Capturing the Friedmans is Incredible!

Holy mind fuck. One of the best documentaries I've ever seen. I've been wanting to see this since August after a psych professor recommended it. It's amazing and tragic and frustrating. The filmmakers do a really great job of showing many perspectives and not influencing the audience through the filmmaking, so that even at movie's end, you have no idea what happened or who to believe. But does it matter? It's not for me to judge. All I know is that many lives were torn apart by the accusations, and it's impossible not to feel immense compassion, particularly for Jesse. And even if the things that they were charged with didn't happen, there was definitely dysfunction in that family's life and some highly inappropriate and devastating behavior. There were also definitely many grievous actions and judgments that went on within the investigation. Complete witchhunt mentality, which was frightening in itself. The home videos capture some incredibly naked moments. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND renting this on DVD and watching all of the extras. They're almost better than the movie. This movie...seriously...it'll be on my mind for a while.

In the past few months I've been drawn to the issue of sexually inappropriate behavior within families and the psychological aftermath these things have on children after they become adults, particularly between a parent and a child.

I really want to take an opportunity here to talk about something I'm very serious about. There are many things that go on behind closed doors that people never talk about, because they are afraid, because they are ashamed, because they feel a sense of duty to their aggressors despite being victimized or because they are in denial and/or have no memory of the incident (s). In particular and quite unfortunately, sexual abuse, to its varying degrees, is not uncommon.

I read an eye-opening article a few months ago...

The Pyschological Impact of Sexual Abuse: Content Analysis of Interviews with Male Survivors (David Lisak, Journal of Traumatic Stress, Vol. 7, No. 4, 1994)

When I found this article, I was particularly interested in male victims with female perpetrators, since this is a very taboo subject and few men are willing to come forward due to fears of the social stigmas; I feel that so much work has been done from other perspectives, that it is very important that men victimized by women also have understanding and an outlet. This article was extremely powerful and heart-wrenching, especially when I read the quotes from survivors. I hope, to those who read the following, that this article will promote more understanding, and to those who have experienced forms of abuse, that they know that life does not have to be such a dark struggle, and that many things that are carried inside are things that do not need to be carried. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, a light that matches the light that resiliently burns deep within you, and which you deserve to be embraced by. Together, we need to break this cycle of hurt.

The stats (24 cases):

Age of onset: avg. 7.6 years old(range of 4-16)
Perpetrators: 7 mothers, 1 father, 5 siblings, 3 aunts, 2 uncles, 1 priest, 1 scout leader, 3 neighbors, 6 strangers (some were abused by more than one perpetrator). 53.8% were abused by intrafamilial perpetrators
-family environment often characterized by disruption and/or violence:

42.3% came from families of divorce, separation or parental death.
46.2% were physically abused
34.6% witnessed violence between their parents
50% had at least one alcoholic or drug abusing parent
80.8% have history of substance abuse themselves
50% actively thought about suicide
23% attempted suicide
69.2% have received psychological treatment
31% have victimized others at some point in their lives (this includes sexual abuse of children, rape of adult women, battery of female intimate partners, sadistic physical assaults on adult men)


Some interesting themes described in the article which pervade male survivors' experiences and lives:

Anger
Anger emerged in the men's autobiographies in many different forms. They talked about the experience of feeling overwhelmed with rage, of being afraid of their anger, of suppressing it and of discovering its existence...For some [the anger] seemed to conflict with their view of themselves, to make them see themselves in a less favorable light. Others expressed their fear of their violent fantasies or of losing control over their anger.

[SUBJECT]:If they knew what I thought, they wouldn't let me in society. No way. There's an incredible amount of violence and stuff that runs through my mind. And I'm really scared of it.

The fear of this anger, or confusion about how and when to express it appropriately, caused some men to actively suppress it. However, control and suppression of anger does not always work and some of the men described what several of them termed, "snapping."

Betrayal
A subject's sense of having had their trust or faith in someone violated by this person, either directly or by the person's perceived actions or thoughts or feelings...Most frequently, men expressed these feelings toward a parent, and most often because the parent failed to protect them from the abuse.

Fear
Men described fear pervading their lives, during the abuse, in the childhood aftermath of the abuse, and throughout the rest of their lives into adulthood. They described fear which could be a dull, ever present reality, or a dizzying experience of abject terror.

[SUBJECT]: I remember the first night I spent in there I screamed just to get out of there. Because that's where I had been molested. Though I didn't know that's why I was screaming. I was just terrified of the room.

[SUBJECT]: I started having panic attacks and I was afraid to have anybody in the house and I was afraid to go out and socialize with people.

[SUBJECT]: And I was afraid I was going insane.

Some men recalled a specific fear which gripped them in the aftermath of the abuse, the fear that they would be "discovered," that the secret they harbored would be revealed:

[SUBJECT]: And I would be petrified, utterly petrified that somebody might find out about me.

