All this talk of rape has me concerned

I am what some would call a “Lone Father”, I have sole custody of my 2 sons. The reason - their mother was molesting/physically abusing them.

After witnessing her sexually abusing 1 of my sons when he was just 14 months old I tried to report it. Most governing agencies didn’t know how to handle it. A woman sexually abusing a male child is not all that common or perhaps under reported. They were hesitant even to take the report at first passing it off, arguing which was the responsible reporting agency. Finally 1 concerned social worker stepped forward and helped out, but there has been so much difficulty trying to get any counseling help for them.

The youngest boy because if his extremely young age at the time she committed the acts shows little or no signs of psychological damage today. It was pretty difficult to break him of some of the actions his was trained to perform. But thank God for a very good grandmother who helped with day care and teaching him those actions were inappropriate.

The older boy is extremely violent towards me. Perhaps because during the time of her abusing/molesting them I was working for a national contracting engineering company supervising contracts far from home. Sure I knew things were not fine at home, but I thought it was just directed towards me. I had no idea she would sexually abuse the children.

Years of numerous attempts to council him by psychologist, psychiatrist, and therapist has largely been in vain. All of which has been out of pocket for me because once she was confronted by the police she entered psychological treatment for herself and no agency sought criminal actions against her. That and there is NO treatment programs for Male victims of sexual abuse.

Now he is quickly approaching 18 and so ill prepared to face life even thou he is of Mensa level intelligence and making $3000 a month from internet marketing. I fear for him so much now we are buying a larger home that will include a studio apartment for him. I can’t let him go out into a world of hard knocks that will destroy him for consequences of her abuse

But there is no where for him to turn for help nor me

....but I appreciate the sharing of your situation -- it raises the consciousness of us all toward the less-common instances.

My sincere best wishes to you and yours. We at DU are always available to listen. I hope that's worth something.

... but it sounds like his anger is a form of depression. Classically, people tend to think of depression as an inward-turning sort of thing where a person withdraws. But in males, depression can be masked by anger.

I can sympathize with trying to find services for your son. Society is only beginning to understand that sexual abuse of males can be just as devastating as sexual abuse of females. Look at the wildly differing sentences handed down to female teachers who sexually abuse male students. That's a symptom of the schizophrenic way society views sexual abse of males by females. On the one hand, we are extremely concerned about protecting little girls (and protecting boys from male predators), but there is an undercurrent of "hey, what a stud!" when an underage boy is molested by an older female. Remember the movie "Summer of '42"? Most people view it as a romantic movie, but from a legal standpoint, it could be considered statutory rape.

You know your son better than any of us on an internet message board, so in the long run it's up to you to choose to kep him close. At some point he will be out on his own and the best you can do is to prepare him as best you can. You might try reading up on the subject and educating yourself as much as possible. A good starting point is the book Wounded Boys Heroic Men: A Man's Guide to Recovering from Child Abuse, by Daniel Jay Sonkin. Here's an amazon.com link to it:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1580620108/sr=8-1/qid=1145210008/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-7080085-7028159?%5Fencoding=UTF8

I wish you all the best of luck. Recovery isn't easy and it's next to impossible if the victim isn't ready to deal with what happened to him. Let him be the one to decide when he's ready to deal with it. If you force him to confront feelings he's not ready for, he'll resent you.

Thanks for the link

Yes his anger is a form of classic depression. He also eats to suppress his feelings and is about 80 lbs over weight. He’ll get up in the middle of the night and raid the fridge pretty regularly. For a while we rarely saw him eating.

I don’t suspect he’ll ever show a chink in his armor, but none the less I am concentrating on father/son relationship. It’s difficult, tenuous at times, and even dangerous given his propensity to act out violently towards me. Just that I shudder to think of what society at large would do to him. I don’t mean him acting out the cycle of abuse, I mean when his bubble is popped and he is rejected by so many people. Right now a 17 year old earning 3K per month is a pretty popular person.

i put that in quotation marks -- because while you father and son -- you are also both adults and have a more sophisticated relationship that say a five year old.

have you talked to a psychiatrist?
he probably needs meds -- if he isn't on them.

there is no such thing as ''no help'' -- it's where to look that is the problem.

i see that you are in cali -- that's positve because if any place has the resources -- cali would.

he's still young - but old enough to be concerned that he shouldn't get older bearing this stuff.

keep us informed.

