families of origin) of these men, are generally not equipped to deal with the information that would be presented. There are, though, a number of great books available to help in that process. For anyone needing resources, I would suggest starting with Allies in Healing: When the Person You Love Was Sexually Abused as a Child by Laura Davis and If The Man You Love Was Abused: A Couple's Guide to Healing by Marie H. and Marlene M. Browne. (There are a host of other resources listed in the bibliography of the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute website.)
Whether your partner is willing to read these excellent guides is, though, a problematic issue. It both depends on the couple's level of mutual respect and intimacy, and your partner's willingness to hear the kind of deep male pain that most people aren't used to hearing from men and which, given the narrow cultural construct of 'manhood', leads many women to question their male partner's masculinity in spite of any amount of their otherwise active encouragement to display his more 'sensitive' side. [For a further exploration of this contradiction, see The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks]. Additionally, as I have pointed out in many of my blogs -- and will continue to do so until substantive change occurs -- there are very few social service or nonprofit agencies which have mental health services or personnel trained to cope with the special kinds of issues faced by male sexual abuse survivors (such as the cultural prohibition that 'males aren't supposed to be victims', etc.).
Nonetheless, the willingness of Oprah to present these programs on a major network channel is truly to be commended. Hopefully, funders will take notice. The kind of information that she conveyed, especially the statistics that approximately 1 out of 6 boys are sexually abused as children and that 90% of perpetrators are known by their victims, is the very kind of data that I have been trying to disseminate, since 2003, via the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute website (www.mmwi-stl.org). Therapists throughout the nation should be heartened by these broadcasts and the associated links to Male Survivor, 1 in 6, Men Thriving, and other resources promoted on the program and on Oprah's website. My concern is not that there aren't some great websites to which male survivors and their partners can turn for assistance; rather it is that online information is only a start. One-on-one mental health therapy is the next quite important step that needs to be taken, and there is a profound dearth of those programs. Maybe [hopefully] this program will encourage other broadcasters to address this subject and funding for such mental health services will eventually be in the offing. However, until then, male survivors who have the courage to come to grips with their childhood sexual abuse will be, in many cases, left 'high and dry' when they seek out competent and affordable mental health services.
In any case, the programs did provide survivors and the general public with a view of 'the world around them' of which most citizens are profoundly unaware. Least we forget, the knowledge about the sexual child abuse of females is only a quite recent phenomenon; until the mid-1970's, many mental health studies had continued to perpetuate the myth that females were 'only sexually abused as children at the rate of one in a million'. So, even though there is a greater cultural allowance to seeing women as victims (which, though, doesn't in may respects help women, because such a viewpoint also continues to encourage the cultural view that very few women are -- or can be -- potential successes), this perspective, as it relates to females being sexually abused as children, is only of quite recent vintage.
Hence, it should hardly be surprising that the culture is largely unaware of the sexual child abuse of males, given the greater and more pervasive reluctance of the culture to view males, even male children, as potential victims, nor that it has taken so long for such a program, like what Oprah broadcast in the last couple of weeks, to appear on network television. This is profound emotional and psychic pain and its existence challenges many deeply held assumptions in our culture. That it will continue to be a while before sufficient social service and/or mental health agencies 'take notice' of this change in the mental health landscape should not surprise anyone. It's one thing to be aware that some boys were sexually molested by some Catholic priests (or ministers or politicians); it's quite another to come to grips with the reality that such trauma is not an isolated dysfunctional 'acting out' behavior exhibited by a small percentage of the population, but a much more widespread problem.
