Month: November 2013

Posted on

Come On! Families of Pedophiles Have to Know, Right?

This is a common misperception–that families of pedophiles had to know that a perpetrator was in the family. Think of Ariel Castro. His family was quickly indicted in the eye of the public. The questions abounded: How could he have 3 girls tied up in his basement for years and nobody in the family had a clue? You mean nobody noticed anything odd about his behaviors? And what about Jerry Sandusky? In his case, people did know that abuse was going on and covered it up. This fuels the perception that already exists in the public. What’s going on? Do family members and close friends know and just choose to cover it up?

As the son of a pedophile, I cannot speak for other families but I can share my experience. Here are a few of my observations:
We Family Members Did Not Know–Not only did we not know, but we daily live with the guilt of not knowing. At the end of the day, our ignorance did nothing to stop him from abusing so many victims. The questions for me usually appear in the form of nightmares (literally). How did I not see it? How could I not have seen the signs? Why did I never question odd behavior that I had seen over the years? Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat after seeing faces of children crying out for help. The guilt of not knowing never leaves.

There Was No Cover Up–To state, suggest, or imply that the family of a perpetrator somehow covered up abuse only adds to our multi-layered pain. It is a traumatic thing for a family to find out that one of their beloved family members had been abusing young children for years. My world stopped 2 years ago when I found out and there are still days when I wake up and have to wrestle with the reality of my own father being a pedophile.

Imprisonment Is Not High-Five Worthy–Now that we do know, and our dad is currently serving a life sentence in prison, we do not celebrate that fact. Don’t get me wrong. He is where he needs to be and worked hard to get there. But it brings no comfort to know that he will die in prison. He is still our dad and, as such, comes a whole gamut of raw emotion. Many of my siblings are still wrestling with whether they should contact him for the first time since being incarcerated. Holidays are weird, too. Do we bring it up? Do we pretend that everybody’s happy? Certain places trigger different memories and emotions for different family members. We try to be sensitive to that when we get together for holidays.

There Can Be Redemption In Not Knowing–Because my family did not know, I have dedicated my life to teaching others how to know that someone is abusing children. Admittedly, much of my drive is fueled by guilt. I get very mad at myself for not taking time to educate myself on abuse, or opening my mind to the possibility that one of my family members might just be an abuser. Because of this horrible experience, I am hopeful that I can offer help to others and stop abuse before it happens. I’m not under the illusion that abuse will cease. But I live under the reality that each of us has a responsibility to inform others and protect the innocent. It’s people like you readers who are making a difference. We need you.

In between college and seminary, I took one year and drove truck coast to coast. It was always something I wanted to do, and I’ve driven off and on over a 10 year span. In 1,000,000 miles, I’ve seen a lot of treacherous road conditions and have witnessed hundreds of accidents, many of them fatal. Nothing, in my estimation, compares to the deception of freezing fog. One night in 2008 I left home and it was 35 degrees and foggy. I climbed to the top of the mountain on US 30 before my descent at a 6% grade for the next 8 miles. Only a small guard rail separates the road from a cliff that drops down a few hundred feet to the bottom. The road was perfectly dry and everything seemed good. However, I had a bad hunch. Something didn’t feel right. I decided to “stab” the brakes on the flat to test the dry pavement. Instantly, all 18 tires skidded. . . big time! I was on sheer black ice–freezing fog. I was faced with the challenge of getting an 80,000lb truck down a 6% grade on a sheet of ice. It was quite literally the scariest time of my life.

What’s my point? There were enough signs telling me that black ice was a possibility. Thick fog, high elevation, near freezing temps, and dry looking pavement. Yet, even with knowledge and experience I’m repeatedly fooled by black ice. I can count at least a dozen times that I’ve nearly lost control from unexpectedly hitting a patch of black ice. Yet every time there were definitive signs which I ignored: cold temps, saturated air, a glassy look to the pavement, a different sound from the tires (tires get quieter when you are on ice), ice building on mirrors, and “soft” steering. In each and every one of those scenarios, I legitimately did not know that I was entering an ice patch. There was no cover up! But I’ve driven enough to know that ignorance is not an excuse. We have got to always be vigilant, be defensive, be attentive to signs, and pass on information that can inform others and ultimately save lives. Let’s work together to help families identify ways that they can protect their children before abuse ever happens.

