The Socially Skilled Child Molester

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About a month ago I posted about a book I just read, Identifying Child Molesters, by Carla van Dam, PhD (2001). Today I’m reporting on another of her books, The Socially Skilled Child Molester: Differentiating the Guilty from the Falsely Accused (2006). While there’s a lot of overlap in content between the two, the difference of five years does give each its own flavor.
Book: The Socially Skilled Child Molester by Carla van Dam PhD
A bit more historical context for Dr. van Dam’s work. In the 1990s, “stranger danger” was the big thing. However, most children who are harmed, both then and now, are targeted by someone they know. Dr. van Dam’s 2001 book detailed strategies used by these abusers.

In this second book, Dr. van Dam draws us composite of a few types of child molesters, based on thousands of interviews. Each composite profile is characterized by their particular approach to grooming the communities, parents, and children upon whom they prey.

  • Businessman Bob is successful and charming. Even after being convicted of molesting his oldest daughter and going through “treatment,” he is welcomed back into the community and even manages to wrest custody of his three younger daughters from his ex-wife.
  • Marvelous Moving Marvin, an enthusiastic young man, seems always available for baby-sitting, helping out at summer camps, winter camps, day care, you name it. When too many rumors about inappropriate behavior around the youth begin swirling, though, he moves on to another town and begins the process all over again.
  • The Divine Dr. Dan is a diligent medical doctor, who misuses his expertise to make sure all the boys on his camping or fishing or baseball or skiing trips are healthy by taking their temperatures rectally and examining their penises.
  • Cranky Coach Carl is not particularly socially skilled, but he makes up for that by being a winning coach. His peculiarities are masked by the league considering him “old school” and just a bit of a disciplinarian.
  • Bottom-Feeder Buddy is likewise not particularly socially skilled, not to the same level as Bob, Marvin, or Dan. But then he sets his sights lower, going after struggling single moms (with daughters) who are SO happy to be dating a man who occasionally does laundry and makes a dinner.  He, too, moves on to another town as the daughters age out of his interest.

In The Socially Skilled Child Molester, Dr. van Dam frames this abuse as a form of addiction. There are implications to thinking sexual abuse as paralleling substance abuse. The abusers have organized their whole lives around grooming families, setting up situations, and gaining access to children. Every relationship, career choice, or location move is based on access to molesting children. And, unless they get treatment, they will continue that behavior.

Can they successfully be treated? Two of these composite characters went through “treatment,” and learned how to better mask their tracks in the future.

Dr. van Dam refers many times to how others often enable abusers, citing the then-recent example of the Catholic Church moving abusive priests from parish to parish, without ever giving parishioners any warning. Maybe you remember that 20 years ago, in 2002, The Boston Globe published a series of articles exposing how bishops would move abusive priests, come to private deals with families that included clauses that barred victims and families from every discussing it, and the immense number of sealed court documents. In a nutshell, the idea was that each incident would be considered just a one-off, that any errant priest was a lone offender, and the real magnitude of the issue got buried. Until reporters at The Boston Globe ran their exposé.

The subtitle of this book is Differentiating the Guilty from the Falsely Accused. Dr. van Dam does bring that topic up a few times. Her thinking is that the guilty are the addicts who organize their lives around finding, grooming, and molesting targets. The innocent, on the other hand, do not. I’m not sure, though, that she focuses enough on that topic to make it a whole subtitle. Perhaps it’s what we’d now call a click-bait title. Because overall we are so afraid of embarrassing or ruining the reputation of a charming professional person who happens to offer very convenient services that we feel initially better off overlooking their “idiosyncrasies.” Unless it hits your family.  As Dr. van Dam states in the Introduction, “[t]he consistency of the practices and strategies of the well-socialized Groomers being examined in this book are successful because of continued public ignorance.”   To borrow a phrase from another famous public figure, as long as we willfully ignore another inconvenient truth, we will continue to allow these molesters to hide in plain sight.

Recognizing the ploys and manipulations of child molesters, as well as adult molesters, is an essential part of our curricula.  Visit our website to find a class that fits your needs.

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What If He Gets Angry?