Again, Oprah is to be commended on the hard hitting and no-holds-barred issues raised by the men who were interviewed, and by Tyler Perry and Dr. Howard Fradkin of Male Survivor. Next week, and in the weeks to come, I will continue addressing, more directly, some of the comments made by the male survivors on the Oprah broadcasts.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Adult Men Speaking Up About Sexual Abuse On 'Oprah'
It was both disturbing and refreshing to see the November 5 Oprah broadcast "200 Adult Men Who Were Molested Come Forward". Disturbing, of course, because of the horrendous abuse they recounted and how their families often either refused to believe them or chose to remain in denial about the abuse perpetrated upon their children. Refreshing, because of their courage and candor in being willing to speak openly about a subject that has, for too long, been ignored in America by the media, the public, and all too often, men themselves. It isn't easy for adult men to come forward and talk openly about being molested as children. Men, as I've noted in several of my blogs, aren't supposed to be victims. Never mind that the molestation often occurred when they were children and defenseless -- in our culture, men aren't allowed to admit that they were victimized. To "be a man" in our culture, you have to stuff your anguished feelings and 'tough up', face the world as an independent person who can take care of himself.
Except, of course, when you were sexually abused as a child and it impacted your ability to adequately cope with maturation. Under those circumstances, becoming someone who can, in any healthy way, grow into a person who has any idea, at all, how to take care of yourself, how to defend yourself adequately from further abuse, isn't really much of a relevant issue. So, you turn to alcohol and/or drugs to deaden the horrific shame that consumes your soul, you fail in one interpersonal relationship after another because you don't want to face your abuse (it's painful and even more painful to work through the shame to the other side where mental health lies), or you have no idea what 'intimacy' actually involves because being sexually abused was equated by your perpetrator with 'being cared for' (when in fact the abuser only cared about their own sick pleasure -- to them, you were only an object upon which to act out their perverse fantasies).
Life, under those circumstances, just doesn't feel worth living as you grow into 'manhood', as the stages of life past 12 years of age are so harshly termed. I say harshly, because no one seems to be concerned about allowing you to be human, only whether you fit into an extremely limited 'manhood box' that your society has constructed for you. This 'box' inherently crushes your ability to exhibit the full range of an emotional life, one that involves angst, joy, tears, laughter, inner turmoil, loving touch -- and, yes, anger as well. Not only rage, which is one emotion men are allowed, but all those other possibilities, the ones that constitute the 'infinity of shades of gray'.
But you rarely meet other people who can tolerate hearing about the pain and shame and terror that you experienced as a child, especially not female partners and just as rarely male partners and even more rarely your male friends. Stuff it, that's the message you hear from others, whether they say it openly or just let you know by refusing to listen. Your female partners might be willing to let you know about their angst, their emotional pain, but don't make the mistake of discussing your own. After all, you're supposed to "be a man" and men are supposed to not be emotional and definitely not talk about how their souls were crushed as children by 'caregivers' who had 'care' as the least of the emotions for which they took responsibility.
It's not that you never cross paths with such persons, rather that it is rare. We're all socialized by the same culture, whether male or female, and all too often people are looking for a 'specific kind of partner', and not especially individuals who are authentic about the anguish they experienced as children.
As the Oprah program pointed out, among other things, 90% of child molesters target children they know. We're not talking about guys in trench coats molesting random children in the park, though indeed that occurs and far too often; we're talking about biological fathers (and mothers, which is too often overlooked), stepfathers and stepmothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents. Those closest to us, the ones we should be able to trust, the people who we have no choice but to trust, because we are, as children, so highly dependent on adults, especially adults who claim to love us. Those are the people who molest young boys (and girls) most often, that molest the 1 out of 6 boys in America who are sexually abused as children. The monster isn't 'out there, lurking in the shadows', like Nosferatu, but 'in here', in our own homes, twisting the truth to serve their own twisted sexual desires. Or they are priests or teachers, who have authority over us, and whose supervisors (or bishops or school administrators) look the other way, even when they hear about the abuse and deny that it is happening.
Children can't be believed, they make up stories, they have great imaginations; this simply isn't true [or so the society wants to believe]. Mothers believe, in their hearts, that their husbands can't be raping their children, because 'men don't do that' and because the women don't want to lose their economic support. So they side with their sexual partners and say their children are lying, not even allowing for investigation or curiosity. Or fathers deny that their wives are molesting their children, because they don't want to risk emotional abandonment, or because they were molested as children themselves and haven't faced their own shame squarely or gotten intervention for it. Or either or both parents have no earthly idea how to obtain intervention for their children, even if they did believe them.
