Per your request, I'm copying part of a speech I did last month at a conference about "Victim to Victimizer". I'm not posting the whole one hour speech but a section that I think addresses some of the issues raised in this post. If something seems missing or out of context, let me know and I'll see if the post needs to be amended.
Here it is:
This is equally true for the victim of sexual abuse. There is little positive about the experience of being abused. While some survivors of sexual abuse have credited the experience for their creativity or talent as a song writer or poet, I suspect few, if any, would choose abuse to enhance their abilities.
As I said before, victims are usually plagued with negative feelings and thoughts. They may take the feelings out on others by becoming a sexual abuser, or a bully, or a rage-aholic. They may take the feelings out on themselves by cutting or other self-injurious behaviors. They may block the feelings with alcohol, drugs, food or sex. Or they may use resources such as support groups, therapy, or other positive interventions to heal and recover from the abuse.
Now, if this concept about sexual abusing as a compensatory behavior is true, how come we dont see as many females as males among our abuser population? Females, research has shown, are two to three times more likely than males to be sexually abused. Logically, we should have twice as many female abusers as males. Of course that is not the case.
SLIDE #4
There are a number of reasons why females either do not abuse as frequently as males or dont get caught or reported. Some of the reasons are biological. Females have less testosterone in their bodies. Testosterone is a hormone that contributes to aggression. A lot, though not all, of sexual abuse is aggressive. Aggressive female abusers are few and far between.
Sexual interest in children may be less likely for females due to their biological make up and social conditioning to be nurturing. Also, if a female is sexually aroused to a child, it may not be as obvious to the child or others as compared with the erection of a male who is turned on by the child.
For whatever the reasons, in general, females tend to turn inward, or act in, when dealing with negative feelings and thoughts. Their compensatory behaviors are more likely to be hurting themselves or numbing out. Men, due to hormones or socialization, tend to act out or numb out their negative feelings or thoughts. Anyway, this is what our conventional wisdom says at this time.
When a male is sexually abused, he is controlled and manipulated by someone who is generally older, stronger, and more knowledgeable than he. Typically, a male will avoid appearing weak, vulnerable, or unable to protect himself, in other words, being a victim. If his abuser is a male, the victim will often struggle with concerns about homosexuality connected with the abuse. For many males, being the victim of sexual abuse is especially difficult to talk about and to get help for. This is beginning to change as more services are available for male victims and society accepts the fact that males can be victims just as females are.
However, for many abused males, acting out their abuse on others is a way of moving from being the victim helpless, weak, and vulnerable to being the one in charge, the one who hurts rather than being the one who is being hurt.
Now, common sense tells us that if something bad and unwanted happens to you, why in the world would you want to do that to somebody else? If youve been sexually abused, how could you put somebody else through that experience?
For some people, it is a matter of little or no empathy. Some folks either cant put themselves in others shoes or they have selective empathy. By that, I mean they can have empathy for certain people but not others. I worked at a state training school for delinquent youth in the 80s. I was seeing a kid there who robbed houses, sold drugs, shook down people for money. Not very nice behaviors. We were talking about selling drugs on the street crack cocaine was a big money maker and I asked him who he would sell to. He had no problem selling crack to mothers on welfare, even those who were pregnant. Hed even take their food stamps for payment. He justified this behavior by saying that if he didnt make the sale, someone else would. What if it were his mother or sister who wanted the drugs? Hed go after the seller and hurt him, he told me. Why? Because this is his family. It didnt matter to him that the woman hed sell to was somebody elses sister or mother. Thats them, and this is mine. His empathy was selective and compartmentalized.
Was his thinking somewhat distorted? I believe so. Sometimes called thinking errors or cognitive distortions (if you want to impress your friends), distorted thinking is how we make it ok to do something we know should not do.
SLIDE #5
Distorted thinking is used by sexual abusers to make it ok in their minds to abuse another person. Distorted thinking is also how we make it ok to do other negative or illegal behaviors in our own lives...... Anybody here go over the speed limit on your drive to this conference? Those of you who took public transportation or car pooled, please bear with me for a moment. So, how many of you went over the posted limit today?
You know it is against the law? You know you could get a speeding ticket and pay a fine? You know you could have your insurance rates go up and if you have enough points, you could lose your license and have to pay a lot of money to get it back? You know that your chances of getting into an accident are increased the faster you drive? And, if you are environmentally concerned, you know you burn more gas the faster you drive.
Well, since you know all this, and you are intelligent people, how did you make it ok to do something that you know is against the law and could have serious consequences?.... You made it ok through distorted thinking.
You may have rationalized the behavior... everybody does it. Im just keeping with the flow of traffic. You might be justifying your speed... Im running late for this important conference. You might be above the rules... Im not going to get caught. The cops are all tied up with that accident back there, and Im speeding in the right hand lane where they wont notice me. And besides, if I get caught, Ill give a good story that will get me out of a ticket.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Sexual abusers use a similar pattern of distortions in their thinking to make it ok to abuse another. They may blame the victim for provoking them to the abuse. They may blame their abuser for causing them to abuse others. They may play poor me for the legal, financial and relationship consequences after they get caught. They may minimize the damage they are causing by only touching, and not penetrating. They may convince themselves that the victim will forget about it, or rationalize that they werent the first person to do something sexual to that child. They may blame the alcohol or drugs for causing the abuse, or claim not to remember because of the alcohol or drugs.
