Is Sexual Harassment Different for Men? (Part 4 of 9)

One of the charges leveled against the women who claimed to be groped or raped is that they stayed friendly with their abuser. Their critics can’t seem to realize that those victims were afraid of losing their jobs or not being believed. They wanted to put the trauma behind them, so they played the role of being friendly.

And they silently suffered.

Many of us know that feeling well, but our reasons for silence may be different. Although I knew it was wrong when an older man groomed me and assaulted me, I felt a deep love for him. As strange as that may seem to my adult self, I truly thought he loved me. No one else listened to me or seemed to care about my feelings. Even though it was deception on his part, it was real to me.

Recently, I spoke with a man in his sixties who was assaulted in his early teens and stayed in a relationship with an older man until he was 20 years old. “I thought he loved me,” the survivor said, “until he said I was too old for him.”

Did any of you stay friendly or loving toward your perpetrator?

Loss of a Secret

(This post comes from Roger Mann.)

In January 1995, I received a 2:30 a.m. phone call from my hysterical sister. “Dad shot Mother while she was sleeping. Then he shot himself in the front yard.”

Because she thought Mother to be alive, my wife and I got to the hospital as fast as we could. I was such a mess, all I could say was, “No, no, no.”

The rest of the month was a blur, and the next two or three years a roller coaster. Eventually, I settled into a working funk that slowly faded. Yet, at this time every year, I have an ache that won’t go away. I miss Mom and probably always will. I left so many things unsaid.

More than that, I grieve the loss of my secret. I kept it as a good boy should, but I cherished the fantasy I had made of it. In my mind I romanticized it as something other than abuse. It was a secret that was just for Dad and me and no one else. If I couldn’t have the healthy relationship I needed and wanted from a father, at least I could console myself that I had the secret of our “special times.”

After that January night, I had nothing but the truth. I wasn’t special—I was just more convenient. It wasn’t love—it was selfish, abusive, and damaging.

Along with my mother, Dad’s bullet took away everything I thought I had. I suspect I’ve been afraid to mourn Mom because I’d have to mourn all the rest. So, every January I just ache until I can push it back and move on to what the new year brings.

Some losses stick with us a long time.

Rewriting Life

The speaker referred to "strategies for protection from painful memories." He said many of us, unable to face the reality of horrible childhoods, unconsciously rewrote our family history and called that period of life by many terms, such as happy, conventional, nearly perfect.

Yes, I thought, I was one of them. In seminary, we had to take courses in pastoral counseling. In a personal interview, the lead professor asked me about my childhood.

"My mother was warm and accepting; my dad was quiet. I had a conventional, happy childhood." I said more than that—and thought I was telling the truth.

Years later, I was showering and realized I had not seen my family the way they truly were. "My mother was hard-hearted and unloving!" I yelled at my wife. "My dad was mean and brutal!"

Shirley hugged me and said, "Several times I heard you talk to others about your warm, loving family. I thought your mother was one of the coldest individuals I've ever met."

That opened me up. I had deceived myself (or I could call it lived in denial) and used words like conventional or happy to express my childhood. From that day onward, I began to accept my real family history. A year later, I could admit that I had been physically, verbally, and sexual assaulted as a child and that neither of my parents expressed affection.

God, help me not to rewrite my childhood history.

Instead, help me to accept the real one.

* * * * *

This post is excerpted from Cec's book More Than Surviving: Courageous Meditations for Men Hurting from Childhood Abuse (Kregel, 2018).

Contemplating My Father (Part 1 of 2)

(This post comes from Roger Mann.)

Although my father’s been dead for years, I’m still contemplating his life. This year has been more insightful as I look backward. Maybe because I’m now older than he was when he killed himself.

My father could have been great; he never was. He always pastored small churches and never made a lot of money, even though he was in sales and was good at it. He reached a successful level, then stalled and moved on to something else. He had many casual friends, but his closest and most intimate were always of an odd or sexual nature.

He knew a lot about the Bible but had trouble applying it to his own life.

He was a control freak, but it was tempered by his faith. He never became violent, didn’t drink alcohol, and kept up the appearance of happy husband, father, and minister. Still he never really connected with anyone like I have on the level we have on this blog.

He was secretive and led a double life fairly successfully most of the time until the end. He never really connected with me emotionally.

