Rich Snowdon "Dealing With Incest Rapists: Excuses, Excuses, Excuses"

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Who is raping their own children? Who are these men? "Perverts … Psychos … Inadequate men … Psychopaths … Monsters." This was said by a man on the street, and until recently I would have said the same thing, before I volunteered to lead a psychotherapy group for such men. I was ready to face monsters: I could handle that. But I was completely unprepared for who they really were

When I first entered the therapy room, I couldn't even open my mouth to say hello. I took my place in their circle and sat down. When they started talking, I was involuntarily amazed that they were all ordinary guys, ordinary working men, unremarkable citizens. They reminded me of the men I grew up with. Bob had the same way of joking as my captain of the scouts; Peter seemed as reserved and authoritative as my priest; George was a banker, a member of the Presbyterian Church, and had the same scrupulous politeness as my father; and finally, worst of all was Dave, to whom I warmed from the very beginning - suddenly he reminded me of myself.

I looked at each of them in turn, studied the hands that did this, the mouths that did this, and more than anything else that night I didn't want any of them to touch me. I didn’t want anything from them to be passed on to me, so that they would make me the same as they themselves. However, even before the end of that evening, they touched me with their honesty and their denial, their regret and their self-justification, in short, their usualness.

During the year that I led this group and conducted interviews with imprisoned rapists, I listened intently as man after man tried to explain, defend himself, or forgive himself. What they said struck me as outrageous and at the same time sickening and pathetic. However, it was all painfully familiar.

Every Monday night I sat with this group trying to figure out how to get the job done and how to change something, and I continued to be haunted by difficult questions about what it meant to be a man. And along with these questions came melancholy, with which I could not do anything.

I considered myself a "good guy" who "would never do anything like this." I wanted these men to be as different from me as possible. At the same time that I heard them talk about their childhood and early adolescence, I found it harder and harder to deny that I had a lot in common with them. We grew up learning the same things about what it means to be men. We only practiced them in different ways and to varying degrees. We did not ask to be taught these things, and we never wanted to. Often they were imposed on us, and often we resisted it as best we could. However, this was usually not enough, and somehow, these lessons of masculinity remained in us.

We were taught that we have birthright privileges, that our nature is aggression, and we learned to take but not give. We have learned to receive and express love primarily through sex. We expected us to marry a woman who would look after us like our mother but obey us like our daughter. And we were taught that women and children belong to men, and that nothing prevents us from using their labor to our advantage and using their bodies for our pleasure and anger.

It was scary to listen to what the rapists had to say and then look back at my own life. I saw how often I was attracted to a woman who was soulful, spontaneous, caring and strong - but no more powerful than me. I was looking for someone who would have a lot of great qualities, but who at the same time would not question my definition of our relationship and would not jeopardize my comfort, speaking about their personal needs, which has a lot to offer, but which is easy to manage. like a puppy for whom you are the whole world, or a child. I also had to admit how hard it is to keep desiring, striving, and enjoying a relationship with a woman who is equally powerful in every respect.

During the week between the groups, I tried to make sense of my encounters with these men and myself, and as a result I turned to what I thought would be safe scientific research on the topic. I was able to find a lot of information that did not bring me any comfort. I learned that 95-99% of rapists are men, and I had to admit that incest is a gender problem, a male problem that we impose on women and children. I had to admit that this was not a crime committed by "a few sick strangers" as I thought for most of my life. When I spoke to Lucy Berliner, a victim rights expert at a Seattle hospital, she told me that one in four girls will be raped at least once until they become an adult, and David Finklehor, author of Children Are Victims of Sexual Assault, said me that the same applies to one of the eleven boys. Surprisingly, both of them considered these to be the most conservative estimates. Both of them said that in 75-80% of cases, the abuser was someone whom the child knew and often trusted.

The research took me back to the same place where the group passed in the evenings. I had to start thinking about millions of men, men from a wide variety of social, economic and professional backgrounds. Men who are fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, husbands, lovers, friends and sons. I had to think about ordinary American men.

To say that incest rapists are “ordinary men” is tantamount to taking a critical look at the socialization of men and discovering what is wrong with it. However, it is also a statement that men use as an excuse.

As the number of middle-class men being detained as rapists grows, it is quite common to hear police officers, parole officers, lawyers, judges and psychotherapists say, “Most of these men are not criminals. They have not previously committed crimes. They are good men who just made a mistake."

As soon as they call a man "good", then his violence ceases to be a crime. However, if a man is not considered "good", then his actions, regardless of his motives, will be condemned by law. An unemployed father who robbed a store to feed his children is denounced as a criminal, while a successful father who has raped his eight-year-old daughter for five years is considered a "good man" who deserves another chance.

