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J. Steven Svoboda is a member of TheMensCenter Advisory Council, an Independent attorney active in human rights law and Executive Director of Attorneys for the Rights of the Child (ARC).
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By J. Steven Svoboda... |
By Michel Dorais. Translated from the French by Isabel Denholm Meyer. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002. www.mqup.ca.
In the wake of 2001’s excellent Spreading Misandry by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young, McGill-Queen’s University Press last year published another top-notch book on men’s issues, Michel Dorais’ Don’t Tell: The Sexual Abuse of Boys. Although this book originally appeared in French a full five years previously, in 1997, neither the passage of time nor the language barrier tarnish it at all, thanks in part to Isabel Denhom Meyer‘s evidently superlative translation.
Dorais, a Quebec City social work professor, has spent many years working with male victims of sexual abuse and knows his subject extensively. His book examines only male perpetrators, though Dorais acknowledges the existence of female abusers. The author rightly laments the scarcity of research on abused boys, and indeed previous works are few and far between and notoriously difficult to track down.
Once deceived, a boy may come to believe that all adults are potential abusers. To me, the greatest tragedy of all is that victims may stop believing in the possibility of relationships that are transparent, sincere, and empathetic.
The most eloquent, heartbreaking portion of the book are the testimonials Dorais wisely includes from a number of his clients, which serve to personalize with devastating directness what might otherwise seem to be abstract, generalized issues. We may well wonder what can we say to Eric, who tells Dorais, “I’ll be dead by the time the book is done… If I can pass on AIDS to other men, there will be fewer to exploit children.”
To a man, the witnesses in Dorais’ book are never the same after their abuse. Sexual victimization flies in the face of the core of male self-identity, often leading victims to feel lifelong compulsions to prove to the world and to themselves that they are neither 1) a child, 2) a woman, nor 3) homosexual. Children who endured abuse by older or adult males usually have strong conflicts regarding their sexual orientation, often viciously rejecting homosexuality while at the same time preferentially if not exclusively pursuing male sex partners. One particularly sad tale involves a witness who manages to consider himself heterosexual by virtue of his selection as sex partners other “heterosexual” males with whom he joins in beating up gays. Many victims feel convinced that they are defective or abnormal in terms of their sexual identity and that any shrewd person will discover this and victimize them again. Many spend the rest of their lives recreating their abuse, by seeking out partners of a similar age, by becoming abusers themselves, by seeking out a “Batman and Robin” type of relationship, or even in a redemptive manner by attempting to protect other children from abuse.
If you have been abused and are male, you are likely to suffer from sleep problems, hypervigiliance, psychosomatic discomforts, and/or abuse of drugs and/or alcohol. Abuse may serve as a training ground for prostitution for you. You may experience a dichotomy between your self and your body. You may have the impression that you do not belong to the male community. In short, you don’t have too many great options.
Often the only one “punished” is the victim. Families tend to side with the abuser and to disbelieve the victimized boy. When they do react, sometimes it is the “gay” behavior that concerns them more than the abuse. Even when a case does manage to wend its way into court, judges typically let perpetrators off very lightly. Moreover, a misplaced sense of male solidarity as well as understandable fear often prevent a boy from pursuing his abuser. Dorais examines the four quadrants of male-male sexual victimization, involving familial and extra-familial cases, and the same or different generations for victim and perpetrator. Some of the effects and details differ between these four cases, but all have devastating, lifelong consequences for the victim.
A boy’s difficult relationship with his father predisposes him to seek any available form of tenderness, wherever it might be available. In the case of father-son incest, the son often perceives it on some level as the only available path to intimacy with Dad. Of course, the resulting lack of trust can only further alienate the boy, who is likely to wonder how he can trust any adult now.
Perpetrators are often boys only a few years older than the victim. Child molesters may begin their careers very early and are frequently themselves survivors, who replay the same traumatic scenario with roles reversed as soon as they feel that they can be the stronger one. Abused men may find themselves unable to express themselves emotionally in terms of love or sex. Love is associated with future deception or suffering. Sexuality becomes only a matter of a power relationship, a “dog-eat-dog” view in which victims strive to become dominators.
Apart from a few typographical errors, including one unfortunate one that gives two different ages a decade apart for a witness, I only have two criticisms of this excellent book: At one point, Dorais entirely squanders a golden opportunity to clarify the issue of false memories of abuse. Secondly, twice in the early chapters, the author devotes some space to discussing other cultures in which man-boy sexual relationships are accepted. Since the rest of the work is devoted to Canadian cases, this issue comes across as a distraction, a potential apologia for abuse, and a total red herring despite Dorais’ futile attempts to connect the dots by contrasting abuse in our society.
Somewhat miraculously, in part due to the human interest of the individual stories, and in part due to his and his translator’s skills, Don’t Tell never becomes as hard to read as you might expect. Ultimately Dorais’ message is one of hope, though not of reasonless optimism. In fact, the author notes that despite growing awareness of the problem of female victimization by sexual abuse, male victimization remains relatively unacknowledged and unexamined. Nevertheless, Dorais presents to us individual witnesses who are devoting their lives to helping other children (either potential victims of sexual abuse or in other contexts) and to thereby conquering the demons they first met at all too young an age.
And we learn concrete ways to help. Dorais believes that we must demand that prevention campaigns target both victims and aggressors. Since abusers rely on the ignorance, vulnerability, and even guilt of their child victims, frank and age-appropriate sex education will help prevent abuse. Health professionals, social workers, and therapist must be better prepared to recognize and help victims. Michel Dorais managed to negotiate a delicate dance that acknowledges that most perpetrators were victims while failing to absolve them of responsibility and rejecting the view of abusers as merely suffering from an illness that excuses their acts. Handsomely produced as it is, this book is likely to remain for years to come the most accessible and definitive work on a critically important topic.
©2003 J. Steven Svoboda
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