sherman and i am your host and my guest today is mike lou mike is a psychotherapist and the author of victims no longer the classic guide for men recovering from sexual child abuse welcome mike thank you so i'm going to start with something i read on line according to the two thousand and ten c d c s national intimate partner and sexual violence survey there are estimated to be more than twenty five million male victims of sexual violence of all forms in the united states and millions of them never come forward to disclose the abuse they experienced so clearly there's a huge impact on many levels that ripples out but i'd like you to talk about some of the impact but also why it's so hard for us to relate to or to you know that date males being victims well i think across the board the statistics are problematic that yes those are huge and shocking numbers but the most conservative estimates that are agreed upon by researchers and clinicians are that between one in three and one in four females will be sexually abused before the age of eighteen and approximately one in six males now these are these are conservative estimates because they don't take into account the numbers of people who never disclose who disclose and aren't believed and once when someone is not believes there are unlikely to keep talking about it so it's a very difficult situation in our culture we don't really traditionally have room for males as victims we've considered that only females are victims and only males are victimized so for a man or a boy to be victimized he is seen and often the season so something other can read less than a man so he's less likely to disclose so you know it's a you know there was this period of time where there was the whole thing about the church and the priests and whatever else and you know some of that has been addressed and some of it has kind of dissipated it's no longer in the news but it still impacts these people hope for the rest of their lives and then everybody they come in contact with their intimate relationships their families their their self esteem how they show up in the world you know what what would you i guess the  significant thing is what would you say to someone who has been victimized and hasn't come forward and just kind of lives with it well i believe in isolation is the enemy of cover that abuse takes place in isolation and recovery has to happen in the company of other people but it's tricky because isolation can feel like safety if i'm by myself no one's going to hurt but it isn't safety it allows the old abuse messages to repeat like a tape loop without anything or anyone contradicting so i would say when you can disclose and if the person you just close to can't hear it or minimized disclosed to someone else find someone who can listen to you with respect believe you and treat the information as an act of trust as an important displeasure i have been doing this work i've been working with male survivors now and i'm well into my fourth decade doing well and things have changed things have improved not as quickly as i would like and certainly not as quickly as most of the survivors but things have gotten better in part i think because of the public nature of a lot of disclosures including the roman catholic church in boston and the wonderful work that the boston globe spotlight team did  breaking that story also because for good or ill we're a celebrity driven society and i think that each time a celebrity discloses an abuse history it gives other ordinary people permission to to speak out so more and more that's happening and it's happening to good effect that so one of the things  in your book you talk about you know the question was if what is what it takes to heal and recovery and what is recovery and you defined it as recovery is the freedom to make choices in your life that aren't determined by the abuse so i'm assuming most victims then self define by those incidents well it's it's tricky to talk about most victims because as you said earlier we're talking about millions of people yeah who are abused in many different ways at different ages some by a man or men some by a woman or women some b all on any level just doesn't work yeah yeah but given all the differences there are also a huge number of commonalities there's a lot of  overlap and one of the reasons why it's so important for male survivors to meet other survivors is that they stop feeling so ilia they stop feeling as though this were as a as though he were the only one this was done and when they heard men say right i heard my story coming out of someone else's mouth and that is such a contradiction to the about incest and it was one of the male survivors and he says incest is the story of silence the silence of the innocent of the vulnerable of the trusting of the sensitive of the sweet of the human that silence alone thunders condemnation of the weak sick pathetic cruel and vicious individuals who destroyed the expression of innocence vulnerability trust sensitivity sweetness and humanity in another human being this remains true even if our abusers were not the totally depraved individuals that some of our number suffered under incest is not only a reprehensible crime of violence against the person of a child but also a crime against the future of that child i found that tremendously moving and compelling and kind of says it all in one place so again it is a crime against the future of that child so what's part of the journey has them start to create their own future this varies with the individual see the common factors or first of all time and distance from the original use sometimes physical distance and i was when i started doing this work i was in minnesota and i'm sure that the west coast was full of people from the east coast who had to do the same thing so there's that time and distance from the it use and you know safety physical safety i don't believe that it's possible to heal while one is being a few sometimes it's resources sometimes what triggers the work is a life change whether it's someone getting married someone becoming a parent and wanting to make sure that they don't sli the results of the use not their own children sometimes what triggers it is very minor it can be a line in a song or see in a film and it all comes flooding back and say i need to deal gambling you know all sorts of things and the pain is to live there eating disorders and so kicking and screaming that say ok i guess i have to do this i don't and i have huge respect for anyone willing to take it on yeah you know it couple of years ago or a few years ago i interviewed mark crawford who is the executive director  snap a new jersey survivors network of those abused by priests and one of the things that he said is that children will never tell even if we tell them to tell  and that's part of the dilemma is that generally the abusers are manipulators and threatening and intimidating but again is there anything we can do as adults that would make that more possible well much as i like and respect mark and i think he's here wrote in his life i don't completely agree with the idea that children will never tell i think that children will tell if it's truly safe for them to tell and if they can overcome your abusers trying to keep them silen but what frequently happens when a child just slows is that the the idol doesn't believe them blames them shames them scolds them oh how could you say that are about joe you bad child well or your father so and so a child doesn't have to hear that response too many times to know that it's not safe to disclose  you've got to build them you've got it's got to be ok for them to come to you with anything and this