As I pondered his life, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between us—especially in the area of achieving a certain level of success and then coming to an abrupt halt and moving on. I was always trying not to gain too much attention. My life couldn’t have stood a lot of scrutiny.

Whether it's shame, guilt, or pride, I too have trouble applying truth to myself successfully and consistently. The posts that I read on this site have helped in gaining insight to what is wrong and what needs to be done to correct it.

And thanks guys, BTW. You're all amazing.

The Shock

(This post is from Roger Mann.)

* * * * *

I still remember the slow creeping shock that came over me when I first began to realize (or maybe I should say accept) what had happened to me as a boy. I had this fantasy of such a wonderful childhood that I clung to all my life. Clung to so desperately that it made my chest ache at times. Every time I heard about someone else’s wonderful childhood, I’d get angry and irritable and not know why. I should have been happy for them, but I was confused and angry and just wanted to go away.

I lost so much.

I can’t begin to tell you how sad and betrayed I felt. It took me awhile, going from weeping to rage and back to weeping for a week or so. I guess it was a grieving process, and I’m still not done. I’m almost 69 years old now, and it still stings. I’m tempted to list all of the might-have-beens that go through my mind still today, but I won’t.

It doesn’t matter. It is what it is.

Since the death of that denial somewhere back in early 2000, I have spent my life reluctantly but sincerely reaching out to others hurting from similar wounds and betrayal with sympathy and encouragement that I admit sometimes I didn’t feel myself. I share what was shared with me when I came looking for help with the pain. I share my experience as one who has traveled a well-worn part of this journey, pointing out pitfalls and traps that can keep one stuck in a particular sadness.

And I know those places well. I’ve had to learn how to recognize that I’m stuck and learn how to get unstuck and move on, even when I wanted so badly just to stay and wallow. And I’m not against a certain amount of wallowing. I earned it in spades.

But to heal, I have to crawl out of the pit and move on, which usually means climbing the ladder of forgiveness one more time. I sometimes hate that ladder, but it’s the only route for me to freedom and moving on.

Just my thoughts.

Roger

Excusing

“She couldn’t help it,” I once said of my female perpetrator. “Her father made her his sexual partner after the death of his wife.”

For a long time, I used that as a way to excuse her. “She couldn’t help it. It was behavior she learned as a child.” That’s true, but it doesn’t pardon her for sexually assaulting me.

I excused the old man who molested me. “He was such a lonely man.”

More than just excusing the culprits in my life, by defending them (and I was defending), I didn’t face my anger.

But one day that changed. I went out for a late afternoon run by a small lake and (fortunately for me) no one else was around. For at least an hour I raged at the two now-dead people. I was angry at myself for defending their actions. After the venom poured out, I allowed myself to grieve over my stolen childhood.

I finished my run, sank on a bench, and cried for a long time. “I’ll learn to forgive you,” I said to both culprits, “but right now I want to feel my anger. You hurt me and made my childhood sad and lonely. I didn’t deserve what you did to me!”

It was almost dark by the time I left the park. I didn’t feel vindicated or happy. At the time I was worn out, but deep within was the sense that I had faced reality. I had pronounced them both guilty of murdering the innocence of my childhood.

When I no longer defend the guilty,

I can have compassion on the innocent.

The Perfect Life (Part 2 of 2)

The speaker referred to “strategies for protection from painful memories.” He talked about unconsciously rewriting childhood history into perfect family memoirs.

Yes, I thought, I was one of them. In seminary we had to take a course in pastoral counseling. The lead professor asked me about my childhood.

“My mother was warm and accepting; my dad was quiet. I had a conventional, happy childhood.” I said more than that—and thought I was telling the truth.

Years later, I was showering and realized I had not seen my family the way they truly were. “My mother was hard-hearted and unloving!” I yelled at my wife. “My dad was mean and brutal!”

Shirley hugged me and said, “Yes. Several times I heard you talk to others about your warm, loving family. I thought your mother was one of the coldest individuals I’ve ever met.”

That opened me up. I had deceived myself (or I could call it lived in denial) and used words like conventional or happy to express my childhood. From that day onward I began to unwrite my family history. A year later, I was able to admit I had been physically, verbally, and sexually assaulted as a child and neither of my parents expressed affection.

