Child Sexual Abuse

I was on the phone the other day with my buddy, a Penn State alum. He is one of our nation’s “greatest generation,” having had his college career interrupted by his service in World War II. Our conversation could just as well have been about the recent/current scandal, here in Charleston, involving a Citadel graduate who has coached and taught, been a school administrator, foster parent and church youth group leader locally for the past ten years, a young man charged with multiple child sexual abuse crimes. But because of where my friend went to college, so many years ago, the tenor of our conversation had more to do with a similar scandal at his alma mater.

Except, the one question he asked me–it wasn’t what I’ve heard more of in recent days–how such a venerable institution as the Pennsylvania State University, in general, and arguably the most respected, if not idolized football coach in modern sports history, in particular, could allow such a travesty to have continued, with at least some awareness of the aberant behavior (on the part of yet another popular Penn State assistant football coach), for so long.

Rather, my friend’s question was this: “What causes someone to do something like that?” The “something” being, of course, the sexual abuse of children. As in the two cases I’ve referred to, specifically, the sexual molestation of young boys on the part of a trusted adult male mentor.

I was talking to my buddy on my cell phone, waiting in the car for my wife to come out of the grocery store. At which she did, just as he asked the question. So I told him my response would have to wait until he and I were together again. We’re both big sports fans and sometimes go to ball games together where, interestingly enough, we often talk about subjects far removed from necessarily anything athletic.

And while I’m hardly an expert at diagnosing and treating pedophiles, nor in the treatment of persons who have been sexually abused, I’ve been a mental health professional long enough to have spent considerable time with other mental health professionals who do have expertise in matters of this sort, learning from them, while also doing considerable reading on the subject and attending training sessions concerning sexual abuse with respect to both the abuser and the abused.

Here, then is what I will likely be explaining to my buddy in response to his question: “What causes someone to do something like that?” Which I’m sharing here, thinking that other laypersons (regarding mental health matters) might find such general information on such a painful subject helpful.

Getting Off the Guilt Hook–Finally

I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy–what happened to the University of South Carolina’s great sophomore running back, Marcus Lattimore, who suffered a season-ending knee injury when the Gamecocks played at Mississippi State in a recent college football game. I say that, having been there, done that and gotten the T-shirt.

Knees aren’t built for playing football, since they don’t bend sideways or backwards. And because orthopedic surgery and rehabilitation wasn’t, half-a-century ago, what it is today, in retrospect the injury I sustained proved to be career-ending. Sometimes the direction of our lives can turn on a single unfortunate incident. I didn’t, however, believe that then, and hung on too long, hoping to still live the dream. Since, in those halcyon days, college coaches-recruiters and pro baseball scouts were paying me lots of attention. But it was over–for me at least–my playing days: however long it may have taken to sink in. And worse, if once upon a time I could run pretty fast, today–on two prosthetic knees, two hip replacements and a couple of back surgeries–I can barely walk.

Whereas, in Lattimore’s case, I expect he’ll be back better than ever.

The violence of football is a trade-off. Despite the damage the game can do, and often does, adolescent boys and men need some reasonably fair place and way to dissipate at least some of the testosterone that tends to characterize most of us males.

At least I was carrying the ball, my foot planted when a couple of big guys tackled me. Lattimore, however–the consummate team-player–he was blocking for someone else when an opposing player, who wasn’t blocking or tackling anyone, rolled over on his leg. It could have been one of his own team-mates, as often happens, particularly to linemen, where the space of the contact is more confined. The military call it “friendly fire,” merely an accident, hardly intentional.

Strangely enough, however, Marcus Lattimore’s unfortunate injury has finally freed me of the guilt I’ve carried all these years. How’s that, you ask?

Bullying and Immunology

My receding hairline these days reveals a small blue spot above my forehead. And sometimes I’m asked what it is. I explain that it is pencil lead. When I was a 14-year-old high school freshman, an older kid stuck a pencil in my head, a reminder of which my ever-increasing baldness exposes more than half-a-century later.

In the culture of my small-town high school in those days, that was part of an honored tradition called “Freshman Initiation”–at least for boys. By the time I got to college, a similar ritual became even more violent, in most fraternities, and certainly in the “jock dorm” where I resided.

Today, would that be considered “bullying?” Or would it more likely be expressed as insulting, demeaning, embarrassing, even threatening comments about my looks, size, sexuality, intelligence, ethnicity, religion or whatever online in mine or someone’s social network?

Bullying of any sort shouldn’t, of course, be tolerated by authority figures in any institution–most notably, involving kids in school. Those who bully should, by any and every means, be exposed for whatever inadequacy they harbor, the fraudulence of which finds such de-humanizing expression in the “picking on” of anyone sufficiently vulnerable.

And while I’ve never considered myself, at any age, a likely target for bullying, the kid who assaulted me with a pencil–he obviously had enough problems to find me threatening in some way or other. Since that is, after all, what bullying reveals.

As important as it is, however, to expose and even punish bullies, such a defensive approach will never eliminate the problem. Let me explain . . .

Who’s Perfect?

Trying to be “perfect” can make you crazy–if not others, as well–if they let you do that to them. At least in the way most of us, these days, define the term–”perfect.” This, I recently discovered, once again, when writing the initial installment of my blog. It was a piece in reference to disgraced New York Congressman, Anthony Weiner. Or is it “Wiener”?