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A frequent question:  What if he gets angry?  As March (a/k/a Women’s Herstory Month) slips into April (Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month), it’s a good time to consider how our past assumptions impact our current situations.  Our herstory is not sequestered in the past.  It is alive and often seething, usually out of sight and out of mind.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy not that far away, women heard that, if assaulted, they should not resist.  Yes, you read that correctly.  They were told they’d be better off not fighting back.  Because the assailant, always male, was certainly bigger and stronger and there was NO WAY a woman could fend off that bigger, stronger, masculine assailant.  A woman who would try to fight back would only further enrage the assailant, and she’d end up getting hurt worse.  Of course there were no studies, no data, but who could dispute the obvious?

Like many other “obvious” truths, this one stood neither the test of time nor data.  Women who fight back are more likely to escape.  Women who speak up are more likely to not get assaulted.  And women who recognize the early behaviors that they are being targeted — and then enforce their boundaries — are far less likely to experience attempted assault.  We know more about the social dynamics surrounding assault.  But this is not news, we’ve known most of this for at least 40 years.

Yet, even today, I’m still often asked “what if he gets angry?”

Well, what if he DOES get angry?  Most of the time anger is an attempt at intimidation, which often works.  There’s the fear that a situation can spiral into physical violence, which does happen (though not as often as you’d think).  You have some quick decisions to make, and it would be helpful if you gave the matter some thought in advance. 

If you yield to their anger, are you safer? 

Is it sustainable in the long term?  Or you can chose a couple of specific verbal skills (broken record, distraction, direct confrontation) and script out some responses.  And maybe it’s a good time to learn (or refresh) your physical skills, just in case.

Stay safe, live life.

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Do You Trust Yourself?

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Today is May 26, 2021. I have some decisions to make. Scheduling classes for the summer. Usually it’s not a big deal, kind of like a jigsaw puzzle putting together dates with class types, but this year I have to choose between running live in-person classes or sticking with virtual Zoom sessions. Do I require in-person class attendees to be vaccinated for COVID-19? To show proof, or trust they are truthful?

Do you trust yourself?

I read this book years ago, “Yes” or “No”: The Guide to Better Decisions by Spencer Johnson. Johnson is known for writing business self-help books that rely on allegories to convey their points. In this one he goes through a tale about a young man needing to make a decision and the advice he’s given by a mentoring group while on an extended hiking trip. We never find out what the issue or choices were, the whole point was the process of arriving at a decision via a series of six questions. The first three questions were in the rational realm, but the second three were more in the domain of the heart. One of those key questions to ask oneself is “does this decision show that I trust my instincts?”

Do you trust yourself?

Sure, all of us on occasion have misjudged situations, misread body language, acted on our prejudice and assumptions. But what happened afterwards? What did you find out? Did you find feedback to learn more about yourself? Were you honest with yourself?

Do you trust yourself?

Or, did someone subsequently try to shame you, or insist that your assessments are always wrong? Always would be wrong? With constant picking on your choice of clothing, restaurants, or movies. Disparaging comments about your family and friends? Expressions of contempt for your opinions on matters cultural or political?

Over a decade ago one student told me about her self-development strategy. She sold cherries in Pike Place Market over the summer, One student learned to "read" people when she sold cherries at the market, and learned to trust herself.when she was home from college. Now, who’s in Pike Place Market in the summer? A whole lotta tourists, who really don’t need cherries. They may need a snowglobe with the Space Needle, or a chocolate salmon, or a T-shirt that says “my parents went to Seattle and all I got was this T shirt.” But not cherries. So she came out from behind the stand to interact more with visitors. From that experience she learned to assess body language and attitudes, and more quickly figure out who may be a customer and who may be a creep.  (BTW, I also talked about this in my blog post 2 weeks ago.)

As I’ve noted several times, the great American sage Yogi Berra is said to have said, you can observe a lot just by watching.

She honed her sense of trusting herself.  You can, too.

Stay safe, live life.

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Recognize Social Media Hoaxes

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Happy Earth Day, everyone!  Although today is Thursday, April 22, 2021, I’m not here to talk about Earth Day. But a good discussion moment came up in social media, about media literacy and how to recognize social media hoaxes.

