This is how a pedophile is made.
The Three Monkeys takes place in the 1940′s, a time when people did not discuss or mention anything pertaining to sex. Sexually abusive or otherwise neglectful treatment of a child, which by today’s laws would place the parent in prison, remained secreted away behind closed doors. People closed their eyes, covered their ears and shut their mouths while children suffered and bore abuses in silence. The following is entirely true.
Caution: This story describes child sexual abuse.
Read “The Story of Little Ben”
Pages: 1 2
About MBCowan
Thank you for sharing. Its ugly, but how can such a topic not be? As parents we need to know .
Yes, it is ugly and must be exposed so that children can be protected. There are tell-tale signs, often ignored, because it is too painful to think the one you love or trust is abusing your child.
I dunno. First of all, the fact he forgot it all till his 50s is very suspicious. Generally when we forget something it doesn’t effect us, its the stuff we remember that effects us.
Secondly the father thing and the maid thing?
Thirdly, more recent research suggests that there is not really much truth in the idea that abused people become abusers – unless they considered their abuse to be “good for them”. A man who was beat and thinks it made him a man might beat someone, if he thinks it was an ordeal he won’t. A person who had sex as a child and thought it was an expression of love or a growing experience might do it to a child in return, one who experienced it as a horrible loss of control and felt miserable for years because of it won’t.
The fact that this man gets convicted and then tells his story is very suspicious, it makes it seem like an excuse.
This is a true account of my life, and is only a chapter from the entire book, which goes into more detail of what triggered me. During my incarceration I met hundreds of men who suffered similar trauma, and acted out sexually aggressive.
Disbelief is often met by children who tell and even adults who share. It is very hard to face.
The importance of this is to help protect children by knowing what to look for. Know the signs and understand the behavior.
If you are interested in the psychological findings on this, there is a library full of professional literature on trauma and how repressed memories create posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive behaviors and dissociation. Carnes, Claudia Black and so many others have written extensively on this.
There are major red flags to look for before an offender strikes.
I was under the impression the notion of repressed memories was largely debunked nowadays?
yeah, somehow most of the child sex abuse stories on this site seem like an excuse, unfortunately. They lost me at the end when it said he was convicted
Then, you totally missed the working toward healing.
In my case my memories were deeply buried and the cause of an anxiety-filled childhood, a night filled with horror, and all kinds of issues with trust. As I got older, I had major problems in elementary and high school and was delinquent. (I smoked and carried a switchblade at age ten). I had few friends and barely graduated. I was filled with shame and self-hate and did not know why I behaved as I did.
Male victims seem to act-out their abuse while females tend to act-in. Boys molest and girls cut. Boys set fires and girls have eating disorders. Drug and alcohol abuse come in to numb the pain.
These are some signs of abuse: Poor grades, school problems, torturing animals, fire-setting, eating disorders, sudden rages, night-terrors, pre-sexualized and regressing to earlier years (bedwetting, thumbsucking, excessive whining).
Thank you for writing this…this is so difficult a subject…
My ex-abuser told me a long time ago when he was very young that an adult at summer camp had pulled down his shorts but he cried and got away….he later told someone in charge that someone (I think it was a cook) did “something bad” to him and that person was fired….
I also wondered if that was really the end of it…if there weren’t other incidents of sexual abuse that he couldn’t tell me about….was he also abused by his father? a priest? a teacher? By his behavior, he was very secretive and swore me to never tell…but he was constantly testing the boundaries…as if he was flaunting it and daring someone to turn him in….perhaps he got a thrill from doing the forbidden and getting away with it…
He had extensive drug and alcohol problems, however high functioning he was…he also told me as a teenager he would cut school to go into the city with his friend and hang out in seedy movie theaters and the like….he was exceptionally bright but many times he did not consistently apply himself academically and thwarted many of his own aspirations for a career (he finally did achieve professionally what he had always wanted but after he broke off with me and 3 decades later than when he first started!)….
Thank you for being so courageous by telling your story…
Leia, Thank you for being so courageous to share. You well described how we all struggle and how we are so terribly wounded by abuse. As much as being victimized seems as an excuse to perpetrate, we are still responsible for our actions, and in moments of sanity we are aware of what we do. The urge at that point is so consuming and the inner anguish so unbearable, that we do not want to stop but we want to be stopped, if this makes any sense. We are at war withing ourselves and I think of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde here. It is not about sex at all, but a re-enactment and totally selfish act. It is NOT love.
