Published article
Hello men,
I have written several articles for publication. I get my inspiration and ideas from you, I should list you all as co-authors. This is the first of two articles. When the second one is printed I will post it too.
This one appears in this months Pastoral Life magazine.
Bob
Gently Healing Bruised Reeds
Robert Wheelock, OFM. Cap.
Because of the intense faith we have in the holiness of the functions of the priest, we naturally believe that a man simply could not offer Mass and then abuse a child just minutes afterward. So, we hear people wondering how it could be, that virtually none of these boys told anyone about their abuse for decades. Let me try to explain that.
Our society clearly insists on the idea of a male being strong, powerful, the one who chases the girls, and is always a real man. To call a boy a sissy, to say he is weak, to yell at him to stop acting like a girl, cuts far deeper than anyone can imagine. The attitude is that, there is no such thing as a boyjust younger and smaller MEN.
Boys have many questions about their bodies and what is happening to them when they discover that they are physically different from girls. They pick up early in life that there is something about their body that is a kind of power, but they are not sure just what that is. If a boy has not been well educated about sex, he is shocked at wet dreams and erections, and wonders what is causing all of this. It can be frightening even as there is pleasure.
Then, one of these boys has an adult make him get naked, makes him let him touch the boys body, play with him and often sodomize him or force him to give or to receive oral sex. The boys reality is changed forever. A man did this to me-- Is this the way I have to act to be a man? No other boy has ever told him about this happening to him. There must then be something wrong with him. The man must have thought he was a freak, surely not a real boy. The boy wonders what he did that caused the adult to do this to him. If the adult is someone who the boy had thought was a great man, he is all the more frightened and confused. This was not fun. He was afraid. It hurt. He felt embarrassed. He was degraded. But the adult may have insisted it was a special kind of love. Or perhaps, the boy had an involuntary erection. Perhaps the adult did something to him that felt good. Now the boy wonders if he is one of the people he has sometimes heard people talk about; a pervert, a fag, a queer. To a child who does not know what those words mean, all he knows is, that when someone says those words they do so in derision.
Rob, who was abused by his grandpa speaks so clearly of the confusion:
I just dont understand. I loved him, and I thought he loved me. I thought he accepted me. I felt special. I also liked it. I hate that I liked it, but I did! I felt close to him, and loved, and although I didnt have an orgasm, it still felt good to have my penis touched! God help me! Even relating these experiences, though it is painful, it is at the same time pleasurable and even erotic! I feel so messed up and lost and like no one loves me, and that I cant ever connect with a man without it being sexual. I dont want these feelings! I want to be mad! I want to hate him, and have that be all! I want to be angry!
You see, to me the sex was love, and I still need to be loved.
When the boy is left alone, he is really alone. He has certainly been told not to tell anyone. There may have been threats connected to that warning. He has experienced something sexual and he does not know what it was. It was painful, it was exciting and if he ever told anyone that a man had done that to him he would just want to die. He would be so embarrassed, and possibly all his friends would say that he must have wanted it so it was his fault. They would want nothing to do with himhe wonders if they think he might try to do the same thing to them.
The terror of the abuse, and the confused thinking about it, often carries over into the married life of the man. Marriage to a survivor is often an emotional rollercoaster:
I know now this young man never had a chance at normalcy. Sometimes what he needs most is what he fears most love, understanding and acceptance. These are all the qualities that evoke getting in touch with vulnerability, a place where breathlessness lives.
Once, later in my recovery my wife brought to me her awareness of my most recent need for emotional distance. I acknowledged this and said to her, there is a fourteen year old boy in the room who is desperate to have someone to hold him. But, there is no way he can let that happen. If someone tries to do that, he will bite, fight, scratch or do anything else he has to keep anyone from getting that close.
If I grab him and hold him, will you hold me? As soon as she said yes the young man in me went limp and cried nonstop for about two hours, in both of our arms. He is still skittish about this thing called intimacy. I expect this hesitance to be there for a lot longer, but, I understand him better now, and he feels more and more accepted in his frailties."
It is easy to forget that all these terrifying things happened to a boy or a young teen, who is still very much, a child. Perpetrators know how to make the boy believe that it is the boys fault, that the boy made him do it.
