Dear Prudence's Molesters (and why she never told)

[summer]

www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/06/why_don_t_sexual_assault_victims_speak_out_i_was_molested_three_times_here_s_why_i_never_told_my_family_or_the_police_.html

It could have been much worse. None of the three people who molested me when I was young was a predatory pedophile like Jerry Sandusky. What I went through was brief and sadly common. It’s estimated, though no one knows the actual numbers, that one in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before they reach 18. What happened shook me up at the time, but my experiences weren’t shattering. I didn’t repress the memories—I’ve just never given them much thought. But the trial of Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach, has made me think more deeply about what was done to me and what I did in response.

As Dear Prudence, I always urge people to report any sexual abuse. Removing the secrecy takes the shame from the victim and puts the blame on the perpetrator. Exposure is the way to stop repeat offenders. But I never told anyone back then. Even with the benefit of hindsight, considering the world in which these events took place—from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s—and the family in which I lived, I still understand my choice.

The first incident was when I was about 9 years old and I was sleeping over at my cousins’ house. I was particularly close to one cousin, a girl my age. She had a brother who was about 14. Somehow he and I ended up lying on the floor alone together, watching TV. He started gently tickling my feet. “Doesn’t that feel good?” he asked. It did. He slowly moved his fingers up my legs, and when he got past my knees I started to become uneasy and told him to stop. He said the “tickling game” felt much better the higher up it went. (I note that Victim 6 in the Sandusky trial testified that the coach’s first approach was to call himself “the tickle monster.”) I tried to take my cousin’s hand off me, but he kept creeping upward, telling me how good it would feel if he went all the way between my legs.


By this time I knew something bad was happening and told him no more tickling. But he became more insistent. Holding me down with one hand, he got his other between my legs and pushed my underpants aside. I broke away from his grasp and ran out of the room. I joined my female cousin in her bedroom, and normal life resumed.

The idea of putting these deeds into words and telling my parents—or his—seemed worse than what happened. I knew it would make the adults angry and possibly cause a fissure between our families. Maybe he would say I asked him to tickle me and I was lying about the rest. I saw my male cousin many more times during my childhood, but he never tried to touch me again. Eventually our two families drifted apart, and I’ve had no contact with him in years. He did end up being sentenced to three years in prison, but it was for a white-collar crime, not sexual abuse.

The next event came when I was 15, a freshman in high school. I was at the house of a friend, “Diane.” We had been doing homework together, and it was time for me to go. It was winter, cold and dark, so her father offered to give me a ride. He was a quiet man, a bit of a nebbish, and on the brief ride we talked innocuously about school. He pulled up just short of the driveway to my home, turned off the engine, then turned to face me. His voice choked with emotion, he started babbling about how men have sexual needs. If a man’s wife won’t have sex, he said, that leaves him angry and frustrated. I knew I should just open the door, but I was so shocked that I froze. Then he lunged at me, a hand on each breast, his face pressed to mine. I pushed him away, got out of the car, and ran into my house.

Again, I didn’t say anything. Diane’s dad was the kind of man my father, a former college boxer, had contempt for. I imagined that if I told my father, he wouldn’t call the police but instead would go to Diane’s house and punch her father in the face. That would make things unpleasant in school the following day. A part of me thought her father was pathetic. High school boys were more adept at making passes.

For years my memory of that episode stopped at my front door, as if the whole thing were just a brief snippet of video that then goes blank. But of course that wasn’t the end. Diane and I remained friends through high school, and we were at each other’s houses many times. Sandusky’s lawyers have tried to impugn the credibility of the victims by pointing out that their testimony is sometimes more detailed than the accounts they first gave to the grand jury. Victim 7 explained, “Talking about different events and through talking about things in my past, different things have triggered different memories.” I know exactly what he means. Thinking about it this week, I remembered for the first time in years that Diane’s father continued to offer me rides. I always refused unless she came along, as she often did.

One night her father said he’d drive me home, and Diane said she’d join us, so I said yes. Her father turned to Diane and said she needed to stay home and finish her homework. She protested that she only had a little reading left and wanted to come. He became adamant, which was out of character for him, insisting that she stay home. I had already accepted the ride, so I would have to get out of it somehow if Diane didn’t come. Diane’s mother seemed to sense something was amiss. She said firmly, to her husband’s clear frustration, that Diane was to come along with me. Did she suspect what her husband was up to? Did she know?

