Robert Brown shares his story of being sexually abused by other children and how it has shaped him as an adult.
“Hey Fag-Boy!!!” Yeah, I usually didn’t hear my actual name for many years. In fact, my name was not actually heard until I grew-up and left my hometown forever. That type of alienation, isolation, and marginalizing is only one of the costs of seven-years of sexual abuse. In fact, given that it was older boys that used my body as warm sex-meat, so many isolating factors got strapped to my back that any hope of a normal childhood was virtually gone. The drama was all recreated in a 700-Club video, so I won’t hop into the details of the continued sexual abuse. Instead, I’ll describe the factors that made child-on-child rape possible and what followed.
My mother was bound to a wheelchair from 1956-forward due to catching the Polio virus. That’s right, the very year Dr. Salk saved the world. He just missed my mother by inches. As a result, I was mostly raised from birth by a revolving door of hired-help; the kind of hired-help that really doesn’t care much about some little rich brat and his diapers. The doctors and books will tell you that it’s certainly not healthy for a baby to not bond to a mother figure. I can surely testify to that. I came on the scene in 1960: a birth that was deemed “impossible” for a polio victim.
My father was a successful industrial engineer and travelled very heavily – weeks or months at a time. In the neighborhood, the default assumption was that “Fag-Boy’s father is out-of-town.” When he was home, he was a heavy-drinking rage-aholic who could kick my little body into the air. I learned to really hate those slippery hardwood floors and their lack of “hold” of my socks. Those place-kicks would always land me on my ass when I’d run for my life. Man! I Hated those freakin’ floors!
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When you live in a new upper-middle-class neighborhood full of child baby boomers, everyone pretty much knows your living conditions. When I peed my pants in public from a hard face-slap by Daddy, the neighborhood kids gathered a lot of assumptions – correctly.
The conditions were all there, all ripe, all perfect. There was no present or attentive Dad, no intrusive and prowling Mother; all in a time and place where there was no concern or attention paid to matters of sexual abuse by children. The older boys (12-years-old at the start) had quite a little find in this 7-year-old. It was only a matter of time, and the Winter of 1967-68 was my time.
Anal and oral rape became the activity of choice for four of those 12-year-olds, and I was the compliant, a coerced and quiet outlet for perverted and cruel experimentation.
I tell you all this not to horrify, sicken, or shock you, but rather to introduce the topic of male child sexual abuse – “child-rape” more directly. Is mine a severe case? Maybe, but severity has nothing to do with the fact that I’m not alone with this type of history. Thus, you are not alone either if you recall such wrong abuse of your body. If you were not abused, I guarantee that you know a man who was, and you’ll benefit through better understanding a topic that still remains highly taboo in our society. But I’m not the only child who grew into adulthood with PTSD, irrational fear, more sexual issues than you can count, inter-personal handicaps, less-than-zero self esteem, nightmares, flashbacks, a ruined marriage, drug and alcohol abuse on a grand-scale…I need not go on. If you are a survivor, you already know the rest. Boys with only one encounter of unwanted sexual assault can have the same nightmarish adulthood. Once trust is broken, once betrayal shocks, as soon as violation of your sacred child-body occurs solely for the pleasure of an adult or older, more powerful person, you are damaged.
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Even though I faked my way through life looking and acting like “a normal,” I eventually had no choice but to break-down and seek help, else I was doomed to a very early death. I used to believe that I’d go to my grave with the truth of my childhood, but apparently I could not quite make that goal.
In the coming series, I’ll recount the nature of abuse and its relationship to my illnesses today. I’ll discuss why I held and left 11 jobs in 14 years as an MBA. Examine wearing a mask in society, and that mask wearing-thin. Marriage, disclosure, public perceptions, and misunderstandings will be examined as well. And I must make clear the reasons why a victim/survivor fears disclosure, fears being discovered and how the many horrid myths that surround sexual abuse of boys are flat-out wrong.
For now, know that if you are a victim/survivor or if you love a victim/survivor, that healing is possible and that the days of horror can end; that you can find a voice; that you can call “foul”; that none of it was your fault no matter what; that bad days are finite; that you can change your future.
—Photo nebowers/Flickr
when it all becomes too overwhelming, its rough. when you just don’t give a shit molecule, yer seemingly spent. when you just don’t care one more sub-atomic particle… when you just don’t see any point at all…….. When you wake up in a shit-hole….like a nazi concentration camp, for what are you struggling to survive? Is the concentration camp going to improve? Will there be a new swimming pool and zip-line game? Will there be careers and neighborhoods with nice homes and children running with dogs, screaming in joy and laughter? Will your survival initiate an improvement of the concentration… Read more »
Bethany, I’m so sorry the two of you (or more) have to deal with this. I truly hope he’s getting therapy. I know this level of grief and depression of which you write. I battle it nearly every day for at least 2-hours in aggregate. Its pure hell. If I may suggest, get to a major bookstore for Mike Lew’s, “Victims No Longer” 2d ed. The book was a life-saver for me and many others. You are welcome to visit my blog (to be re-activated shortly). It can be found in my gravitar profile or robbie357.wordpress.com. The video, “A Childhood… Read more »
Hi Rob, Firstly I’m so sorry all this happened to you. But thank you so much for sharing your story. Just this week I’ve helped the father of my children stay alive – he has similar stories as yours, although his perpetrators were also uncles, priests and brothers. But he also became a perpetrator in his mid-teens and carries enormous guilt around this. His depth of depressions has him unable to work currently, he can’t sleep, and even the sleeping pills don’t seem to knock out the recurring nightmares he has. He just keeps saying that he doesn’t know how… Read more »
Rob, Thank you for your story. It meets my needs for community with others of similar experience and helps me heal and validate my own experience. I have a similar story of incest and child rape with similar age differences. At the age of 29 I’ve finally acknowledged the far reaching consequences of this history. I was never able to acknowledge this history or place blame because my perpetrator was still young (15) and confused, had just made some mistakes with me, was generally a good guy otherwise and I looked up to him. How could I blame him? If… Read more »
Wow JP, The similarities in outcome and effects are virtually the same for me (plus a box of other horrors – guessing for you too). It hurts me every time I read, see, hear of another victim/survivor. I’m sorry it caused such issues for you.
Fully 1/3 of all Child Sex Abuse (CSA) is perpetrated by other children/minors. Such CSA has its own set of unique outcome attributes.
I’m glad you found this helpful and validating in any way. I hope the entire series will be of value as well.
1/3? Wow, I thought my experience was more unusual.
I think the guy who molested me was 12, too.
I have known Rob for 30+ years and he’s the brother I never had. I can’t imagine what his childhood was like but I do know the man and father he has become and he is one of the best. I love you Rob and hope that you continue healing and helping others in need.
Rob, please find my writer’s profile on GMP, go to my website, get my email address, and contact me.