Tom, who was abused first by a priest and then later by one of his high school teachers, writes powerfully about the confusion a man feels when he has been raped by an older, trusted male:
I know that we all have different effects from our abuse and each story is different. The age we were when the abuse started, and the length of time the abuse lasted, all have effects on us. For me, being abused the second time at 14, has been much harder to deal with than at 11.
Sexual Identity issues were the main effect on me from that one-day I was raped at 14. Not only did I have my shame to deal with, I asked myself, why did I not stop him, why did I let him get away with abusing others?
Mr.X would stalk me in school, trying to talk me into doing it with him again. "You know you enjoyed it and you want it " he would say when he would find me alone. That, along with the normal crap a 14 year old goes through, made me super confused.
I remember right after I was raped saying to my self, you are not gay, you are not gay, and you can be what ever you want to be. Well guess it took many years before I believed that. Most of my high school days I was dealing with this issue. I rejected many of my friends because I thought they may be gay and I didnt want to be around them.
The few times I would have dates with girls I just didnt know now to act. We would usually have a great first date, but I was afraid to ask for the second date. Didnt want to get too close, that could lead to sex.
All in all High School was an OK time I just had to question my inner self all the time.
In a sick way of continuing the perpetrators pleasure, and to insure the silence of the victim, some adults take photos and videos of the child naked and doing sexual acts. Arthur is a man who was abused as a young teen. He has worked to move on with his life as an adult. Recently, a friend of his showed him pictures he had found at a flea market, of Arthur naked and crying. Arthur was shaken, and humiliated again, as he explained how the pictures got taken:
I always knew this would happen one day; for a number of very simple reasons. First of all, many hundreds of pictures were taken of me, over a period of 12 years. Some of these have found their way onto the Internet. I know of a few, the perpetrator actually bothered to send me a letter, telling me he had done so. I was 23 at the time. The pictures he referred to show me age 12 up to 17. As you can imagine, a person doesn't change that much in 11 years, at least I didn't. My face hasn't changed all that much, heck, I still don't look my age, and most people think I am 18 or 19.
This is an example of a victim being re-traumatized. Arthur is a strong young man; he will be able to deal with this event in a healthy way. But his pain is so evident. It is as though his abuse will never end, because until he gets very much older, he will wonder if friends and associates have seen his pictures, recognize it is he, and are disgusted, not knowing that he was forced to allow these pictures to be taken. This also shows how people who pay pornographers by buying pictures and magazine, and enrolling as a member of Internet porn sites. Cooperate and provide the funds for this evil.
I have spoken and written quite a bit about the fact that I am a survivor of sexual abusethat I was repeatedly raped. It stills embarrasses me to say it. I feel that men in the audience are thinking about what that means and are sickened at the thought. Then I feel damaged, ruined, as though I am a freak that decent people would not want to get close to. I can never say or write the words: I was raped, without feeling as though I was just slugged in my stomach.
If a boy or man gets the courage to break the silence, then, it might be possible for other victims of the same perpetrator to come forward as well. The embarrassment of it all keeps many men from speaking up, even if close friends talk about it, and seem open to believing that boys were indeed abused by a particular perpetrator. For the longest time, most men have felt that only they have had such an experience. It is so awful, it is so perverted, that he thinks surely no one else could have had happen to them what happened to him. That thinking makes it hard to admit the abuse, even after others have come forth. He cant help but fear that what happened to him and what happened to others was something very different. Until the man hears other men tell of the abuse they endured, it is almost impossible to believe that anyone could have been abused like they were. Until I physically saw other survivors and talked to them directly I had just a little suspicion that maybe men who wrote about their experiences might just be guys dabbling in porn. I will never get used to the fact that anyone could cause so much pain and harm to a boy, even a big boy.
