Why I'm writing this blog for males who have been sexually abused and why they should read it.

Why I'm writing this blog for males who have been sexually abused and why they should read it.

I'm writing this blog for the same reason I wrote the book Real Men Do Talk: Metaphysical Healing for Male Victims of Sexual Abuse. I'm writing it because I felt led to do so by a series of events that I could only describe as happening within the realm of synchronicity. I had just resigned from my position as a direct care worker for a private facility in the city of Indianapolis, which specialized in the treatment of adolescent male sexual offenders. The six years I spent working with this population was an experience in itself and it actually left a bad taste in my mouth.

By the time I left, the facility had began to get an influx of kids from the juvenile system and many of these kids brought their antisocial behaviors with them. There were more fights, more threats against staff and more sexually acting out. Many kids, heavily influence by the gangster rap culture, thug life, and glorified prison movies, brought their thug persona with them into treatment. Some of them talked about shankin staff and runnin things, like the facility was maximum-security penitentiary.

Needless to say, most of them were boys with conduct disorders who had also molested someone. Their victims were friends, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, mothers, animals and so on. And the method of how they abused their victim was enough to make you sick to your stomach. It was hard for me to refrain from forming my own biases or opinions about them especially when they brought these same behaviors to the facility with them and showed no inclination of committing to treatment or experiencing any genuine empathy for any of their victims, not to mention their desire to act out sexually in a sexual treatment facility. (You’d be surprise of how inventive a male adolescent sexual offender can be. They are so cunning and manipulative they could act out sexually right under your nose and you may not ever know it, until one them came forward or the incident was reported by another kid to a staff member or his therapist.)

In short, not even the motion sensors this particular facility installed were even able to stop them at times. They’d simply stand on the ends their bed and place a piece of tape or other item over the sensor and plot how they were going to victimize another resident. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t kids who actually tried to work their treatment. I was happy to see a kid leave successfully after completing treatment, although we all knew the word 'successful' was an allusive term that would only be determined by their ability to never offend again. Nevertheless, as I stated earlier, my experience working at this facility and with this particular population made me want to take a break from working with people. I was tired and burned out and I simply wanted to take time away from helping other people to deal with my own mental health. I felt the change was long overdue.

I started working in mental health field in 1982 as a psychiatric technician with Indianapolis’s largest state hospital at that time. I went on from that time to work in various psychiatric settings in both the private and public sector. I’ve work with some of the finest psychologists, counselors, therapists, nurses and social workers that you’ll ever want to meet and I owe a great deal of whatever insight I have acquired over the years to them.

The other source of my insight comes directly from the patients themselves. Although I had no desire to go on working in the area of mental health and resigned myself to doing something different, (I actually went to work part time for the post office and had limited experience of the factory floor) I ended up back at another state hospital which focused on educating, training and teaching medical students. And wouldn’t you know it; I ended up working in children services with kids and adolescent boys. What is more interesting about this scenario is I had worked for this same facility nearly 20 years ago. Only the name of the kids had changed. And although I couldn’t figure out why I ended up back at same place, I knew it was for a specific purpose. That purpose was revealed to me one early morning in December 2006. We'll pick up here in the next blog.