See for yourself: the conclusion

I mentioned six parts but I’m ending this little series today. We’ve covered four important aspects of living as–or alongside–survivors in a world where sexual predators are a frequent and under-reported reality. You can click on each one, below, to get back to them:

1. Part 1: The problem of rosy spectacles
2. Part 2: Not your mother’s charm bracelet
3. Part 3: Protecting our kids: scales and chocolate bars
4. Part 4: I’ve got a bad feeling about this: protecting ourselves and our marriages

This last post is simple: read the book. It’s not an easy read. One person said to me, “You know, this is something that’s really creepy for a lot of people to think about.” Yeah. But creepy isn’t an excuse for ignorance. Nor is it an excuse for overlooking or dismissing the possibility of recidivism, even in folks who seem to be pretty amazing people.

Read the book, because after studying and working with and even providing therapy to predators, I dare say no one knows them or their capabilities better than she. Don’t just take my word for it. Read the book. Check out her sources. Do a literature search for yourself.

Salter describes her book this way:

It is, first of all, a book about secrecy and deception because secrecy is the lifeblood of sexual aggression. It is a book about why and how sex offenders get away with their crimes for decades, sometimes forever. It is about how they fool you and me and people like us everywhere. It will touch on why we are so trusting, which we are as long as the offender isn’t poor and toothless and/or of a different ethnic group, as long as he looks like us and talks like us…reading this book will make it harder for sex offenders to get access to you or your children. It will make it harder because knowing how they think and act and operate is the best protection that we have. Indeed, it is the only protection possible. (p. 4)

And that right there is reason enough for me to have read it and spent this much time and cyberspace on it for you and yours.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this: Protecting ourselves and our marriages (Predators, Part 4)

The familiar quote from Obi-Wan in Star Wars sticks in my head as I consider my own experiences of revictimization in my adult life. What is revictimization? It is physical, emotional or sexual abuse experienced by an adult who was sexually abused as a child. (I would add virtual abuse to this as well.) It is common. It is tragic. And it is real.

As someone who was abused as a child by both males and females and in many different ways, I’ve had my share of revictimization. Here are just a few:

In college, I managed to avoid full blown rape, but I had more than one frightening encounter with co-eds who would have become violent or coercive had it not been for close friends just outside the room.

Once, when I was a new nurse excited about my new job in the operating room, I had a surgeon sexually harass me in the middle of a kidney transplant. Newly re-attached, it began to grow larger and pinker and pulsate as I held it in my gloved and sterile hand: a miracle of life for the patient, but a tool of shame and harassment for the narcassistic surgeon. He took it as an opportunity to throw out several comments about my experiences with “other pink and pulsating things.” I was so enthralled with the science of it all I didn’t realize his implications until the entire operating room–no less than ten gowned and masked professionals–erupted in laughter.

As a wife, I had a frightening encounter in a separate workplace when a man–unbeknownst to us at the time but later found to have been a registered sex offender–made unwonted, obsessive and terrifying sexual advances toward me and no fewer than 1/2 dozen other females in the business. I know for a fact that at least six of these other women had histories–some of them significant–of childhood sexual abuse.

In each of these cases–and the ones I didn’t write about here–I had a bad feeling about the person every single time.

It is a known fact that men with an affinity for sexual abuse and misconduct have an almost supernatural ability to find and then target women with histories like mine. My therapist said in a room of thousands, they could find someone like me in minutes. Anna Salter writes that these men possess “…a persistence and a compulsiveness that few outside the drug addiction world could appreciate.” Combined with the covert, undetectable nature of predators and, what experts agree is the near certainty of recidivism, it is no wonder survivor revictimization is real, frequent, and tragic.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to learn to listen to and trust our instincts. But we must also learn to be wise and to protect ourselves; and, if we are married, we must act ruthlessly to protect our marriages. Thank goodness most places of employment now have sexual harassment policies in place. That offers us some protection as we go about our daily jobs. But we must be wise about the interpersonal boundaries we establish when communicating and interacting with members of the opposite sex.

Until a few years ago, I tended to be way too trusting and naive with my relationships with the opposite sex. (Evidently, I’m still behind the times: I didn’t even know what swinging was–let alone that it is pretty common–until a couple months ago.) Now I know it’s wise to avoid emotional and personal conversations with men other than my husband and my therapist. I know it’s best for me not to be FaceBook friends with members of the opposite sex. (I make a few exceptions, for guys who are also friends with my husband or have proven to be trustworthy, but even then I don’t ever “chat” or write more than a sentence or two.)  I know to always keep the door open or meet in a room that has windows with members of the opposite sex; not to ride in a car alone with someone of the opposite sex; never to go for a “business lunch” alone with someone of the opposite sex; and whenever possible, to limit the length of email and other online messages to members of the opposite sex. I love the example of Billy Graham, of whom it’s been said never even rode in an elevator alone with a woman. Instead, he would politely step out and wait for the next one, to even avoid the possibility of a rumor of impropriety.

All of this might seem harsh, but in a world of over 50% marriage failure rates, rampant affairs and the media’s romanticism of extramarital relationships, I don’t think so.

Add to that the sad fact of revictimization, and survivors are sitting ducks. Walking bulls-eyes. Kamikaze targets.

