Girl Called Karen

by Karen McConnell

  Build on your past accomplishments, and forget about all those things you haven’t yet accomplished. It is a human failing to dwell on our failures rather than our accomplishments. Get over it! What we have accomplished rather than what we have not accomplished will guide us to success. We worry about money and status, people’s opinions, how fat or skinny or short we are, and many other weaknesses rather than how well we have done with what we have. I am not suggesting that we ignore real problems like cancer or alcoholism. I am encouraging you to learn from your successes and grow in resiliency.

  “People are more motivated to change when their strengths are supported,” deduces Dennis Saleebey, editor of The Strengths Perspective in Social Work Practice.

  In my own practice, I worked with the mother of a teen who had just about given up on her ability to parent her child. When we began listing all the accomplishments of her child and all the strengths of their relationship, she saw how she and her daughter could reconnect. She had been so mired in the immediacy of the crisis that she couldn’t stop doing what was not working and look for a new approach. It wasn’t until she surveyed their accomplishments rather than their failures that she became motivated to heal the relationship and mend the family’s broken circle.

  Examine your strengths, and consider all those times when you demonstrated the ability to bounce back. Build on them. Maximize your strengths and talents. Become an expert on YOU and what works for you. You can be resilient. You can bounce back from adversity to succeed.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Prescription for Social Resilience

  My plan has been to tell you about a little girl who was abandoned and abused, but grew up to be successful. My hope has been that I can share with you some strategies for you or your children or your clients that might help them achieve success. I hope that I have succeeded to some extent, but I am also compelled to talk some about sexual abuse from my experience and my social work observations and the need for reform.

  Not all sex abuse perpetrators are hopelessly irredeemable. Not all perpetrators are intrinsically evil. Not all perpetrators need be discarded as human garbage. Before you get out the lynch rope or decide to drum me out of social services, please understand that I am not and will not try to justify sex abuse or alibi the behavior. What I am saying is not all sex abuse is the same and that the perpetrators are human beings. They are human beings who have done something very wrong.

  Some abusers are human beings who desire sexual gratification from children rather than other adults. Sometimes they will make a relationship with an adult to hide their propensity for children; but an adult relationship is forced and unsatisfying to them. Their sexual preference is shaped early in childhood and is inalterable.

  When I first emerged from graduate school, I found myself working as a therapist in a community mental health agency. A strange thing happened fairly early on, the scheduler figured out that I didn’t balk at being assigned sex abuse perpetrators. Actually, I was too stupid to realize that I could be choosy or that these clients were somehow less than treatable. I just assumed that we were all there to help.

  One of my first clients was a skinny little guy who could barely read and write. He had served several years in prison for rape and gotten himself into even more trouble for failing to register as a sex offender when he moved. He went to county jail for several months and was mandated to therapy as part of his parole agreement. My client was forty years old and, except for the lack of several teeth, appeared younger. After an initial session of connecting and setting boundaries, my client talked at great length about his crime. There is no doubt in my mind that he did not understand any of it.

  He told me that he had been drinking a good bit and went to bed with this “good-looking gal” that he had spent the evening flirting with at a party. He woke up in the morning next to her. He said he heard someone hollering at him to open the door, and before he could get up or even cover his nakedness, the police broke down the door and threw him to the floor. It seems the girl was the fourteen-year-old daughter of a local businessman. She was hustled away, and my client was arrested. His court-appointed public defender counseled him to plead out, and he went to jail.

  He took advantage of a child. He was wrong, but he still hasn’t quite figured it all out.

  They also assigned me one of the scariest individuals I have ever dealt with in my life. He was a short, grossly overweight man with lashless eyes. He was being investigated for abusing his two stepdaughters. At the time I saw him, he was working at a nursing home where he provided nursing care to elderly and disabled patients. I saw him two times. That was more than enough. I was physically afraid of him. He lied to me from the very first moment, never admitting to any wrongdoing, but his tone of voice and body language spoke volumes. It became paramount to me that I document our visits for the courtroom, as I was convinced that this man would be charged with sexual assault.

  The next time I saw him was on the local news broadcast, which showed him chained to a water pipe in the county jail. He was too big to be put just anywhere, and he couldn’t be placed in the general population, where the prisoners were outraged by his crimes. He had been arrested for abusing several elderly women and at least one man. Ultimately, the police investigation revealed a lengthy pattern of patient sexual abuse, as well as abuse of his stepdaughters.

  This man was guilty of unconscionable crimes against the most vulnerable population. He is a sexual deviant who deserved to be removed from society. There is little hope for his rehabilitation. We don’t know how to work with this kind of aberrant behavior, and we aren’t spending a lot on research to find the answers.

  Let’s look at my own sexual abuse. First there was the single incident with my father. My father was an unfaithful husband. He cheated on my mother with other adult women. The night I was in his bed, he took advantage of a situation. I don’t believe that he even remembers it. I’ve been told that he is outraged that I told anyone, now or back then, and it may well be righteous indignation because he may have blocked it. After all, it was just one time, and it was just a little fondling. (I hope my reader recognizes sarcasm.)

  I have struggled with disclosing it after all these years. Why should I make my family members feel ashamed or disappointed? Wouldn’t it just be easier to let that one incident in the dark remain in the dark? Probably. It is still unbelievably difficult for me to indict my own flesh and blood. In the long run, the reason that I have described that night has to do with what it set me up for later. Perhaps, without that night, I would not have been so vulnerable to subsequent abuse. I don’t know, and I never will. I do know that it did not help.