Here is a video for your viewing pleasure, so you can see just how fun black ice can be. Stay safe!:

Posted on

My Child Is More Important Than Your Feelings

Jesus loved people. . . enough to offend them at times. Sometimes he name-called. He liked to use the word “hypocrites” for religious people who treated others poorly. One time, after calling a group of people “hypocrites,” Jesus’ followers said, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” (Matt. 15:12 ESV). Did Jesus apologize? Nope! He responds with more name calling. . . “Let them alone; they are blind guides” (Matt. 15:14).

We are a reactive society. When someone is offended, Twitter lights up like a Christmas Holiday tree, death threats included. Because we are a reactive society, we often become reactive to others’ reactions. I find myself sometimes worrying to the point of paranoia about hurting someone else’s feelings because I don’t want the hassle of being ridiculed or threatened. Blogging about child abuse is difficult. I try very hard not to be offensive or to hurt people’s feelings. But then I remember that Jesus wasn’t concerned with massaging hurting feelings. He was concerned with love, justice, and being a voice for the broken and marginalized–in spite of mobs of people who threatened to imprison or kill him.

I get a lot of people who ask me a lot of questions in a lot of different ways, but essentially most of them boil down to this: “How do I protect my kids from abusers?” In order to answer this question, we must first know something about the abusers. First of all, child sexual abuse is about power and control more than it is about sexual attraction. To be sure, the vast majority of pedophiles have normal adult sexual relationships and only about 7% of pedophiles report being attracted only to children. So begs the question–why do perpetrators risk so much to sexually molest young children when they are also attracted to adults? Why not pursue a sexual relationship with an adult, or have an adult affair, or have sex with adult prostitutes? Granted, there are many factors and many of them are complex, but studies with pedophiles show that the thrill of doing something so out of the ordinary is part of their enjoyment. So is the ability to control and manipulate. Plus children are extremely vulnerable, easy to sexually manipulate, and easy to keep quiet. People with deviant sexual patterns find ways to isolate and victimize children. If we were to oversimplify things for a moment, we could say that deviant thrill seekers find vulnerable people and they attack.

To illustrate this in a visual way, there is a “game” that’s rapidly gaining popularity among teenagers in the streets. You may have heard of it. It’s called Knockout. The idea is for a group of teens to randomly find the most vulnerable person walking on a sidewalk or riding a bike. Whoever sucker punches the person and knocks them out cold (or kills them) is the Knockout King. They target defenseless women, children, and the elderly. There literally are no restrictions on who is targeted. It’s tough to watch, but it is happening and it’s becoming popular:

Child molestation is, in some ways, a lot like the game Knockout. Perpetrators find the most vulnerable kid, groom them, sexually assault them, and move on to their next victim. To make matters worse, many pedophiles are very good at manipulating the feelings of adults and can easily make them feel bad for a number of different things. If you draw boundaries to protect your child from abuse and someone makes you feel bad for that, remember that your goal is not to protect the feelings of others. It’s to protect your child.

If anyone gives you a guilt trip (and they will) for not allowing your child to go on a sleepover, or if someone makes you feel bad for any reason whatsoever, remember that your child is more important than others’ feelings. Predators prey on vulnerable people by acting as if their feelings are hurt. Don’t fall for it. Keep the focus on your child’s well-being. If you begin to soften your approach on setting boundaries for your child, just remember the game Knockout. Let your guard down for a second and someone could eventually swoop in for the sucker punch.

Sometimes protecting your child means that you will offend people. Sometimes other people may have hurt feelings. You may jeopardize relationships or be labeled a whack job. But guess what? God expects us adults to be protectors of children. There is no excuse for negligence. Keep protecting your child and stop worrying about protecting the feelings of others. . . . without guilt.