We have been to at least 8 different professionals. Even Prosak at one time

Even 1 psychiatrist in different city who is a notable expert on the situation. The psychiatrist was at a loss for what to do because the child just clams up and won’t discuss any thing. Yet the mere mention of his mother results in instant tears.

Even he gave me the “you can lead a horse to water” speech.

Another wanted to commit him in a violent child program. Every thing was in place until I found out they deal mostly with youth offenders that have perpetrated violent crimes. Once again not appropriate because he has never done any violent crimes. He is just mad at me, not the world.

My fear of course is for him

It was a grave mistake not to commit him to that program. He, perhaps needs a taste of how the world will react to him--and where his behavior will take him (and with whom he will have to associate.)

Have you been to father-son counseling together?

Years of father son counseling.

In fact we followed one councilor who was the most effective with my sons from one agency to another as he progressed in his profession. We got to a point to where our counseling session was dinner together once a week as to reduce tensions.

But as far as allowing him to suffer his own consequences, this has been quite a well explored topic between me and several of the councilors/therapist/psychiatrist.

As for committing him NO it was not a mistake. 1 of the psychiatrist agreed it was totally inappropriate to deal with him as a violent criminal.

His therapy hasn't been in vain because good therapists will have taught him techniques to use to deal with what he's been through. He will probably act out and make a lot of mistakes. Don't give up on him, though. You've done what you can. Now it's his turn.

I had a friend in the 60s who was sexually abused by his mother. Back in the 50s when it was going on, people barely admitted that girl children were being molested by men. My friend was completely screwed up by it. There was NO therapy of any kind for male survivors. I listened to him without judging and I hope it helped. It probably didn't, he died of alcoholism.

Your son has had the benefit of intervention. Even if he's in full rebellion now, he has the potential to come around and get boring and respectable like the rest of us. You can't control the process, though. You can offer that studio apartment but you can't make him take it nor can you control his behavior while he lives there.

Good luck to you both.

provide conseling for both femal and male victims of molestation, as well as "protective" family members. They can also provide it for adults who were victims or coordinate with another agency who can provide it.

child Advocacy Centers exist across the country and there should be an equivalent where you live.

I'm sorry for what you're dealing with. Parental abuse is a horrible thing for a child to grow up with.

so, take this info however you may.

http://www.kalimunro.com/article_mother_son_sexual_abuse.html
web information and contacts.

some of the same info -- but another contact.
http://www.joekort.com/articles66.htm

detailed statistics and some help and reading info
http://www.jimhopper.com/male-ab/


kali munro's name comes up again and again -- maybe getting in touch with this person is a place to start.

don't give up.

"A woman sexually abusing a male child is not all that common or perhaps under reported."

Unfortunately, it's the latter. As you've seen, there's little to no framework for nontraditional sexual abuse cases. Particularly in the area of female offeners. No one takes it seriously, no one wants to hear about it. Even organizations dedicated to sexual abuse don't usually help with it. In large part, it's because there's a broad perception that women can't be sex offenders. Obviously wrong, but there it is. So it doesn't get reported, doesn't get dealt with, and no infrastructure ever comes into existence.

The best thing you can do for him is to help him to understand that what happened wasn't his fault. He may already understand that, but accepting it is a different thing. When one of your own parents treats you in that manner, it shakes up a person's entire view of the world, and leaves them with very deep-seated issues about whether or not there's something wrong with them, that not their own mother can do that to them.

It might also help resolve some of his anger if you expressed your apologies for not realizing what was going on and stopping it sooner. That's probably the source of his anger towards you--the feeling, even if it's illogical, even if he doesn't fully realize it's there, that you "allowed" the abuse to happen by not stopping it sooner, or by tolerating his mother's other behavior, whatever it might have been.

intellectual memory and reason have little to do with the understanding of abuse, the body remembers. i was sexually assaulted at three (and the man who did it to me had access to me from age 1 1/2, so who knows...) the situation was *fearful* for me, so maybe that's it's still remembered by my body. if it was not a situation that would invoke fear, it might have a different effect on him.

i'm sorry, that's so terrible, so difficult to deal with.