Tag Archive for: child abuse

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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Identifying Child Molesters, a book by Carla van Dam, PhD

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I just finished reading Identifying Child Molesters: Preventing Child Sexual Abuse by Recognizing the Patterns of the Offenders, by Carla van Dam, Ph.D.  This book was published over 20 years ago, yet it seems oddly contemporary.  It’s obvious that a lot of the examples she uses are old: some individuals and organizations named have faded into obscurity, technology has changed, and laws involving pedophilia are updated.  Yet Book: Identifying Child Molestersthe process by which assailants groom their targets, in fact often groom communities, is still alive and kicking.  By grooming, I mean how wanna-be molesters get chummy with parents, teachers, and other community members to gain access to children, and how they cultivate relationships with the kids.

Earlier this year I taught a Safety Skills class for children (ages 5-8) and parents.  One exercise was to have the kids go to the parent and tell them a neighbor had invited them to come over to see their new tropical fish.  The next exercise was for the parents:  they were to approach that neighbor (role-played by me), and let me know it’s not okay to invite their child over without direct and immediate parental permission.  It was surprisingly hard for most of the parents to get the words out, even with prompting.  Yet this is probably the most critical link to break in the chain of events leading to child molestation.

That is a huge challenge around identifying child molesters.  Non-aggressive confrontation seems to be hard for too many people.  Yet the long-term consequences are even harder.  It’s so difficult, now and throughout history, to acknowledge that someone we thought we knew and may like, who has been helpful and kind, has also been abusive.  We like to believe that molesters are evil monsters, badness runs through everything they touch, and their true character is obvious. 

Not true. 

Mostly we’re gambling.  Betting that that person whose actions and words sometimes cause us discomfort is just socially awkward.  Betting that abuse and manipulation happens to other people.  Betting that we are too smart and aware and educated, that we can readily spot the baddies.  But only once we’re sure, because we don’t want to embarrass someone or wreck their career needlessly.  

Once we are sure, however, it’s too late.

As Dr. van Dam wrote, “Learning to say ‘no’ with grace and certainty to those whose behavior seems problematical does not interfere with friendships, but does send potential molesters away.  Those who are interested in opportunities to molest children will not invest their time with adults who do not tolerate their charm.”

You can learn to be one of those adults, and practice some skills in our classes.

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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