Posted on

Corey Feldman, Hollywood, and Pedophilia

It came as no surprise at all when I saw news articles recently come out outlining Corey Feldman’s new book, Coreyography, revealing Corey was molested as a child. Corey describes the grooming process, how he was made to believe it was his fault, and how he was told that the sexual encounters were what “normal people do.” All of these things are stripped right from the same playbook of pedophiles. Having a very broken home life with drug-addicted parents, Corey was primed, as currently are millions of other children in this nation, to be a vulnerable target for abuse. Yes–sexual abuse of minors is even in Hollywood.

Corey believes that pedophilia is a huge problem in Hollywood, and that it is everywhere else too. He says, ” I think there’s a lot more of it than we’d like to believe and a lot more of it in all paths of life. The world is a very, very dark place right now. Right now, more than any other time in the history of mankind we need to have spirituality in our lives, we need to believe in a higher power and stay positive no matter what.” 1. Apparently, experts conclude that pedophiles are a bigger problem in Hollywood than in Corey’s day.2.

I would agree, too. Statistics show it is true. But so does experience. Recently, I met and prayed with a Christian man dying of AIDS who was from West Hollywood. I asked if I could ask him very pointed questions about life as a gay man, and he was very open and honest. What he described sounded more like a horror flick than reality. At the age of 49, he had outlived every one of his friends. Every single one. As a paramedic, he described routine calls for overdoses and suicide attempts in the San Fernando Valley, the porn production capitol of the world. His patients for those types of calls were almost exclusively porn actors. But he also told me something that had struck a nerve with me. He said, “Jimmy, all you hear about is the glamor of the gay lifestyle. As one who lived my whole life in this community, there are things that go on that you wouldn’t believe. And child molestation is wildly out of control here.” Before anyone rushes to blast me, these are not my words. I passed no judgment on my friend. I simply let him tell his story. As a man who was, for years, sodomized by his biological father when he was a young boy, he had the authority to speak on the subject.

Child pornography and pedophilia are everywhere. On lunch break today, the local news had a story of young minors who posted hardcore nude pictures on a pornographic website because their boyfriends told them to. Ironically my own website, which tries to combat child sex abuse, is bombarded daily with traffic from people seeking child porn. Just today the top searches which led people to this very site are “child sex site,” “very young teen hardcore porn,” and “pinay child phonography.” I know what you’re thinking, “What is pinay child phonography?” Pinay is a slang word meaning a Filipina girl but it’s also slang used to describe the most beautiful kind of girl alive. Phonography has appeared almost daily as a search term and is an intentional misspelling of pornography to sort of “fly under the radar” of illegally searching for child porn.

The bad news is that this is a pandemic. Corey Feldman is right that there is a lot more going on “than we’d like to believe.” That’s just it. We don’t want to believe it. So we deny. And the more quiet we are, the more enabled abusers are. It’s also bad news that the majority of abuse is not reported. And the majority of the abuse that is reported never gets investigated. Corey experienced this in December 1993 when he reported the abuse to the Santa Barbara Sheriffs department and they never investigated.3. I experienced it last year when I turned in a prominent person in the churches by handing over files of explicit pictures and comments posted online with young children, only to be told that there was not enough evidence. This happens all the time and it needs to change.

The good news is that more and more people are speaking out about abuse. Where it was taboo in the past, it is slowly gaining attention today. And it’s not just a fringe group quietly typing away at the keyboard. I’m encouraged by the people who have contacted me privately to join forces, who have their own books and websites to specifically educate others and speak out. I’m encouraged by people like Corey Feldman who take an unpopular approach and risk their careers to speak out. I’m encouraged by people like Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie, who is speaking out about her sexual abuse as a child. And I’m encouraged by Jaycee Lee Dugard and Elizabeth Smart who were brave enough to recount their horrible kidnappings and rapes from men who stole their innocence. I’m encouraged by former porn stars, prostitutes, and strippers who now have thriving ministries to help rescue women from the industry who’ve never known anything but abuse and exploitation. I’m encouraged by the National Child Protection Training Center for the war they have waged on abuse. And on and on it goes.

Finally, I’m encouraged by my readers who read these blogs, pray, and comment. This is not easy stuff to talk about or read about. But you all do it. And so we press on. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17 ESV).