On
January 1st of 2002, I became President of MaleSurvivor:
National Organization on Male Sexual Victimization
(www.malesurvivor.org) for a two-year term. Little
did I know that within weeks there would be an explosion
of interest in the subject of male sexual victimization
because of the scandals involving the Catholic Church.
In
the past few months, I have become a media spokesperson
in a far more active way than I ever imagined. Numerous
newspapers and other media journalists have approached
us for comments on pedophile priests and their victims.
Interestingly, a number of the stories we worked on
were killed by editors. My sense is that the media,
like the public at large, is more comfortable thinking
about the effects of the scandal on the Church than
about the effects of sexual abuse on boys. As I write
this in late June, however, there has been a shift
in media attitude. Journalists have made more serious
attempts to find out about what happens to victims,
and this has resulted in longer interviews and some
television appearances for me and some of our members,
including men who were abused by priests.
My
connection to MaleSurvivor goes back to 1994, when
I was present at the constitutional convention in
Columbus, Ohio, that formally created it. However,
MaleSurvivor's roots go back further, to 1988, when
a group of therapists from different parts of the
country who were working in isolation with male survivors
of sexual abuse decided to have a conference in Minneapolis.
Since then, we have had a series of conferences, approximately
every other year, in Tucson, Atlanta, Portland (OR),
Washington, Columbus, San Francisco, Vancouver, and
New York. They have included a heady blend of participants:
therapists who work with male survivors, male survivors,
therapists who are themselves male survivors, survivors'
families and loved ones, and other professionals who
work with male survivors (researchers, law enforcement
and corrections officials, criminologists, attorneys,
educators, clergy, journalists,and students). Our
conferences have always been exciting and filled with
emotional immediacy, in addition to offering professional
training and also healing to survivors. (Our next
conference is scheduled in Minneapolis on September
18-22, 2003.)
MaleSurvivor's
mission statement is: "Dedicated to a safe world,
we are an organization of diverse individuals, committed
through research, education, advocacy and activism
to the prevention, treatment and elimination of all
forms of sexual victimization of boys and men."
To this end we have organized healing retreats for
male survivors, advocated for male survivors in state
legislatures, responded to media, encouraged research,
and established our web site. In a recent seven-day
period, the web site had over 70, 000 hits worldwide.
I invite you to visit it. It contains a variety of
resources, including bibliographies, articles, a Discussion
Forum and chat room for male survivors, and a Resource
Directory of professionals who work with male survivors.
I encourage anyone who has an interest in treating
this population to apply to be in the Resource Directory.
This can be done on line, and you do not have to be
a MaleSurvivor member to be listed, although of course
we welcome new members.
My
own interest in male sexual victimization goes back
to the 1980's, when a male patient began to recall
memories of severe sexual molestation by his father.
I had little understanding of sexual victimization,
and read what I could in the literature. At that time,
there was very little available, and what there was
mostly related to women. While these books and articles
acknowledged the existence of sexual abuse of boys,
they did not focus on it, and the reader was left
with the impression that it is rare and that its treatment
is very similar to that of sexually abused women.
That did not match my own impressions, which became
stronger when I started a group for sexually victimized
men after I could not find one in New York for my
patient. As I began to understand how masculine gender
socialization and concerns about homosexuality intersect
with a man's capacity to process sexual victimization,
I began to write about my views in a series of five
papers given at Division 39 (Psychoanalysis). These
papers led to my writing Betrayed as Boys: Psychodynamic
Treatment of Sexually Abused Men, which was published
by the Guilford Press in 1999. I became a member of
MaleSurvivor's Board of Directors in 1998, was Program
Chair for its 2001 conference in New York, and started
my term as President this year. Had anyone told me
twenty years ago that this would be the arc of my
career, I would have thought them ridiculous!