Fighting Back: What an Olympic Champion's Story Can Teach Us about Recognizing and Preventing Child Sexual Abuse--and Helping Kids Recover
246
Fighting Back: What an Olympic Champion's Story Can Teach Us about Recognizing and Preventing Child Sexual Abuse--and Helping Kids Recover
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781462532971 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Guilford Publications, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 05/03/2018 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 246 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Cynthia S. Kaplan, PhD, is a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and Director of Trauma Training and Consultation in the Simches Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at McLean Hospital. She has worked with numerous survivors of child sexual abuse and is coauthor of Helping Your Troubled Teen.
Blaise Aguirre, MD, holds the Michael Hollander, PhD, Endowed Directorship at the 3East Dialectical Behavior Therapy program at McLean Hospital, and is a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of Borderline Personality Disorder in Adolescents: What To Do When Your Teen Has BPD.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
How Child Sexual Abuse Begins
I started judo when I was 6 years old. My mother took judo in college, and so when I was little she wanted me to learn self-defense. I think she also wanted to get me out of the house a little bit because I was kind of a wild child. From the very beginning I loved it. I loved everything about it. Bowing at the beginning of every class to show respect. Learning how to throw people through the air, and even learning how to fall and fly through the air properly so that I didn't get hurt were cool tricks to show my friends at recess. And most of all, judo made me feel special. It was the thing I did, I realize now looking back, that made me different from everyone else. And I loved that.
When I first started judo, though, I wasn't very good. In fact, I didn't win a match for the first year of competition. In judo, the object is to score ippon, which is like a knockout in boxing. There are four ways to score ippon:
• By pinning your opponent for 20 seconds
• By choking your opponent until she concedes by tapping the floor (for 13 years and older)
• By arm barring your opponent until she taps out (for 15 years and older)
• By throwing your opponent flat on her back
Well, in my first year of competition I kept finding myself flat on my back with the referee calling "ippon" for the other girls. First I would only last 15 seconds in a match, and then I made it a whole minute. Finally, I lasted a whole match and didn't lose by ippon, just by points. And then the day finally came that I'll never forget.
I was about 8 years old and at a local tournament in Indiana (I grew up in southern Ohio). The tournament was by no means a big one. A small high school gymnasium was filled with judo mats and parents, mostly moms, with their kids. Maybe 300 people in total. I probably only had three girls in my division, but I beat those three girls and I won. I won the whole thing. And then it was my turn to stand on top of the podium, and I received a trophy that was as big as me.
And I knew — I knew right then. I didn't want to be a singer or a doctor. I didn't want to be an actress; I wanted to throw people. And I wanted to be the best in the world at it. But being the best in the world at anything isn't easy. You need the right team.
So shortly after I won and started competing more wholeheartedly, I told my mom I wanted to train in earnest, by which I meant at that time that I wanted to go to judo more to see my friends. My mom would also tell me if I enjoyed winning and wanted more trophies I would have to train for them, which I was all too eager to do! There was a club about 45 minutes from us that was a much more competitive club, and we agreed that I would start going there and see how things went.
Walking into the Renshuden Judo Academy for the first time was overwhelming. I was so scared! My little judo class in Hamilton was in a school, and there were only a couple kids in the class, and they were mostly kids my age with not a lot of experience. At Renshuden I saw all ages and ranks on the mat: black belts, purple belts, teenagers, and blue belts. I think at the time I was a green belt and not a very experienced one at that. I could tell right away, however, that I was definitely going to like it there.
The head sensei, or teacher, was a little Irish man with twinkling eyes and a smile on his face. I liked him right away. And although the kids seemed intimidating, they also were eager to help me learn. Right away they started showing me stuff and helping me with my uchikomi, or the practice of my throws. By the end of the very first class when it was time to bow out and go home I was hooked. I couldn't wait to go back and learn with all of my new friends.
Not long after I started at Renshuden, Daniel, the head sensei's son, came home from training in Scotland and I immediately knew that I wanted him to like me and that he could help me be the best in the world at judo ... and so my relationship with Daniel began.
What Kayla, at the age of 8, could not have known was that Daniel could not be trusted. Kayla, like most children this age, still looked at coaches, teachers, and adults in general as people who could be counted on — counted on to behave in a predictable and honorable fashion. It is this trust that child predators prey on as they first earn, and then abuse, the faith placed in them by a child. And it is their very importance and prestige that makes it possible to earn not only the confidence of the child but also often the confidence of the child's family. Once this trust is established, it is only a small step for individuals with dishonorable intentions to first isolate and then begin to inappropriately touch a child in their care. This is how child sexual abuse (CSA) happens, and this process must be more fully understood if we are to more effectively protect youth everywhere.
WHAT EXACTLY IS CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE?
The definition of child sexual abuse may seem obvious, but its classification as a condition of interest to mental health professionals and a punishable crime is shockingly recent. It was not until the late 1970s that a majority of states in the United States had mandatory reporting laws that required adults with knowledge of to tell child welfare and legal authorities.