Psychotherapists often report that incest perpetrators are not menacing men, that they are charming people, and that their actions are merely "distorted love" or "misdirected feelings." I listened carefully to these descriptions and did not know what to think about them, until one evening in the group I discovered that it was enough to scratch their surface a little to reveal the truth about them. I began to discuss the issue of injunctions, and then suddenly I saw muscle tension, teeth grinding and clenched fists, their whole appearance said that they all had more than enough masculinity.

I, a grown man, sat in the middle of this angry group, and I was scared. Everything inside me froze. I stopped hearing the echo of voices around me. The only thing I could think about was a child who was left alone with such a man. What a horror she must have felt. This bottomless rage that she should have felt, even if he used her body politely, gently complimenting her. Even if he spoke to her about his needs as a beggar, she was forced to obey him, or his rage awaited her. I could only think of a child who had to go through the rape alone, and who, unlike me, had nowhere to run, she did not have her own home, where she would go at ten in the evening after the end of the group.

Incest rapists are simply men who had the power to take what they wanted and who used it. They are men who are too much like other men. And they, too, use this fact as an excuse in the hope that it will help them get off with a short sentence in court.

There are rapists who have the courage to surrender themselves, and there are those who tell the whole truth during their arrest, try to change, even if it hurts a lot. Working with them is very effective, but they are rare.

From the very beginning to the end, most rapists deny what they have done. Dan: “I didn't do anything. I was tricked. Why is it because of such a trifle inflated, do not understand what, I just kissed her, and they keep repeating that I raped her. Isn't a father supposed to kiss his daughter? " Yale: "I did not commit any incest, and everyone who says this, let him come out with me one on one and decide this matter like a man."

Under pressure, some of them will agree that perhaps such a small thing as incest has happened to them once or twice. However, they vehemently deny that they bear any responsibility for what happened; instead, they claim that they are the real victims. The clever tales they invent to support this claim are far more powerful, destructive and dangerous than even the most stubborn denial.

Based on the theory that offense is the best defense, they try to soften our hearts by telling us that they are innocent victims of a provoking child or a bad mother. They believe that if they introduce someone else as a monster, then they will remain the good guys. The tales they tell represent a frightening version of the family - Lolita, the Wicked Witch, and Santa Claus.

Lolita: a child as a seducer

Lolita is the first of the descriptions that each of them gives to their daughter. The script is usually the same, although each man adds personal details to it. Jack: "She always walked around half naked, twisted her backside, so I had to do something about it." Zachary: “She's your typical little Brooke Shields, that's how she dresses. Little girls are growing up very quickly now. They are just like women. They all want it. " Thomas: “She kept coming to me, putting her hands on me, sitting down on her knees. She all wanted me to be affectionate with her. One thing led to another. She said no when it came to sex, but I didn't believe her. Because why then did she want everything else? " Frank: “My daughter is the devil. And this is not a metaphor. That's what I mean."

These men are faster than television scriptwriters and better than professional pornographers when they write line by line about the dangerous desires of little girls and how men are constantly in trouble because of them. They not only portray girls as objects for sex, but as aggressors, "demonic nymphets". They define not only the child's body, but also her soul.

Florence Rush, in The Biggest Secret, a revealing story of child sexual abuse, shows how deeply ingrained this hatred of girls is. She explains how Sigmund Freud based his theory and practice on Lolita - a lie that he helped reinforce and to which he gave weight.

In his essay "Femininity" he wrote: "… almost all of my female patients told me that they were seduced by their father."However, he cannot believe that there are so many men in civilized Vienna who sexually abuse their daughters. So instead, he decides that these women, who have confided in him their most painful secrets, are lying. However, this is not all. He stated that if a girl reports rape, she is simply revealing her deepest sexual fantasies, expressing their true nature, and that their expression means that they want to be "seduced." Lenny and Hank expressed the same thought in other words: "She asked for it."

In our culture, this concept is so pervasive and so deeply ingrained that it is not surprising that even girls who begin to blame themselves for the rape accept it. Unsurprisingly, many of them actually consider themselves Lolitas.

Carlos, sentenced to three years in Atascadero, the highest security hospital for sex offenders, tells the truth about Lolita to anyone who will listen: “Of course she seduced me, but that was only because I seduced her to seduce me … adult. I am responsible. " Carlos performed once on the Donahue Show and met with Katie Brady, a victim of incest, who wrote the book "Father's Days", in which she tells the story of her life. He snapped and sobbed violently during the program. For the first time in his life, he listened to his heart, and not to his defense mechanisms, and only then he realized to what horror he had doomed his daughter. It was the truth, told from the point of view of a child and a woman, that allowed psychotherapy to begin.