You may have seen social media postings about April 24. About an alleged group of six men who are said to have declared — via a TikTok video — April 24 as National Rape Day, suggesting that men go out and sexually assault women, and it would be legal.

Others on social media have been sounding the alarm. Stay at home, carry a weapon, be on high alert, etc. Except, where’s the alleged video? One TikTok account claims to have seen it, and claims to be spreading the word because most of her followers are women and they should be aware of it. Others have picked up on that warning. But I don’t know of many, or even any other accounts claiming to have seen the alleged original video.

And TikTok cannot find the offending video, on their own platform.

If I were a gambling type of gal, I’d be betting this is a hoax. That this “news” is a troll or two whose goal is to generate attention, spread fear, and kick back laughing as they watch responses roll in. Said trolls could be the purported group of six, or it could be the account that issued the warning about a non-existent Group of Six.

I personally do not plan on taking precautions other than what I would normally. Remember, an average of about 1,200 persons are sexually assaulted each day in the United States. The alleged “advice” we are hearing from those spreading the April 24 hoax is to stay safe by staying at home. I call BS. Most women are raped in someone’s home. By people they know.

recognize social media hoaxes

Wouldn’t it be nice if recognizing social media hoaxes were this easy?

This is a good example of why we — and I mean “we” as individual media consumers, and that probably includes you on occasion — why we need to practice better media literacy and critical thinking (yes, we do cover that in our self-defense classes).  Why we need to more surely recognize social media hoaxes.  This has the markings of a hoax. It pushes a hot-button issue with a claim of imminent outrageous action. It has a built-in audience, and will attract a sizable readership, especially on social media. And there’s no real evidence. Before spreading crap, please do some homework if you have ANY doubts. Click the links, all of them. No links? That’s a red flag. Google all the names. Reverse image search all images. Run a Whois on domain names. Or if you don’t want to do all that, at the very least find a reliable fact-checking site, maybe Snopes.com. I am not on TikTok, but if I were, I’d be checking into the reliability of those spreading this. Please do not empower trolls by spreading their misinformation — it sucks up your time and energy needlessly, and it sucks up the time and energy of others with whom you share, that can be put to much better use. And it contributes to a social environment where most people consider the world a suckier place then it really is.

Stay safe, and live life!

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What You Don’t Know About Rape Laws May Shock You

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April is Sexual Assault Awareness (and Prevention) Month.  This one’s for you, aimed first at girls going away to college. But it’s really applicable for anyone moving out-of-state.  Or who doesn’t know their state’s rape laws.

Laws around crime, in this case sexual assault, differ state by state.  Maybe you already knew that, but I’m surprised by how many of my students did not.

Rape laws vary across the country. Most law around crime is in a state’s domain, the federal government only claims an interest in specific and limited situations.

So if you’re moving — or will be attending school — out-of-state, you should educate yourself.  If you’re not off to college or moving, do you know something about the rape laws where you live?

I’ve been telling teens this in my Off to College classes for several years. It came to the top of my attention a couple of weeks ago thanks to this article in the Washington Post. A man’s conviction for third-degree criminal sexual conduct was overturned by the Minnesota Supreme Court. Their ruling centered around state law that defined a victim as being “mentally incapacitated” due to too much alcohol or drugs ONLY if said alcohol or drugs were administered without her knowledge. In this particular case, the victim had drank a lot before, went to a “party” that really wasn’t, passed out, and woke up to find the “host” engaging in sex with her. She told him she didn’t want to have sex, but he insisted and continued, and she again lost consciousness.

The Supreme Court ruled that because the woman had drank beforehand, she was not “mentally incapacitated” according to the law’s definition. And, according to this article, most states in this country have similar laws.

This reminded me of another article I’d read a few years ago. In North Carolina there was this “right to finish,” where you could not change your mind about engaging in sex after you began, even if the other person began getting violent or abusive. Fortunately, it’s been changed — after being on the books for about 40 years.

Back to Minnesota. If the rape law is that clear, why was the defendant originally convicted, and the conviction upheld by an appeals court? I’m not an attorney, don’t play one on TV, and certainly not a law expert. However, I did find a very useful resource. RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) has a webpage that summarizes state sex crimes definitions and penalties. I looked up Minnesota. I have to restate that I know nothing about the case other than what I read in the article in WaPo. And there is another definition under third-degree criminal sexual conduct: physically helpless. One of the characteristics of physically helpless is being “not conscious.” Which, according to the article, this victim was.

I cannot say if the lower courts were relying on one definition in the law, and the Supreme Court chose a different definition to take priority. If so, that is an issue of power, of which ruling body has the power to take possibly contradictory sections of law and decide whose view prevails.

My advice to girls (and boys) off to college: get familiar with the law of that state (check on the RAINN site). And don’t count on it to be obvious.

Stay safe, live life.

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Athlete A

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Today I’m revisiting that hot mess from a couple of years ago that was USA Gymnastics, the organization that trains and selects the Olympic team. Because this weekend I finally got around to watching the Netflix documentary Athlete A.

This disturbing documentary brings to life to the phrase “the banality of evil.” How team doctor Dr. Larry Nassar was enabled by coaches and the USA Gymnastic organization, who themselves were too engrossed in making money and medals to give priority to the welfare of the teenage athletes. But it’s not just the coaches and administrators who bear responsibility. There are layers of staff and volunteers and even some parents around that circle who bought into the idea that athletes needed to be abused and belittled to achieve peak performance.

Perhaps “bought into the idea that abuse is required” is a bit forward. How about “studiously ignored,” or “turned a blind eye” to abuse, as long as it got results. An ideal set-up for a sexual predator to stalk their prey. But it was just business as usual, for them.

“Athlete A” was the alias in early court documents for Maggie Nichols, one of the many athletes sexually abused by Dr. Nassar.  Nassar himself, after an over 25 year career, was convicted of victimizing many athletes and of possessing child pornography (37,000 images on hard drives). One of the film’s major focus is on Nichols, who reported the abuse and was then not selected for the 2016 Olympic team (Nichols’ mother has stated she felt that Maggie’s exclusion from the team, despite having been a favorite, was retaliation).  Several other former athletes are spotlighted, as are the investigative reporters at the Indianapolis Star, the newspaper that broke the story and then dug deeper. Nichols was not the first to report Dr. Nassar, but she successfully spearheaded the effort and because of that many many others came forward.  A lot of this, and more, is also in the excellent podcast Believed.  There is also a Discussion Guide for Athlete A.

The story has a pretty good outcome for Maggie Nichols. She went to the University of Oklahoma, joined the gymnastics team there, and became one of the most accomplished NCAA gymnasts. Many of the former gymnasts, after Dr. Nassar’s conviction, felt the single most important outcome was that they were finally believed. And I’m sure there are many more out there who are still struggling with the aftermath of their abuse.

What can we learn from this film? How easy it is to get away with assault and abuse, so long as the perpetrator is successful and well-liked. How challenging it is for the abused to be taken seriously. An articulate example of the extent of the power imbalance in amateur athletics. When an administrator says “don’t report to the police, we’ll take care of that,” do not take them at their words. And, most importantly, how easy it is for SO many people to not want to see the real human costs of child abuse, as long as there’s some benefit for them.

Stay safe, live life.

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Creating Support and Safer Spaces

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Over the last month I’ve written about seeking support (several posts, in fact:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).  Finding family, friends, even professionals, who would be supportive should you need help.  Finding safer spaces.  While that help can be material, mostly in our self-defense classes we talk about emotional support.  This post follows Part 3, where at the end I talk about not just finding support but your role in creating a supportive community.

Here is a book that addresses those same concerns:  Making Spaces Safer, by Shawna Potter.  The subtitle says it all.  “A guide to giving harassment the boot wherever you work, play, and gather.”  Because whether you are out to make a living, have fun, or change the world, contending with the extra obstacles of harassment is an unwanted detraction.   It diverts your energy from what you want.

