Sexual Abuse
survival has different definitions when it comes to life changing events. If you come out of a battle, plane crash, or tornado and are still in one piece and breathing that’s probably the most obvious level of survival. Obviously, this is a must from a perspective of continued existence. So the dust clears and you have lived to see another day, does this make you a survivor?
Let’s fast forward a few months or maybe a year. Is life back to business as usual? Or maybe you are drinking more, sleeping less, or just not able to concentrate as well as you used to. Conversely, maybe you have realized that you have been given a second chance that others didn’t get and that you need to do something with it. Has this event become a weight on your life. Or a foundation for you to build the rest of your life on?
Looking at the event a different way, do you see the event as being in the past. Or is it something that you see echoed in your daily activities, or as something that is destined to happen again? This is where the definition of survivor starts to get murky.
Different Types of Trauma
There are an unlimited combinations of experiences that people have after a traumatic event. When I was 17, I had a helicopter crash in back of my house. I was the only one there, and I was not successful in rescuing either of the occupants. It’s a very vivid image even though it happened over 35 years ago. Other than declining a couple helicopter rides over the years, it hasn’t altered the direction of my life, or how I interact with the world. Maybe it’s me, or it could be my perception of the likelihood of the event happening again.
With sexual abuse, the physical act, setting or participants are likely to present themselves in some context in the future. This is why sexual assault victims tend to relive their experiences more than others who experience traumatic events. With my helicopter incident, there are very few things that I associate to the event. With the various abuse incidents I am most familiar with, there are regular common reminders that often trigger a reaction.
Types of Survivors
So what type of survivors do you have in your family? Have you moved past the event, or is it something that follows you around waiting to be relived? Or better still have you built upon the experience and become a person that others look up to? I’ve learned over the years that often times the people who have lost the most are the ones who grew the most from the experience. We don’t have choices about the events that happen to us, but we do have choices about how we respond to them. Once you can answer the question what type of survivor you are the important question to ask is, what type of survivor do you want to be?
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse victim situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Sexual Abuse
Towards Healing and Renewal is the title of a conference on child sexual abuse which is being organized by Gregorian University in Rome with the support of the Vatican. The conference is in Rome Feb 6-9 and includes representatives from a large number of Catholic organizations and Vatican offices. I’m not sure exactly what it says that the Pope will not be in attendance. But it does seem to be typical of the distance the Pope tends to approach the subject with. As such, my expectations are low. Still, this is golden opportunity. Having spent a little bit of time on the edge of the political landscape I can understand why the Pope might watch this from a safe distance.
If this is the first you have heard of this conference that has representatives of over 100 Bishops, I’m sure it’s not a coincidence. The Catholic Church has made so many missteps in dealing with child sexual abuse, as well as being the source of more than their fair share, that they can’t afford another black eye. If the conference come up with a bold direction that can reposition the church as a defender of children, the Pope has a ready entrance to step in and solidify the message. If it falls short, the Pope continues to support efforts to ensure the safety of children and recognizes there is still more work to be done. Leaving the Pope out of the equation also allows the conference to go forward without making the front page of CNN.
Making it all ok
Welcome to the safe road in dealing the sexual abuse. Everyone’s political ass is covered. Sadly this is not part of the recipe for real change. Here’s what I’d like to see happen. Two days of stalemate discussions trying to figure out the best way to limit legal exposure with all the abuse cases. Enter the Pope on day 3. The Pope announces that no-one leaves until they have a comprehensive plan for dealing with abusive priests, protecting children, and supporting victims. On the fourth day, the Pope announces the plan to the world. It’s not perfect, but it sets a new standard within the church and restores the faith of many Catholics who feel betrayed by their church. Or at least that’s how it would play out in the movie version. I guess we’ll have to see what happens in the real world next week.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse victim situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Sexual Abuse
With the success of organizations like AA and alanon, why isn’t there a pedophiles anonymous? Answering this question gets to the heart of the problem of dealing with sex offenders in our society. People aren’t embarrassed to go to AA. Maybe initially, but then they learn that people are proud of them for doing it. Do you think the same would happen with pedophiles? Clearly we aren’t there yet.
My uncle was a long time member of AA. I think most of the family viewed him in context with the damage that drinking did along the way. In contrast there are dozens of members of AA that credit my uncle with helping to save their marriage, their jobs and in some cases their lives. Unfortunately, the later is the stuff you often find out at funerals. It’s hard to imagine multiple people standing up at a funeral to say how someone helped them with their sexual attraction to children. With AA people are more then willing to acknowledge those that have helped them with their addiction – and do it publicly. Sex offenders stay in the shadows, and in many cases are pushed there. It’s hard to tell which sometimes.
