True Stories of Finding Help and Hope
"Neil's" Story
"Neil" wished someone could have held up a crystal ball and showed him he was about to lose the person most precious to him: his daughter.
Editor's Note: This is a true story based on an interview with "Neil" (not his real name).
When I was first arrested for abusing my young daughter, I denied it to everyone. I never wanted to tell anyone what I was doing—not about the sexual abuse or the drugs.
I held it in. I was in a lot of pain. I was so messed up at the time. My big concern was that nobody knows what I did. I didn't want anybody to know I was a pedophile. I thought, "That's the bottom of the totem pole," not realizing that the only way I was NOT going to be a pedophile for life was to get help and to learn to change myself.
So I said I didn't want treatment. I figured I would just do my time. One day my probation officer said to me, "Why are you always taking the easy way out?" That's what she said. And then she said, "You know, I've done this for many years and there's nothing I haven't heard." So I started to tell her bits and pieces. And it felt so good for someone to sit there and listen. It felt so good to just get rid of all that crap inside. And I eventually told her everything. We talked and she arranged for me get treatment.
At that point I started feelin' a lot better, started lookin' at it in a different way. Realizing that, you know, I do have a problem, but there's people out there willin' to help me. Who are gonna accept me. That I don't have to be this way for the rest of my life.
Back when I was abusing, I did feel terrible for what I did, but it didn't stop me from having fantasies. After coming down from using meth and thinking about what I did, I thought, "My god, I can't believe I was touching my daughter," you know, and getting aroused to that. "Just, what the hell is wrong?" But I couldn't let it go. I needed help. I'm not the Lone Ranger.
But it was real hard for me. I had a tornado of emotions going through me. I really had to rebuild myself from the ground up. Change isn't easy. But right now, I have no secrets. I've never had that before. Honesty. That feels so good.
You know, I'm glad I'm not that person any more. In treatment I picked up tools, learned how to deal with being aroused by kids. But unfortunately it took hurting people and a huge chain reaction, not just for victims, but family, friends, a lot of shock to everybody. The victim takes the big part of it, but then you have so many consequences.
To this day I can't believe I did it. And I coulda never imagined anybody out there willing to talk. If there had been one of these crystal balls and someone could've shown me, "This is what's going to happen if you go one step further," and give me a glimpse of my future, that would've woken me up. But no one did.
Because of treatment, I got my life back. I've learned so much about myself. I have goals. And I love helping people. I get such good feelings off that. Even in jail I found out that I felt really good tutoring guys that can't read, to help them. I've been surprised that people I know have been pretty accepting because they know I'm working hard to change myself. They know I'm dealing with these issues. And as far as sexualizing a child, when I think about what children think, like how innocent they are and how fragile, I'd cry before I could ever touch one again.
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"Shawn's" Story
"Shawn" wished he had known sooner that he had lied to himself for years. He thought he wasn't sexually assaulting children, but being affectionate.
Editor's Note: This is a true story based on an interview with "Shawn" (not his real name).
Getting help was a good idea because now I finally woke up to the fact that what people had been saying all along was true. That my spending a lot of time with children was at the very least highly inordinate or inappropriate, not something for adults to be doing and that my fascination with children was obsessive-compulsive, sexually addictive in nature, was really a problem.
I called it a "greed need." That it was a need I shouldn't have had. It came out of greed. My family called it unnatural, not socially acceptable. I had a lot of resentment that I didn't see how intrinsically wrong, in and of itself, my fascination was. I thought that, well, it's society's problem. They have a problem with how they're looking at this.
I didn't get honest with myself about it, that it was pedophilia. No one ever called me those things except the psychiatric nurse I saw at an outpatient clinic at a hospital before I was sentenced for child sexual abuse. She said, "You're a pedophile based on what you're telling me. You fit the criteria for it."
I was really devastated. For years I lied to myself, or deluded or deceived myself that I was not sexually assaulting children, but I was in a sense making love to them. By holding them on my lap, by cuddling them, caressing them, snuggling with them, picking them up, I was being affectionate to them.
