Harvey Weinstein Roy Moore Bill Cosby
when you picture these names in your
head you probably can envision the
countless numbers of news articles and
the women who have accusations against
them 2017 was the year of the woman
coming out of the shadows and talking
about abuse and trauma with the hashtag
need to movement which was all overdue
and incredibly necessary but it left out
other silent victims of trauma and
violence when you think of domestic
violence and physical emotional and
sexual abuse you often think of a male
perpetrator and a female victim
but there’s another silent victim that
has been long overlooked male survivors
of trauma one and six men are sexually
abused and it’s my work with that
population that I’d like to share with
you today now before I begin I want to
give you a trigger warning I’m about to
talk about in graphic detail physical
emotional and sexual abuse so if you
ever feel uncomfortable please feel free
to leave the room now let me tell you
about my life’s work I am a forensic
psychologist and a professor in Los
Angeles and I get to research evaluate
and treat male survivor trauma on any
given day I am teaching or I’m in the
courts talking to the legal system about
clinical assessment and it’s my
experience with that population that I
get to bear witness to their stories in
2017 the Bureau of Justice and
Statistics stated that men have been
equal chance as women to be the victim
violent crime
does that shock you I mean it shocks me
but after hearing hundreds of stories I
am no longer in disbelief to articulate
this I’m gonna tell you the true story
about a man I interviewed named Robert
Robert is 49 years old today and he is 6
feet tall and he weighs 300 pounds now
he sounds incredibly tough right but
even the toughest and the strongest can
be victims of abuse
Robert was perpetrated against at three
different points of his life
by multiple perpetrators at age 4 at age
7 and as 15 by his maternal aunt by
marriage and at each point he stuffed
his pain deep down because he was taught
suck it up be a man and he didn’t tell
anyone now with the last abuse his
perpetrator actually convinced him they
were gonna run away and get married
now with most perpetrators he figured
out this wasn’t true and he slit his
wrists at that point he told his mother
now I want you to envision something for
me your 15 year old daughter comes to
you and says that her uncle is touching
her would you believe her
of course she would and he would be
beyond furious the cops would be called
arrest would be made and families would
be split but Roberts mother
she wasn’t furious she actually said you
couldn’t force a teenage boy to have sex
if he didn’t want to
you can’t take sex from a teenage boy I
could hear in my head now what did this
teach Robert it is this injustice there
are men go into the shadows one in six
men are sexually abused Roberts a mother
didn’t even believe him I wonder if it
has anything to do with how we in doctor
name our children have you ever heard
someone say to a little boy don’t hit
little
by making this gender distinction in
this way we are teaching that women are
weak and that they need to be protected
how come we don’t say don’t hit anyone
women are applauded as the heroines that
they are but men they’re ostracized
they’re criticized and they’re thought
of as weak Roberts mothers thought of
him as powerful not the 15 year old
child that he was she did not believe he
Richard Gartner a famous child abuse
psychologist said that society has a
myth that men can be abused now how is
this a myth if I just told you about
Robert and he’s not alone the film the
mask you live in talks about this
cultural phenomenon where we make
cultural gender norms and we ascribe
gender and emotion you know based based
on masculinity and femininity but the
thing is is that men are ascribed these
cultural gender norms but they are told
to be masculine they have to be all of
these things they have to be the star
athlete the entrepreneur the top
executive the problem is men cannot be
all of these things and when they are
not measuring up to all those things
that create this cultural blueprint of
what is masculine or feminine that they
cannot live up to and they feel like
they are a failure and it affects their
relationships with other people to
further talk about this I’m gonna tell
you about a man who greatly impacted my
career I was once called into a prison
to evaluate Marco now I’ve changed his
name and I did
to protect him well what I went into the
prison he was there for domestic
violence what struck me is that the day
I walked in the day before he had slit
his own throat from ear to ear and he
had no history of depression or violence
before his offense and I said okay
something has to be going on here
because it takes a lot of depression and
self-loathing to slice your own throat
so I said there has to be trauma so I
called him into my office and I sat
across from this incredibly gentle man
whose wife actually visited every single
week and we had two rubber chairs and
our concrete walls and I said what
happened to you and he looked at me and
his guys got really wide and he said
nothing nothing and then after about two
minutes his eyes became downcast and he
said to me he was raped at age five by
an uncle at age 21 by a rival gang now
see you have to understand something men
