This is an edited version of a chapter from The Parent’s Guide To Protecting Children From Pedophiles.
In 1946, Ben Goldman, two-and-a-half-years old, was a sweet, adventuresome and curious child. He delighted in accompanying his mom to the garden where he toddled and romped about, dodging bees and enjoying the fragrance of the roses. He was fascinated watching his dad spray DDT from a device resembling a tire pump with a tuna can on the end.
Dr. Steinman, a Detroit pediatrician, noted Ben’s speech was remarkably clear, he was unusually alert and bright; he forecasted a wonderful and prosperous future for Ben.
An only child, Ben had enjoyed the full attention of his mom, Sarah, until late that summer when she returned to the family business full-time. She left Ben in the care of a newly hired live-in maid, Yvonne.
The brown-eyed, brunette, average in most ways, was unemployed at her time of hire and without references. She had a preference for green sweaters and a penchant for little boys.
Within six months time, Ben, then age three, stopped eating, had crying spells and refused to allow anyone to touch or comfort him. Upon the recommendation of Dr. Steinman, Sarah brought Ben to the Child Guidance Center where a psychiatrist took Ben into a room with toys and invited Ben to finger-paint.
Ben sat on the wood floor with a pile of large sheets of paper in front of him. Using both hands, he smeared paint while responding to her questions. As the painful memories of Yvonne came forth, Ben began crying and stopped painting. The psychiatrist urged him to continue, assuring him it would just be a little longer. “Just keep drawing and talking, Ben.”
He revealed how Yvonne had been forcing him to touch her “down there” while she “did things” to him. He hated how his fingers and hands felt. Ben had wept and begged Yvonne to wash his hands. He could not stand her touching him. Ben was sickened by it all and forced to continue, lest Yvonne tell his mother and he be sent away for being a bad boy.
Whether or not he continued in therapy, or if Sarah was informed about Yvonne, is unknown. Ben, his burden lightened by giving voice to his secret, was patched-up enough to resume eating and appear normal.
Shortly thereafter, Yvonne’s boyfriend, Mike, showed up and introduced himself to Ben. He told Ben that he was going into the bedroom with Yvonne and asked Ben to leave them alone for a while.
Ben took Mike’s statement as a confession that he was a victim of Yvonne, about to be victimized again. (For how else could Ben construe it?)
“I know what you are going to do in there!” Ben volunteered, and told Mike the exact details.
All hell broke loose. Mike raced into Yvonne’s room, screaming at her. Yvonne ran up the stairs, sobbing. Mike was behind, hitting and shouting at her. He pried her fingers loose from the banister and dragged her into her bedroom.
Later, he went to Ben and sat down. “If she ever touches you again you tell me immediately. I am taking her out of here.”
Good to his word, a few days later, Mike loaded her and her baggage into his car and before leaving, asked Ben if she had touched him. Ben never saw them again.
Ben repressed all memory of his abuse. When his son was born Ben began having flashbacks and entered therapy. In searching for answers, Ben called his mother. She described the maid’s basement bedroom, his behavior and the clinic. She recalled he was terrified of the dark and the basement; he would cry out for her at night, seeing sheets of cobwebs the size of the wall come loose and cover him and his bed.
As his mother spoke, Ben recalled sheet after sheet falling on him while he lie helplessly in horror and screamed. The wallpaper was changed. The walls were painted. His bed was moved. He was given a night light. The maid had long gone. The cobwebs no longer appeared. The 1940’s bedspread was a doily-like, lacy affair. Ben now connected it with the cobwebs. He recalled laying on it wiping his sticky fingers.
His mother denied any knowledge of the maid raping him, claiming the psychiatrist never disclosed it. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she cried. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
[In the 1940’s, there were no mandatory reporting laws. Everything was confidential. Patient’s reports of molestation were often diagnosed as an Oedipal complex and treated as fantasies.
Children, especially those younger than seven, do not manufacture accurate sexual fantasies without sexual exposure, experience or knowledge.]
Adults abuse fantasies as a method of raping children. At five-and-a-half-years old, Ben remembers being awakened by a man standing next to his bed, who looked just like his father, Hershel, but was not. The memory re-surfaced years later following his father’s death, while Ben was attending a conference on sex abuse in San Francisco.
The presenter described a particularly devious way an offender had molested a very young child. The method matched Ben’s experience and triggered a flash-back where all of Ben’s memories surfaced.
When Ben looked up, it was very late; he saw his dad standing next to his bed and said, “Hi, Daddy.”
The man replied, “I am not your daddy. I look like your daddy but I am not.”
Ben was confused. The man reached down and groped him. Ben was frightened and shocked. “Would your daddy do a thing like that?” the man asked.