And children are 'taught' by the molester that they will only be allowed to survive if they keep the abusive 'loving' secret, that it's 'just between the two of us', or inculcate the belief in the children that "you caused me to do this to you", which far too many children willingly believe, because how could they know otherwise? This is their 'caregiver', this is an adult who, like all adults, is supposed to have their best interests at heart -- though we, the observers of this process, sitting outside the molestation mechanism, know only too well is not the case. Adults and only adults are responsible for their actions, not the children who are the object of their abuse.
We, as a culture, have slowly begun to be aware of the sexual abuse of children by the clergy, especially a portion of the population of Catholic priests. But hopefully Oprah's programs, which were inspired by her friendship with Tyler Perry and motivated by his willingness to talk about his own childhood molestation, will move the 'conversation' to the next level. As I've pointed out, in my blogs, and on my website since 2003, when I founded the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute, our culture is well aware (at least since the late 1970's) that females are victims of sexual abuse at the rate of 1 out of every 4 or 5 girls, but has only just started to admit that males suffer sexual abuse at more or less an equivalent rate. And for men, the issue becomes if I do come forward with the truth about my abuse, are there any services available to help me through this pain? That's the larger question: motivating males to come forward is a powerful first step, but if society doesn't fund programs that assist adult men with intervention -- and, just like with female survivors, intervention that is long-term -- then inspiring them to come forward will only lead to further frustration.
Except, of course, when you were sexually abused as a child and it impacted your ability to adequately cope with maturation. Under those circumstances, becoming someone who can, in any healthy way, grow into a person who has any idea, at all, how to take care of yourself, how to defend yourself adequately from further abuse, isn't really much of a relevant issue. So, you turn to alcohol and/or drugs to deaden the horrific shame that consumes your soul, you fail in one interpersonal relationship after another because you don't want to face your abuse (it's painful and even more painful to work through the shame to the other side where mental health lies), or you have no idea what 'intimacy' actually involves because being sexually abused was equated by your perpetrator with 'being cared for' (when in fact the abuser only cared about their own sick pleasure -- to them, you were only an object upon which to act out their perverse fantasies).
Life, under those circumstances, just doesn't feel worth living as you grow into 'manhood', as the stages of life past 12 years of age are so harshly termed. I say harshly, because no one seems to be concerned about allowing you to be human, only whether you fit into an extremely limited 'manhood box' that your society has constructed for you. This 'box' inherently crushes your ability to exhibit the full range of an emotional life, one that involves angst, joy, tears, laughter, inner turmoil, loving touch -- and, yes, anger as well. Not only rage, which is one emotion men are allowed, but all those other possibilities, the ones that constitute the 'infinity of shades of gray'.
But you rarely meet other people who can tolerate hearing about the pain and shame and terror that you experienced as a child, especially not female partners and just as rarely male partners and even more rarely your male friends. Stuff it, that's the message you hear from others, whether they say it openly or just let you know by refusing to listen. Your female partners might be willing to let you know about their angst, their emotional pain, but don't make the mistake of discussing your own. After all, you're supposed to "be a man" and men are supposed to not be emotional and definitely not talk about how their souls were crushed as children by 'caregivers' who had 'care' as the least of the emotions for which they took responsibility.
It's not that you never cross paths with such persons, rather that it is rare. We're all socialized by the same culture, whether male or female, and all too often people are looking for a 'specific kind of partner', and not especially individuals who are authentic about the anguish they experienced as children.
As the Oprah program pointed out, among other things, 90% of child molesters target children they know. We're not talking about guys in trench coats molesting random children in the park, though indeed that occurs and far too often; we're talking about biological fathers (and mothers, which is too often overlooked), stepfathers and stepmothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents. Those closest to us, the ones we should be able to trust, the people who we have no choice but to trust, because we are, as children, so highly dependent on adults, especially adults who claim to love us. Those are the people who molest young boys (and girls) most often, that molest the 1 out of 6 boys in America who are sexually abused as children. The monster isn't 'out there, lurking in the shadows', like Nosferatu, but 'in here', in our own homes, twisting the truth to serve their own twisted sexual desires. Or they are priests or teachers, who have authority over us, and whose supervisors (or bishops or school administrators) look the other way, even when they hear about the abuse and deny that it is happening.
Children can't be believed, they make up stories, they have great imaginations; this simply isn't true [or so the society wants to believe]. Mothers believe, in their hearts, that their husbands can't be raping their children, because 'men don't do that' and because the women don't want to lose their economic support. So they side with their sexual partners and say their children are lying, not even allowing for investigation or curiosity. Or fathers deny that their wives are molesting their children, because they don't want to risk emotional abandonment, or because they were molested as children themselves and haven't faced their own shame squarely or gotten intervention for it. Or either or both parents have no earthly idea how to obtain intervention for their children, even if they did believe them.
And children are 'taught' by the molester that they will only be allowed to survive if they keep the abusive 'loving' secret, that it's 'just between the two of us', or inculcate the belief in the children that "you caused me to do this to you", which far too many children willingly believe, because how could they know otherwise? This is their 'caregiver', this is an adult who, like all adults, is supposed to have their best interests at heart -- though we, the observers of this process, sitting outside the molestation mechanism, know only too well is not the case. Adults and only adults are responsible for their actions, not the children who are the object of their abuse.
We, as a culture, have slowly begun to be aware of the sexual abuse of children by the clergy, especially a portion of the population of Catholic priests. But hopefully Oprah's programs, which were inspired by her friendship with Tyler Perry and motivated by his willingness to talk about his own childhood molestation, will move the 'conversation' to the next level. As I've pointed out, in my blogs, and on my website since 2003, when I founded the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute, our culture is well aware (at least since the late 1970's) that females are victims of sexual abuse at the rate of 1 out of every 4 or 5 girls, but has only just started to admit that males suffer sexual abuse at more or less an equivalent rate. And for men, the issue becomes if I do come forward with the truth about my abuse, are there any services available to help me through this pain? That's the larger question: motivating males to come forward is a powerful first step, but if society doesn't fund programs that assist adult men with intervention -- and, just like with female survivors, intervention that is long-term -- then inspiring them to come forward will only lead to further frustration.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Men's Roles As Fathers: Equality in Divorce and Custody of Children
In the past decade, ever since President Clinton's 'welfare reform' of the mid-1990's, there has been a re-emphasis, in economically-deprived families and/or those on welfare or in Head Start programs, on fathers playing a greater role in the lives of their children. The government chose this policy, in part, to display it's realization of the value of fathers after four decades of pushing fathers out of the home [families received fewer or no welfare benefits if the father was around the home], but more importantly because it wanted to save money. This 'cost cutting' was one of the primary motivations of the 'reform', which forced welfare families to get off welfare by taking low-paying jobs, often which didn't sufficiently cover their expenses, especially after the cost of childcare was factored in (though, in some high-profile examples, families were able to completely move beyond the minimum wage/welfare cycle altogether). The problem was that after many years of discounting the value of fathers -- of, in fact, acting as though the government itself was sort of a 'big daddy' that could, via welfare payments, replace fathers [ignoring, in the process, the emotional value of fathers in families] -- the government turned around and acted in a rather haughty manner and demanded that fathers take a more active role in the lives of their children without constructing a social service delivery system that supported that change.
As an example of this, several years ago I was involved with the Father and Family Committee of the St. Louis [Missouri] Consortium on African American Male Survival. We were working with a lot of fathers who had been incarcerated due to failure to pay child support. The policy of throwing fathers who were delinquent in their child support payments into prison, as the members noted, was somewhat contradictory: the state wanted fathers to make the child support payments that had been ordered by the court system, but incarcerating fathers for failing to do so was rather counterproductive. They surely could not earn money in prison, at least not enough to send any sort of sufficient payments to their families, and once having been incarcerated, their economic value on the labor market was reduced, since they now had a prison record.