The last incident was not child abuse, because I was no longer a minor, though I was still a teenager of 18 or 19. Several years earlier, my family had worked for the election of our congressman, Father Robert Drinan, an anti-Vietnam War, pro-choice priest. He was in town for a fundraiser or town meeting, and I went. Afterward he offered me a ride to the subway. (You’d think I would have learned.) He was in his 50s, and as he drove we chatted about college. We got to where he was letting me off, he turned off the engine, and he began jabbering incoherently about men and women. Then he lunged, shoving his tongue in my mouth while running his hands over my breasts and up and down my torso. It seems like the set-up for a joke, a Jewish woman being molested by a Jesuit. As we tussled, I had probably the most naïve thought of my life: “How could this be happening, he’s a priest!”

As I shoved him off and opened the car door to get out, I saw I had left a smear of my pink lipstick on his clerical collar. Again, I told no one. It was embarrassing, revolting, and I had no desire to make accusations against a congressman, especially one I admired.

Maybe because I grew up in a chaotic household, knowing adults were unpredictable and unreliable, none of these incidents had an innocence-destroying effect. When I spoke to David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, he understood why silence was my instinctive reaction. “Kids have an intuition this might be taken as a big deal by adults, and are not sure they want it to be. It means confronting the adult who did it. For you, it involved your friend. What are you going to get out of it? You escaped, you feel it won’t happen again. You’re not thinking it will happen to someone else. From a cost-benefit analysis, it makes a lot of sense not to disclose.”

I’d like to think that we’re now in a different world as far as the reporting of child sexual abuse is concerned. But one of the most shocking things about the Sandusky case, as my colleague Emily Bazelon points out, is that the children who decided not to speak were too often right in suspecting that adults just wouldn’t believe them.


Fortunately for me, my perpetrators were neither rapists nor the kinds of hardcore predators who pick children who are too young, or too vulnerable, to escape. Finkelhor told me, “They had what they perceived to be some sexual need and thought there was an opportunity that didn’t have a lot of risks and took advantage.” Maybe my cousin just wanted to explore, though he was old enough to know what he was doing was wrong. But what did Diane’s father and Father Drinan expect would happen? That I would say I wanted to give them what they weren’t getting? I now think they each had an urge rather than a plan, and each was going to satisfy it, no matter the consequences. Not that there were any consequences.

But all of the incidents I’ve described were crimes. Because the events took place in Massachusetts, I talked to an attorney there, Carmen Durso, who has brought suits on behalf of many victims of pedophile priests. He said if these incidents happened today each would be a potential case of indecent assault and battery. (The state has harsher penalties if the victim is under age 14.) Because these would be sexual crimes, a conviction would lead to the defendant being put on the sex-offender registry.

Durso thought a prosecution of these one-time events would be a long shot, however. He cited a statement by the current district attorney of Suffolk County that, of 1,000 child sex abuse cases reported to their office each year, they only prosecute 200. “It’s likely what you described would be looked upon both then and now as relatively minor in the face of reasonable doubt a jury might have,” Durso said. He added that it’s nonetheless vital to make a complaint. “The likelihood is that the person who has done it will do it again.”

I know that speaking up can work. In my role as Dear Prudence, I fielded letters recently from two young women who had disturbing encounters with older men—one with a math tutor, the other with the father of a friend. In each case the men were getting a sexual thrill but also clearly trying to keep within the law. I said the police should be called because sometimes it’s the accumulation of evidence that makes a case. Indeed, in the follow-up letters I got, it turned out that several victims had already reported these men.

If my 16-year-old daughter had experienced what I did, of course I would want her to tell me. I would also act. A teenager who tries to molest his cousin should at the very least get intervention. A father who touches the breasts of his daughter’s friend should be reported to the police. But as much as I hate to say it, I’m not so sure I would advise her, if she were a young adult, to report a groping by a powerful man. As we’ve seen too many times, coming forward in a case like that opens a woman up to character evisceration. Father Drinan died in 2007, and I’m aware that I’ll be assailed for besmirching the memory of a distinguished man.

Because in each case I was able to push back immediately and end the abuse, these became isolated incidents. I was not traumatized. In some way I was even empowered—I was able to handle these bigger, older males. But now, all these years later, I’m left to wonder about Diane’s father: Did he ever touch anyone else?

[meshaliuknits]

Prudie's story reminds me of the early chapters of Foxy (Pam Grier's book). I cried for her a couple of times.

[pamela]

I think her advice is crap a lot of the time and that doesn't change here.

"But as much as I hate to say it, I’m not so sure I would advise her, if she were a young adult, to report a groping by a powerful man. As we’ve seen too many times, coming forward in a case like that opens a woman up to character evisceration."

So your response is to keep quiet and let him keep using his power for evil and shaming victims into silence?

[wrathofkuus]

Jul 30, 2012 10:57:11 GMT -5 pamela said:

I think her advice is crap a lot of the time and that doesn't change here.

