The best way to understand male sexual abuse is to learn about its survivors. They are the victims, and they have stories to tell. Author O'Brien Dennis recounts how he was sexually abused as a boy in Jamaica, and he also shares accounts from other men who were abused. By giving them a voice, he unveils how male sexual abuse can so easily happen at the hands of close and trusted family, friends and even strangers. As you read these intimate stories, you'll learn how society's narrow definitions of sexuality and masculinity have conspired to silence male victims, preventing many from speaking up about their abuse. Sexual abuse hurts victims, who may later suffer from drug addiction, sexual dysfunction, self-blame, guilt, and other problems. Male rape is used not only as a form of subjugation but also as a tool for war and dominance in contemporary wars and conflicts. Male sexual abuse is underreported, and it is estimated that one in six boys is sexually abused before he reaches age sixteen. By Understanding Male Sexual Abuse, it's possible to start exploring solutions to a terrible problem.

UNDERSTANDING MALE SEXUAL ABUSE

WHY MALE VICTIMS REMAIN SILENTBy O'Brien Dennis

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 O'Brien Dennis
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-1696-9

Contents

Preface.....................................................................................................................ixAcknowledgments.............................................................................................................xiForeword....................................................................................................................xiiiIntroduction................................................................................................................xvChapter 1: Three Rapes Occurring in Darkness................................................................................1Chapter 2: History of Sexual Abuse..........................................................................................12Chapter 3: Definition.......................................................................................................19Chapter 4: Types of Sexual Abuse/Assault....................................................................................30Chapter 5: Myths about Male Sexual Abuse....................................................................................45Chapter 6: Society's Views about Male Sexual Abuse..........................................................................52Chapter 7: Masculinity and Sexuality........................................................................................60Chapter 8: Male Sexual Abuse—An Underreported Crime...................................................................65Chapter 9: Conversations....................................................................................................75Chapter 10: Promiscuity and Prisons.........................................................................................83Chapter 11: Prison Rape.....................................................................................................89Conclusion..................................................................................................................107Appendix A: Male Survivors of Sexual Violence, Michigan Resource Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence.....................115Reference...................................................................................................................121

Chapter One

Three Rapes Occurring in Darkness

Maturity comes when we have acknowledged and accepted that we have little or no control over our past and when we have accepted the things we have little or no control over.

I still have issues sleeping, and while I have not been professionally diagnosed with sleep apnea, I understand what it's like to have a consistently interrupted sleep pattern. To explain the background of this dysfunctional sleep pattern, I have to return to my childhood, which I do not recall with many fond memories. Then and as I grew older, most of my thoughts were consumed by one of my best kept secrets. I was five-years old when my childhood was taken from me. As a male child in a rural community in Jamaica, I grew up with no affirmations from adults of my self worth: I believed I was unattractive and I didn't deserve love. Today, I still struggle with the fear of loving someone and not having that love returned.

Through listening to others speak of their abuse, I have come to realize that my story is not unique, and the pain I kept locked up inside wasn't restricted to Jamaica, the touristy Caribbean island paradise.

Recently, while shopping in a Caribbean market close by where I live in Westchester, New York, I encountered an item that encapsulated my past; it had trapped me in silence and pain for more than twenty-five years. As I passed by the fruit section and an assortment of Jamaican sodas, out of the corner of my eye I saw the familiar orange color of carbolic soap. Even though I was not close, its unmistakable smell invaded my nose, assaulting my olfactory senses either with its real presence or from the memories stored in my mind. It was a smell I knew only too well from years ago. The memory of the experience overpowered me; I ran out of the grocery store, tears streaming down my face.

Even though I am unable to completely relive that horrific experience, I often have moments when for reasons unknown, details of the bathroom, the act, and of my abuser, flash in my mind as a single image. I have since realized that because of the shower experience as a child, I hate taking showers, especially to have the water flow over my face. Ironically, I realize that the association with sex and a shower is why I have such a strong passion for having sex in the shower. The fear of reliving my past has kept my mind imprisoned and prevented me from truly dealing with what had happened. I could not believe that, twenty years later, I still had vivid memories of the event that changed my life. I was trying to cope, but it was never easy, especially when I was alone.

Up to the time of the abuse when I was a five-year old, I was a very vibrant, talkative child who was adored by everyone. I had a sense that I was loved. As a sign of the favoritism in my family, my uncle called me Rossi, after Paolo Rossi, who in 1982 led Italy in the 1982 FIFA World Cup. While I enjoy being a spectator, I am far from good at the game. I was always an inquisitive child growing up, and my curiosity later got the best of me. While I lived with my grandmother in Westmoreland, often I would visit my mother who had moved to live and work in August Town a part of Kingston, the capital of Jamaica.