Wicked Witch: Vicious Mother

The second misconception that rapists use is the Wicked Witch they claim each of them married. Even if the victim's mother has a disability due to illness or injury, or because she has experienced the same abuse as the child and has learned all too well the lessons of submission and despair. In spite of everything, rapists refer to her as a “bad mother” or “a silent accomplice,” concepts invented by psychotherapists that imply covert hostility.

The rapists take this topic to its logical conclusion, telling a tale that accurately repeats Hansel and Gretel: a virtuous, sincere father gives up due to constant pressure from a controlling wife and does something terrible to his children. The villains are women - on the one hand the "unnatural" stepmother, on the other - her reflection, the Wicked Witch. Every woman whose “innate” maternal instincts have “failed” or turned into “spite” is surrounded by an aura of evil. Ulrich describes it this way: “My wife was always nagging and bitching at me. She didn't give me sex. However, my daughter looked at me with her mouth open. She helped me feel like a man. So I started going to her for everything. " Evan says: “My wife always put pressure on me, forcing me to spend more and more time with the children. In the meantime, she cooked and tidied up all the time and complained how tired she was. She paid no attention to me or the children. So I started to play with them, and with my daughter it was corruption."

“My wife made me do it, it was her fault,” is the overt or implicit message of the rapists. This excuse is highly contagious. As soon as one man in the group clings to it, it spreads like an epidemic. At the same time, one evening when I reminded Quentin that he cannot miss a single session unless it is an emergency, he yelled at me, “Don't you dare tell me what to do. Nobody can force me to do what I do not want. He could not have expressed his thought more clearly. Neither a woman nor a child can force a man to commit sexual violence.

When the rapists describe the detailed plans they made to keep their abuse secret, they prove that they were the ones who bore the full responsibility, especially those who admit that they stopped at nothing to get the child to obey and silence: "If you tell someone, then I will kill you." Or: "If you tell your mother, I will kill her."

At the same time, men usually believe that it is the mothers who must save the family from any problems, including incest, that they must protect the daughter from the father, and also protect the father from himself. As a result, both rapists and psychotherapists very often begin to blame the mother for everything. If a mother knows but does not speak out of fear that no one will believe her, or because she is afraid to send the family's only breadwinner to prison, then she is blamed for not protecting the child.

If she does not know anything, and therefore cannot tell (and this is true in most cases), then she is blamed for not knowing about anything, as if she has no right to let her daughter out of sight, even if it is about her own home.

Finally, if she finds out the truth and tells, then she is blamed for destroying the family. As if she must fix everything privately, as if she is able to heal her husband in one evening on her own, the same man with whom professional psychotherapists have been stubbornly fighting for several years when the court prescribes compulsory psychotherapy.

Over and over again, when I tell people about the counseling that I do, they express disgust at what these men have done, but they also get angry with their mothers. It feels like one could not expect more from a man, but if the mother could not protect the child, no matter what the reason, then she "cannot be forgiven."

Not surprisingly, the most common emotion of these mothers is an overwhelming sense of guilt. Not surprisingly, many do consider themselves to be the Wicked Witches.

Some rapists are following on the heels of a growing number of psychotherapists who support their attack on mothers. They yearn to appear as compassionate and understanding people, so they want to achieve the illusion of shared responsibility and choose soft words. They learn to translate the word "mother" as "family" and book titles such as "Violent Family" become family lexicon. However, when they say family, they mean mother. Because in our culture, the mother alone is responsible for everything that happens in the house. It is very nice if a man shows interest or helps around the house, but all the arrows are transferred to her.

Sandra Butler, who has written a very accessible and extremely useful book, The Conspiracy of Silence. The trauma of incest,”responds to this cowardly lie very simply:“Families do not sexually abuse children. Men do it."

Santa Claus: Generous Father

The third misconception that rapists use is the Santa Claus they pretend to be. This is a man who gives gifts to children, gives them everything "what they want when they ask." They talk about themselves like the father from Daddy Knows Best. Stanley: “Don't tell me to hurt anyone. I gave her the love that I thought she needed. " Jan: “I tried to teach her about sex. I didn't want her to learn this from some dirty slum boy. I wanted her to have it with someone gentle and caring."

Glen committed lecherous acts with his three children. He says this is how he reacted to their pain: “I loved them, but they were not happy children. I wanted to help them. With my seven-year-old daughter, I saw her, I loved her, and I took her in my arms to hug her. Instead, I put my penis between her legs. With my fourteen year old son, it all started with strokes and went on. In the end, he began with my passionate and serious romance. But do not think that I am a fag or a pedophile as such. I just didn't know how else to show him my love. ""Why didn't you abuse your eldest son?" “He was a completely different person. He was successful and independent. He didn't need me that much."