"But as much as I hate to say it, I’m not so sure I would advise her, if she were a young adult, to report a groping by a powerful man. As we’ve seen too many times, coming forward in a case like that opens a woman up to character evisceration."

So your response is to keep quiet and let him keep using his power for evil and shaming victims into silence?

I too hate New Prudie's advice. Remember when the woman wrote in saying that her boyfriend had fucked a prostitute on vacation, and New Prudie told her that she should forgive him and stay with him, because the fact that he told her about it means he's a keeper?

[msmerymac]

Jul 30, 2012 10:57:11 GMT -5 pamela said:

I think her advice is crap a lot of the time and that doesn't change here.

"But as much as I hate to say it, I’m not so sure I would advise her, if she were a young adult, to report a groping by a powerful man. As we’ve seen too many times, coming forward in a case like that opens a woman up to character evisceration."

So your response is to keep quiet and let him keep using his power for evil and shaming victims into silence?

Uh, no. Her emotional response is that the situation isn't so black and white. Some people don't want to be the martyr. Some people don't want to be made an example of by having their character dissected. Many, many women don't report rape when the perpetrator is rich or powerful or popular because they don't want his defense team to slut shame her in court. Remember how Kobe Bryant's lawyers used the fact that his accuser had had sex recently with multiple men to try to convince the court that she obviously, therefore, didn't mean no, or couldn't decide for herself that she didn't want to have sex? After all, she had lots of sex! ^o)

Would it be better for society if everyone reported sexual assault? YES. It would also help stop people who are multiple offenders, as I believe many are (because I agree, how does she know she was the only one? She probably wasn't). But not everyone is willing to take one for the team and be an example, and I can't say I blame them.

[mandimija]

I don't agree, but I get where she's coming from. Perhaps a better response/advice would be for a young woman to prepare herself for the character evisceration that will inevitably come.

I say this as a woman who did not report my ex-husband for sexual assault. For starters, I can't prove it other than in a he-said she-said situation, and I just do not want to go through the crazy that comes with reporting someone for sexual assault. With it being a marital situation, the consent issue would have come up. I know my ex-husband. The character assassination would come. In fact, it has already come; he claimed I was schizophrenic to anyone who would listen after I left/filed for divorce, including many of my old contacts at my alma mater. I fought back and won.

Many times, these women have suffered enough. I can't bring myself to blame them for not coming forward in a system that all-too-often blames or slut shames the victim.

[gault]

This is making a grey zone out of something that should be black and white. Inappropriate touching, not okay. You say no and they do it anyway, not okay. Underage and your friend's dad/uncle/priest/what have you feels you up, NOT OKAY. I get emotionally that it can be difficult to pick which action to take afterward, but stuff like this is an example to other young girls about how to handle themselves.

She kind of sucks.

[pamela]

Jul 30, 2012 11:24:44 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

Jul 30, 2012 10:57:11 GMT -5 pamela said:

I think her advice is crap a lot of the time and that doesn't change here.

"But as much as I hate to say it, I’m not so sure I would advise her, if she were a young adult, to report a groping by a powerful man. As we’ve seen too many times, coming forward in a case like that opens a woman up to character evisceration."

So your response is to keep quiet and let him keep using his power for evil and shaming victims into silence?

Uh, no. Her emotional response is that the situation isn't so black and white. Some people don't want to be the martyr. Some people don't want to be made an example of by having their character dissected. Many, many women don't report rape when the perpetrator is rich or powerful or popular because they don't want his defense team to slut shame her in court. Remember how Kobe Bryant's lawyers used the fact that his accuser had had sex recently with multiple men to try to convince the court that she obviously, therefore, didn't mean no, or couldn't decide for herself that she didn't want to have sex? After all, she had lots of sex!

Would it be better for society if everyone reported sexual assault? YES. It would also help stop people who are multiple offenders, as I believe many are (because I agree, how does she know she was the only one? She probably wasn't). But not everyone is willing to take one for the team and be an example, and I can't say I blame them.

There is a difference though in warning someone to be prepared for the unfortunate consequences of reporting and saying you wouldn't recommend reporting someone because of those consequences. Just because she wasn't strong enough to deal with them, doesn't mean she should advise the next woman not to be either.

[ttt]

Jul 30, 2012 11:24:44 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

Jul 30, 2012 10:57:11 GMT -5 pamela said:

I think her advice is crap a lot of the time and that doesn't change here.

"But as much as I hate to say it, I’m not so sure I would advise her, if she were a young adult, to report a groping by a powerful man. As we’ve seen too many times, coming forward in a case like that opens a woman up to character evisceration."

So your response is to keep quiet and let him keep using his power for evil and shaming victims into silence?