Making Spaces Safer

Making Spaces Safer, by Shawna Potter

The ideas Potter puts forward are based in her work with Hollaback! in Baltimore, as well as with her workshops as she toured with her band.  They are simple in concept, but as with most simple ideas they can be hard to implement.  There are folks for whom the status quo is just fine and see no need to change, or who are advantaged by ignoring harassment, or who just hate change and what it may represent.

Let’s get back, though, to the simple.  Really, it’s like all the stuff you should have learned in kindergarten.  About asking first and sharing and saying please and thank you.  Let’s get to some specifics.

  • Prioritize the needs and testimony of the person who experienced harassment.  That individual’s sense of security and self-determination just took a big hit.  While that sounds straightforward, many agencies don’t do this.
  • That individual should have some control over the process.  What are their choices?  Can they freely make choices?
    • If you are the person hearing the account, what is your role?  Do you manage the space where the harassment happened?  Can you find a place for that person to be more comfortable so they can tell you what happened, and the remedy they’d like?
      • For example, if you manage a club, you can offer to keep an eye on the harasser, take the harasser aside for a conversation, or remove them from the premises.  Who makes that decision?  Most of the time it is the manager, and Potter is saying it should be the person who experienced the harassment.
  • Validate that person’s experience!  I’ve used that concept for a while, in the area of self-care.  Find a trusted, supportive ally, someone who believes you and reminds you that the harassment was not your fault.

About now you may be shaking your head and thinking about how this is all well and good, but just not practical.  Well, it is.

Homeroom is a restaurant in Oakland, California.  They serve mac & cheese.  Some sides, but their raison d’etre is mac & cheese.  Comfort food.  Erin Wade, chef and owner, wants everyone to feel comfortable.  So she was appalled when she found out that some customers had been harassing the servers, and that managers were doing little about it.  They had a meeting, and she heard a lot more that had not been reported.  Not OK with Wade (did I mention that before starting this restaurant she was a lawyer?).  They instituted new procedures, and shifted control.  Really simple, too, based on color coding.  Incidents were graded yellow, orange, or red.  A yellow meant that a server reported an uncomfortable vibe or look to a manager, and the manager would take over that table if the server chooses.  An orange is inappropriate comments, and the manager does take over that table.  A red is overt sexual comments or physical touching, and the customer is ejected from the restaurant.  Please read these two articles for more details:

Note the critical change is that it is the servers who decide what level each incident warrants, and the manager has their roles already prescribed.  No need to wonder if the customer really intended that, or if the staff was just too sensitive that day.  The power is in the hands of the (mostly female) server staff, rather than the (mostly male) manager.  (BTW, Wade also then recognized the gendered job levels and was seeking to change that also.)   And this system works because it has become the company culture.  Because Wade sought to shift the balance of power, support that shift, and deliberately make her restaurant a safer space.

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Getting Support – Part 3

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These last 2 weeks I’ve been outlining finding support after assault.  Self-care is a critical aspect of anyone’s overall safety plan, and the central pillar of self-care is knowing who among your family and friends could support you after any assault, regardless of outcome.  Two weeks ago I began outlining traits of those individuals, with my thumbnail sketch of what a supportive human does.

  • They listen.
  • They believe you.
  • They remind you it wasn’t your fault.

Two weeks ago I described what listening looks and sounds like.  Last week I described what believing you and reminding you it wasn’t your fault looks and and sound like.  Today I have a few more words on blame and fault-finding, and then move on to creating community.

First, some words about those who habitually blame victims for their own assaults. This is chronic in domestic violence, where the abuser is manipulating the target’s perception.  Very often also manipulating the perception of those around, cutting off ways of getting support.  This is often described as “gaslighting.”  It is a long-term strategy for you to relinquish control and hand over decision-making.

Getting support? Not from them!

Getting support? Not from them!

A major process in our culture is an adversarial approach — our justice system and political system are set up to pit two sides against each other, there are defined rules and referees, they duke it out like a boxing or martial arts sparring match, and a winner is picked. So it’s not really a surprise that some of us expand that view, that life is a brutal competition.  It bleeds into other parts of our lives, where there are no explicit rules, no referee, and it’s not a good fit.  And it’s all about power.