means anything not just what's comfortable for you to he even if you hate the idea if your child comes to you and says for example that they get that has to be ok or that they're sexually active that has to be ok because if they can't come to you with this when something like a fuse is present it's certain if they can't come up with something smaller they're not going to come to you with something bigger so you have to accept even the most uncomfortable things if you want your kids to disclosed otherwise you will not get information yeah and you know and i think kids are always have even if they have the most open parents you know there's always that fear of getting caught by mom or dad or whatever that kind of fear of the adults but i suppose that it is often reinforced by the abuser yeah and sometimes the dad yes so i want to segue into that because there's something i don't understand and that find it unfathomable and maybe you with your experience can kind of add some like to that so there's a one parent who is the abuser and then there's the other silent parent now sometimes they don't know but my guess is very often the other parent knows and stays silent what is that all about often when a survivor first gets in touch with his outreach and then saying it is because we're talking about male survivor but it's equally true for females now when they get in touch with their outrage about what was done to them initially it's not unusual for the anger to be expressed not at the busey parents but at the complicit non protective parents yeah because the question becomes did you know if you knew why didn't you do something  and if you didn't know why didn't you because it was your job and what's your theory on that and i know there's no one answer fits all but what is that silence even though the abuse effectively destroys the family sometimes it's sheer what will happen if mom or dad and eve's sometimes it's the the family so that these can go on as normal while you know there was a former miss america who you know perfect family four daughters i actually have in communication with her about doing a show about her story and she's in her seventy's now i think but her story is very compelling in that again this was the perfect american family and she was miss america but i think it was her who said one night she heard her mother's footsteps coming down the hall when her father was in her room and she thought oh thank god finally and her mother stopped and turned back and walked away i hear stories like that all the time that you know when a child is being abused by a creased another priest comes into the room and sees what's going on and leaves so it's not just within the family but that's sort of cowardice that sort of sacrifice of a child's to the abuse is outrageous it's unconscionable so the thing that's puzzling for me and i know you're not the answer men but it's just the idea that and so there's some kind of underlying psyche that you know maybe maybe many components but the idea i think is that it's not that damaging i think that is that part of the component like oh the kid will get over it if somebody else sees that well you know we expect boys to be a little men and men and we expect men to be able to handle any situation and you know we raise men to be a problem solvers to be fixers and again if they can't handle it they become solutions either i guess you know one of the things that i want to make sure that we don't run out of time yes a place is the question of recovery because  most frequent question i get from males is is recovery possible and i've been doing this work for decades and decades now and my answer is an unequivocal yes recovery is possible i know this to be affected because i've now worked with thousands of male survivors in many countries in many situations and i see many many creative powerful courageous intelligent capable men actively working toward recovery and mitten changes in their lives it's not quick it's not easy it is no quick fix or simple answer one size doesn't fit everyone and life never gets perfect but no one's life is perfect right but things do get better what you said earlier about the abuse not determining every waking moment it's happened it's you know people feel good about themselves people stop wishing they were someone else people are able to take our careers make career choices that aren't based on feeling less than they're able to establish healthy intimacy both sexual and non sexual friendships this is huge huge change from the isolation and it is possible but it doesn't happen easily or quickly and it doesn't happen there's no way to go over around or under the pain have to go through it to get out the other side and i a feeling there's no timeline you know that's the second most frequent question that i get asked is how long will this take and i'm not being facetious when i say my best dancer is it will take longer than you would li you fear yeah and you know when you describe that like living a healthy lifestyle you know developing intimate relationships and friendships getting a job based on what you you know good self esteem rather than settling for less because you don't deserve it coming out of that context that occurs as miraculous absolutely absolutely and so i don't use the word miracle lightly but i do see these miracles all the time yeah and again so you know there are people and there was something you wrote because there are people who still will not want to come forward or they think they've got it hendo there's some and you wrote if you have been abused you're already engaged in the struggle and so you know it may feel like it's just part of your a but there it is so i would assume that like you say if you you know again you could live your life kind of in that narrow path of who you know yourself to be or you can take that courageous journey you know and nobody does it a minute before they're ready we say easily a good half of the phone calls and e mails i get are from partners of survivors close friends of survivors or close relatives wanting be to fix their survivor partner and i don't generated others by professionals but there are lots of resources available and it's possible for people to do things not anonymously at first they can read a book if you go online and look at a website without having to commit themselves to any public disclosure that's awful but start from for guys who want to begin their recovery and that's what your book is geared toward that's what i'm hoping yeah yeah the male survivor and you said and their families so those care about yeah or the other as professionals i friends or family yeah so we've got two minutes left is there anything specific you want to say any message you want feel complete that is compelling more compelling than the others just two quick lines one is if the way to approach a survivor is with complete respect and i found that regardless of the cultural where in the world when people are men with respect they will respond to surviv there is hope things do get better stay with it don't give up there are resources there are people who understand and people who care yeah that's really powerful and you know i've met people who are survivors of concentration camps and somehow get whatever journeys they choose to take they have done some feeling and i think in some ways  you know as someone who has been sexually abused the experience in some ways could be very similar but just know that there could be life after that  thank you thank you thank you and on that note we have to and mike thank you so much for joining me today thank you natasha my pleasure my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining us