Sexual Abuse
Everyone has their breaking point. Often times victims will endure abuse for years and suddenly react when they feel someone they know is in danger of being abused. Such is the case of Aaron Vargas. He endured years of abuse, but when he thought his child was in danger of being abused by the same man who abused him, he confronted him with a gun. Aaron was free of his abuser’s grip, but paid for it with his own freedom. Aaron was sentenced to 9 years in jail for killing the guy he said sexually abused him for decades.
So do we look at Aaron as we would anyone else who kills someone? Does it make it better that he killed someone who most people will sleep better knowing he is gone? Or does Aaron get a pass because he was failed by a system so long that he ran out of other options in dealing with his abuse. Too many times this lack of options results in the person holding the gun and the person who dies being the same person.
If Aaron had picked up a gun and shot this man when he was first being abused at age 11, he would probably be doing Oprah as a hero. People don’t realize that part of the abuse involves turning the fight/flight switch off. It’s like elephants who are chained up. They long ago stopped being held by the chain, but their brain doesn’t know it. They are still that young elephant that can’t move past the chain. The fact that the fight back instinct kicked in years later seems to change the perception in the eyes of the court.
What do you think?
Do I think Aaron did the right thing? No. Could I see myself reaching that same point? Probably. If you’ve lived through any part of this, you can see how it can happen. Giving Aaron a free pass would essentially be declaring open season on sex offenders. While many people might find this appealing, that isn’t the answer either.
So what’s the answer? I would hope that Aaron’s family would continue to generate awareness of the incident. The punishment might follow the letter of the law, but not the spirit. Hopefully this can shed some much needed light on a broken system. Perhaps some enlightened public official will realize that this is just a symptom of how children are often not protected by our legal system.
For more information on the case visit – http://www.saveaaron.com/
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Sexual Abuse
No I didn’t just misquote “The Donald”. Finding out that your child has been molested will find you strapped into an unplanned adrenaline ride that seems to go on for a very, very, very long time. It starts with the initial rush and possibly a feeling you are going to throw up as well. Police interviews, sexual assault exams, and discussions with social workers will keep the juice flowing. Over a few days or weeks of mainlining adrenaline, you are likely to feel the track is leveling out and you are past the hard stuff.
Then one day you wake up and you just don’t feel right. Maybe you are feeling tired, unmotivated or your brain doesn’t seem to be working correctly. Congratulations – you’re fried! It’s not a formal medical diagnosis but it is the end result of flooding your body with adrenaline that it doesn’t need. A lot of people will reach for the sleeping pills and anti-depressants. What you want is to try and get your brain back on it’s regular regime of chemistry.
Reboot Time
Here are a few ideas to get life back on track:
- Take a walk outside. Treadmills are a second choice if you can’t do outside. Spending time outside is an important distinction if you are able. Interaction with nature, combined with exercise is more helpful than just the exercise itself.
- Think IPod. Any mp3 player will do, but having tried others, I can’t imagine using anything else. Fill it with music you love. Listen often, rinse and repeat.
- Rediscover a hobby. Reawaken that inner Monet or Hemingway that you have been ignoring. Get those creative juices flowing again.
- Take a trip. This isn’t about running away from the situation, this is about rebooting your inner computer to the factory settings. Three to four days is usually long enough to start things on the right path.
So regardless of whether it’s Donald Trump telling you “You’re fired” or your body telling you “You’re fried”, it’s time to take notice of the situation, and take a different direction.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Sexual Abuse
Monty Hall made a career out of letting people have do overs. If you don’t like the experience the universe has dealt you, you can trade it for what’s behind door number 2. Sometimes it’s a new car, sometimes it’s a herd of goats. It’s designed for entertainment and there isn’t much life altering in the decision either way.
The advantages of cancer
So here’s a hypothetical for you. What if you could trade your abuse? Let’s say you could undo your child’s sexual abuse but you traded it for cancer. There are several advantages to cancer:
- In most cases you can treat it with surgery, medicine or radiation.
- Pink ribbons
- Road races
- Lots of treatment facilities
- Everyone knows someone who has had it
- Lots of people to talk to
- There are social rules that everyone understands
This last one is probably the most important difference. Here are some of the social rules:
- People pray for you in church
- Friends come to visit you while you are in treatment
- Friends bring your family food
- People will talk to you about cancer
- Some people send you cards
- People will give you ideas about how to deal with cancer
- Most people know what to expect and how to react
- Friends will cry with you
Now there’s clearly a downside to cancer, but we’re not going to talk about that. Being intimately familiar with both, I wouldn’t wish either on anyone, but these are the challenges that enter our lives. It does make you wonder though. Wouldn’t it be nice if abuse victims and their families got the same support as people with cancer? Would you trade your abuse for cancer? You probably know the answer.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Sexual Abuse
Knowing but not doing anything about it is the latest banner of guilt capturing public interest. “Pope Benedict XVI failed to act over complaints during the 1990s about a priest in the US who is thought to have abused some 200 deaf boys, victims say.” The public cries out “how could you have ignored this problem?”. The sad truth is it happens every day – it just doesn’t make it to the front page of CNN. It is a systematic failure to act.