On a warm, Saturday, summer evening in 1985, while spending the weekend with my grandmother, my innocence was taken away from me. I was passing the communal shower in the neighborhood when I saw my neighbor's sixteen-year-old son taking a shower. He called me to him, and curious about what he wanted, I went over. I recall as if it happened yesterday—he asked me to come into the shower stall with him. Even today, I could still see the image in my mind of him lathering his body with soap and spending a long time with the soap in his hands on his genitals. I cannot forget the smell of the carbolic soap he used to lather himself.

I was clueless as to what had occurred to me in the shower. I only knew that it never felt right, and I should never tell anyone about what had happened. It all took place so fast, and it was nonverbal. I had no clue what sex was or that someone took advantage of me or the fact that my innocence was taken away from me. Even without my abuser telling me what my next move should be, I knew then that if I said anything, no one would have believed me. I now realized why I had so many horrible nightmares as a child: I was fearful of not being believed. I felt what had happened was my fault, and no one would believe a child.

My grandmother was the one person I wanted to tell, but she died before I managed to tell her about the experience. I knew she saw the pain in my eyes and my subdued behavior. I knew she wondered what had happened, but she didn't ask. She never knew how to find the words to start that kind of conversation. I was close to her and disappointing her was the furthest thing from my mind. So, I kept this secret to myself. Today, I feel sad that I didn't have the strength and courage and was unable to tell her what had been done to me.

Following the experience with the neighbor in the shower, I became secretive. At nights, I felt that aliens would come and take me away simply because I was not a good boy. Not only did I lose that childhood innocence, I lost my smile and my spirit—my joy for life. When I look at any of my childhood pictures, I was never smiling in any of them. I never felt happy, because I knew that I was different. Someone had made me different, and I grew up believing that it was my fault. I never seemed to fit in. I was always a loner, and I constantly looked at myself in mirrors, trying to reassure myself that I was still a child.

I now work with children who have serious emotional and developmental challenges, and I when looked at a photograph of me from a high-school year book a friend posted on Facebook, I saw the familiar sadness and disinterest in my facial expression. Oddly enough, no one saw then what was going on, and no one even took the time to inquire. To numb the pain and the depression I felt, I started drinking. From as early as eleven or twelve-years-old I drank a mixture of Jamaican white rum and orange juice, which I kept in a small ice cooler It was all I needed to get through each day.

For the remainder of my childhood, I was withdrawn and morose. But, as if once was not enough, when I was fourteen years old, I was again set upon, and this time by a twenty-one-year old neighbor who worked setting up electronic systems. He had seen me having sex with another fourteen-year-old schoolmate, and thought to use what he had seen as a tool to blackmail me into having sex with him. At the time, I was having difficulty with my school work, and when he approached me more friendly than he had been before, I told him of my plight. He offered to help tutor me and a quasi-friendship began to develop. Then some time later, he reminded me of the his threat to tell my mother of what he had seen, unless I gave in to his demands to have him penetrate me.

After several months of helping me with my school work and being a mentor, trust developed between us. When he asked me again about having sex with him, I refused. One night, when I was over at his house so he could help me with my school work, he forced him self on me, pinned me down, and raped me to the sound track from the movie Waiting to Exhale. During the experience when he took advantage of me, several tunes played on his CD player, including Mary J. Blige's "Not Gon' Cry" and Patti LaBelle's "My Love, Sweet Love."

I will never forget that night for as long as I live. It took years before I could ever listen to that sound track and relive the memories of that horrifying night. These songs will always remain with me. They will always be a part of me

After my abuser, who I had miscast as my mentor, had violated me, he held me in his arms as a mother would a child. I went home that night bleeding, ashamed, afraid, and filled with guilt. I had no one to talk to. I was the child; he was the adult. Who would have believed me? The fear of no one believing me is one of the reasons I kept silent for so long—also, it was the fear of believing that I asked for it and, more importantly, that the act itself had turned me into a homosexual.

I cried myself to sleep that night, and I went to school the following day with tissue paper between my butt cheeks to stop the bleeding. How would I start the conversation? How could I find the words to tell even my best friend what had happened to me the previous night? I started doubting myself; who I was. I convinced myself that the abuse was my fault.

Going to the police was never an option; not even a possibility. I knew what should happen. Jamaica is known everywhere as one of the most homophobic countries in the world, where anyone, male or female, suspected of or caught in any same-sex act or relationship is dealt with harshly by both the authorities and citizenry alike. I was more afraid of what the police would do to me than I was of being disbelieved.

