Confronting from a safe distance

[Ken Singer LCSW]

As a followup to the question of what would you say or ask a perpetrator, I got to thinking and proposed this to clinicians from two NJ sex offender treatment prisons:

Attention clinicians at ADTC and SVP:

I am writing a book aimed at male survivors of sexual abuse to help them break through the self-blame and doubts they have about their abuse. Many survivors blame themselves for putting themselves in situations that permitted their abusers to molest or assault them. They further blame themselves for situations of repeated abuse or failure to stop or report the abuse. They need more information about abusers.

I am looking for your assistance in several areas. Most of the men I work with who are non-offending survivors of sexual abuse do not have access to their abusers. They have many questions that I am trying to answer in this book and on the MaleSurvivor discussion forum.

I would like to pose some of the questions to you if you can provide me with responses from abusers who have male victims. Those who have perpetrated on adult males would be especially of interest.

Since restitution is difficult for many offenders, particularly if their victims are unavailable or unknown to them, I believe this project can be beneficial for both abusers and the male survivor population who may read this book. Offenders cannot undo the damage they caused but if they can help an adult survivor in his recovery, there may be some good that come from sharing their abusive history.

I would like to send you some of the questions that male survivors want to have answered. There would be no identification on either side so anonymity and confidentiality would be assured. If your residents/inmates were interested in helping, you could email their responses to me.

Thank you for your consideration.

Ken Singer, LCSW

I distributed this letter to a number of clinicians at our state network meeting yesterday. Their response was very positive. They will run it by the chain of command and I hope to get an answer soon.

The men who are at ADTC are sex offenders deemed "repetitive and compulsive". They receive intensive sex offense-specific treatment and research has shown that they have a very low rate of recidivism over many years following treatment and release. Some, however are deemed to be too dangerous or treatment failures. They are civilly committed to the SVP (Sexually Violent Predators) program which keeps them there for an indeterminent time. Likely, many will never hit the streets and will die there. They must demonstrate progress and low risk in order to tbe released. In 5 years or so of the SVP, only about four or five have been released.

There are men in the programs who have sexually abused boys and men. There are some who have done good treatment, have become honest and changed their thinking and risk to the community. I'm hoping to run some of your questions and comments by these men for answers.

Of course, anonymity and confidentiality is assured. The staff at the prisons will communicate with me and will not know who you are. I will communicate through the staff there and will not know who the inmates are.

The information exchanged can help you to better understand how offenders operate and become more empowered. The inmates will be able to hear from former victims of what the abuse has done to them and hopefully become more aware of the damage they caused others.

While many of the questions you asked in previous posts dealt with either thoughts of your abusers or were hypothetical to ask any abuser, now that we possibly have real offenders to confront and ask questions, what would you want to say or ask?

I will send on the questions and comments when I get the word that it is ok to do so and post the responses on this site.

Ken

 

[dwf]

Gee, Ken, this is a really intriguing opportunity. One that is also a bit hard to get my mind around.

I've been thinking about what I would ask the men who sexually abused me.

For me, I can say that first I would have different types of questions for the men who participated in the sexual abuse when I was a teenager, than I would for the men who raped or abused me after I had become an adult.

I seem to want to judge these two types of men differently; how and why is not totally clear to me yet.

At the risk of being overly simplistic, I guess I would start with the following questions, directed towards the abuser who enticed, seduced, abused and then abandoned me when I was a teenager.

In my case the primary abuser was a man of 55, who was a teacher in a religious summer camp I attended. After seducing me, he took me into his charge and continued his abuse for a period of several years.

All the while, he pretended to others to be acting 'in loco parentis', as a parent to me.

All that introduction out of the way, I would want to ask him:

"Didn't you know that what you were doing with me was wrong?

It seems obvious to me now from the great pains taken by you to hide the true nature of our relations shows that you knew it was wrong and could get you in trouble.

Yet, you continued to use me sexually until I got to be too old for your taste

If you knew that what you were doing was wrong, what did you tell yourself in order to overcome that knowledge and continue to have sex with me?

How did you justify having sex with a 15 year boy, when you were 55? Or having sex with someone with whom you had assumed a paternalistic, protector type relationship?

If you did not think it was wrong, then why did you hide it? And why didn't you tell me more explicitly what you knew about the whole 'having sex with teenage boys' phenomenon? Why didn't you tell me it was OK to be attracted to other men? That it was OK to be gay?"


