Understanding the Sexual Betrayal of Boys and Men

The Trauma of Sexual Abuse

Richard B. Gartner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138942226
• eBook ISBN: 9781317375579
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Understanding the Sexual Betrayal of Boys and Men: The Trauma of Sexual Abuse is an indispensable go-to book for understanding male sexual victimization. It has become increasingly clear since the 1980s that men and boys, like women and girls, are sexually abused and assaulted in alarming numbers. Yet there have been few resources available to victims, their loved ones, or those trying to help them.

Richard B. Gartner was in the vanguard of clinicians treating male sexual victimization and has written extensively about it, initially in professional papers, then in his landmark 1999 book for clinicians Betrayed as Boys: Psychodynamic Treatment of Sexually Abused Men, continuing with his 2005 work Beyond Betrayal: Taking Charge of Your Life after Boyhood Sexual Abuse. He has been a tireless teacher, clinician, and advocate for male victims of sexual abuse in the classroom, the lecture hall, and of course the consulting room as well as in newspaper, television, radio, and online interviews.

Dr. Gartner has gathered together expert colleagues from the trauma, psychoanalytic, medical, and survivor treatment fields. Together, they have created a comprehensive guide to what was once thought to be a rarity but now is clearly an all-too-common occurrence. Understanding the Sexual Betrayal of Boys and Men looks at the realities of male sexual victimization, guiding clinicians and lay people alike to understand the complexities of the devastation it causes in victimized boys and men. It considers topics as diverse as:

• sexual assault in institutions like the military, sports teams, schools, universities, and religious organizations;
• sex trafficking of boys and adolescents;
• neurobiology and brain chemistry of male survivors of sexual abuse;
• gender and sexual dysfunctions and confusions resulting from sexual exploitation and trauma;
• physicians' treatment of sexually abused men's medical problems;
• socio-cultural influences on processing and treating men's and boys' sexual victimization.

Understanding the Sexual Betrayal of Boys and Men is required reading for anyone working with male victims of sexual abuse and assault at any level – psychotherapists, rape counselors, attorneys, journalists, guidance counselors, physicians, clergy, graduate students, and lawmakers – and helpful to lay people interested in this often-unrecognized problem.

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Part I

Sexually abused men and their challenges

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Chapter 1

Effects of sexual abuse and assault on boys and men

Richard B. Gartner

What have we learned about understanding boys and men with histories of sexual victimization and trauma?

When teaching about the subject, I often start by talking about overt and covert abuse; memories that have always been present and shadowy memories that remain forever elusive although persistent; sexualized attachment that never becomes physical; prevalent feelings of responsibility for abuse that happened even in early boyhood; and violent assault versus skilled grooming that makes a boy accede to ensuing sex acts.

I then tell my students and colleagues there are three themes I want them to recognize in order to understand how male victims of sexual abuse and assault differ from their female counterparts. These are: masculine gender socialization; feelings and worries about homosexuality; and fears of becoming predators themselves.

Masculine gender socialization informs how boys and men think of masculinity and therefore how they measure up as men. As I have said elsewhere, for many men this means believing that:

“[R]eal” men are in charge of themselves and therefore cannot be victimized . . . masculine men don’t express emotions, are “independent” rather than “needy,” are competitive and resilient, and welcome sexuality whenever it is offered, particularly from women.

(Gartner, 1999, pp. 67–68)

According to these traditional masculine stereotypes, “ideal” men must suppress many of the very characteristics needed to heal from sexual abuse, most importantly, the capacity to experience themselves as victims without sacrificing their inner sense of being men. Therefore, an important part of psychotherapeutic treatment may involve actively challenging and critiquing these stereotypes (Lisak, 1995).¹ As Kia-Keating, Grossman, Sorsoli, and Epstein (2005) put it:

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Therapists can take on the role of helping men to see their experiences in the context of traditional expectations of masculinity, to critically assess gender roles, and to learn how to reformulate traditional codes based on their own provisions. It is important for therapists to acknowledge and support the process of gender deconstruction, with the understanding that it is necessary to inform the process of amending patterns of abuse and violence.

(p. 183)

While stereotyped ideas about manhood continue to prevail in many parts of society, new ideas have started to take their place in others (cf. Messerschmidt, 2015; Hammarén, Haywood, Herz, Johansson, & Ottemo, 2017). In an op-ed in the New York Times, journalist Charles Blow (2016) eloquently describes these changes and the complications they bring:

Today, both men and women are called upon to live up to the traditional ideals of both genders. So the ideal man, at least in polite society, gracefully achieves a series of balances. He is steady and strong, but also verbal and vulnerable. He is emotionally open and willing to cry, but also restrained and resilient. He is physical, and also intellectual . . . [He] honors the women in his life in whatever they want to do. He treats them with respect in the workplace and romance in the bedroom. He is successful in the competitive world of the marketplace but enthusiastic in the kitchen and gentle during kids’ bath time. This new masculine ideal is an unalloyed improvement on all the earlier masculine ideals. It’s a great achievement of our culture. But it is demanding and involves reconciling a difficult series of tensions.