There does not need to be a long-term relationship for blame-shifting to occur.  People who harm others often try to shift attention away from themselves and their actions to what the victim did “wrong.”  The stereotypical ones include “what was she wearing,” “how much did she drink,” and “she was flirting.”  Others in our communities, like ourselves, want to stay safe and part of their process, though, is to find out details about what happened to others and resolve to not make the same “mistakes.” Except there’s a big problem with this approach.  The person targeted may have done something different, and it may have made a difference, or maybe not.  There are people who do “wrong” stuff all the time — they smile at strangers, they drink a lot, maybe even pass out on a friend’s couch.  And didn’t get assaulted.  Because there was no assailant present.  The common elements of all assault isn’t clothing choices or alcohol consumption or flirting, it’s the person(s) who made the bad choice to take what they wanted, regardless of consent.

Do you want to wait until after an assault to figure out who your supportive friends are?  Probably not.  Rather, you can be cultivating those relationships now.

My colleague Yehudit Sidikman of ESD Global suggested in a recent blog post that you practice talking about “what-if” scenarios with those important people in your life.  One of her examples is, “mom, if something like this [kind of assault] ever happened to me, how would you react if I told you?”  Or begin a conversation with a good friend like, “ I’ve never had this happen to me, but I am wondering how you would react if I came to you and told you that [add story].”  Maybe there was a recent assault in the news, you could use that as your example.  Or a particular #MeToo story.  Their responses can give you some information about what they think about assault and blame.  We do all know that there’s often a gap between what a person says and what they will do, so please temper this with what you already know about them.   But, perhaps more importantly, it will also give them food for thought. And this does not have to be a “one-off” discussion, and should not be a one-off.  You transition that “what-if” into a conversation on what it means to be supportive, to be a friend, do you want to be supportive, when do you feel it important to be supportive.  When these conversations happen with a few people in your circle, and it becomes less awkward, you get a better sense of where people are at.  You find those who share your values, and you maybe even move others to really think about what support means.

Building these relationships takes a while.  And it is critical.  And that’s how communities begin, one relationship at a time.

Why don’t you begin with the very next conversation you have with someone close?  Today is not too soon.

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Getting Support – Part 2

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Today, November 11, is Veterans Day.  The one day where we as a nation formally thank those who served our country with their military service. Parades, taking out old photos and uniforms, visits to memorials.  We recognize all those who served.  At the same time, as a nation we are less caring about veterans’ getting support they need.

For about 12 years (between 2003 and 2014) I worked with Dr. Wendy David, Dr. Ann Cotton, and the VA Medical Center in Seattle on the Taking Charge project.  This 12-week self-defense program was for women veterans who were suffering from long-term, chronic PTSD as a result of sexual assault while in military service.  (Unfortunately, the program ended when Dr. David retired.)  If you are familiar with PTSD, you know it’s not pretty.  Watch this short video for more on the effects and possible causes.

While this blog post not an exposition on PTSD, I have to note there’s a significant correlation between social support and the likelihood of an assault survivor developing PTSD.  One commonality all the participants in Taking Charge had was a lack of support from those around them after their assaults.  Our culture does come with a large victim-blaming component, and sorting out those who can be supportive from those who won’t is likely to be critical to your long-term health and happiness.

Last week I began outlining how to find those individuals who would be supportive, with my thumbnail sketch of what a supportive human would do.

  • They listen.
  • They believe you.
  • They remind you it wasn’t your fault.

Last week’s post was on the first bullet point, listening.  Today I’m moving on to the other two.

They believe you.  Most women are assaulted by someone known to them, particularly in cases of sexual assault.  They may be a friend, a co-worker, a classmate, a colleague, a family member.  Because of that, others you know will also know that assailant.  When you confide in someone in that same circle, it can get complicated.  That person may be struggling to wrap their brains around what you are telling them, which may be totally counter to their own experiences with the assailant.  They’re trying to figure out how someone they know as a kind and generous soul could have done something so wrong.  We humans do not do well with that sort of cognitive dissonance.  That can come out as questioning your account of what happened, which comes across as non-supportive.  One option is to confide in someone from another social circle.  Another is to cultivate relationships of support, which is the topic of next week’s blog post.