When we no longer need the perfect life,

we accept the real one.

Making Healing a Priority

(By Gary Roe)

God, give us the grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
the courage to change the things which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

This is part of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer. I like the word serenity. Peace. A sense of inner calm. I tend to be up and down. I need steadiness. My soul longs to be more settled.

To experience serenity, I need to accept what happened. I was sexually abused. Many times. And that abuse had drastic, lifelong effects. I didn’t get what I needed growing up. I cannot change these things. I need grace to accept them.

But there are things I can change. I am not stuck; I can make choices. I need supernatural courage for this. I can resolve to make my healing a priority—not just for my sake, but also out of love for those around me.

I can't change what happened, but I can heal. I can grow in serenity.

If I want to experience serenity,
I must make healing a priority.

(This post is adapted from Not Quite Healed, by Cecil Murphey and Gary Roe.)

Did It Really Happen?

I "forgot" (that's denial) about my abuse until I was 51 years old. For several months after the memories began seeping back into my consciousness, I kept trying to convince myself that the abuse hadn't happened.

I hadn't gone to a counselor or therapist, but that happened around the time we heard so much about the false-memory syndrome. Therapists had inadvertently planted false memories in some of their clients.

I wanted mine to be false memories.

But they weren't.

I was molested. 

Because I can accept that fact, I can overcome the pain.

(This post was adapted from Not Quite Healed, written by Cecil Murphey and Gary Roe.)

Healing Is a Process

At a seminar in El Paso, I said, "Healing is not an event; healing is a process."

One man said, "I needed to hear those words." At age 43, memories of abuse by a church deacon began to surface. He had gone to a therapist for nearly three months. The question he had planned to ask me before the seminar was, "Why am I still not healed?"

Without knowing his question, I gave him the answer when I spoke to the entire group—something most survivors could have done. We'd like to believe that we have a moment—a special insight—and we're free forever.

I wish it worked like that.

We need the experience of enlightenment, awareness, or what we refer to as the aha moment. That's where we begin. Once we face the reality of our abuse, we start down a path of healing. Notice I used the word start.

None of us knows where the journey ends.

Helping Others

In a previous blog I mentioned helping others. I did kind things and encouraged them. I tried to love people—that was genuine—but sometimes for the wrong reasons.

Although unconscious of the truth, I served them because I wanted their acceptance and love. I believe they needed and often benefited from what I did, but this is an attempt to be candid about misperceptions about myself.

My friend and a man with whom I wrote two books, Gary Roe, has also struggled with some of the same issues. “I was afraid of what other people thought, afraid they wouldn’t like me, or worse, I feared their anger.” He added, “I also worried that if I didn’t do whatever I could to make them happy, they’d abandon me like many others in my life. If I performed well, their response would get me what I needed.”

I needed to be loved. Helping them made me feel worthwhile or significant. I became so enmeshed in taking care of others, I had few thoughts about self-care.

I still help individuals when I can, but my motive is improving: I do what I can because it’s the right thing to do. Now I see it as a privilege and opportunity to share what I have and not to gain anything from them.

That change began one day when I felt worn out from helping and asked my wife, “Would people still like me if I didn’t do nice things for them?”

“But that’s who you are.” She added that it was my nature to help. Even though I spoke about my need to give so they would value me, she said, “But it’s still who you are—you care. You give of yourself.”

Shirley’s affirmation pulled me back to reality. My motives weren’t always pure, but I was still doing what I could for others.

Since then, I’ve realized I truly, genuinely want to help others. I gain deep satisfaction from that.

And as my wife said, it’s who I am.

Talents

I can’t remember when I didn’t know I could teach. In school I used to reach out to the so-called dumb kids and do what I could to help them improve their grades. While still in high school I became an excellent bowler and taught others how to play the game well.

Fifteen years ago, I was teaching a group of twenty people about talents—how to recognize and use them. One of the things I suggested was to ask our friends what they see as our special abilities. “All of us have talents of some kind. Sometimes we don’t recognize those talents,” I said. “Others may see them, but we remain unaware.”

Then I said, “I’m a teacher. That’s my primary gift.”

“I disagree,” one woman said. “You’re an encourager. You do that better than anything else.”