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My second focus about male sexual victimization involves fears and concerns about homosexuality. Most male sexual predators and victims self-identify as heterosexual, yet male-on-male sexual abuse is often perceived as a sign of homosexuality in one or the other, or both. The impact on a boy – whether straight or gay – of sexual abuse by a man or boy can be considerable. Boys growing up with a predominantly straight identification often feel their sexual identity is undermined at an age when it is just forming. Such a boy may wonder why he was chosen by a man as a sexual victim; whether the abuser knew something about his sexual identity he himself didn’t know; or whether he was “really” gay because he “allowed” abuse to occur. Boys growing up with a predominantly gay identification, on the other hand, may feel hurried into recognition of their sexual preferences. Or, they may associate gay sex with secrecy, exploitation, and betrayal. Most destructively, they may decide the abuse “turned them gay,” thus making it far more complicated to develop a positive sense of themselves as gay men, since they may feel that being gay means the abuser “won.”²

Finally, male survivors of sexual abuse and assault frequently worry they themselves will become abusers, even if they have never experienced desires to be sexual with a child. Or, aware of the commonly believed myth that sexually abused boys almost inevitably grow up to become sexually abusing men, they may fear disclosing their history, thinking others will perceive them as potential abusers and be afraid to allow them near children. One man who disclosed sexual abuse in his 60s, first to his wife, then to a therapist, was terrified to tell his grown sons about it, fearful his daughters-in-law would no longer allow him near his grandchildren.

Particularly challenging is helping a man who in later childhood or adolescence was reactively but inappropriately sexual with a vulnerable, usually younger, child. I am not talking about habitual predators or pedophiles here. I have not worked with such individuals. Rather, I am referring to men who reacted before they had matured enough to fully comprehend that what was done to them was wrong (Johnson, 2009). As boys, they may have assumed it was all right to repeat it with others, or perhaps had the sense that such actions were inappropriate but had not yet developed sufficient judgment and self-control to stop themselves. Working with such a man involves helping him acknowledge that he did something very wrong, experience remorse and make amends if appropriate, but also move beyond his guilt in order to heal from the hurt done to him.

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These are the underpinnings that often inform the psychology of sexually victimized boys and men. Following are stories of how lives of actual men in treatment unfolded following sexual betrayal. First is Nels,³ a victim of brutal incest. Second, Jozef, an athlete trapped by the coach who could bring him stardom. Third, Tucker, “lucky” enough to be seduced by his female educator. And, finally, Brandon, whose creepy relationship with his father subverted his emerging sexuality.

Nels: good boys serve others

Nels grew up on a farm in a strait-laced rural area. His parents, while not religious themselves, came from repressive religious and cultural backgrounds. Growing up, there was little tolerance for questioning, “whining,” or discussion of negative or sexual experiences.

Living far from the small town where he attended school, Nels had little opportunity to play with children other than his siblings. In any case, there were always chores to be done on the farm, so playtime was considered a foolish luxury.

Residing on the farm with Nels’s family was his mother’s younger brother, Uncle Henrik. Henrik was a dwarf, a man regarded with great sympathy in the community because of the misfortune of his birth. That he had overcome his disabilities enough to earn a living and even volunteer for various charities was considered an admirable example of how adversity can be overcome.

But when Nels was 4 years old Uncle Henrik grabbed him one day and brutally raped him. From that day forward sexual attacks by Uncle Henrik were nearly a daily part of Nels’s young life. With time, Henrik also assaulted Nels’s younger brother and one of his sisters, sometimes coercing Nels into participating with them as well.

There was never a pretense that these assaults arose from affection for the children. They were always painful, fierce, and vicious. Nevertheless, Nels devised an internal narrative that he was nobly sacrificing himself to help his worthy uncle maintain his sanity while living the harsh life his body sentenced him to. After all, as his mother was fond of saying, if anyone had any grievances about life, all they had to do was look at Henrik to see how fortunate they were. So who was Nels to complain? Self-sacrifice was a great virtue in Nels’s family and culture, and Nels tried hard to be a virtuous boy.

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Nels and his siblings never discussed these rapes. Their family frowned on talking about life’s travails and in any case they had no language with which to discuss these terrible things. For that matter, the attacks began so early in their lives, and their lives were so isolated from other children’s, that they barely knew the assaults were unusual.