Finally, a supportive person will remind you that the assault was not your fault.  Period.  End of sentence.  It is so common for the person assaulted (or targeted) to go over details again and again and again in their heads, trying to figure out if they could have, should have, done something different.  Maybe there is something they could have done differently.  It may or may not have made a difference.  It’s overlooking the fact that someone else made that choice to harm someone.  That’s right, the assailant is not like a fast-moving river into which you slip and fall.  Rivers don’t make choices to injure or drown people.  But people do.  The assailant is the person who is responsible for their actions.  If you are the listener, please make it a point to remind your friend/family member of that.

And, in a nutshell, that’s how you know someone is supportive.  But, do you really want to wait until you are in need to find those trusted, supportive folks?  No.  Next week we’ll look at building supportive communities.

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Getting Support – Part 1

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I’ve been teaching self-defense for over 25 years.  And for most of those years I’ve been teaching that self-care is an essential part of everyone’s safety and self-defense planning. Self-care covers a wide range of actions, like exercise or meditation or listening to music or watching funny cat videos on YouTube or a glass of wine or seeking medical care or . . . pick your top three ways to calm yourself when upset or anxious.  My personal favorite is playing music — drumming along to some of my all-time favorite songs, or muddling through a guitar chord progression with overdrive and reverb.

But, if I had to pick just ONE self-care practice as most critical, it has to be getting support from other people. We humans are social creatures. Any assault, or attempted assault, regardless of outcome, often feels isolating and like a loss of control over important aspects of life. Connecting with another human helps offset that, but only when that other human is supportive. We do live in a highly victim-blaming culture, and have to recognize that not every one of our acquaintances (or even family or closer friends) will be open to supporting you.

Over the years I’ve heard from several students that, when confiding in those who they assumed would be supportive, were met with statements such as “what did you expect,” or “you sure won’t make that mistake again,” or “I hope you learned something from that experience,” or “how could you let that happen to you.”  As humans, we will often look to safety, or at least to mitigate and manage risks.  Some people’s interest in hearing about others’ misfortunes is to “inform” themselves so they won’t make the same “mistakes.”  And sometimes they will think they are helping by informing you of their conclusions.  It may not mean they are a bad person, but it does mean they don’t have (or are not willing to make available) emotional bandwidth for you.

But let’s get back to getting support. How would we recognize that supportive human? Is there a covert signal or secret handshake?

By what they do. Here’s my thumbnail sketch of what a supportive human would do.

  • They listen.
  • They believe you.
  • They remind you it wasn’t your fault.

    One woman is getting support from another.

    Getting support from a trusted friend or family member is an important component in healing from assault.

I’m going to go over each of these three items.  In this blog post, it’s listening.  Next couple of weeks will cover believing and not blaming you.  And then we’ll tie it up with steps for the future.

First, though, I strongly suggest that you give a potential listener a heads-up that you’d like to share something uncomfortable.  Give them a chance to assess their readiness to offer support.  Or, if necessary, set their own boundaries.  Even the best supporters are not available 24/7 to everyone (self-care, remember?).  An important part of getting support is that the support has to be voluntarily given!

Someone who is listening is really LISTENING, rather than trying to figure out their snappy reply.  Listening is NOT letting you talk for 10, 20, or 60 seconds, then interrupting with “hey did you try THIS?  You coulda done THAT, you shoulda done THAT, I woulda done . . . ”  Thank that person for their time, and move on.  They don’t have bandwidth for you.

Rather, listening involves taking in what that other person is offering.  A really good listener will treat what you’re saying as a gift, and if they have the emotional space they will be paying attention to what you are saying and the event’s impact on you.  You may hear something more like, “That sounds horrible, I’m so sorry you had that experience!  I am here for you.”  And now is where listening is super important.  The listener could assess if you need to just talk, or if they are looking for advice, or if they have their next steps and want your help.  And, dear listener, it’s OK to ask.  Do keep in mind that part of the trauma of assault is the feeling that control over ones life has been torn away; one goal of the listener is to help empower those hurt by making sure their choices are really theirs.

Next week, we look at the other two items on my list, believing and reminding that assault is not your fault.

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