Erik, who considers himself a poet and a “thoughtful, gentle and caring” person, told me: “My stepdaughter was 14 years old and she didn't do that well. Her grades were normal, but she had no friends, so she was depressed and very lonely. Her mother worked the night shift at the hospital, so she was not there to help. One night I woke up and heard Laura crying next to the heater, so I went there, hugged her, held her, talked to her. Before going to bed, she said: "Dad, will you hug me every time I want to cuddle?" I said, "Okay." Then we got closer and closer, and it came to sex. " He continued to "comfort" his stepdaughter in the same way, even when he had sex with her, after which she began to think about suicide and "needed my hugs even more than before."

Some men lift their Santa Claus mask and discover the real dynamics of incest with horrifying but honest self-confidence. Alan: "My child's body is as much mine as her own." Mike: “I choose children because it's safer with them, that's all. They will not contradict you like a woman. " Rod: “She's my girl, so that gives me the right to do whatever I want with her. So don't pry your nose into your own business; my family is my business."

These fathers admit that they could only do what they did because they could force their children to obey and could command them to be silent. They did not use anything other than the power that any ordinary father has.

At the same time, it is this power that most men deny when they are caught and condemned. When charged, they suddenly begin to describe themselves as unable to control anything, including their own actions. Xavier: “I didn't know what I was doing. I don’t understand how it happened to me.” Walt: “He asked me to do it, I just did what she said. I couldn't say no to her. Owen: “I fell in love with my daughter. I mean really fell in love with her. I couldn't stop myself."

They claim that they have become helpless victims of Lolita's manipulation. Once she started them, they were in her power and can no longer be held accountable. When a man thinks in this way, it does not matter what his daughter says or does not say, does or does not; it is enough for her to be a girl with the body of a girl, and she already becomes an insidious temptress. She is a "natural temptation" for his "natural impulses", which makes him completely helpless. So you can't expect him to be able to resist. He considers himself a real hero if he did not succumb to temptation, and just an ordinary guy if he “gave up”.

As long as these men deny their own power and the power that men have as a group, as long as they deny the responsibility of men, nothing will change. They deny that they could have responded to stress differently without being violent: “My boss criticized me all the time. My son was detained by the police for stealing cars. My wife started to avoid me. I tried to handle it all on my own. Nobody cared about me. And then my daughter was next to me. " They deny that they could change despite their socialization: “My upbringing made me do it. I am a slave to my upbringing. " Or: "I am sick … I am evil … I have a complete mess in my life … I can’t do anything about it, so I don’t have to do anything about it, leave me alone."

They deny that fathers can learn to care for their children instead of demanding it, including forcing their daughters to serve them like little mothers: “I thought that children should magically heal all my emotional wounds. Kiss me to make things better."

The men in my group told me over and over that they were tired of thinking of themselves as criminals and talking about violence all the time. They said they just wanted their families to live together again, "like the rest of the families," and return to the role of "normal fathers, like other men." If only it were that easy. But given the height of these men, this is impossible. They face the same problem that I face - the realization that it is not enough to be a "normal man", for none of us it is enough.

Norm told me, “The first step is to say, 'Yes, I did it. I have a problem". But this is only the first step. The second step is to start tearing yourself apart and rebuilding. " "How much should you tear yourself apart?" "Fully. This must be done to the very foundation. There is something hidden in every crevice and hole - and it needs to be brought out into the light. Everything down to the smallest detail. Nothing can be left inside. You can't say, "Well, this is my sexual part, I only need to work with this." Nothing will come of it. The whole person must be pulled into small pieces and reassembled piece by piece. I found myself inside a huge pit. This void used to be filled with something that I liked. But I like what I put in there now. I find something fresh to put in there."

Lamonde explains as we sit at his window and look through the bars: "We all knew that what we were doing was bad, but we had fairy tales that we told ourselves, so we kept doing it."

Lolita, Wicked Witch and Santa Claus - these are these fairy tales. But these are not the same tales that men read to their daughters and sons at night to help them fall asleep. They made their children live these stories in real life. And these are stories of endless horror.

When we were boys, we didn't have the power to stop lying and violence, but now we are men and we have that power. We have the power to tell the truth. We have the power to stand by the boys' side and help them protect their care. We have the power to stop being "ordinary guys" and become something better - men with whom children and women are safe.

Material from the Women’s Support Project