Uh, no. Her emotional response is that the situation isn't so black and white. Some people don't want to be the martyr. Some people don't want to be made an example of by having their character dissected. Many, many women don't report rape when the perpetrator is rich or powerful or popular because they don't want his defense team to slut shame her in court. Remember how Kobe Bryant's lawyers used the fact that his accuser had had sex recently with multiple men to try to convince the court that she obviously, therefore, didn't mean no, or couldn't decide for herself that she didn't want to have sex? After all, she had lots of sex!

Would it be better for society if everyone reported sexual assault? YES. It would also help stop people who are multiple offenders, as I believe many are (because I agree, how does she know she was the only one? She probably wasn't). But not everyone is willing to take one for the team and be an example, and I can't say I blame them.

Dominique Strauss Kahn anyone?

[meshaliuknits]

Jul 30, 2012 11:12:31 GMT -5 wrathofkuus said:

I too hate New Prudie's advice. Remember when the woman wrote in saying that her boyfriend had fucked a prostitute on vacation, and New Prudie told her that she should forgive him and stay with him, because the fact that he told her about it means he's a keeper?

For serious? Those are some low standards.

[wrathofkuus]

Jul 30, 2012 14:05:18 GMT -5 meshaliuknits said:

Jul 30, 2012 11:12:31 GMT -5 wrathofkuus said:

I too hate New Prudie's advice. Remember when the woman wrote in saying that her boyfriend had fucked a prostitute on vacation, and New Prudie told her that she should forgive him and stay with him, because the fact that he told her about it means he's a keeper?

For serious? Those are some low standards.

I couldn't find the original Slate page, but I did find a page where someone had C&Ped it:

boostershot.blogspot.com/2006/09/cambodian-prostitute-blues.html

[meshaliuknits]

That is unreal.

You know what doesn't make up for sleeping with a prostitute while away on business? Making a charitable donation.

[Deleted]

Jul 30, 2012 11:52:33 GMT -5 pamela said:

Jul 30, 2012 11:24:44 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

Uh, no. Her emotional response is that the situation isn't so black and white. Some people don't want to be the martyr. Some people don't want to be made an example of by having their character dissected. Many, many women don't report rape when the perpetrator is rich or powerful or popular because they don't want his defense team to slut shame her in court. Remember how Kobe Bryant's lawyers used the fact that his accuser had had sex recently with multiple men to try to convince the court that she obviously, therefore, didn't mean no, or couldn't decide for herself that she didn't want to have sex? After all, she had lots of sex!

Would it be better for society if everyone reported sexual assault? YES. It would also help stop people who are multiple offenders, as I believe many are (because I agree, how does she know she was the only one? She probably wasn't). But not everyone is willing to take one for the team and be an example, and I can't say I blame them.

There is a difference though in warning someone to be prepared for the unfortunate consequences of reporting and saying you wouldn't recommend reporting someone because of those consequences. Just because she wasn't strong enough to deal with them, doesn't mean she should advise the next woman not to be either.

As the victim of rApe who reported it, the 2 years it took for my case to go through the system taught me that if I was ever raped again, I would not report it,

This doesn't mean I'm not 'strong enough', but thanks for the character assumption. But for 2 years my character was dragged through the mud by slimy defense lawyers who said i was a drunk slut because i was drunk and wearing a skirt when raped. I'd rather not do that again, thank you.

[ttt]

Jul 30, 2012 11:52:33 GMT -5 pamela said:

Jul 30, 2012 11:24:44 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

Uh, no. Her emotional response is that the situation isn't so black and white. Some people don't want to be the martyr. Some people don't want to be made an example of by having their character dissected. Many, many women don't report rape when the perpetrator is rich or powerful or popular because they don't want his defense team to slut shame her in court. Remember how Kobe Bryant's lawyers used the fact that his accuser had had sex recently with multiple men to try to convince the court that she obviously, therefore, didn't mean no, or couldn't decide for herself that she didn't want to have sex? After all, she had lots of sex!

Would it be better for society if everyone reported sexual assault? YES. It would also help stop people who are multiple offenders, as I believe many are (because I agree, how does she know she was the only one? She probably wasn't). But not everyone is willing to take one for the team and be an example, and I can't say I blame them.

There is a difference though in warning someone to be prepared for the unfortunate consequences of reporting and saying you wouldn't recommend reporting someone because of those consequences. Just because she wasn't strong enough to deal with them, doesn't mean she should advise the next woman not to be either.

So someone who doesn't want her life to be ruined in public isn't "strong"?

This is not a black and white issue. The consequences of reporting rape can sometimes be as traumatizing as the rape itself.