One of the devastating effects of childhood sexual abuse is that it causes the victim to be so confused about what love is and how sex relates to love. Many survivors try to go on with life and be normal. But the confusion is still there. An example of this is that of a married man who has trouble sexually relating to the wife he truly loves. Listen to Harold wonder about life:
I recently started learning how some of what my cousin did to/with me has affected my attitudes towards life, and especially about sex and love. I always knew what happened, but what made me start thinking about it as abuse was when my wife recalled being raped before the age of 10. That's when I realized that even though my cousin wasn't officially an adult, he was nearly 16 and I hadn't even hit puberty yet. I think I was 11 or 12. Now, I can't seem to understand love, sex, or life in a way that's possible to articulate, other than it seems like something is missing, and I constantly want sex of virtually any kind. I finally see that things shouldn't be like this, but I can't seem to see how they should be
. For a year, I was abused. I felt horrible because most of it was somewhat pleasant and he never really hurt me physically. I then began to try to get other friends my own age to do these things with me and quickly learned that they didn't want to. This made me think I was rotten and evil for wanting to do these I guess.
Harold goes on to speak or a habit of masturbation and having fantasies of having sex with men, although he has no desire for that.
Other men have different problems, related to the fact that a female and/or a family member abused them:
My older sister abused me for some time (I am not sure for how long) after my father got kicked out of the house. The loss of my father was difficult
I do not know if my sister was just trying to reassert her own control in a situation that was out of control, but she seduced and sexually abused me.
I had always looked up to my sister. She is about five years older than I. She is beautiful and she was a surrogate when my mother wasn't there. During the time of the abuse, I felt as loved as I have ever felt. A void was filled. As she was using me I felt safe. While she was demonstrating her pure, evil manipulation of me, I adored her.
Then, she ended it abruptly, perhaps out of guilt, or maybe she had just had enough. I was devastated. She threw me away like a used condom.
As an adult this survivor knows that what was going on between he and his sister was wrong. But at the time he sincerely thought he was being loved. Tragically, men in situations like this will sometimes leap up out of bed and tremble in a cold sweat, while in the act of making love with their wife. It takes a very patient and understanding wife to be faithful through all of this, until the survivor is able to get over his flashbacks to sex as abuse. This is a perfect example of the effect of a victim seeing sex as love, when all it was is sex. Still, many who do abuse children, truly do believe that they love the child and somehow convince themselves that the child is not harmed by their actions. Clearly, the child is harmed for life.
It is the betrayal, by one who was either loved or trusted or both, that leads to feeling useless, to feeling full of hatred for the self. Survivors who are repeatedly abused come to feel that they are good for nothing but to be someones sex plaything: Will, is a very fine man, who is helpful to other men who have been abused. Wills feeling of value was so damaged by being abused that he can write:
Later, when the really bad stuff was happening, I no longer cried or played. The legend says that you give the ferryman a gold or silver coin to carry you across the river into the realm of the dead. I paid the ferryman dearly almost every day for month after month after month. I didnt pay him with silver or gold. I paid him with bloodstained underwear. I paid him with the light of a childs innocence. I paid him with my soul. I had arrived in the realm of the dead. I had no emotion. I had no spark. I was the living dead. I didnt cry anymore, I didnt play any more. I went there to escape because I still felt safe there (under a bridge). No one could hurt me there. But all I did was simply stare at the water for hours at a time. Sometimes I threw rocks. I didnt even care about escaping any more; I had been completely and utterly brutalized, to the point that I was not Will anymore. I was the receptacle for a penis, nothing more. His statement had come true; I was now truly good for nothing but fucking. I knew this to be true.
These are very harsh words, hard to read. But they are the ordinary self-concept for many abused boys. It is this thinking that makes it so hard to get well, to feel good about ourselves. We can know that we are loveable in Gods eyes, but even then, we feel embarrassed that God knows all that happened to us that He saw it all. That embarrasses us too.
Sometimes an older boy was the perpetrator. Older boys can be very vicious to a young boy they decide to violate. Will, talks about his first experiences of sexual abuse as he describes how the teenage boy across the street abused him when he was his babysitter.
I would have to get naked and wait in my bedroom for him to come in and rape me. As I recall, many times I was in there for hours waiting for him.
Sometimes he would sit in my dads chair and I would have to be in front of him, naked, for a long period of time before he would start.
I was forced to do oral sex on him and he would always make me swallow.
He would have anal sex with me repeatedly. I recall that this caused bleeding on many occasions. Here I was, all of 7/8 years old and walking to a store and using my allowance to buy underwear, because I would get rid of my bloody underwear so that my mom wouldnt see it.