How appropriate boundaries look for one person will be different from another. I believe it’s important to talk it through with your spouse, and let him in on the facts of revictimization. Make sure you are both aware of the way predators work and the reality of recidivism for those who have targeted other women in the past. Know the facts about communication and grooming tactics of predators. (I think the article Communication Tactics Used By Sexual Predators To Entrap Children Explained  can also be applied to how they work on adult women.) For example, the man who targeted me and the several other women in the office a few years ago often came up behind us and touched our hair or put his hand on our shoulder or knee in meetings. He complimented us, first subtly, then more frequently. He was grooming in predatory and purposeful ways that were sly and seemingly innocent to outsiders, but significant and terrifyingly intrusive to those he targeted.

Ultimately, it is up to us. Boundaries and instincts can go along way as we, as survivors, learn to live more safely in an unsafe world.  But we must also be wise, we must be aware, and we must do what we can to teach others these facts and realities.

Protecting our kids: scales and chocolate bars (part 3)

Welcome to part 3 of my little series on sexual predators. If you’re new, you can catch up by clicking on part 1 and part 2. And don’t worry: I’m not going to make you feel guilty about eating chocolate or your weight.

Blogging is an interesting phenomenon. I liken it to running your own business: you’re really not accountable to anyone, but at the same time–if you want to run a legitimate and respected one–you’re accountable to everyone. I take this writing very, very seriously. As a Christ-follower, as a nurse with the utmost respect for evidence-based practice, and as an artist, I choose every word precisely. So, I take very seriously the questions I receive about how we, as mothers and survivors, can possibly keep our children safe. There will be a couple of other posts after this (I’m thinking six, in all). But this one, on protecting kiddos, is the one that hits closest to home.

I’m perhaps a bit hyper-vigilant about watching out for and protecting my kids. Recently, one of them was involved in an activity where the leader kept giving my child chocolate bars. Immediately my head was flooded with bells and sirens, and I talked to the program director right away about the leader’s intentions. The director’s assurances were comforting, but you better believe I still kept my eye on the guy, knowing that by the time someone ends up with a crime that shows up on a background check they have already racked up countless other victims.

I’m not an expert on how to best protect our kids. A topic as serious as this requires the expertise, once again, of Anna Salter. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of reading her book, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists and Other Sex Offenders. Who They Are, How They Operate and How We Can Protect Ourselves and Our Children.  Regarding the protection of our kids, here is a great excerpt:  “It’s hard to remember now, but hospitals were once careless about blood. The gloved and masked creatures our children know as doctors and nurses were once people who actually put their hands on patients without a latex barrier, who smiled without a mask. But then came AIDS, and it became clear that caretakers could not tell who did and did not have AIDS until after they had drawn blood, after they had exposed themselves to possible infection. And so health care workers simply started treating everyone as though it were possible he/she had AIDS. Now they wear gloves with every patient. They use the same blood-handling procedures with everyone, regardless of whether they “look like” they have AIDS or not. ..Assume every coach, every priest, every teacher is not likely to be a sexual predator, but that one could be and that you will not know if he is. Given that we cannot detect child molesters or rapists with any consistency, we must pay attention to ways of deflecting any potential offenders from getting access to us or to our children.” (p. 223, Chapter 11)

How, you say?

By being present.

Oh, and handing your kid a cell phone is not the same as being present.

The astounding busy-ness of American families causes a lot of  trouble. We simply cannot afford to be too busy not to attend our kiddo’s practices, meet their after-school activity leaders, or let someone we’ve only just met drive our child to an event.  We cannot be too busy to let them walk or play at the neighborhood park alone anymore. We even need to think long and hard  before sending our kiddos with people we do know well. Remember: these folks are experts at deception. As Salter writes: “The better you know him, the more you like him, the more stake you have in believing he is not a child molester. You may not have considered the impact your liking him has on your judgement, but rest assured he has. He may not have studied deception first hand, but he has lived it. He has seen firsthand how hard it is for people who like him to believe he’s a child molester. So he will work very hard for you to like him. [They] are professionals operating among kind-hearted amateurs. “ (p. 204)

This “likeability” phenomenon can even dupe people more than once, as it did in one small community, when a convicted molester moved away for several years. Time must have eventually erased many of the towns folk’s memories of how calculating and dangerous he was, because a few years passed, and after re-friending many of the townsfolk on the internet and convincing them he was recovered, he had the unbelievable gall to move back…to that same town. In fact, he befriend some of the same people who had walked alongside the several victims he hurt so badly. The man was able to get people to like him…again.

There is no easy, catch-all answer. Awareness helps. But overall, it’s a balancing act. It’s a balancing act for parents, because we cannot shelter our kids and keep them out of activities, but we need to be involved enough and in a way that doesn’t freak them out and cause them to live in fear, too.

It’s a balancing act for Christ-followers, because we are called to love our coaches and neighbors, and on top of that, the broken and marginalized. We are even called to go to places like prisons and homeless shelters and third world countries and embrace those who may have committed the very same crimes I write about today.

But there’s a big difference between loving someone with Christ’s love and enjoying life with someone and walking along side someone…versus allowing them to cross (and even re-cross) boundaries that give them access to the deeper parts of our hearts and minds and bodies…the parts of ourselves reserved for our closest friends, our families, and our God.

As parents we must decide where those  boundaries are for our children, and guard them diligently.

Enjoy your kids. Help your kids enjoy life and their sports and activities. Take them places–as a family–where they can serve the poor and marginalized. Just do so while keeping an eye out for those who come close to the boundary lines. Read Salter’s book and visit RAINN for expert tips on prevention and warning signs.

Oh…and most important of all…pray. Pray all day long for protection of you and your kids. There will be times we must let them leave our sides, and in these instances we cannot underestimate the power of prayer, nor the amount of love God has for our kids.

Pray.