“No,” Ben said, shaking and crying.
“Your real daddy is in the closet. Do you want your real daddy back?”
Ben nodded.
“Then you must do as I say. If you do what I say, then I will go back into the closet and your real daddy will come out.”
The man paused to let the threat sink in. Bed nodded and the man continued. “If you do not do what I tell you, I will not go into the closet. Your daddy will be trapped in there and I will be your daddy.” Ben was crying hard and trembling.
The man told Ben what to do. Ben, wanting his daddy back, complied. Ignoring his son’s agonizing screams of pain, his father forced a pillow over Ben’s head and raped him for two years.
♦◊♦
Ben’s playful nature provided an opportunity to tell. One day Sarah came into Ben’s room and a rubber tipped arrow fell from his ceiling on her head. Sarah shrieked. Ben loved it and laughed. Sarah looked up astonished to see a row of arrows hanging from the ceiling. She laughed. And because it was a happy mood and Ben felt safe, he told Sarah about the man in the closet.
Sarah demanded Ben repeat the story three times in a row without any errors in order to believe him. Ben did so. She looked at Ben with horror in her eyes and braced herself against the frame of the door, sobbing. Ben stood transfixed, drawing comfort and strength from her, at once feeling loved and understood, reassured that she believed him. She would make it go away, stop; protect him.
Her arm went out from under her and she began to fall against the wall, slipping towards the floor, flailing, grabbing the doorframe with one arm, saying things about her arm—it wouldn’t work; things Ben did not understand.
Motionless and terrified, Ben watched her struggling to stand and finally regain use of her arm, her face going from relief to anger. Sarah remained silent for a while. When she spoke she uttered something incomprehensible to Ben, and added she would “take care of it.”
Sarah seated herself on the floor next to Ben and in hushed tones, instructed him, “You are not to mention anything. You must not speak of bad things. It is bad to speak of bad things.” She explained the meaning of the Three Monkeys and had Ben repeat it.
“See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.”
Shopping in a Five and Dime store, Sarah found a set of the Three Monkeys and brought them home for Ben. They sat on Ben’s bedroom dresser, a reminder of their little secret.
Sarah’s idea of “taking care of it” was to order Hershel to bed when she went to bed. As absurd as it sounded, despite his protestations, “I’m not tired” and her, “Come to bed anyway,” Hershel complied. Sarah bought stock in her magical belief, her fantastic notion, that by his presence in her bed she had Hershel leashed.
When Sarah went to sleep Hershel came into Ben’s room and raped him. The Three Monkeys saw no evil, heard no evil, spoke no evil. Ben was little more than 6 years old.
At night, from his bed, ghosts floated along Ben’s wall and one leaped at him. Another, a female form, went back and forth. Ben screamed. Ben’s mother placed him in therapy and he was put on tranquilizers.
The family business grew and Ben’s parents were having a home built. They would be moving within the year, before Ben turned eight. One night when Ben’s father came in to rape him, Ben told him that he would have to stop once they moved. He (the man in the closet) lived in the closet and the closet would not be in the new home. Confronted by irrefutable logic from his seven-year-old son, his father agreed: the man in the closet would remain behind.
The trauma did not remain behind.
♦◊♦
The family moved into their home before Ben turned eight years old. The rape stopped. The ghosts went away. All memories of the maid and the man in the closet were repressed and forgotten. What remained was the impact. Ben was an emotional wreck. Unable to otherwise express himself or put into words the turbulence of his inner world, he displayed it.
Ben bit and kicked the maids. He found comfort in lighting matches and set a small fire in his parent’s bedroom at age seven. He performed poorly in school both academically and socially; he was unable to concentrate. Ben carried knives, stole, shoplifted, and gambled. He began smoking cigarettes at age ten. He stuttered, twitched, and suffered migraines, sexual obsession, loneliness, rage, anxiety and depression.
On the positive side, he was extremely bright, creative, funny, sensitive, had leadership potential, and was capable of tremendous insight. He challenged ideas, institutions, dogmas and ideologies. He wanted to grow up and become a psychiatrist, an attorney, a muckraker, a writer or a sports car mechanic.
♦◊♦
The conference broke for lunch and Ben was lurched back into the present.
Ben’s memories were now intact. The puzzle was complete. It was too late. Ben was in his fifties. His third marriage was deteriorating. He drank. He experienced anxiety, despair, and excruciating loneliness. He sought unproductive therapy. He went into rages.
Despite knowing better, he molested a child and went to prison.
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
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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.
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… Read more »
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,… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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.
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.
Thank you for sharing. Its ugly, but how can such a topic not be? As parents we need to know .