This phrase haunts me at all time: He would end each time by saying you little fag, you aint good for nothing but fucking.
It is odd that we can take in statements like that as though they are absolute truth. When the person saying those hateful things is someone we thought we could trust, or someone we had admired, it is nearly impossible to ever stop hearing their words ringing in our ears. A young man who early on realized he was gay became a double victim of his parish priest. The priest not only abused him sexually, but also verbally and has made him feel that his sexual orientation is meant to lead to abuse.
I realized when my friends were talking and starting to brag about kissing girls that I wanted to kiss other guys. I'd never liked girls as anything other than friends, but I had crazy crushes on my male friends, and that bothered me. I wanted to know if it was normal, if it was OK, so of course I went to the church, to the priest who I'll call Fr. Evil here, because he was my friend and I knew he wouldn't get mad at me for how I felt. He was the "cool" priest, the young one who played basketball with us and talked to us like we were his equals instead of just sixth grade kids. So I told him how I felt, that I didn't like girls, that I wanted to hold hands with other guys, kiss them even. And he said it was OK, as he was getting ready to put his hands on me.
I'm not going to go into details, but at first he was pretty gentle with me. Even though I hated it, I knew it couldn't be abuse--I mean, it's not like he was physically hurting me or anything, and besides, I'd already told him that I was attracted to men so what did I expect? But I found out that his gentleness was just a way to make me trust him, to lure me in deep enough so he could do what he wanted. He got violent and extremely abusive, sometimes I think the things he said to me hurt me more than the rapes ever could.
I realize that his has been a difficult article to read. I believe it was necessary to let you hear the words of the men themselves. You have been given a glimpse into some of the suffering of but a few survivors. Still, this gives a look at the very common results of being sexually betrayed and violated as a child. I have not written about men who have been assaulted as adults. Not in prisons or jails, but on the streets of our nation. This happens much more than I was aware of until I started to communicate with other survivors.
However, from what I see, much of the effects of the abuse on boys are true also of abuse of the adult male.
Further information and help is available at: www.MaleSurvivor.org
Fr. Robert D. Wheelock, OFM Cap.
3625 words.
I have written several articles for publication. I get my inspiration and ideas from you, I should list you all as co-authors. This is the first of two articles. When the second one is printed I will post it too.
This one appears in this months Pastoral Life magazine.
Bob
Gently Healing Bruised Reeds
Robert Wheelock, OFM. Cap.
Because of the intense faith we have in the holiness of the functions of the priest, we naturally believe that a man simply could not offer Mass and then abuse a child just minutes afterward. So, we hear people wondering how it could be, that virtually none of these boys told anyone about their abuse for decades. Let me try to explain that.
Our society clearly insists on the idea of a male being strong, powerful, the one who chases the girls, and is always a real man. To call a boy a sissy, to say he is weak, to yell at him to stop acting like a girl, cuts far deeper than anyone can imagine. The attitude is that, there is no such thing as a boyjust younger and smaller MEN.
Boys have many questions about their bodies and what is happening to them when they discover that they are physically different from girls. They pick up early in life that there is something about their body that is a kind of power, but they are not sure just what that is. If a boy has not been well educated about sex, he is shocked at wet dreams and erections, and wonders what is causing all of this. It can be frightening even as there is pleasure.
Then, one of these boys has an adult make him get naked, makes him let him touch the boys body, play with him and often sodomize him or force him to give or to receive oral sex. The boys reality is changed forever. A man did this to me-- Is this the way I have to act to be a man? No other boy has ever told him about this happening to him. There must then be something wrong with him. The man must have thought he was a freak, surely not a real boy. The boy wonders what he did that caused the adult to do this to him. If the adult is someone who the boy had thought was a great man, he is all the more frightened and confused. This was not fun. He was afraid. It hurt. He felt embarrassed. He was degraded. But the adult may have insisted it was a special kind of love. Or perhaps, the boy had an involuntary erection. Perhaps the adult did something to him that felt good. Now the boy wonders if he is one of the people he has sometimes heard people talk about; a pervert, a fag, a queer. To a child who does not know what those words mean, all he knows is, that when someone says those words they do so in derision.
