Survive today – every day

Here are the links to today's project, we used ordinary people and walked the streets promoting what we do. We were also celebrating International Men's Day. We ensured we included men and woman, young and old from all walks of life.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=250758251744724&id=121120558041828

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=250755365078346&id=121120558041828

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=250759958411220&id=121120558041828

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Shortly after the revelations at Penn State University I was asked by the New York Daily News to write an op-ed piece about it. I sent them the following, but they chose not to print it. So I am posting it here:

Whenever a major sexual abuse story is revealed in the media, several things are certain to follow: people profess shock and outrage, doubts are expressed about the truth of the accusations, questions are asked about why the victims didn’t speak up sooner, and survivors of sexual child abuse will experience upsetting emotions and memories triggered by both the revelations and the reactions.

For over three decades I have worked as a counselor, workshop leader, and educator, primarily with men recovering from the effects of sexual victimization.

Reports I hear from survivors throughout the world are remarkably similar regardless of age, ethnicity, class, race, or religion.

Many who attempted to disclose the abuse they suffered as children had their revelations minimized, deflected, ridiculed, or dismissed as outright lies by adults who were supposed to protect them. Some were punished for making accusations about a respected adult. A child who experiences this type of response soon realizes that it is unsafe to talk about what was done to him. Some child victims are convinced by abusers to maintain silence through threats, humiliation, bribes, or physical coercion. Other boys and girls were returned to the original environment to suffer further abuse.

It is no wonder that survivors, especially males, maintain their silence for so many years. Most of my clients range in age from their late 20s to 60s. It is unusual for males in their teens and 20s to begin to address these issues and begin the difficult and often painful journey of healing. Younger men are more likely to engage in survival strategies of trying to ignore, distract, deny, or drink, drug, fight their way through - acting out to reduce their pain and push away traumatic memories. It is only later, when these survival strategies fail and the pain remains, that they will, reluctantly, begin their recovery. This also speaks to the need to increase or eliminate statutes of limitations on prosecution of child sex abuse cases. Survivors cannot be expected to speak out until they are ready and able.

Parents and other caring adults often ask me what they can do to help ensure that their children will not be abused, or will tell if anyone is harming them. I say that it must be safe for the child to come to the adult with anything, not just what the adult is comfortable hearing. To punish a child for revealing uncomfortable, embarrassing truths is to sacrifice that child, consigning him to years of secrecy, shame, and pain.

Studies of children who were abused have found that the most important factors in healing are the immediate responses of the adults who learn about the abuse. Children must be reassured that it was right for them to tell, that they did nothing wrong, that they are believed. Children need confidants - to be encouraged to talk about anything that concerns them, not just the abuse.

Following the reports from Penn State and Syracuse and the more recent revelations about the Horace Mann School, the male survivors I work with were massively upset - not only by being forced revisit their childhood experiences, but by once again hearing the widespread reactions of shock and denial. I believe this is particularly common when respected public figures are accused, e.g., Roman Polanski, Michael Jackson, Jerry Sandusky. We don’t like our heroes to become villains.

I asked a male survivor colleague and friend what he thinks needs to be said about the current uproar. He wrote:

What was most disheartening to me as a survivor is the profession of ignorance and outrage by the public, after all the work we have all done to "educate" that same public.

At a recent forum in Melbourne, Australia, survivors and professionals were asked what is the most important thing to be done when children disclose abuse. A male survivor on the panel very quietly said, “Believe them.”

Mike Lew is a counselor in the Boston area and the author of Victims No Longer: The Classic Guide for Men Recovering from Sexual Child Abuse

The house itself, if it had a voice
Would speak out clearly. As for me,
I speak to those who understand;
if they fail, memories are nothing.

— Aeschylus, Agamemnon

We say what we know because we must.
You can cheer us or run us out of town.
It’s nothing at first, like rain on dust,

a hairline crack in the faultline’s crust,
a tentative first-person plural pronoun.
We say what we know because we must

recall, recount, redeem, and readjust
all that we’ve known, not for renown.
It’s nothing at first, like rain on dust,

or the first few tiny flecks of rust
on barrels buried underground.
We say what we know because we must

talk back to histories we do not trust,
relearn our own, and set them down.
It’s nothing at first, like rain on dust.

What does it mean to fear what’s just?
You can cheer us or run us out of town.
We say what we know because we must.
It’s nothing at first, like rain on dust.

Richard Hoffman

For more of Richard Hoffman's writing, see: www.abbington.com/hoffman or http://mnemosynesmemes.blogspot.com/