So where is the problem here? Taking a quote from Star Trek – “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one”. Just as that logic was shown to be flawed in the TV show, the same is true here on planet Earth. It’s easy to rationalize that serving a larger population sometimes means not dealing with “smaller problems” . Especially when it’s a topic that no one wants to talk about in the first place. Much like the problem of sexual abuse itself, the actions of the people dealing with it, often exist out of a lack of education. So do we blame people for their ignorance, or educate them? There’s an enlighted answer, but the reality is that blame solicits the most emotional response and plays better for the media. Blame can be done in an instant – education takes time.
System Failures
As a parent dealing with your child’s sexual abuse, you will probably find yourself dealing with several agencies or individuals who failed to act. There were a couple that really annoyed me. First was the public safety licensing person that pencil whipped an inspection I requested because she was tired of me calling about the status. The other was the school superintendent that told us we couldn’t discuss the subject with our child’s teachers unless we got a subpoena – and the offender wasn’t even associated with the school.
There’s a saying that given the choice between maliciousness and incompetence – assume incompetence. Failure to act often falls into the later area. Conspiracies play better for the media, but most times it comes down to people not having the wisdom that the generation that will follow them is likely to have. Concepts like slavery and racial purity have all been popular themes in some culture in the not too distant past. By people’s decisions to act they have largely disappeared. My hope is that an awareness of sexual abuse will cause more people to act. It may dramatically reduce it in our lifetime. For now, there continues to be those that we rely on that fail to act. And for the majority that simply made decisions that seemed right for the time, my hope is that the media attention will serve as an education for better decisions in the future.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Sexual Abuse
OK – this is an absurd title, but if you are following media frenzy regarding the sex abuse in the Pope’s old parish, and the recent letter about the past abuses in Ireland, it sort of sounds that way. The Catholic Church doesn’t have a corner on the market for abusing children – just a long history. Then there is the media aspect of associating the Pope with sexual abuse. And last, if you want a giant civil case the Catholic Church is at the top of that list.
So does all of this attention help the victims? In the short term probably not much, but I think we are reaching a pivital point in awareness and understanding about child sexual abuse. One of the biggest problems with sexual abuse awareness is that there aren’t a lot of physical signs that people can identify with to associate to a cause. Whether it was woman’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, race for the cure, Jerry’s Kids, etc. you could look at that population and generally see a difference – even if it was just a pink ribbon or tee shirt. Several years ago I spoke before a state senate committee and was told I didn’t need to provide my name. I did anyway. There is still this fine line between privacy and victims rights, and wanting to be counted as having been affected by this crime.
Dealing with change
For now, I see this getting messy and potentially destructive as the world comes up to speed on understanding child sexual abuse. All acts of change are first acts of destruction. Perhaps it’s appropriate that this is happening around the first day of spring. Aside from the symbolism of spring, it was 45 years ago this weekend that 3000 people gathered in Selma Alabama and began a four day march on the capital. By the time they reached Montgomery their numbers were over 25,000. As awareness of child sexual abuse grows, I see a similar movement taking shape.
So what should the next step be for the Catholic Church? Apologies and settlements are probably not going to cut it in the end. Here are a few ideas:
- Openly discuss the problem internally and with church members
- Educate everyone on what child sexual abuse is and why it will not be tolerated by the church
- Hold pedophile priests accountable – remove them from the church community – and no longer provide for them
- Provide counseling and support as needed to those who were victimized in the past
- Do whatever is necessary to ensure that the church and activities it supports are safe for all children
And lastly – back to my original title. It’s not realy absurd, just incomplete. Let’s get the Pope…to fix the Catholic Church!
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Sexual Abuse
After a couple years of dealing with your child’s sexual abuse, you may start to wonder why there aren’t more training programs or products for people in our situation. I still don’t know the answer to that one. At any rate, I’ve included a link to the Total Transformation system which is marketed towards parents of defiant children. This may not be your situation now or in the future, but this is one of the few things I have found that teaches you skills that help you deal with a sexually abused child as well. I don’t know that there are any sexual abuse references per se, but I found it useful.
Disclosure
For those of you from the FTC that are viewing this, the link does pay a commission if you buy the product, but I bought the product a couple years ago and definitely would recommend it. Two key points resonated with me:
- Whether you have been physically abused, molested, have ADD, a learning disability, etc. you still have to learn how to live in the world. These might be challenges, but they can’t be allowed to become excuses.
- Most negative child behavior is about problem solving skills – or a lack there of. Parents dealing with child sexual abuse are generally without a manual, or experience dealing with issue. The kids also suffer because they are dealing with a problem they don’t know how to solve.
Becoming educated about abuse, and becoming an advocate for your child, are going to be the two biggest things that a parent can do to help them get through their abuse. The Total Transformation system is definitely one product worth taking a look at.