Rob, who was abused by his grandpa speaks so clearly of the confusion:
I just dont understand. I loved him, and I thought he loved me. I thought he accepted me. I felt special. I also liked it. I hate that I liked it, but I did! I felt close to him, and loved, and although I didnt have an orgasm, it still felt good to have my penis touched! God help me! Even relating these experiences, though it is painful, it is at the same time pleasurable and even erotic! I feel so messed up and lost and like no one loves me, and that I cant ever connect with a man without it being sexual. I dont want these feelings! I want to be mad! I want to hate him, and have that be all! I want to be angry!
You see, to me the sex was love, and I still need to be loved.
When the boy is left alone, he is really alone. He has certainly been told not to tell anyone. There may have been threats connected to that warning. He has experienced something sexual and he does not know what it was. It was painful, it was exciting and if he ever told anyone that a man had done that to him he would just want to die. He would be so embarrassed, and possibly all his friends would say that he must have wanted it so it was his fault. They would want nothing to do with himhe wonders if they think he might try to do the same thing to them.
The terror of the abuse, and the confused thinking about it, often carries over into the married life of the man. Marriage to a survivor is often an emotional rollercoaster:
I know now this young man never had a chance at normalcy. Sometimes what he needs most is what he fears most love, understanding and acceptance. These are all the qualities that evoke getting in touch with vulnerability, a place where breathlessness lives.
Once, later in my recovery my wife brought to me her awareness of my most recent need for emotional distance. I acknowledged this and said to her, there is a fourteen year old boy in the room who is desperate to have someone to hold him. But, there is no way he can let that happen. If someone tries to do that, he will bite, fight, scratch or do anything else he has to keep anyone from getting that close.
If I grab him and hold him, will you hold me? As soon as she said yes the young man in me went limp and cried nonstop for about two hours, in both of our arms. He is still skittish about this thing called intimacy. I expect this hesitance to be there for a lot longer, but, I understand him better now, and he feels more and more accepted in his frailties."
It is easy to forget that all these terrifying things happened to a boy or a young teen, who is still very much, a child. Perpetrators know how to make the boy believe that it is the boys fault, that the boy made him do it.
Tom, who was abused first by a priest and then later by one of his high school teachers, writes powerfully about the confusion a man feels when he has been raped by an older, trusted male:
I know that we all have different effects from our abuse and each story is different. The age we were when the abuse started, and the length of time the abuse lasted, all have effects on us. For me, being abused the second time at 14, has been much harder to deal with than at 11.
Sexual Identity issues were the main effect on me from that one-day I was raped at 14. Not only did I have my shame to deal with, I asked myself, why did I not stop him, why did I let him get away with abusing others?
Mr.X would stalk me in school, trying to talk me into doing it with him again. "You know you enjoyed it and you want it " he would say when he would find me alone. That, along with the normal crap a 14 year old goes through, made me super confused.
I remember right after I was raped saying to my self, you are not gay, you are not gay, and you can be what ever you want to be. Well guess it took many years before I believed that. Most of my high school days I was dealing with this issue. I rejected many of my friends because I thought they may be gay and I didnt want to be around them.
The few times I would have dates with girls I just didnt know now to act. We would usually have a great first date, but I was afraid to ask for the second date. Didnt want to get too close, that could lead to sex.
All in all High School was an OK time I just had to question my inner self all the time.
In a sick way of continuing the perpetrators pleasure, and to insure the silence of the victim, some adults take photos and videos of the child naked and doing sexual acts. Arthur is a man who was abused as a young teen. He has worked to move on with his life as an adult. Recently, a friend of his showed him pictures he had found at a flea market, of Arthur naked and crying. Arthur was shaken, and humiliated again, as he explained how the pictures got taken:
I always knew this would happen one day; for a number of very simple reasons. First of all, many hundreds of pictures were taken of me, over a period of 12 years. Some of these have found their way onto the Internet. I know of a few, the perpetrator actually bothered to send me a letter, telling me he had done so. I was 23 at the time. The pictures he referred to show me age 12 up to 17. As you can imagine, a person doesn't change that much in 11 years, at least I didn't. My face hasn't changed all that much, heck, I still don't look my age, and most people think I am 18 or 19.