So the three children adapted to their trauma alone. When they discussed things much later in life, Nels’s sister acknowledged that Henrik had “tried” to assault her but maintained she had successfully resisted him; this despite Nels’s total recall of seeing her assaulted and in pain on multiple occasions. This denial (or dissociation) was his sister’s pervasive style of dealing with anxiety. On the other hand, quite possibly as an aftereffect of these childhood assaults, Nels’s brother became a drug addict and male prostitute, dying of a drug overdose in his 40s.

Nels’s own adaptation was both positive and negative. He left the farm and was successful in university and then in an arts career. But he developed a severe alcohol problem, eventually experiencing blackouts. In addition, he found himself unexpectedly (and disturbingly) attracted to some men, though he never acted on this attraction and never truly questioned his heterosexual orientation. He was also highly ambivalent about the attention he got in his career: feeling vulnerable to attack if highly visible, he grew more anxious the more successful he became.

Nels never revealed to anyone what happened with Uncle Henrik, trying hard not to think about it himself. By now he lived far from his extended family, although he maintained close ties to it. Then Henrik suddenly died. Sitting through the glowing eulogies at his uncle’s funeral was agonizing to Nels. He remained silent but later went on a severe bender. He could no longer bear his life.

To the astonishment of all who knew him, Nels precipitously switched from his burgeoning arts career to one in business that required skill and intelligence but where it was easy to stay under the radar and not be noticed. At this point he attended a few AA meetings, started long-term therapy, and over time maintained consistent sobriety on his own.

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Nels eventually told some family members he had been sexually abused as a boy, but only named his abuser to one or two. After all, Henrik remained a saint in many people’s eyes and Nels could not bring himself to face the anger and disbelief he felt sure people would express if he disclosed what his uncle had done. His widowed mother was exhibiting signs of dementia and he saw no purpose in confronting her with how she had not protected him from Henrik.

Once he stopped drinking, his severe depression became more apparent; he started psychotherapy in his late 30s. His characteristic self-sacrificing became increasingly apparent. His extended family continued to turn to him for help, and he was unfailingly available no matter what they asked of him. His wife and children also made many demands, often appropriately but sometimes well beyond what Nels could reasonably accomplish. Yet he never said no. Similarly, at work he was asked to work beyond the hours others did, and he could never set limits on these demands.

Only with time did he realize how angry he was about his role as constant rescuer. And he noticed again and again that when he asked for help it was rarely forthcoming either within his family or at work.

For example, Nels’s mother eventually had to be put in a nursing home. Although competent members of the family lived nearby, it fell upon Nels, who lived ten states away, to decide on the placement, manage the move, and get rid of the detritus of a lifetime. It was a major shift on his part to agree to my suggestion that he hire movers and an estate liquidator. At first he demurred, saying that in his town it would be considered scandalous not to do everything by himself. But when he thought about it Nels realized his extended family and neighbors had no real hold on him regarding how he handled things. He was stretched to his limit because of work responsibilities and the care his wife now required because of a chronic illness. Since no one else stepped up to the plate, he decided he could deal with the move as he chose. He did so, dismissing relatives’ complaints about the money he was spending from his mother’s estate and ignoring gossip about his “spendthrift ways.” This was extraordinarily liberating for him.

With time, Nels found ways to make mild requests of others, and often when he was politely firm people did their part. By the same token, through a series of changes at work and mild modifications of his attitude, his work situation improved. As he ended treatment, he began to re-engage as an amateur in the creative field he’d pursued earlier in life, rediscovering the tremendous satisfaction he had once felt expressing himself through his medium.

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Jozef: the price of athletic stardom

Jozef has come a long way from his impoverished beginning in a small city in another country. The illegitimate son of a salesclerk and a married man, he only met his father three times by age 18; when they did meet his father was aloof and formal. He extended little child support to Jozef’s mother, who later had two children by other men. The father himself was a “shady character,” according to Jozef, a profligate womanizer who fathered several children by other women, showing little interest in any of them.

A bright boy, Jozef used his athletic prowess to gain admission to an elite private school where he excelled in his sport, eventually getting chosen for his country’s national team. While his family was never considered quite respectable in his hometown, Jozef became something of a celebrity due to his athletic triumphs.

Jozef developed a close relationship with his coach, Axel, also a national hero because of the winning streaks of the nationally prominent teams he coached. Having no other father figure in his life, Jozef gravitated to Axel. Three afternoons a week, Jozef went home with Axel be...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Praise
• Understanding the Sexual Betrayal of Boys and Men
• Psychoanalysis in a New Key
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• PART I Sexually Abused Men and their Challenges
• PART II Research, Biology, and Medical Treatment
• PART III Institutional and Cultural Effects
• PART IV Exploitation and Sexuality
• Index