For the purposes of this book we are using the American Psychiatric Association's 2013 definition, which is essentially that CSA is any sexual behavior engaged in by any adult that involves a person under the age of consent and is designed to be sexually gratifying to that adult. The legal definition is essentially the same, although the letter of the law varies from state to state (and is discussed further in Chapter 4). For the purposes of this book we are defining a "child" as someone under 18 years of age.
Child sexual abuse can take many forms — including both touching and nontouching behaviors (from the Hero Project):
Touching behaviors include but are not limited to:
• Fondling or touching a child's genitals for sexual pleasure or other unnecessary reasons.
• Making or inducing a child to touch someone else's genitals
• Penetration of the vulva or vagina, the mouth, or the anus of a child by the perpetrator for sexual pleasure or other unnecessary reason.
Nontouching sexual behaviors include but are not limited to:
• Exposing a child to, or using a child for the purpose of prostitution
• Performing sexual acts in a child's presence.
• Photographing a child in sexual poses and/or exposing the child to pornography
• Watching a child undress or use the bathroom, often without the child's knowledge.
• Using computers and the internet to make sexual overtures or expose a child to sexual behavior.
• Indecent exposure.
Child sexual abuse typically begins gradually, and perpetrators of child sexual abuse can spend months "grooming" a victim with nonsexual hugging and touching — behavior that at first seems perfectly normal and acceptable. When the behavior becomes increasingly sexual, the child is most often confused, frightened, and feels powerless to make it stop. As you will see through the excerpts written from Kayla Harrison's personal experiences with sexual abuse, the child victim may want to be special in some way to the adult — a specialness that the perpetrator then takes advantage of as he incrementally trades his attention and affection for escalating sexual favors.
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT SEXUAL ABUSERS OF CHILDREN
Not that long ago, the prevailing assumption was that the people who abused or hurt children would be obvious in some way, conjuring up for many a creepy man lurking at the edge of a school playground or prowling the bushes and parks. This, however, has not turned out to be accurate since, according to almost all studies and evidence we now have, sexual abusers are most often the people that our children know, often someone parents feel close to and someone the child cares about and trusts.
Because sexual abuse of a child is so abhorrent, the idea of the abuser as an unknown — and unknowable — pervert can seem easier to accept than the truth: Many abusers are family members or family friends, teachers and day care providers, neighbors, babysitters, religious leaders or coaches and, thus, are the very people who are in close, unsupervised contact with children on a daily basis. In fact, among victims of sexual abuse that draw the attention of law enforcement, studies reliably indicate that more than a quarter are victimized by a family member, while 60% are abused by some one else from their social network. Research by Howard Snyder and Melissa Sickmund of the National Center for Juvenile Justice showed that only 14% are victimized by someone they did not already know (see the box on page 12 for more data on CSA perpetrators).
Unfortunately these findings confirm that personal appearance, public behavior, or occupation will not serve as clues to who among us is a potential abuser. When identifying a child abuse risk, it's not who a person is — his age, position, gender, or ascribed status in a community — that matters; it's how that adult chooses to interact with the children under his or her care or supervision. What we do know is that sexual abuse happens universally and that perpetrators most often gain access to a child in a manner that does not initially arouse suspicion in adults or fear in the child. This means that people who sexually abuse children typically don't appear outwardly dangerous. The fact that they can be the very people we feel most trusting of and familiar with is often instrumental in their securing access to their victims.
For a parent or anyone else charged with the care of children, these facts can be terrifying. How can you protect your son or daughter or student if the perpetrator of sexual abuse is likely to be someone you are inclined to trust? The answer is that the greatest degree of protection comes from knowing the behaviors that may be a red flag that an individual is beginning to interact or treat a child in inappropriate ways that may signal the beginning of what we refer to as "grooming," often the introductory phase of sexual abuse.
As was true for Kayla's mother and stepfather, many parents of abused children never thought that an adult who was presumably helping their child might simultaneously be taking advantage of his status and access to that child. Kayla's mother described to her how their family was seduced by the help Daniel offered: "He was always saying stuff about your potential and about the Olympics. He wanted you to make the Olympic trials when you were 13. Your dad and I stayed in a timeshare, and you stayed with the team in a hotel. Because of the Olympic dream, there was a lot of behavior that I did not question. Even to the point when we thought about moving you to the national training center with Jimmy but Daniel said no, he could coach you, and we believed him. You also had a fit and did not want to leave. You were very insistent that you were getting good training where you were and you didn't want to leave. And Daniel was as well. He always said that your potential was amazing. And I always thought that too. I always went to the ends of the earth to make sure you reached your potential."
Disbelief about the possibility of abuse is particularly strong when the perpetrator is a family member, and finding out about incest is perhaps the hardest type of sexual abuse for other family members to accept. Kayla's mother had believed that Daniel's behavior, even when harsh, represented his efforts to help Kayla rather than hurt her and had accepted him in essence as a member of the family with all of the trust and access that this designation carries. In an interview after Daniel's abuse of her daughter was revealed, Kayla's mom talked about her general lack of awareness and her assumption that abuse is not something perpetrated by family friends or other trusted adults:
"Daniel became a trusted family friend. He babysat all three of our children ... they all would spend the night at his house. He went on vacations with us because our vacations were around judo. He was a member of the family.