This is an example of a victim being re-traumatized. Arthur is a strong young man; he will be able to deal with this event in a healthy way. But his pain is so evident. It is as though his abuse will never end, because until he gets very much older, he will wonder if friends and associates have seen his pictures, recognize it is he, and are disgusted, not knowing that he was forced to allow these pictures to be taken. This also shows how people who pay pornographers by buying pictures and magazine, and enrolling as a member of Internet porn sites. Cooperate and provide the funds for this evil.
I have spoken and written quite a bit about the fact that I am a survivor of sexual abusethat I was repeatedly raped. It stills embarrasses me to say it. I feel that men in the audience are thinking about what that means and are sickened at the thought. Then I feel damaged, ruined, as though I am a freak that decent people would not want to get close to. I can never say or write the words: I was raped, without feeling as though I was just slugged in my stomach.
If a boy or man gets the courage to break the silence, then, it might be possible for other victims of the same perpetrator to come forward as well. The embarrassment of it all keeps many men from speaking up, even if close friends talk about it, and seem open to believing that boys were indeed abused by a particular perpetrator. For the longest time, most men have felt that only they have had such an experience. It is so awful, it is so perverted, that he thinks surely no one else could have had happen to them what happened to him. That thinking makes it hard to admit the abuse, even after others have come forth. He cant help but fear that what happened to him and what happened to others was something very different. Until the man hears other men tell of the abuse they endured, it is almost impossible to believe that anyone could have been abused like they were. Until I physically saw other survivors and talked to them directly I had just a little suspicion that maybe men who wrote about their experiences might just be guys dabbling in porn. I will never get used to the fact that anyone could cause so much pain and harm to a boy, even a big boy.
One of the devastating effects of childhood sexual abuse is that it causes the victim to be so confused about what love is and how sex relates to love. Many survivors try to go on with life and be normal. But the confusion is still there. An example of this is that of a married man who has trouble sexually relating to the wife he truly loves. Listen to Harold wonder about life:
I recently started learning how some of what my cousin did to/with me has affected my attitudes towards life, and especially about sex and love. I always knew what happened, but what made me start thinking about it as abuse was when my wife recalled being raped before the age of 10. That's when I realized that even though my cousin wasn't officially an adult, he was nearly 16 and I hadn't even hit puberty yet. I think I was 11 or 12. Now, I can't seem to understand love, sex, or life in a way that's possible to articulate, other than it seems like something is missing, and I constantly want sex of virtually any kind. I finally see that things shouldn't be like this, but I can't seem to see how they should be
. For a year, I was abused. I felt horrible because most of it was somewhat pleasant and he never really hurt me physically. I then began to try to get other friends my own age to do these things with me and quickly learned that they didn't want to. This made me think I was rotten and evil for wanting to do these I guess.
Harold goes on to speak or a habit of masturbation and having fantasies of having sex with men, although he has no desire for that.
Other men have different problems, related to the fact that a female and/or a family member abused them:
My older sister abused me for some time (I am not sure for how long) after my father got kicked out of the house. The loss of my father was difficult
I do not know if my sister was just trying to reassert her own control in a situation that was out of control, but she seduced and sexually abused me.
I had always looked up to my sister. She is about five years older than I. She is beautiful and she was a surrogate when my mother wasn't there. During the time of the abuse, I felt as loved as I have ever felt. A void was filled. As she was using me I felt safe. While she was demonstrating her pure, evil manipulation of me, I adored her.
Then, she ended it abruptly, perhaps out of guilt, or maybe she had just had enough. I was devastated. She threw me away like a used condom.
As an adult this survivor knows that what was going on between he and his sister was wrong. But at the time he sincerely thought he was being loved. Tragically, men in situations like this will sometimes leap up out of bed and tremble in a cold sweat, while in the act of making love with their wife. It takes a very patient and understanding wife to be faithful through all of this, until the survivor is able to get over his flashbacks to sex as abuse. This is a perfect example of the effect of a victim seeing sex as love, when all it was is sex. Still, many who do abuse children, truly do believe that they love the child and somehow convince themselves that the child is not harmed by their actions. Clearly, the child is harmed for life.