Part of my anger at myself was that I didn't allow this realization to occur while I was abusing children. I found defenses against that, other things to call it. I believed that I was being nurturing and affectionate, what someone might call a strong delusion, like drinking, but back then I didn't believe it to be.
This was going on in my head and in my heart. As long as I'm careful not to show it in my eyes, my face, my voice, my mannerism, or actions, as long as I don't give a hint or a sign about what is going on in me, I can be nurturing and affectionate to kids and that's what I'm getting off on, the experience of being affectionate, etc. And nobody notices it. That will mean no harm, no foul. That's what I told myself.
I feared, as an evangelical, going to heaven and having the Lord tell me this, "You had this effect on these kids and that effect and that effect on those kids, those kids and those kids.You're going to pay the piper now." In churches I went to, and things I saw on Christian TV, I became aware of a concept called the Seat of Judgment, or the Benah seat, like the seat of authority. You're rewarded or you're consequenced based on your actions and behaviors and what those say about you as a person. So I had fears of how this is going to make me look both here on earth, over time, and in the after world.
Treatment is helping me to curb and control my problem with being infatuated with and enamored with children. If a guy like me came into my treatment program, I'd tell him, "Get honest. Get real. If you do, you will begin to change. You will become intimate with people your own age. You'll feel care, concern, and warmth. It's worth it to get honest."
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"Brian's" Story
When "Brian" turned himself in, he thought he'd lose everything—his wife, his job, his friends. Instead, he got into programs that helped him. He feels like a new man.
Editor's Note: This is a true story based on an interview with "Brian" (not his real name).
I wanted to stop being sexual with children but I didn't know how. I felt like a man in a hole. That's what I called myself, the man in the hole. I was very depressed. I didn't realize the harm I was doing to kids.
It took an arrest and jail to do it, to get me to find help and change. I turned myself in, and when they put me in a cell, I cried all night long. I thought that I was never going to see daylight again. I thought my life was over. I was so scared. I thought I would lose everything—my wife, my job, my friends—but it didn't turn out that way.
I got a one-year sentence in the workhouse, and twenty years of probation. And the judge ordered me to get therapy. That snapped me out of it.
Treatment helped me out an awful lot. Before I got treatment, I didn't think what I was doing with kids was really that bad or serious. I always thought it was just like a "show and tell" and that's it. I believed I wasn't hurting anybody. But I was wrong.
In treatment I started reaching out for others, like my wife. She had been so angry when she found out I was molesting kids, but when I opened up about it, my wife accepted what I said. That helped me a lot. She stood by me a hundred percent, which I didn't think she would. To this day she stands by me, too. I'm very proud of that, very happy.
We did some couples therapy. The therapist asked her one time, "Why didn't you dump this guy? What are you hanging on to him for?" She looked at the therapist and said, "Because I love him." That hit me, right here, right in my heart.
I graduated from treatment a year ago. I've been in an aftercare group since. My group members are proud of how well I'm doing. I've also been in Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) for three years. I feel now that I want to help people that have this problem. That's why I go to SAA. I'm a sponsor now. I feel comfortable in my SAA group because they know who I am. I know who they are. I feel that I'm not alone.
I even like going to the group run by my probation officer because there's people there who've been through what I've been through. They've been what we call "sober" for a long time. We get together every three months. It's very helpful. I get suggestions from them. I can give them suggestions. It's a very good thing to do. So I'm not worried about committing another offense again.
I go to church a couple of times a week now. I volunteer there. I never had any religion before I got arrested—not when I was growing up, and not until I was in jail. I started going to Bible study in jail. I liked it. When I got out of jail, I kept it up. It's been helping me ever since. I've learned an awful lot about spirituality and about myself.
I knew what I had been doing was the wrong thing to do. The life I was leading was wrong. I had to change my life. It takes a lot of courage to change your life.
I learned how to pray. The Serenity Prayer was the first prayer I ever learned. Now I know other prayers. I pray for people. I pray for the children I hurt. I pray for others who are being hurt.
My conscience is free right now. I don't feel guilty like I used to. I'm doing the best I can. I feel good. I feel like a new man.
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I'm worried
about myself.
I'm worried about an adult I care about.