or people who have been sexually
assaulted they have something called
post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD kind
of like combat veterans when they come
back from the war and they’re triggered
by loud noises but they can be triggered
by touch sensation and sound sexual
abuse survivors right well that day that
he was arrested he was in the shower
with his wife and she touched his butt
and all of a sudden he was no longer
there with her all of this molestations
materialized and he was back with his
perpetrators and as he told me this
story he violently shook they cried and
I said to him what I say to all of my
male survivors who disclosed to me I say
that was not your fault thank you for
telling me your story you see because a
male survivors story is guarded like a
dragon protecting their gold and ever
urging head Marco call his wife and tell
her
and she said to him why didn’t you tell
me I love you he said I didn’t want you
researchers O’Leary and barber state
that 44% of men wait more than 20 years
[Music]
to disclose sexual abuse 20 years and
this is because we’re not listening
business blueprint that we’ve created
for our men of this culture of silence
we have hashtag me – what about hashtag
men – I wanted the opportunity to hear a
brilliant speaker at Lincoln University
mr. Greg halt Meyer who’s a survivor
himself and he told me that when a male
survivor discloses it’s the most freeing
feeling that they can have because they
the problem is when a survivor discloses
what’s there for them to go to we have
all of these resources for women what we
have for our men and if they did it what
would happen the media portrays male
survivors so negatively when they do
disclose
I was once watching a popular news
pundit and he was talking about a female
teacher who molested a boy in her
classroom
he said the news pundit that he was
lucky lucky I don’t see how gender
it is this atrocity
why I continued my work of working with
male survivors and to be proactive I
created a conference each year in Los
Angeles
it’s called script and every year we get
together we celebrate the resiliency of
male survivors and all of these people
come from their own environments and
they take back all that information to
their individual environments and they
implement it to stop this culture of
silence to date we have trained over 800
people in male survivor trauma and this
year for brave survivors came forward
and told their stories and they were
surrounded with support resources and
love so they could continue to journey
of healing the rest of the year I teach
and I evaluate offenders and I realized
something so very very profound not many
people are writing about or researching
male survivor trauma so I wrote a book
it’s called his history her story is
about male survivor trauma and
relationships
now you remember Robert I interviewed
him for my book he told me a story about
when he went to Orange County with his
wife because it was her birthday and
they took their little boy to the
Children’s Museum now you have to
understand something here
Robert hated Orange County and when I
say hated he never even actually told
anyone how much he really just stained
it and throughout the day he got more
and more agitated his wife’s like what
is going on with you but they continued
their day and that’s the end of the day
a car cut him off
now the normally calm Robert would just
let this car pass right
he didn’t he rammed up the engine and he
almost crashed into the car and his wife
yelled stop it
and he said don’t tell me what to do
with such resentment and
his wife began to cry and she was silent
the rest of the way home because she was
terrified she was terrified for herself
she was terrified for her son but she
was terrified that her son may see his
father arrested later on she reflected
on this day and she realized that that
day was not about her at all because
Robert began to share more of his story
it was about Orange County itself
because he Robert grew up incredibly
poured orange Callias this incredibly
privileged area and he used to dream of
a day of privilege because his mom was a
single mom which left him without a lack
of supervision right but this lack of
oversight is when he was molested so
that day in the car all this was
molestations materialized from being in
Orange County and his wife saying stop
it he realized how powerless he was over
his own abuse his wife realized
something else that her husband had so
much pain because he had to go silent
and in the shadows and see I should know
this pain because I’m Robert wife and
he’s here today supporting me if I could
dream of a day when people like my
wonderful husband were not abused
I would but until then let’s listen
let’s stop tying emotion to gender let’s
think about the messages we send to our
boys and our men let’s look at our
cultural norming my mission started with
love love for my husband and love for
all the survivors that I have had the
pleasure to work with in my career I
have a little boy who’s here today with
a full range of emotions in his
little bitty pocket that he can express
anytime he wants to because his ideas on
gender are not set
let’s look those male survivors come
into the light so they know they are not
alone let’s listen let’s love let’s break the silence together