Days after the rape, I went back to my first abuser, asking him why he did it. I had come to believe that he was the only person I felt comfortable talking to, and the weirdest thing was, I still trusted him. I believed in all that he had done for me before the assault, and I felt indebted to him for all the help he had given to me to improve my grades. As consolation, my mentor told me that if it would make me feel comfortable I could do what he had done to me. With the same music, the sounds of Whitney Houston's "Waiting to Exhale" playing on his CD player, I did what I was instructed to do and performed as commanded. After it ended, I felt as if I had erased what had happen to me the night before. That night was the first of many sexual encounters that helped not only to mess up my mental frame of mind, but defined what love shouldn't be.

For two years, I engaged in a sexual relationship with my abuser. I felt loved, desired, cared for, nurtured, and, most importantly, confident that the relationship would last a lifetime. But it has had a detrimental effect on all my future relationships: I lost trust and confidence in anyone who has come into my life and who has loved me unconditionally. I still struggle with trust and boundary issues, and too often I am unable to differentiate between sex and love.

Without warning, as if he had picked a fruit, eaten it, and now was ready to discard the skin and pits, he abruptly ended our sexual liaison.

When I completed high school I transitioned to attending a community college some distance from my home in order to prepare for university. My family never understood my reasons for not wanting to go to a community college closer to home. Instead, for two years I attended a college deep in the interior of the island. My drinking, which had started early in my childhood and which had continued unabated, increased significantly.

Also, I engaged in random and risky sexual encounters, including having sex with another roommate at the same time when our apartment also housed several fellow students. In the Jamaican culture, if we were caught or suspicions aroused, we could have been killed. I used both sex and alcohol to mask the pain I was going through and to cope with the rigors of college. I did everything I could do to stay from home, and I never had much of a desire to return. I was accepted to the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, when I completed community college. Until this point,, I could barely function or manage my school work, now, in university with little or no supervision, I was left to fend for myself.

With the independence of being alone at university came a desire to search for answers to why the man had I trusted and believe in so much had hurt me: I came to realize that he no longer wanted me. I also wanted to know if there was something about me that was odd—the way I walked, the way I carried myself, did I telegraph some signal? I internalized all of my emotions. And, because of my lack of understanding, I neglected the one thing I had set out to do, gain an education. I had set myself up to fail.

My life was not without some happy moments. A three year stretch, between 1998 and 2001, were some of the best years of my life. I met many people who played an instrumental role in shaping who I am today. During this period I learned how to define myself, and I forged a group of friendships that continue to sustain me.

In the pursuit of answer and identifying with others like myself, I met online a young man named Chris, and we developed a friendship, even though it was at a distance. Like every relationship, it had components of trust, which seemed to defy the odds.

It felt good knowing that I was finally able to talk to someone who knew where I was coming from and who understood the pain I was going through. The friendship was platonic and long distance, and it gave me hope that I could once again trust someone. I still had my struggles with trust and felt comfortable only communicating by phone or through the Internet.

After months of constant pleading from him, I agreed to meet Chris for the first time the weekend before my finals. He asked if he could bring a friend to the meeting—an older man—and I didn't object.

The meeting and the subsequent encounter happened, as had my previous bad experiences, on dark night. At the time across the entire island, there were rolling blackouts. The government said they were trying to save energy. In Kingston, the blackout and the buildings made the streets seem darker. Chris, his friend, and I went to a neighborhood outside of the city to the friend's house. By the time we arrived, the electricity had returned. The night itself was balmy—a cool, moisture-laden night, overcast with clouds—and no stars were visible. I was curious to see what would develop. But, what happened that dark, moonless night became part of the mosaic of other images and experiences that are indelibly impressed in my mind.

Chris's, whose name I never got, was an older man of about forty-five years. Although I later found out that the older man had children, one of whom was as old as Chris and I, this encounter was the first and last time I met him. At twenty one, Chris and I were the same age. When we arrived at the older man's house, he invited Chris and me inside. At the time the BET television network was popular, and a BET show was on the television. Fascinated, I started watching the show. The older man remained with me in his living room, and we talked about life and growing up.

After a short while, he said he had heard that I was well endowed—that I had a big dick. I was taken aback by this, since as I didn't know him and Chris and I had never had any such conversations. I wasn't sure how he came to know that about me. As the conversation continued, I became aware that what he was saying grew increasingly inappropriate, but I tried to remain disengaged, waiting for Chris to reappear. After speaking with me for about fifteen minutes, the older man excused himself and left the room. I continued to wait, but after about twenty minutes I began to wonder where Chris had gone. I knew that houses such as this had only one entrance and exit, and I was standing close to the door where Chris had to pass. Wondering where he had gone, and not hearing any sounds, even of conversation, I started looking around.

(Continues...)

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