Bottom line is that as a society, we aren’t ready to admit that pedophiles are a part of us. The same people we want servicing our communities and teaching our children, often happen to be sexual predators. This is scary as shit! Most people’s brains can’t even get a handle on this because it doesn’t make logical sense. It’s so much easier to go with the explanation that there are good people and bad people, and good people do good things and bad people do bad things. We live in a society which actively seeks to destroy things that don’t make sense. It’s not right, but it helps us make sense of our world. And think of the time and money it saves on education.
Go to a meeting
So lets imagine you saw an ad for Pedophiles Anonymous in the paper. What do you think would happen? For the most part no one would come. And sooner or later, people that did come would probably be killed by a parent or victim looking for payback. Unlike being an alcoholic or a drug addict, there isn’t a safe place to admit being sexually attracted to children, or worse having acted on that. There is no social acceptance that this is a problem that we as a community can help someone with. It is more of a cancer that should be removed and destroyed. And oh by the way, don’t talk to anyone about either.
There’s an old joke about what do you call 300 lawyers thrown off a cliff? Answer: a good start. Substitute the word pedophiles for lawyers and you have a statement that most people would agree with. On a purely emotional level it’s hard not to feel that way, especially when you have lived through abuse yourself or as a parent. The more you learn though, the more you find that it doesn’t fix the problem. AA fixes a problem. Drug courts fix a problem. Both recognize the addiction, they understand the scars it leaves on those around them, and they recognize it takes an open and educated community to deal with the problem.
We Need to be Open
Like it or not at some point we have to look to a similar approach for sex offenders. We need to bring the problem and treatment into the open, if we want to reduce the number of victims in the future. Most people don’t know that AA has been around for almost 80 years. And it really has only been really socially accepted for the past 20 years or so. Hopefully a similar structure can come to exist for sex offenders that doesn’t take quite that length of time for society to accept.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse victim situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Parenting, Sexual Abuse
A few months ago the phrase “Jerry’s Kids” brought to mind a charitable organization that has helped children for years. Now it’s more aptly associated with Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State sexual assault victims. There are some interesting parallels. Both center around non profit agencies for children. The question of motivation is where things get muddy. Both organizations clearly value and try to further the interests of children. It’s still mind boggling when organizations with an unquestionable purpose actually turn out to have a dark side.
I use the term mind boggling figuratively. But there is a very real component of this conflict of reality that most people’s brains can’t comprehend both conditions existing. The brain tends to be binary in it’s early stages of learning. There are good people and bad people. The possibility of both existing within the same person is a concept that the brain would rather ignore than accept because it violates the rules.
Brain Damage
If you are a Star Trek fan you will remember an episode where an entity takes over the computer. The crew is able to destroy the evil entity by giving the computer an impossible problem to solve. It basically crashes (Sorry for the spoiler if you are just rediscovering the Star Trek series). People’s brains do the same thing. They want to crash and reboot when they encounter something that shouldn’t be possible. If you have ever lost work when your computer crashes, memories can equally be lost when our brains try to convince us that what we experience is not real and should therefore be ignored. This is one of the reasons why so many people come forward years later. Pieces of new information allow them to recognize events as real.
In our daily lives we are surrounded by organizations that are setup to serve children. The assumption is that their purposes are purely motivated and they are run by good people. It’s a reasonable assumption that is generally true until it isn’t. What’s even more confusing is that the children who are often getting the most positive attention, are also the ones who are being abused. We all need to get our brains to recognize that the lines between good and bad frequently blur. The sooner we can identify this incongruency in the organizations that serve children, the sooner we can begin to deal with the evil entities that sometimes take up home in them.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse victim situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Sexual Abuse
Welcome to ringside for the sexual abuse story of the year. The Penn State sexual abuse case is likely to grab headlines for weeks to come. Strangely the offender isn’t front an center in the story. Instead it’s about who knew about it, and what they did or didn’t do about it. This same drama gets played out on smaller stages every day.
Let’s start with Mike McQueary. He is the assistant coach that reported the abuse in the first place. You would think he would be the hero in this drama. Instead he is staying off the playing field because of death threats. This is probably the saddest aspects of sexual abuse cases. People will do just about anything to protect the image of someone that they hold in a position of trust. Destroy, discredit or scare the source of the information and then it doesn’t have to be true. In our case, one of the families who came forward had their mailbox and pole ripped out of the ground and thrown threw the window of the car. They got the message and moved. This isn’t how things are supposed to work. The new homeland security slogan is “If you see something, say something”. You would think the same would be true for sexual abuse cases.