"I was devastated and horrified when I heard from Kayla that Daniel had sexually abused her. I can't imagine that I didn't know. Still, it's just something I never thought could really happen. There are days that I still think, 'How in the world could I not have known?'"
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT GROOMING BEHAVIOR
Sexual predators often groom their victims for abuse behavior. The grooming process begins with the abuser identifying a child who seems vulnerable. We now know that some abusers look for children who have low self-esteem or lack confidence, are lonely, or are in need of attention (see the box on page 14). But just as often the abuser is someone who has access to the targeted child and the power to provide or withhold things the child needs. This is what gives relatives, teachers, caregivers, and coaches so much potential for misusing their authority — gradually beginning to violate a child's boundaries without discovery or repercussion.
The first time I met Daniel he was on the mat running around and playing with all my new friends. The first thing I remember about him was how fun he was. At 6'1" and 230 pounds, he was an adult and a black belt but always wanted to play games with us and goof off. His bald head and big belly gave him away as a grown man, though.
More often than not Daniel's father would spend half the class yelling at Daniel to knock it off! It was always a fun atmosphere, but everyone there trained hard. And the more time I spent at Daniel's home, the more I wanted Daniel to notice me. He definitely had his favorites, and although he could be harsh to them and it scared me, I also noticed they were the best in the class, and I wanted that so badly.
Selecting Vulnerable Victims
Taken together, what we know from studying the characteristics of child victims and direct reports from perpetrators is that they actively look for children who are passive and may be lonely or troubled due to larger family circumstances, such as coming from single-parent or broken homes. They also look for services or tangible items they can offer a child or family to increase access and reliance.
Expanding the Relationship
After selecting a child, based in part on the child's unsuspecting willingness to engage and in part on the child's falling into the vulnerability categories given in the box on page 14, the abuser commonly forms an expanded relationship with the child that is substantively different from a "normal" adult–child relationship, although, again, the perpetrator typically attempts to make the relationship appear "normal" when others are around. The perpetrator gradually begins to demand acts and behaviors from the child that become obligatory if the child wants this person's ongoing favor, approval, and protection. This process can be seen in Kayla's recollections from that early time as she began to work harder to gain Daniel's admiration:
Daniel terrified me. He was unlike anyone I'd ever met before. Not caring and understanding like my family and friends but harsh — insatiable. And satisfying him quickly became my sole purpose. Slowly at first, because honestly, for a while, I'm sure I wasn't even on his radar. And why should I have been? I was mediocre at best. The fear suppressed any bursts of ability that I had. And the raw talent all around me didn't help. Used to being the star in the context of the general pool of kids my age, I was unaccustomed to being looked over, to being just another someone.
But this new obstacle affected me in several different ways. Sometimes my confidence and self-esteem would dip so low I would become a mere mirage of the child I truly was. Other times my "normalness" would infuriate me to the point of explosion. I can recall nights of endless tears full of frustration and fear. I wasn't used to failing. And I wasn't used to people I wanted to admire me, treating me with indifference. This, ultimately, changed my path. My failure became my fuel.
Kayla believes that she was particularly vulnerable to Daniel's abuse because she was naturally inclined to try to please others, and in fact this is not unusual. Research by Helen Whittle and colleagues shows that abuse, intermixed with small acts of tenderness and generosity by the abuser, can bond some victims to their abuser. Children eager to please their abuser are particularly vulnerable:
I do feel looking back as if my mentality and natural disposition made me more of a "target" for sexual abuse. I always wanted to please. Whether this meant staying after class and rebinding books for my sixth-grade teacher or pushing myself to limits of exhaustion for a coach, I have always had that "I will be the best" mentality. I have always felt "special" in that sense. I trusted the Pedros [Kayla's later coaches in Boston] as much as I trusted Daniel, but the results were completely different because they were not predators. I think it was a matter of having an athlete who is willing to sacrifice so much (often from an extremely young age because when you have that mentality it doesn't matter how young or old you are) and having it exploited by the right person when I was at an age that I didn't understand if it was right or wrong or okay. I was only sure that I loved judo, I loved Daniel, and so I must do this because that is what people in love and people who are successful do.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Fighting Back"
by .
Copyright © 2016 The Guilford Press.
Excerpted by permission of The Guilford Press.
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Table of Contents
PrologueIntroduction
1. How Child Sexual Abuse Begins
2. Keeping the Secret
3. The Tipping Point: Breaking the Silence
4. Freedom with Its Own Chains: What to Expect after Disclosure
5. Recovery: A Long and Winding Road
6. Find the Way to Professional Help
7. From Victim to Survivor
8. How We Can Help: Prevention and Education
Epilogue
Resources
Interviews
Concerned parents; also of interest to survivors of childhood sexual abuse and to teachers, school psychologists, therapists, counselors, and other professionals who work with children and families.