Her words stunned me and my impulse was to shake it off, but I said, “I need to think about that one.”

“She’s right,” someone else said.

Within minutes, most of the people confirmed that statement. And I was in total shock. I had never seen myself in that light.

That day, I accepted the truth about myself.

Since then, I’ve self-observed the way I interact with people. It’s a natural reaction—okay, it’s a talent. I wouldn’t know how to teach someone to imitate me, because I see that as a divinely given gift.

I’m writing about this because too many of us survivors feel worthless. But I still remember a slogan bandied around years ago when I went to graduate school in a predominately black university. Even though grammatically incorrect, it went, “God don’t make no junk.”

As useless as you may feel, you are gifted in some way. You may not be able to see it yourself, so ask your friends.

I am gifted.

So are you.

Knowing and Not Knowing

On February 19, 2016, I posted a blog called ”Unpleasant Things” about families refusing to know about sexual assault in the home.

Andrew Schmutzer, a frequent responder to this blog, commented, “They don’t know, because they don't want to know. This is an ETHICAL issue, not a cognitive one.” His response resonated with me.

Immediately I thought of the trial of Jerry Sandusky of Penn State. He sometimes took his victims into his basement, and one survivor said he screamed for help. Sandusky’s wife testified that she never heard any cries.

I can only conclude Sandusky’s wife didn’t want to hear.

We often don’t hear or see those terribly unpleasant things. Too many men have told me that other family members didn’t believe them or insisted, “You’re angry and making up things.” Or “He would never have done such a thing.” Those words add more pain. Like Andrew says, “They don’t want to know.”

In the film, A Few Good Men, Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) is asked to tell the truth. He ends his diatribe by shouting, “You can’t handle the truth!”

Too often those who should believe us can’t accept the truth. But then, I realize that all of us have some of that not-knowing-the-truth.

When any criticism or accusation is something we’re not ready or unable to hear, we deny it. I think of many times my friends or enemies tried to tell me something distasteful or repulsive about myself. Until I was open, I never “heard” them.

I make this point to say, we also need to learn to forgive those deniers. They help victimize us without realizing their wrongdoing.

I forgive my perpetrators;

I also forgive those who hurt me by being unable to face the truth.

* * * * *

Are there questions or specific topics you'd like Cec to address in upcoming blog entries? If so, please send an email to his assistant at the following address: cecilmurphey(at)mchsi(dot)com.

Victims No More

(This is an encore post from John Joseph.)

I was abused.

These words can crush me each time I remember them. They can fall upon me like a boulder out of the sky. They can pound in my ears like monstrous tympani reverberating repeatedly, beating out their excruciating rhythm, “I WAS ABUSED! I WAS ABUSED! I WAS ABUSED!”

They can rattle in my soul like old bones—brittle and broken. They can scrape against me like bad brake pads, metal on metal. They can wound and bruise and cut and batter me mercilessly every time I think of them, but only if I let them.

It's taken me years to understand something crucial to my recovery from childhood sexual assault. The memories have only as much power as I will give them.

This sounds easy enough, but don’t be fooled. The trauma is real. The memories are potent. The reality that an older male raped me is just as disgusting as it ever was, but somehow, little by little, the power of it can be sapped, the pollution of my mind cleaned up, and the venom of the bite be drained as I heal one day at a time.

I was abused.

It happened and nothing can change that fact. But I can change how I respond to it now. The choice I have today is to let the abuse make me bitter or better. There resides in the human soul the power to let the past find its proper place as we pursue the present with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

I was abused, yes, and forced into the role of a victim. But right now, today, in this moment I am living, I choose to be a victim no more. Today, I am an overcomer.

"When I Was a Boy . . .'

"When I was a boy . . ."

That's where my story begins; that's where our stories begin. If we can say those same five words, "When I was a boy," we've made an excellent start. Then we can add, "I was sexually assaulted." (Or abused or molested.)

I was a child, and I was innocent. I trusted someone and that person stole my trust, my innocence, and my childhood. I've suffered because of the actions of another person. No matter how caring, kind, or warm the perpetrator may have appeared to be, he or she took advantage of me.

If we can focus on our childhood and realize how immature and innocent we were, we can also remind ourselves that we couldn’t reason the way we do today as an adult. We may also have taken the guilt on ourselves for what happened. We remind ourselves: I was a child and the abuser was a perpetrator.