Confronting a Legend
Next on the stage is Joe Paterno. Here is a legend in college football and a household name – so it’s news worthy. Based on my understanding of mandatory reporter responsibilities, and what I have read so far I believe he fulfilled the requirements. Now this is where it gets murky. I keep seeing phrases like “he should have done more”, which may or may not be true. But hey, he’s Joe Paterno, of course he could have done more – right? One of the problems with mandatory reporting laws is that there is no standard. Even within states, there is generally confusion about who is responsible for what.
In Connecticut the Department of Children and Families is generally responsible for setting policy for reporting and receiving reports. Then there is the Department of Public Health which generally handles licensing which identifies certain groups of mandatory reporters. And then there is the Department of Education which sets policies for educators. Seems logical enough, but when someone doesn’t file a report try to figure out who is responsible for addressing the issue. As we have seen in this case, at least two people thought they were following the reporting process and we still have a breakdown of this magnitude.
Coverup
Next we move to the cover up or perceived coverup. Maybe it was intentional, maybe it wasn’t. In the reporting process, there is no guarantee that a report that is started, makes it all the way to it’s logical destination. This is because mandatory reporting is treated as a management function. Follow the chain of command. You tell your boss, and they tell their boss, and they are supposed to alert the authorities. Sounds good in theory, but let’s go back to a childhood game – telephone. One of the biggest problems with sexual abuse is that people are not comfortable talking about it. Begin with a graphic report of a man raping a child, and two or three versions later you have a perceived interaction with an underage person that appeared to be of an inappropriate nature. And then you have someone in a management position deciding it was probably an isolated incident or a mistake.
So how do we fix this reporting nightmare going forward. My choice would be changing the mandatory reporting process. In addition to providing actual education to mandatory reported, make it a direct reporting process. Reports should be made directly to the police or the state agency responsible for abuse reporting. There are too many chances for the process to break down with the current approach. There is also the dilution of the information that occurs when a report is filtered through several management layers before becoming an actual report. And just like see something, say something campaign – it only works if you tell the right person.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse victim situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Sexual Abuse
We would all like to think that when something bad happens to someone that the justice system is just sitting there waiting to respond at a moment’s notice. Well this isn’t the fire department. And if you think that Special Victim’s Unit wrapping up a case on 60 minutes has any bearing on reality, you would be disappointed. The crimes may be the same, but the timelines are quite a bit different. At one point the time for a child sexual assault case to come to trial in New Haven Connecticut was 10 years. I suppose we should consider ourselves fortunate with only 4 years.
What’s Real
The reality is that courts are over capacity and in today’s economy, there just isn’t enough money to prosecute. One of the things we found was that 5 of the courts in Connecticut did not have victims advocates despite being mandated by state statutes. When we pushed the issue we were told by the Office of Victim Services that unless we could prove that our civil rights were being violated, they could’t do anything about it. We eventually got one after about a year and a half, but this is just one of the ways economics affects the abuse process.
In the normal course of budget shortfalls you will routinely see positions go unfilled for as long as people can stand the inconvenience. With today’s economy, things are a little different. In Topeka Kansas the county has elected to no longer prosecute misdemeanor crime. 4th degree child sexual assault and risk of injury of a minor generally fall into this area. In addition to pushing these cases off the books the city council is considering “repealing the part of the code that bans domestic abuse” . What an easier way to reduce the cost of fighting crime. Eliminate the activity as a crime and then you don’t have to prosecute it.
If You Don’t Like the Answer…
In Hartford, CT the schools started asking children if they had been sexually abused. The system couldn’t handle the number of cases. So what did they do? They stopped asking the question. Several years ago I spoke before a state senate panel regarding child sexual abuse. During the session I directed a question to the Commissioner of the Department of Children and Families and was told “if the child is safe in their home, we can’t help you”. I’m paraphrasing, and I don’t mean for it to sound cold, it’s just how things are setup. And I actually worked for the Department of Children and Families at the time. Organizationally, if you aren’t arrested or in foster care your service choices are limited.
So where does that leave us in a time when state and local budgets are being cut back to the bare bones? First advocate for your child in whatever systems you have available to you. Second educate yourself to help your child through whatever challenges they are likely to face in their lifetime. And third try to find a success path for your child that is not dependent on government services or the outcome of a trial. The cavalry isn’t always going to come to the rescue. Even when they do, that isn’t always the key to long term success. Ultimately the tools are within you and your child. You just need to find them and figure out the right path. And what’s the cost of that…priceless!
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse victim situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