Helplessness
One of the most crucial aspects of the experience of abuse is a fundamental loss of control: over one's physical being, one's sense of self, one's sense of agency and self-efficacy, and one's fate. The profound helplessness inherent in this loss of control was one of the most deeply felt, yet also difficult to articulate aspects of the abuse experience for these men.

[S]: It's like my reoccuring dreams like I can't run. I always have dreams of the same thing. If I'm running, I can't move my legs and my arms. And somebody is coming down on top of me and I can't get up. And I'll wake up and jump out of my bed.

[S]: The world was evil, it's coming to get you, and you could do almost nothing to defend from it.

[S]: I just had to put up with it. That's the way she was. They were her rules. If she said I have to kiss her, I have to kiss her. If she says I have to hug her, I have to hug her. It was like I kept trying to fill her cup and it just kept running out. And she's standing there screaming "fill it, fill it, fill it!"

Particularly for men who were abused by adult women, the helplessness characterized their sexual encounters with women:

[S]: The defeat that I felt with my mother comes back often. I find it in my sexual relationships. A lot of times I allow people to be invasive because I'm used to it. And I've had a hard time setting up boundaries. I've had a hard time believing that my boundaries wer worthwhile, that they were worth keeping. I guess I often felt like I was the property of somebody else. And that anybody could just do whatever they wanted. And that I didn't have a right to have feelings about it.

[S]: All the scenes in college where the girls would seduce me, and I'd just kind of let them do whatever they want to do. Or I would do for them whatever they wanted me to do. And then just get out.

Another common expression of helplessness emerged in men's need for control, in their descriptions of emotional consequences of feeling out of control, in ways they compensated for the underlying feeling of helplessness:

[S]: I'm not going to be that vulnerable. And I know that's all part of the control thing I have.

[S]: And sometimes if I lose the slightest control, I think I'm going to die inside, I really do. I feel like I'm going to lose it, I'm going to die.

For a minority of men, the need to feel in control drove them to victimize other people:


[S]: The joy of seeing other people hurt, maybe not hurt...I guess it's hard to describe. Feeling that I was in control of dominating somebody. I had control over them and they were below me.

[S]: So I always felt somewhat powerless in sex for awhile, except with the younger kids, where I felt in control.

Isolation and Alienation
One of the most destructive legacies of childhood abuse is the stigma which attaches itself to the child, separating him from his peers, robbing him of his sense of belongingness, and seeding the potential for a lifelong struggle with alienation from other people. This sense of differentness, almost always linked to a deeply ingrained feeling of inferiority, interferes with the survivor's ability to seek and accept intimacy with others, sometimes resulting in a history of problematic relationships and chronic isolation:

[S]: But we had talked about intimacy and pain. And how I equate intimacy with pain. The people that I was intimate with from childhood, I went through incredibly painful experiences. Who would want to get intimate with someone....BAsically if you get that intimate someone could kill you, if you make one false move.

[S]: Nobody cares, nobody loves me. And no matter how much people tried to care and love me, I always said nobody did, because I couldn't feel it.

[S]: I didn't have anybody to talk to. There was nobody I could confide in. Or nobody I thought I could confide in. Nobody I thought would be able to understand or do any good. And I thought just to reveal this secret to anybody would just kill me.

[S]: I didn't feel like everyone else. I felt different. I was different. I was different because I had done this weird thing with [someone] and I don't know what that's about but I did it. And definitely no ordinary person would do that.

[S]: I remember clearly being on the playground and just not fitting in. I've heard a lot of people talk about being on the outside looking in. That was me.

[S]: I was alone. I was drifting. I would go from one social group to another, and just never stay anywhere enough time to develop any kind of deep relationship with anyone. I felt very isolated and alone.

Legitimacy
Many of the men struggled to acknowledge to themselves that they were in fact abused, and that the abuse had greatly affected them.

[S]: I feel like I'm just defective and a depressed person and that's why I feel this way.

[S]: This is the voice that goes on in my head. It makes me think I made it up. And it's subtle, because I know that I didn't make up the abuse. I think I'm making the memory. I know that happened, but I think I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill, is what I tell myself.

Masculinity Issues

[S]: I worried a lot about the size of my manhood or whatever, the size of my penis. I did. I was always comparing. I'd ask my girlfriends. And then I felt like I was going to die when they told me no, you're not the biggest man I've been with. You felt like a piece of dog shit.

[S]: I hate violence. I was always the wimp or the pussy to back down in school. I always shied away from violence. I even get nervous if people are yelling. Like somebody being mad at me for whatever reason. It's all interrelated.

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The entire article can be found at:

http://www.jimhopper.com/pdfs/Lisak_(1994)_Male_Survivor_Interviews.pdf