when you picture these names in your
head you probably can envision the
countless numbers of news articles and
the women who have accusations against
them 2017 was the year of the woman
coming out of the shadows and talking
about abuse and trauma with the hashtag
need to movement which was all overdue
and incredibly necessary but it left out
other silent victims of trauma and
violence when you think of domestic
violence and physical emotional and
sexual abuse you often think of a male
perpetrator and a female victim
but there’s another silent victim that
has been long overlooked male survivors
of trauma one and six men are sexually
abused and it’s my work with that
population that I’d like to share with
you today now before I begin I want to
give you a trigger warning I’m about to
talk about in graphic detail physical
emotional and sexual abuse so if you
ever feel uncomfortable please feel free
to leave the room now let me tell you
about my life’s work I am a forensic
psychologist and a professor in Los
Angeles and I get to research evaluate
and treat male survivor trauma on any
given day I am teaching or I’m in the
courts talking to the legal system about
clinical assessment and it’s my
experience with that population that I
get to bear witness to their stories in
2017 the Bureau of Justice and
Statistics stated that men have been
equal chance as women to be the victim
violent crime
does that shock you I mean it shocks me
but after hearing hundreds of stories I
am no longer in disbelief to articulate
this I’m gonna tell you the true story
about a man I interviewed named Robert
Robert is 49 years old today and he is 6
feet tall and he weighs 300 pounds now
he sounds incredibly tough right but
even the toughest and the strongest can
be victims of abuse
Robert was perpetrated against at three
different points of his life
by multiple perpetrators at age 4 at age
7 and as 15 by his maternal aunt by
marriage and at each point he stuffed
his pain deep down because he was taught
suck it up be a man and he didn’t tell
anyone now with the last abuse his
perpetrator actually convinced him they
were gonna run away and get married
now with most perpetrators he figured
out this wasn’t true and he slit his
wrists at that point he told his mother
now I want you to envision something for
me your 15 year old daughter comes to
you and says that her uncle is touching
her would you believe her
of course she would and he would be
beyond furious the cops would be called
arrest would be made and families would
be split but Roberts mother
she wasn’t furious she actually said you
couldn’t force a teenage boy to have sex
if he didn’t want to
you can’t take sex from a teenage boy I
could hear in my head now what did this
teach Robert it is this injustice there
are men go into the shadows one in six
men are sexually abused Roberts a mother
didn’t even believe him I wonder if it
has anything to do with how we in doctor
name our children have you ever heard
someone say to a little boy don’t hit
little
by making this gender distinction in
this way we are teaching that women are
weak and that they need to be protected
how come we don’t say don’t hit anyone
women are applauded as the heroines that
they are but men they’re ostracized
they’re criticized and they’re thought
of as weak Roberts mothers thought of
him as powerful not the 15 year old
child that he was she did not believe he
Richard Gartner a famous child abuse
psychologist said that society has a
myth that men can be abused now how is
this a myth if I just told you about
Robert and he’s not alone the film the
mask you live in talks about this
cultural phenomenon where we make
cultural gender norms and we ascribe
gender and emotion you know based based
on masculinity and femininity but the
thing is is that men are ascribed these
cultural gender norms but they are told
to be masculine they have to be all of
these things they have to be the star
athlete the entrepreneur the top
executive the problem is men cannot be
all of these things and when they are
not measuring up to all those things
that create this cultural blueprint of
what is masculine or feminine that they
cannot live up to and they feel like
they are a failure and it affects their
relationships with other people to
further talk about this I’m gonna tell
you about a man who greatly impacted my
career I was once called into a prison
to evaluate Marco now I’ve changed his
name and I did
to protect him well what I went into the
prison he was there for domestic
violence what struck me is that the day
I walked in the day before he had slit
his own throat from ear to ear and he
had no history of depression or violence
before his offense and I said okay
something has to be going on here
because it takes a lot of depression and
self-loathing to slice your own throat
so I said there has to be trauma so I
called him into my office and I sat
across from this incredibly gentle man
whose wife actually visited every single
week and we had two rubber chairs and
our concrete walls and I said what
happened to you and he looked at me and
his guys got really wide and he said
nothing nothing and then after about two
minutes his eyes became downcast and he
said to me he was raped at age five by
an uncle at age 21 by a rival gang now
see you have to understand something men
or people who have been sexually