If we’re typical, we’ve already gone through (or are now going through) a period of questioning and doubting while vague, often terrifying memories occasionally intrude. Deep inside, something nags at us. Yet in our most vulnerable moments, we know the truth that someone stole our innocence.

One of the reasons I write this blog twice weekly is to remind myself and others that we're not the only ones. I knew I wasn't the only victimized kid, but I felt as if I were.

Many of us have been where you have been or where you are now. We've felt the same kinds of pain you have. More than just having been there, we have survived and are still overcoming the trauma.

In the early days of healing, any of us need to remind ourselves a hundred times a day that someone victimized us. Or it might be easier to say, "Someone older and more powerful took advantage of my innocence and youth."

We need to do it because we want to convince ourselves that we made up the stories, that it didn't really happen to us. We don't want to feel demeaned (although we are) and we don't want anything to reflect on our masculinity.

And we need to tell ourselves that we won't start a sentence with the words, "I should have . . ."

Go back to the beginning. Start with, "When I was a boy . . . ." That beginning can help us become kind and compassionate to ourselves.

We didn’t know how to cope with such seductive assaults—especially when it was someone we trusted who whispered, "I love you and I won’t hurt you."

Now we may choose to say, "When I was a boy, he lied to me." To make it worse, he bribed us, called us special, or made us feel loved and wanted. We were wanted, but for his needs and not ours. Today we hurt because in childhood we were victimized.

"When I was a boy" starts my story.

Now I am an adult and I'm healing from my childhood.

Mirror Image

This morning as I came out of the shower I stared at my legs in the mirror. "You're skinny," I said to my mirror image. Perhaps that doesn't sound like much to most people. I am thin, and people have long teased me about it.

In the past, when I looked into a mirror I never saw skinny. The image that stared back at me wasn't obese but he sure could drop 25 pounds. (A disclaimer: I've never been on a diet, even though that reflection told me I was too heavy.)

Years ago, I read that bulimics and anorexics saw themselves as grossly overweight and I wasn't either. I was just a slightly chubby guy. And I lived with that perception most of my adult life.

When that distorted mirror image disappeared, I don't remember when, but I think it was about two years ago. One day, I stood in front of a full-length mirror wearing nothing but briefs. I stared at myself and marveled. How did I get so thin? (FYI, I'm 5'7" and weigh 135–138 pounds.)

What I saw for years wasn't reality—I know that now. But it shocked me to realize that I had "seen" and accepted the distorted image. I tried to explain my distortion to a close friend and he didn't seem to get it.

But for me, truly seeing my thin frame was one of the most exciting and positive inner proofs of my healing. As I saw my body reflected accurately, it made me realize I was now seeing many things differently. And I like what I see.

As the words from Amazing Grace say, 

"I was blind, but now I see."

That Was Sexual Abuse?

To support his wife, Wayne Jamison attended a two-hour presentation I called "Healing4You." At the end of the evening, as I was packing up my books, Wayne came to me.

He leaned over and said softly, "I—I'd like to ask you something."

I stopped boxing my books. Haltingly, Wayne told me about an older cousin who "did things to him" when he was 12 years old. He described what took place, and added, "It happened maybe four or five times, but we outgrew that, and I forgot about them." He hesitated and asked, "Was that abuse?"

I stared at him, not sure how to answer and then I said, "It was and if you're now aware of it, it says you didn't forget."

He admitted that and went on to say, "I just thought it was things guys did until they were old enough to date girls. That's what my cousin said."

Sounds naïve, doesn't it? Yet I occasionally hear stories from men who didn't recognized that they had been sexually assaulted. The predator made it seem like something natural—as the cousin did to Wayne. As one man said, "It felt normal because my dad came into my room at least once a week. He told me he loved more than he loved my mother and my sister."

Normal. That's just one of the ways we don't face our sexual assault as children. Or perhaps we think that if we could convince ourselves that it was normal, it wasn't really abuse.

On some level we know. And we don't forget.

Why Now?

(This post from Cec Murphey first appeared at 1in6.org.)

Recently, I read an in-progress master's thesis on male sexual abuse. The writer's research said that most men don't deal with their abuse until they're middle-aged—late 30s to early 50s. She provided no rationale, only the figures. Maybe that's well-known in therapeutic practice, but it was new to me.