Another thing is that I want to tell the abuser is how much damage he caused me by his actions; about my alcoholism; and the other abuses he set me up for. But I guess that's maybe for another time. And I will save those statements til then.

OK, Ken, I'm sure it's evident to you how convoluted my thinking is on the subject!

The man to whom these questons would have been adressed in my case, is now dead, having lived for about 30 more years after he left me, all the rest of his life he continued to have teenaged boys with him.

I'll try to approach the subject of the adult on adult abusers I've experienced in my life next.

I hope that his helps you, me and perhaps the perpetators involved also.

Thanks for the chance to do this. Please let me know if any clarification is needed.

 

Ken,

I believe you to be a good man and an asset to survivors. I also want you to understand I am not at the point yet to want abusers to get treatment. I just want them dead.

That being said (and I WON'T apologize for it!), I know in my mind that treatment is possible. So I will try and help. This is hard, though, knowing that the men you are talking about ruined lives and may even be responsible for the suicides of some victiom. And they are alive. With three hots and a cot.

Anyway.

I would ask:

Do you understand the impact of what you did?

I want to know what you were thinking when you did this to him/them?

Do you understand that some of us hate the very fact you're still alive?

If you are released, tell me why I should believe you won't do this again.

Are you accepting "treatment" just to get out? Or are you truly remoseful?

Since you can't undo what you did, and your victim may be long gone or there is no way to contact him (hopefully!), what will you do to try and and pay the debt you owe him? And I am not talking about a prison sentence. You gave him a life sentence. So what will you do?

And this one, Ken, I am sure you wouldn't ask, but I will anyway.

Do you know that even if your victim can't get to you, other victims want revenge, even if it has to be taken on another abuser!?

Sorry, Ken. I tried. I don't know if this will help, but I am just so damn angry about what happened to me and I can't confront anyone since they're all dead.

Marc

 

[crisispoint]

Ken,

Like Marc, I know you ean well, and I know some want to be treated, but most just cannot help themselves. They'll just hurt other people if they get out.

That said, here's what I'd say to these people.

WHat you've done hurts your victims more than I can say. I've had to live what some animal who said they loved me did to me.

You have potentially ruined someone's life for no reason other than your own pleasure.

You cannot imagine the depths of my hatred for you or people like you. You have no idea the pain and anguish you've caused me. I live every single day in fear, every single day feeling worthless, every single frigging day with the memories of what your kind has done to me, every single night without a complete session of sleep.

I don't care if you were raped or abused yourself. I haven't crossed that line. You have.

Friends and relatives say I should forgive and pray for you. Forget it. You and people LIKE you I'll never forgive. I'm sentanced to life for YOUR crimes.

And I pray for you. I pray you go to Hell.

Maybe this will give you a small idea of what i have to live with because of animals like you.

I wish I didn't feel this way, either. Just another effect your victims live with.

Scot

 

[Lloydy]

Ken
my main abusers were two other pupils that were just two years older than myself, I was 11 when they started, they were 13.

What I would to know is-
If you started abusing at a young age, early teens, where did you learn this behaviour if you weren't also a victim of abuse?
I can understand their behaviour to a degree if they were being abused, but like Scot says "it doesn't excuse it"
But if an offender hasn't been abused and started abusing as a young teenager what drove them to it?

Dave

 

[EGL]

Originally posted by Lloydy:
Ken
my main abusers were two other pupils that were just two years older than myself, I was 11 when they started, they were 13.

What I would to know is-
If you started abusing at a young age, early teens, where did you learn this behaviour if you weren't also a victim of abuse?
I can understand their behaviour to a degree if they were being abused, but like Scot says "it doesn't excuse it"
But if an offender hasn't been abused and started abusing as a young teenager what drove them to it?

Dave

I, too, would really like answers to this scenario. My brother was only 1 year older than me in chronological age, but physically he was more like 3-4 years older than me because I was such a small child and he was large for his age. My T has been talking about this aspect some in the past few sessions, beginning to explore what made Robert do this since it's doubtful he just came up with the idea on his own at 13.

 

[Leosha]

Tell them I thank God every day that I am ME, not one of them. I can get better. They can't. I can look at my stunningly beautiful girlfriend and find her seductive and lovely. They can get those feelings only from little boys. Sick fucking basterds.

leosha