Girl Called Karen (11 page)

Perpetrator after perpetrator never even sees a courtroom even though they are as guilty as hell. They deny and get away with it. This man admits and goes to jail. I wonder if this was truly in the best interest of society.

Mike, my foster father, came from Cumberland Gap, Kentucky. In some ways, he was the product of his environment. In Appalachia, twelve-year-old girls might
become wives. At seventy-something, his daddy married his third wife, who was still a young woman, and fathered his last set of offspring. Mike, a child from his father’s earlier marriage, was the first and only person in his family to earn a college diploma, and he was a successful businessman. In many respects, he was a humanitarian, but I wish he had done all he did for me without molesting me. I struggled to have healthy romantic relationships for years.

This is worth repeating: Not every child-
sexual-abuse
offender is beyond help. We have to treat each case on its own merits. We have to work with victims and abusers. We have to value human beings. Our job must be to reclaim all the victims.

I was at the neighborhood pharmacy one morning when Randy the pharmacist approached me with a problem. He told me that his friend, who was married to a woman with a thirteen-year-old daughter, had confided in him that the little girl had accurately accused him of sexual molestation. Before Randy uttered another word, I told him that I was a mandated reporter and would have to report if he divulged names.

Without identifying the family or, even, being too specific about their history because we lived in a very small town, Randy began to share the story. The stepdaughter had gone to her mother and disclosed that her stepfather had been touching her inappropriately for months. The mother immediately
confronted her husband, who did not deny it. He did not want to lose his family, so he agreed to move out temporarily while they all sought therapy in a neighboring town. The family thought that the
client-doctor
privilege meant that they would be able to handle this confidentially. What happened next compounded the tragedy. The therapist said that he would see the mother and her daughter, but he didn’t treat “those kinds of people.” Furthermore, he was a mandated reporter, and he would be notifying the state agency.

I told Randy that the family could expect an investigator in short order. I suggested that the man continue to live separately, to avoid all face-to-face contact with his stepdaughter, to find a therapist who would work with him and a therapist who would work with his wife and daughter. I told him that the man should continue contact with his stepdaughter in the form of cards and letters. He didn’t want her to feel abandoned, but he wanted the investigator to see that he was not trying to influence or coach the child in any way. I tried to help him institute things that the agency would want him to do before they asked it of him. He was not prosecuted, but the family unit did not remain intact, he lost his job, and he moved from his community of origin. Often the public backlash is more damaging than the justice system.

I challenge the prevailing thinking about pedophilia
and the penchant for grouping together all
child-sexual-
abuse perpetrators in one category. I challenge the helping profession to recognize the humanity of the perpetrator. I don’t think it is to society’s advantage to throw away human beings because they do bad things.

Let me be clear about my view of child sex abuse. I believe that it is wrong, just as I believe that any abuse of power is wrong. My fear, however, is that in Western society’s Victorian view of all things sexual, the corporate reaction to child sexual abuse is not always in the best interest of the child, the family, or society.

In a well-intentioned effort to protect the young, we teach them about “good touch/bad touch.” It is a mixed message. Children are sexual beings, and they fully recognize “bad touch” is in fact pleasurable.

Further confusing our children is the onslaught of media messages. In our electronic age, children are routinely exposed to implicitly sexual messages.

Many children and caregivers may take exception to my premise. They are convinced that they supervise and control what their children are exposed to. This, of course, is pure fantasy. We are surrounded and overwhelmed by media entertainment and advertising that uses sex in amazing ways to sell the marketer’s product. It is so pervasive that we are almost unaware of its insidious influence.

I don’t believe we will go back to a simpler time. We have to deal with life as it exists today. It is time for open and honest dialogue about human sexuality,
including the twenty-first-century sexual issues of our children.

In the United States, we used to believe in something called rehabilitation. I don’t know exactly when or how we moved to a mind-set of vengeance and retribution. Perhaps it began with the “war on drugs” and the “three strikes and you’re out legislation.” Perhaps it began because we lost our national courage and just got scared, so we started locking everyone up. Perhaps it started with movie pap like
Walking Tall
and the subsequent vigilante affronts that followed. Anecdotes suggest we now build more prison cells than family homes. Whether they are drug abusers or sex abusers, we lock people up, destroy their dignity, deny simple human comforts, and fail to make any attempt to rehabilitate them, after which we release them back into society. This policy is not working, yet in some insane reflex, we go right on doing the same things over and over again.

It is time to treat drug abuse and sexual deviant behaviors as mental health problems rather than criminal activity. It is time to start channeling some of the incredible amounts of money being spent building more prisons to providing therapy, drugs, research, residential placements, and rehabilitation for addicts of any kind. We, as a society, have to decide that all our citizens are valuable and deserve help, not just those with many resources.

Poverty has become a crime in our nation. Poor
people are looked down on and considered less than valuable, and rich people are automatically exalted. I sat next to a man at a social gathering and mentioned that I had attended a fund-raiser for the homeless in a couple’s home that exceeded 25,000 square feet. I commented on how ludicrous I found this. He responded, “Those who work, get.” His answer didn’t make sense. The man who owned the enormous home started out with family money and made even more as a defense contractor, building weapons for killing that were produced by hard-working laborers making humble wages on the production lines.

Wealth and social standing must not be the criteria for receiving mental health services. We will become a more resilient society when all of our citizens have the opportunity to heal and improve.

E
ileen Brand is my girlfriend, my aunt, my coauthor, and my muse. This book may well never have been written without her. Leaving my job as executive director of Tennessee Valley Family Services and striking out on my own was a momentous decision for me. I confided my fears and insecurities to Eileen, and she responded with the following letter. It is an affirmation of her indomitable spirit and an inspiration to me. I share it with you.

• A sense of personal competence
  
• Consistent emotional support from one or more caring adults
  
• A sense of playfulness
  
• A spiritual connection to something greater
  
• A capacity for learning and creative expression
  
• A willingness to work on problems with reasonable perseverance
  
• The ability to positively reframe