Abusers have lots of excuses and justifications for what they did. Nearly all behaviors are about getting needs met not just for sexual abusers, but for all of us. On a physical level, we have six basic needs that have to be met or else we will die...... We need food, water, air, shelter, sleep, and elimination...... On an emotional level, we also have needs, such as: safety, trust, attention, love, nurturance, intimacy, companionship, hope, excitement, contribution, guidance, respect, power, control and touch. Sex is not one of the emotional or physical needs, although Ive worked with some individuals who sincerely believe they will die if they dont have sex regularly.
I want to address power, control and touch for a moment since these are often beneath sexually abusive behaviors. Touch is a special need because it is a physical act with physical and emotional consequences. Touch is vital for the survival of our species and others. Babies who are not touched and cuddled will often fail to grow, become sick and even die. Most people crave the touch of a hug when it is nurturing and not connected with abusive touch. For most victims of sexual abuse, the nurturing touch has been contaminated and sometimes destroyed by the sexual acts connected to it, particularly when there was a relationship between abuser and victim.
Control is having predictability and order in your environment. It means that when you put the key in the ignition, you can be sure the car will start and you will get from point A to point B without mechanical problems, detours or an accident. For a child, control could mean that sleep will not be interrupted by someone fondling his genitals. Having control in this sense is not about controlling another person.
Power is about controlling another person and is neither inherently good or bad. The power a policeman has to direct traffic around an accident is good power. It can help you, the driver, get back some control from the traffic jam. The power that a babysitter has over the child she abuses is bad or harmful. The power the rapist has holding the knife at the throat of a victim is likewise bad.
These may be obvious examples of how some people get their needs met. The sexual abuser who acts out is getting an emotional need for power met by controlling the victim. Sometimes, the need is not obvious. Remember my corpulent friend, Michael? [THIS REFERS TO A TEENAGE SEXUAL ABUSER I WORKED WITH IN A RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT PROGRAM WHO WAS VERY OVERWEIGHT AND USED FOOD AS A WAY OF ACTING OUT AGAINST HIS PARENTS, HURTING HIMSELF MEDICALLY, AND NUMBING OUT HIS FEELINGS...KS] We may be able to guess what some of his needs might have been by using empathy. Put yourself in his place for a moment.
We can assume that the teasing he endured negatively affected his need for respect as well as his need for companionship, as he had few or no friends. He did not have control of his environment. There was little he could do to make peers like him or accept him.
Food, though usually a physical need for survival, became a drug for him to numb out his pain. It was also a vehicle for him to act in against himself. Physically hurting himself by self-mutilation was not a viable option for him. And, as noted, the act of eating in defiance of his grandmother was a way Michael could act out and get back at others. And, even though his eating was out of control, he was in control of this process, destructive as it was for him.
With this triple play, youd figure that Michael wouldnt need to do more. However, he was sexually abusing his younger brother during this time..... How did this behavior help him get his needs met? Foremost, Michael had power over his brother. His brother was smaller, weaker, less knowledgeable about sexual matters, and more accessible to him than other children he could have victimized.
Michael, himself, had been sexually abused by an older cousin a few years earlier and had never disclosed his abuse nor gotten help. He was prematurely sexualized. That is to say, he experienced powerful sexual feelings that he did not understand at the time. There were some elements of pleasure, embarrassment, guilt, shame, and anger all shrouded by confusion.
Because he experienced arousal at the hands of another male, Michael was not sure if he was gay or straight. He used distorted thinking to blame his brother as the one who was gay. Because his brother had an erection when Michael fondled him, Michael was able, on the surface, to minimize his own confusion about sexual orientation.
In this case, Michael could obtain sexual gratification through the sexual abuse. He was able to achieve orgasm, either through the sexual abuse directly, or afterwards, by masturbating to the thoughts and fantasies of what he had done to his brother. He also got other emotional needs met through this behavior.
He reinforced the emotional needs with the pleasurable physical sensations that sexual behaviors produce. What started out with a single sexual act with his brother soon became a pattern or cycle of behaviors. Behaviors that are pleasurable have a tendency to reinforce themselves. ... If it feels good, we want to do it more. Activities connected to these pleasurable feelings get reinforced.
If having an orgasm felt like getting an electric shock, it might have a significant impact on population growth. Negative feelings connected to behaviors tend to diminish the behavior. Some sexual abusers will never abuse again due to the negative consequences for their behavior. Its the theory behind Scared Straight. In this line of work, we can refer to it as Scared Limp. Unfortunately, we dont usually know for sure which sexual abusers will never do it again, ...though most believe they never will.
Ken