It is the betrayal, by one who was either loved or trusted or both, that leads to feeling useless, to feeling full of hatred for the self. Survivors who are repeatedly abused come to feel that they are good for nothing but to be someones sex plaything: Will, is a very fine man, who is helpful to other men who have been abused. Wills feeling of value was so damaged by being abused that he can write:
Later, when the really bad stuff was happening, I no longer cried or played. The legend says that you give the ferryman a gold or silver coin to carry you across the river into the realm of the dead. I paid the ferryman dearly almost every day for month after month after month. I didnt pay him with silver or gold. I paid him with bloodstained underwear. I paid him with the light of a childs innocence. I paid him with my soul. I had arrived in the realm of the dead. I had no emotion. I had no spark. I was the living dead. I didnt cry anymore, I didnt play any more. I went there to escape because I still felt safe there (under a bridge). No one could hurt me there. But all I did was simply stare at the water for hours at a time. Sometimes I threw rocks. I didnt even care about escaping any more; I had been completely and utterly brutalized, to the point that I was not Will anymore. I was the receptacle for a penis, nothing more. His statement had come true; I was now truly good for nothing but fucking. I knew this to be true.
These are very harsh words, hard to read. But they are the ordinary self-concept for many abused boys. It is this thinking that makes it so hard to get well, to feel good about ourselves. We can know that we are loveable in Gods eyes, but even then, we feel embarrassed that God knows all that happened to us that He saw it all. That embarrasses us too.
Sometimes an older boy was the perpetrator. Older boys can be very vicious to a young boy they decide to violate. Will, talks about his first experiences of sexual abuse as he describes how the teenage boy across the street abused him when he was his babysitter.
I would have to get naked and wait in my bedroom for him to come in and rape me. As I recall, many times I was in there for hours waiting for him.
Sometimes he would sit in my dads chair and I would have to be in front of him, naked, for a long period of time before he would start.
I was forced to do oral sex on him and he would always make me swallow.
He would have anal sex with me repeatedly. I recall that this caused bleeding on many occasions. Here I was, all of 7/8 years old and walking to a store and using my allowance to buy underwear, because I would get rid of my bloody underwear so that my mom wouldnt see it.
This phrase haunts me at all time: He would end each time by saying you little fag, you aint good for nothing but fucking.
It is odd that we can take in statements like that as though they are absolute truth. When the person saying those hateful things is someone we thought we could trust, or someone we had admired, it is nearly impossible to ever stop hearing their words ringing in our ears. A young man who early on realized he was gay became a double victim of his parish priest. The priest not only abused him sexually, but also verbally and has made him feel that his sexual orientation is meant to lead to abuse.
I realized when my friends were talking and starting to brag about kissing girls that I wanted to kiss other guys. I'd never liked girls as anything other than friends, but I had crazy crushes on my male friends, and that bothered me. I wanted to know if it was normal, if it was OK, so of course I went to the church, to the priest who I'll call Fr. Evil here, because he was my friend and I knew he wouldn't get mad at me for how I felt. He was the "cool" priest, the young one who played basketball with us and talked to us like we were his equals instead of just sixth grade kids. So I told him how I felt, that I didn't like girls, that I wanted to hold hands with other guys, kiss them even. And he said it was OK, as he was getting ready to put his hands on me.
I'm not going to go into details, but at first he was pretty gentle with me. Even though I hated it, I knew it couldn't be abuse--I mean, it's not like he was physically hurting me or anything, and besides, I'd already told him that I was attracted to men so what did I expect? But I found out that his gentleness was just a way to make me trust him, to lure me in deep enough so he could do what he wanted. He got violent and extremely abusive, sometimes I think the things he said to me hurt me more than the rapes ever could.
I realize that his has been a difficult article to read. I believe it was necessary to let you hear the words of the men themselves. You have been given a glimpse into some of the suffering of but a few survivors. Still, this gives a look at the very common results of being sexually betrayed and violated as a child. I have not written about men who have been assaulted as adults. Not in prisons or jails, but on the streets of our nation. This happens much more than I was aware of until I started to communicate with other survivors.
However, from what I see, much of the effects of the abuse on boys are true also of abuse of the adult male.
Further information and help is available at: www.MaleSurvivor.org
Fr. Robert D. Wheelock, OFM Cap.
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