I wish I could say that the system is good and helpful today but its not true. The reason is that the system the Mental Health System can also create monsters. I know from personal experience. In previous posts I have talked about my ex-wife and her raping me and abusing me. What is really sad is that my son was a victim of the NC Social Services system. When we separated my son was seven. At the time I didn’t know that my ex-wife had been a victim of being heavily abused by her insane father. Shortly before we married he was sent to a VA mental hospital and diagnosed as a Paranoid Schizophrenic. But what my wife’s parents had done was to carefully hidden was that my wife had been severely molested as a young girl.
In fact as we started the separation process she told me that the only reason she had married me was to get away from him. During our twelve year marriage I had constantly tried to get my wife into therapy because I knew that she had problems; anyone living with an insane parent is traumatized to some degree. But always she refused. Also she didn’t want to talk much about her childhood, me thinking she was embarrassed about being very poor.
After we separated I started to hear things from my son that disturbed me greatly. He was telling me about how his mother was seeing a man and they were going over to his apartment and spending the whole weekend. I didn’t think much about it because I knew my wife was sexually very starved. She thought she needed constant sex, I now believe she was a Sex Addict. Any way I learned that the “apartment was a small loft with a shower stall on a side wall. She was forcing my son to watch her have sex; at the very least. I started to try and get total custody of my son with only limited vists from his mom. Well I ended up getting custody during the school years and he was with her during the summers. But my wife made my son not tell me anything, absolute secrecy.
When my son was twelve he started to get into trouble with gangs. He was nine pounds and twenty-one inches when he was born and never stopped growing. At nine he gave me a pair of shoes because he had outgrown them, I wear a size nine. By age twelve I was looking up to him because he was about six feet tall so he often hung out with older kids. My wife used this to not only get total custody but to cut off all contact. I have to wonder if he was then her sex toy.
When all of these problems started to happen I started to yell very loudly at NC DSS that he was being tramatized and should be helped. My wife played the poor pitiful beat down woman card and got a complete lock on my son; therapists often don’t realize what good liars the insane can be.
My son is thirty now married and has a kid and while I haven’t made an issue of it before I have to reconnect and break the cycle of abuse my grandkids deserve better than what my son got!!!
Opps, forgot to check this abuse is close to my heart and I may specialize in it for my MSW.
James, thanks for sharing this. I could write another book in responding to you! Let me say that it is very hard for people to accept that a woman is a predator and men are targeted in this area. According to the men I met in prison, and females since then, many suffered post-traumatic stress disorder the same as if they had been abused, by being forced to watch abuse, or watch porn (another way that a predator “grooms” a child). It has been diagnosed as secondary PTSD and has the same impact.
When I attended graduate school for my MSW back in the late 1960′s I do not recall incest or sex abuse mentioned. Sex addiction was unknown. Make sure the school you attend has that as an integral part of their program.
Most importantly – the separation from your son must have been insufferable. Your son needs you. He has been without a male, a father, and has suffered greatly. I have since reconciled with my ex and my children and we have all done much needed healing around it. And you are right in breaking the cycle. Your son may be hesitant at first, and he may be suffering many distortions about you and everything under the sun. Keep reaching out! Let me know if I can be of any help.
You already have been a big help. Just hearing from someone that understands is helpful. I can hardly wait till August when the program starts at ETSU.
Your article has actually opened a window for me to have some empathy for perpetrators. I have always heard that there is no rehabilitation for people who molest children. I have heard that in prison they are the most hated. When I was a young woman doing my internship in counseling, a client came to me and he had molested little boys. That is the only client I have ever turned away. I asked my supervisor to please take him out of my caseload. This man continued to babysit a little boy and I just could not deal with the idea that he might molest this little boy.
I can assure you that the man who had a history of molesting little boys had no business babysitting a little boy and rest assured, if the man was in any form of recovery, he would never have been in that situation. And good for you in turning him away if you did not wish to handle it or had little training.
Prison is not a safe place for sex-offenders. Several men I know were violently stabbed, raped, and one man is dead – found in his cell hanging with his hands tied behind his back.
Until recently, there was such lack of information about offenders that we were cast as boogeymen under bridges, incurably deranged; certainly not educated and professional folks from middle class America! Here we are. Many of us are in recovery and breaking the delusions and overcoming our trauma. I am happy to have offered you a window into the world of PTSD – sexually-abused-child syndrome. Understanding and communication helps us all heal.
Thanks for commenting
mbcowan
Readers wanting information on my book The Parent’s Guide to Protecting Children From Pedophiles – can find it at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004G09100