The Consortium felt that motivating the fathers to take a more active role, after divorce, in the life of their children, helping them with job training and employment programs, and then garnishing a portion of their wages -- while still leaving them enough to support themselves economically -- was a more viable [and more cost-effective] solution for the government to engage in. Such a policy would allow the fathers to maintain personal pride and a potentially positive role in the life of their children, other than simply being the providers of child support payments to the mothers. Critical to this policy, though, was to not so harshly garish the wages of the fathers -- many of whom were only able to secure minimum wage employment -- that the fathers would be left with insufficient means to provide for their own minimal needs and, as a result, be motivated to avoid the economic support of their children, the very problem the government was trying to resolve.
A further problem for fathers, generally, whether poor or otherwise, was that when the school system would sponsor 'parent meetings' to support the educational progress of the child -- or for a meeting concerning disciplinary or truancy problems the child was having -- the invitation would be sent solely to the mother of the child, not the father [in non-custodial families]. The very idea that the concept of 'parent' only applied to mothers was rather short-sighted. The school system, in direct contradiction to its own stated mission of promoting family cohesiveness as a better predictor of the child's educational advancement, was in fact promoting a 'social construct' that assumed the only parent of value was the mother. While it was often the case that the fathers had, for various reasons, dropped out of the family system, the school system's invitation mechanism reinforced the very lack of mutual parental involvement that they publicly disavowed. Additionally, fathers who cared a lot about their children, but who had been forced, via various emotional and legal means, out of the family structure, were further discarded by 'the system' that supposedly cared about the father's involvement with the children. Members of the Father and Family Committee actively intervened on behalf of the fathers, when they could, by showing the school system how ignoring the fathers in such 'parent meetings' was thoroughly counterproductive to the emotional support of the children and discounting of any potential ongoing involvement by the fathers.
The contradiction that the educational system faced was often rooted in the way in which the court system handled custody of children in divorce cases. Often, custody was awarded to the mothers -- on the assumption that they were more 'stable' and could provide the children with a 'nurturing home' that the fathers could not or would not provide -- regardless of the mother's emotional or economic capacity to care for the children. The result, in far too many cases, was that the children were, de facto, raised in single-parent households. This legal solution was not particularly helpful to either the mother or the father of the children. The mother was left with an egregious economic and emotional burden, trying to raise the children unilaterally, often dependent on unstable child support payments, welfare assistance and/or income from minimum wage jobs to support themselves and their children. The fathers were either 'left off the hook', in terms of emotional support of the children, or, in situations were the fathers wanted to have an ongoing involvement with their children, often excluded from family activities due to emotional conflicts between the parents.
The tendency of the courts to award sole custody of the children to the mother, with the father's sole responsibility -- or 'right' -- being to provide child support and alimony payments [but not being allowed an emotional relationship with his children] has been increasingly challenged by father's rights groups, with mixed results. In some cases, the courts have been willing to accept the fathers as legitimate caregivers of the children, more so than the mothers, and grant them primary custody, or has been motivated to view both parents as equally caring toward the children and been willing to grant mutual shared custody [with its own struggles in the emotional lives of the children]. In either solution, the rights of the fathers and their value in the family structure has been 'legitimized' by the court system, after decades of viewing fathers as having less value in the life of children than that of mothers. While it may or may not be true that being raised by a single parent [mother or father] can result in an emotionally stable child, there is at least some anecdotal evidence that both sons and daughters who are raised in homes where the father is not present have greater problems with delinquency and/or teen pregnancy. Having positive role modeling from both their mothers and fathers appears to provide children with a more solid emotional foundation in their growth and maturation.
