When I was 15 – I think 15 – perhaps 14, I was molested by a family friend.
My parents were in Amway. They looked at their “upline” in a way that always seemed to me nearly worshipful. Nearly adoration. I didn’t understand it then, and do not understand it now, so many years later. One of those upline was Dan Jacobson. A large fellow. Very, from what I can remember, but you will not see me write, or hear me say, or suggest in any way, that my memory for such things was ever any good. Add trauma to that, and I will not in any way vouch for my own memory regarding the nature of temporal or physical attributes of any person in any event. I’ve never been able to remember what people looked like. And one I want nothing more than to forget?
Dan was over quite a bit. As a troubled young person, something which my parents did not seem to have a way of dealing with, I had no one to talk with. My father’s way of dealing with this was always to bring me to events with people my age and shove me into them telling me I needed to make friends. To stop being shy. At 18, when I had my first interaction with a young lady, one who followed me home my first day of college, he walked up to me and said, and I quote, “Thank God. I thought you were gay.” My mother’s way of handling my difficulties was to ignore them and, on occasion, tell me not to worry. Neither approach was effective.
Dan listened. Later I saw what that was. I don’t think he was listening for any reason other than to get closer, to build trust, to soften me up. That was a year, I think, since my parents had joined Amway under a woman whose last name was Harriet Lapidus. I remember her.
Dan was around very much of the time. Meetings in his office to “draw circles” for “prospects.” Sales and informational meetings. And often meeting my parents at our house in North Miami. There was a patio that had been converted into a room. I can’t recall what it looked like. Knowing my father, it was paneled. There was a couch in that room, and a TV. Dan walked in and asked me how I was doing. Sat down. This was not unusual. But what was, thinking of it later, was how low his voice was. I do not remember where my parents were. Perhaps he was waiting for them. Perhaps they ran out to get food for everyone. Perhaps…
I don’t remember anything of that except next he was unzipping my pants and I disappeared.
I understand now that there is more to the action of the sympathetic nervous system in stress-inducing situations than fight or flight. That has always been too simple. Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Depending on circumstances and individual psychology, one of the four occurs, though all with very similar physiological effects. I froze. When I was again cognizant he had his hands in my pants, pulling my underwear down and fondling me. I know I froze again, but not for long, I think, and then came about, lurched away, and asked what the hell he was doing, pulling myself together. I do not remember if I left the room or he did. I don’t remember anything the rest of that day or for the next day or so. Nothing.
It is not uncommon, as a result of trauma, to not remember events. To need to reconstruct events, timelines, facts, because the brain just did not process them into long-term memory. Memory is processed by the hippocampus. That little seahorse in our brain buffers the information and, when we sleep, short-term memory is funneled through it transformed into long-term memory. But trauma puts a net, a wall, around the event and doesn’t let it out. It stays in the hippocampus as a permanent now. But without that processing it is a jumble and it takes our critical faculties to sort out what it was, what we saw, what we heard, the order of events. This is the basis of PTSD and CPTSD- an event that is always in the now. Triggers bring it back to the forefront and remove anything else that is happening, leaving us to react to the original stimulus.
But more on that later.
It was two or three days later I cornered my mother in the kitchen. I had no idea how to tell her. I started by saying that I hadn’t wanted to tell her because my father would find out and probably kill him. Then I told her what happened. I don’t remember much of a response. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t one, but that I don’t remember there being one. She said I was right. We would not tell him for his own good.
Dan never came back to the house. I didn’t see him again after that. Not that I can recall.
I can still feel what it was like, discovering what he was doing as I came back to my senses. I try to tell myself that it isn’t a big deal. It’s just a touch. Just a body part. There is a value, a significance our culture has just assigned to this part versus that part. Some cultures cover up parts others don’t worry about. So, really, just a part. Arbitrary designation. That should be all. Why let an arbitrary designation and another person’s bad choices or psychopathology hurt me. Isn’t that just logical? We can choose how feel, right? Upset is optional. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii) Forget it. That doesn’t have to be a big deal, right? After all, if a toddler is walking around and grabs you, you look down, pat them on the head, crouch down or pick them up, and laugh it off. If a woman is holding a baby and they put their hand on her breast, no one gasps or feels violated, right? Turn around in a crowded line and accidentally bump the woman behind you with your elbow? You apologise. Say excuse me. The end. Intent is everything. And I am not in any way responsible for another person’s intent. That should work, yes? Somehow that has never worked. I keep trying but it never has.
I blamed myself, of course. I was a 15 year old without a double master’s degree, without a degree in psychology. Of course I blamed myself. I would have stopped him. My sympathetic nervous system had other ideas. I blamed myself. What did I do wrong? How could he have thought I would want that? What’s wrong with me? Now I’m a 62 year old with those degrees, and I still blame myself. Nothing has changed.
It affected me, of course. Prior to that I wore clothes that fit. Not tight, but fit. After that, everything had to be baggy. Still. If a man touches my shoulder or back, like someone deciding my neck is tight, I freeze and become nauseated. Unexpected touches would set me off. My “first time” was rough. I just couldn’t take anything off. Had to be under covers. Thank goodness for Lee’s patience. She knew what happened. I told her. She said it wasn’t my fault. She’d never lie, but she had to be mistaken, right?
I had little experience with people with varying gender preferences, and I desperately needed to offload the guilt. We had just passed the Anita Bryant era and that was in the air. High school was a mass of people calling each other gay and fag, very often leveled at me. So I decided Dan must have been gay and that must be what they do. You don’t have to tell me that’s wrong. Believe me, I know. I just so much needed it not to be my fault.