Although a few children are able to ask for help while young, some of us (and perhaps that word should be many) aren't ready until we're hitting our middle years. I was one of those.

Men like me "forgot" about our experiences. That is, the trauma was so severe we couldn't face it and lived in denial until the truth resurfaced. The descriptive term is Post Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD).

"But why did it surface now?" I asked myself that question many times during the first year of my struggle with the molestation. The easiest thing to say is that it happened when I was able to cope with the pain. I was secure enough as a person—that is, I liked myself well enough—that I was willing to risk the shame and embarrassment.

One day, without ever seeing a therapist or being in any encounter groups, the memories started to flow. I cried—the first real crying since I was 11 years old. The intense agony disrupted my work habits and my sleep for weeks. My wife and my best friend comforted me. Their love and kindness enabled me to move ahead.

But the question still haunted me: Why now? I've concluded that my unconscious, inner wisdom kept the information hidden from me. I had focused on my education, career, marriage, and fatherhood. By the time I was ready, our third and last child had left home.

I still can't give a definitive answer on the timing except that I know I was ready. Because I had dealt with the major traumas of living, I had grown comfortable with myself. And realizing the certainty of my wife's love and commitment helped me know that I could face anything and she would be with me.

Every man needs someone to trust—implicitly—whether it's a spouse, a friend, or a therapist. He needs that safety to divulge and know he'll be heard and not rejected.

Maybe that is the answer: Once we're ready, we can face our pain—even if we feel at times that we can't suffer any more.

My Body, My Mirror

Three times I tried to explain to my best friend my once-strange response to my body in the mirror. But he didn't get it. He'd say something like, "None of us really sees our body as it is." One time he said, "I look into the mirror and I still see my hair as black." (It's mostly gray now.)

"It's more than that," I said and finally gave up trying to explain. I had tried to make it clear to him that I had held a distorted view of my body. I'd read about women who were bulimic or anorexic, and that they looked into mirrors but didn't see their true shapes. It didn't occur to me that I was like that.

I never saw myself as obese, but I perceived my body as slightly on the heavy side. I'm what people refer to as wiry and occasionally someone calls me skinny. Those remarks puzzled me, because I wondered how they could talk that way. I didn't go on diets, but I did watch my weight and avoided putting on more pounds.

Then something happened, even though I can't remember the date. One morning I had showered and toweled off and looked into the mirror to comb my hair. I stared at my naked body.

"I'm thin," I said aloud. "I'm really thin."

For several minutes, I looked at myself, hardly able to believe the mirror. Then I roared in laughter. Now I knew. Now I understood when people said, "You need to put on a few pounds." Or "You're going to blow away if you get any thinner." I had always laughed and wondered what they meant.

That morning the distortion was gone. I stared at myself from any number of angles.

I can finally see my body as it is.

It seems strange that it took so long. I'd been on the healing journey for two decades. And every now and then I became aware of a new marker—evidence of healing from my childhood victimization.

That morning I felt ecstatic because the distortion was gone. And for the first time in my life, I stared at my reflection and said, "I like my body."

And it was true.

"That Didn't Happen."

One of the hardest blows to our healing occurs when a family member says, "That didn't happen. He would never have done such a thing." Occasionally I receive emails from survivors who've been ostracized from their family for saying such terrible things "about your uncle Harold."

*Eldon had gone through more than two years of counseling, regularly attended Celebrate Recovery, and began to refer to his dysfunctional childhood on his blog. "Until you admit that those terrible things didn't happen, we want nothing more to do with you," his father said. "Unless you stop writing such terrible lies, you're not welcome in our home."

Four years have lapsed and he has no contact with his family of origin.

"Their words hurt," he said, "and I miss them. I still love them." They returned his letters, and because they had caller ID on their phone, refused to answer when he phoned them.

Eldon had a good job, married a co-worker, and they have a three-year-old son and an infant daughter. "No one in my family has ever seen them, and maybe they never will."

As sad as Eldon was in telling me, I admired his courage for not backing down. "It happened to me and I can't deny the truth."

I wonder how many Eldons have been cut off from their families for being truthful.

Even if it's only one, that's still too many.