As an example of this, several years ago I was involved with the Father and Family Committee of the St. Louis [Missouri] Consortium on African American Male Survival. We were working with a lot of fathers who had been incarcerated due to failure to pay child support. The policy of throwing fathers who were delinquent in their child support payments into prison, as the members noted, was somewhat contradictory: the state wanted fathers to make the child support payments that had been ordered by the court system, but incarcerating fathers for failing to do so was rather counterproductive. They surely could not earn money in prison, at least not enough to send any sort of sufficient payments to their families, and once having been incarcerated, their economic value on the labor market was reduced, since they now had a prison record.
The Consortium felt that motivating the fathers to take a more active role, after divorce, in the life of their children, helping them with job training and employment programs, and then garnishing a portion of their wages -- while still leaving them enough to support themselves economically -- was a more viable [and more cost-effective] solution for the government to engage in. Such a policy would allow the fathers to maintain personal pride and a potentially positive role in the life of their children, other than simply being the providers of child support payments to the mothers. Critical to this policy, though, was to not so harshly garish the wages of the fathers -- many of whom were only able to secure minimum wage employment -- that the fathers would be left with insufficient means to provide for their own minimal needs and, as a result, be motivated to avoid the economic support of their children, the very problem the government was trying to resolve.
A further problem for fathers, generally, whether poor or otherwise, was that when the school system would sponsor 'parent meetings' to support the educational progress of the child -- or for a meeting concerning disciplinary or truancy problems the child was having -- the invitation would be sent solely to the mother of the child, not the father [in non-custodial families]. The very idea that the concept of 'parent' only applied to mothers was rather short-sighted. The school system, in direct contradiction to its own stated mission of promoting family cohesiveness as a better predictor of the child's educational advancement, was in fact promoting a 'social construct' that assumed the only parent of value was the mother. While it was often the case that the fathers had, for various reasons, dropped out of the family system, the school system's invitation mechanism reinforced the very lack of mutual parental involvement that they publicly disavowed. Additionally, fathers who cared a lot about their children, but who had been forced, via various emotional and legal means, out of the family structure, were further discarded by 'the system' that supposedly cared about the father's involvement with the children. Members of the Father and Family Committee actively intervened on behalf of the fathers, when they could, by showing the school system how ignoring the fathers in such 'parent meetings' was thoroughly counterproductive to the emotional support of the children and discounting of any potential ongoing involvement by the fathers.
The contradiction that the educational system faced was often rooted in the way in which the court system handled custody of children in divorce cases. Often, custody was awarded to the mothers -- on the assumption that they were more 'stable' and could provide the children with a 'nurturing home' that the fathers could not or would not provide -- regardless of the mother's emotional or economic capacity to care for the children. The result, in far too many cases, was that the children were, de facto, raised in single-parent households. This legal solution was not particularly helpful to either the mother or the father of the children. The mother was left with an egregious economic and emotional burden, trying to raise the children unilaterally, often dependent on unstable child support payments, welfare assistance and/or income from minimum wage jobs to support themselves and their children. The fathers were either 'left off the hook', in terms of emotional support of the children, or, in situations were the fathers wanted to have an ongoing involvement with their children, often excluded from family activities due to emotional conflicts between the parents.
The tendency of the courts to award sole custody of the children to the mother, with the father's sole responsibility -- or 'right' -- being to provide child support and alimony payments [but not being allowed an emotional relationship with his children] has been increasingly challenged by father's rights groups, with mixed results. In some cases, the courts have been willing to accept the fathers as legitimate caregivers of the children, more so than the mothers, and grant them primary custody, or has been motivated to view both parents as equally caring toward the children and been willing to grant mutual shared custody [with its own struggles in the emotional lives of the children]. In either solution, the rights of the fathers and their value in the family structure has been 'legitimized' by the court system, after decades of viewing fathers as having less value in the life of children than that of mothers. While it may or may not be true that being raised by a single parent [mother or father] can result in an emotionally stable child, there is at least some anecdotal evidence that both sons and daughters who are raised in homes where the father is not present have greater problems with delinquency and/or teen pregnancy. Having positive role modeling from both their mothers and fathers appears to provide children with a more solid emotional foundation in their growth and maturation.
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