Some years later, I was teaching religious education at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Gainesville, the teen group, and we were helping an RE teacher move. We were moving the stacked washer and dryer into the apartment. I had worked a lot with this man. I’m sorry I can’t recall his name. He was, and I hope still is, a really nice, kind person. In moving, somehow, someone said something perhaps, I discovered he was gay. I was pretty oblivious to those things. To so many things. Still am.
I decided to talk with him. He explained what I should have known to be true, now know is true – that a horrible person is a horrible person. Being gay has nothing to do with molesting kids and a gay person is no more likely, and no less likely, to sexually assault someone. I was faced with evidence contrary to my previous understanding, to my belief, and, therefore, had to change my mind. Isn’t that what critical thinking, what a brain, is for? I am indebted to him for that lesson.
So I was back to blaming myself. Years of counselling did both diddly and squat. Gestalt, REBT, CBT. So much for critical thinking.
I told myself, again, so what. Not like this is anything new and people get over it. One out of three women will be sexually assaulted. One out of six men will be too, although it is expected, due to lack of reporting, that number is probably higher. The more violent a sexual assault, the more likely it is to be perpetrated by a man, against women and men. Women, though by far the greater victims, can certainly be perpetrators. They are, however, usually, less violent. And it is a myth that a man can’t be raped because they can’t get aroused unless they choose to, or can’t if terrified or angry. As far as harassment, I’ve stood in line and had comments like “nice ass” from the ladies behind me. Maybe they were serious. Maybe they were making fun of me. I don’t know. Sitting having a drink with company, a woman is invited over by a person in our group who knows her, and ends up with a hand on my knee offering to pay for my drink if… I am aware this happens to women so much more than to men, but it should never be let go, never be brushed off. Anyone witnessing it should have a hand in decrying it. I’ve lost jobs over telling men, including my boss, to stop telling sexist jokes, making sexist comments, objectifying women, being pieces of crap. I can’t imagine my son’s behaviour in this being any different than my own. I know how he was raised and I’ve seen how he behaves.
And if it is violent, if it is assault, it should always be reported. Lack of reports is why we feel this doesn’t happen to men. The feeling of personal guilt, of personal responsibility, is why it doesn’t get reported. That’s why the 177 assaults by the sports doctor at Ohio State, Richard Strauss, went unreported. After the shock, came the guilt. After the guilt, the shame. And one does not report shame. They told no one. Not even their parents.
Which brings me back to mom and dad. Again, I don’t know how I found this out, but I discovered my father knew. I imagine my mother told him. Did I want him to kill Dan? No, not really, but yes. I didn’t want that on his head. I didn’t want him in trouble. But I wanted him to WANT to kill him. Failing that, could he at least talk to me? Tell me he was taken care of? Ostracized? Shamed? Punished in some way? And apparently I wasn’t the only person. Liz, his wife, divorced him over his infidelities and proclivities. I didn’t understand how he could not do something. I still cannot understand it. I didn’t talk to my father for years after that.
Some years later, after deciding to be better than I had been, I began talking to my father again. Gainesville, Florida, in our backyard, fire going, the neighbours from across the street are over, a common thing, and Ron is playing his guitar. The phone rings. This is before cell phones but after phones no longer needed to be tethered by a cord. Lee comes out of the house and hands the phone to me. It’s my father. He says what he says, he says some more, then, “by the way, Dan says hello. He’s in Boston now.” I was stunned. I still can’t imagine what would possess him. How dense could he be? What pathology is this? I responded. “Please tell him to get a gun, walk to the middle of Boston Commons, put it in his mouth, and blow his brains out.” I then held the phone up and said, “Lee, it’s for you.” I got up and went for a walk. Two hours later I returned.
I don’t know why I said that to her, gave her the phone, instead of just hanging up. And it wasn’t right to make them all worry. I don’t know what I was thinking or why I did it. But that was my reaction.
I want to be clear on something. I am not dumping on my parents 100%. No one is perfect. We all have our problems. Friar Lawrence, Act II, Scene iii of Romeo and Juliet: “For nought so vile that on the earth doth live / But to the earth some special good doth give, / Nor aught so good but, strain’d from that fair use, / Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:” Nothing is fully good or bad. And I dislike using the terms good and bad as they mean different things to different people and therefore mean nearly nothing. But I will break with habit and use them here, feeling I have been clear in what I mean by the terms. Nothing is either all good or all bad. Parents included. We are all a complicated mixed bag or virtue and vice.
I was born with a six vertebra long hole in my sacral spine, with the cord now tethered, and a blood disease, and part of the right occipital lobe of my little brain not connected, and a cardiac sphincter that would not open so I could not eat. My parents were told I’d die, and I didn’t. They were told I would be blind, and I’m only half blind. They were told I would never walk, and I did, at age three and a half. They were told I’d never learn to read, which I did at age four thanks to my mother’s insistent efforts. My speech needed a lot of work. They were told to institutionalize me in the now infamous Willowbrook, which they did not. I was very lucky in that way, but in other ways, I wonder. I asked to see a therapist, and I didn’t. I asked to be tested for learning disabilities, and they did not. So one can see why I would wonder. And then, to not hold responsible a man who molests your son. That is something I do not understand.
I have great trouble forgiving my father. I have great trouble forgiving my mother. And I have even more trouble forgiving myself.
That is, perhaps, the one thing I set my mind to that I cannot, will never, accomplish.