assaulted they have something called
post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD kind
of like combat veterans when they come
back from the war and they’re triggered
by loud noises but they can be triggered
by touch sensation and sound sexual
abuse survivors right well that day that
he was arrested he was in the shower
with his wife and she touched his butt
and all of a sudden he was no longer
there with her all of this molestations
materialized and he was back with his
perpetrators and as he told me this
story he violently shook they cried and
I said to him what I say to all of my
male survivors who disclosed to me I say
that was not your fault thank you for
telling me your story you see because a
male survivors story is guarded like a
dragon protecting their gold and ever
urging head Marco call his wife and tell
her
and she said to him why didn’t you tell
me I love you he said I didn’t want you
researchers O’Leary and barber state
that 44% of men wait more than 20 years
[Music]
to disclose sexual abuse 20 years and
this is because we’re not listening
business blueprint that we’ve created
for our men of this culture of silence
we have hashtag me – what about hashtag
men – I wanted the opportunity to hear a
brilliant speaker at Lincoln University
mr. Greg halt Meyer who’s a survivor
himself and he told me that when a male
survivor discloses it’s the most freeing
feeling that they can have because they
the problem is when a survivor discloses
what’s there for them to go to we have
all of these resources for women what we
have for our men and if they did it what
would happen the media portrays male
survivors so negatively when they do
disclose
I was once watching a popular news
pundit and he was talking about a female
teacher who molested a boy in her
classroom
he said the news pundit that he was
lucky lucky I don’t see how gender
it is this atrocity
why I continued my work of working with
male survivors and to be proactive I
created a conference each year in Los
Angeles
it’s called script and every year we get
together we celebrate the resiliency of
male survivors and all of these people
come from their own environments and
they take back all that information to
their individual environments and they
implement it to stop this culture of
silence to date we have trained over 800
people in male survivor trauma and this
year for brave survivors came forward
and told their stories and they were
surrounded with support resources and
love so they could continue to journey
of healing the rest of the year I teach
and I evaluate offenders and I realized
something so very very profound not many
people are writing about or researching
male survivor trauma so I wrote a book
it’s called his history her story is
about male survivor trauma and
relationships
now you remember Robert I interviewed
him for my book he told me a story about
when he went to Orange County with his
wife because it was her birthday and
they took their little boy to the
Children’s Museum now you have to
understand something here
Robert hated Orange County and when I
say hated he never even actually told
anyone how much he really just stained
it and throughout the day he got more
and more agitated his wife’s like what
is going on with you but they continued
their day and that’s the end of the day
a car cut him off
now the normally calm Robert would just
let this car pass right
he didn’t he rammed up the engine and he
almost crashed into the car and his wife
yelled stop it
and he said don’t tell me what to do
with such resentment and
his wife began to cry and she was silent
the rest of the way home because she was
terrified she was terrified for herself
she was terrified for her son but she
was terrified that her son may see his
father arrested later on she reflected
on this day and she realized that that
day was not about her at all because
Robert began to share more of his story
it was about Orange County itself
because he Robert grew up incredibly
poured orange Callias this incredibly
privileged area and he used to dream of
a day of privilege because his mom was a
single mom which left him without a lack
of supervision right but this lack of
oversight is when he was molested so
that day in the car all this was
molestations materialized from being in
Orange County and his wife saying stop
it he realized how powerless he was over
his own abuse his wife realized
something else that her husband had so
much pain because he had to go silent
and in the shadows and see I should know
this pain because I’m Robert wife and
he’s here today supporting me if I could
dream of a day when people like my
wonderful husband were not abused
I would but until then let’s listen
let’s stop tying emotion to gender let’s
think about the messages we send to our
boys and our men let’s look at our
cultural norming my mission started with
love love for my husband and love for
all the survivors that I have had the
pleasure to work with in my career I
have a little boy who’s here today with
a full range of emotions in his
little bitty pocket that he can express
anytime he wants to because his ideas on
gender are not set
let’s look those male survivors come
into the light so they know they are not
alone let’s listen let’s love let’s break the silence together
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