  In some ways, the greater damage my father inflicted was the result of his abandoning his children and lack of parental responsibility. He dropped us on various doorsteps like unwanted puppies. He never paid one penny of child support, while family members sacrificed to care for his children, and strangers provided for me. Every one of us struggled to pay for our own education. We didn’t have a father sending us to college or buying our first car. Our father was raising someone else’s child, his wife Marge’s adopted son.

  Because my father had molested me and pretended that nothing happened, I thought you were not supposed to tell, so I was an easy mark when my foster father began his long, slow grooming. The coaching for my silent compliance had begun that night in my daddy’s bedroom.

  After working on a very emotionally difficult case, I went to see a therapist. During our second session, I talked about my foster father and my feelings about him. At one point, she said to me, “You have every right to be very mad at him.” It was toward the end of the session, and I just withdrew. It was difficult for me because, of course, I was not mad at him. I spent the next week struggling with how I “was supposed to feel.” When I went in for my next session, my therapist opened the session by apologizing. She recognized that she was mad at my foster father and had presumed that I felt the same. I have observed t
his behavior over and over again with many professionals. Because they find the behavior so reprehensible, because they are victims’ advocates, they presume to defend the victim and vilify the perpetrator. The victims need support, and their perpetrators ought to have therapeutic intervention.

  Even as I write this, I hear the hue and cry. All my friends and colleagues, who are caring and compassionate advocates, will tell you that they understand that the child still loves the perpetrator. They will tell you how hard they work to avoid vilifying the offender. I’ve read the manuals. I’ve memorized the nonleading questions and responses. It simply does not take long for the victim to understand that the perpetrator is bad. I wish I could tell you that they learn that the person they love did something wrong, but he is still a valuable, loving human being. That is not, in the main, what they hear.

  Amy was seven years old when I first picked her up to take her to a therapy session. I was her transporter. She was small, with huge blue eyes and long sandy-blonde hair. She had been picked up several days earlier after disclosing to a teacher that her stepfather had been sexually abusing her. She had been placed in a well-appointed foster home in the suburbs. Amy’s previous living arrangement had been with her mother, her baby brother, and her stepfather in a dilapidated two-bedroom mobile home. Amy’s story is typical of how the system works.

  Amy was bewildered by the whole turn of events. She had not thought that she had done anything wrong, but here she was taken from her mother and living in a very strange place, being asked questions about private stuff. As we drove back to her foster home, Amy was silent as she struggled not to let her tears fall.

  I said to her, “I remember what it was like when I went to my first foster home, and it’s all right to cry.” That opened the floodgates. We sat together without a lot of words and cried. When her tears stopped, they were replaced with a tentative smile. My presence, my tears, her torrent of tears didn’t fix her situation, but some of the hurt was abated.

  It was almost seven years before I saw Amy again. I was picking up my “weekend child” from a group home and who was the newest resident but Amy? I didn’t know her, but she knew me. She hugged me as if I were her best friend. Amy was a system’s kid now. Amy was desperate for affection while at the same time sabotaging any placement that got too close.

  Amy had very quickly decided that she was bad. After all, she was the one who lost everything. She had told her teacher about her stepfather because she had heard the “bad touch, good touch” lecture in school, and she thought the adults could make it stop. Had she fully understood the consequences of her disclosure, she might not have made it.

  Her abuser was her mother’s husband and the father of Amy’s little brother. He did a very bad thing to Amy. The rescue system then compounded the damage.

  When I was in foster care, I had a social worker who came to see me every six months or so. I had adult friends whom I trusted as well as my very close girlfriends. I could have told someone about my foster father, but I didn’t know where I would go or what would happen to me, so I told no one.

  Here’s a different kind of case. It was my job to transport a fifteen-year-old sexual abuse victim to her appointments and her court dates. It was an unbelievable situation. The entire town was outraged at her for making accusations against her stepfather. He was a town councilman and a pillar of the community. When he had grounded her and chastised her for breaking a rule, she had disclosed his ongoing sexual abuse.

  The townspeople didn’t believe her. The mainstream opinion was that she was a rebellious teenager getting back at her parent. His family and friends overflowed the courthouse at every court appearance. Young people hid in the bushes and yelled at her. I listened to her, and I knew she was telling the truth.

  But she buckled and recanted because the rescuing was so much worse than the abuse.

  Her stepfather did a bad thing. Our culture and our judicial system make it impossible to recognize the differences in cases and work with the whole family, including the offender.

  Dr. Amy Hammel-Zabin has written a dynamic book, Conversations with a Pedophile. She writes about a man in prison for abusing more than one thousand children in his lifetime. He has never had a relationship with an adult. He has spent his whole life abusing children with an ever increasing intensity. By his own admission, he is not able to stop the desires. By his own admission, he would reoffend if released from prison. He spent his life living without remorse, sure in his conviction that he was the victim. Only after years of therapy has he been able to recognize the harm he has done. He is not cured, and, given the opportunity, he knows that he would reoffend. He does now, at least, acknowledge that he has harmed children.

  Every case is different. When we stop making blanket rules and start looking for ways to help all the parties, we will better help our children.

  At one point, I almost gave up social work because I felt that my inadequate supervision had contributed to the abuse of a little girl. It was only through the counsel of my friend and mentor, Mary Groff, LCSW, that I understood that I had done the best I could in the circumstances. Mary shared her experiences from her many years as a social worker, and she connected me with other social workers who talked to me about their struggles with feeling as if they had failed. It was a difficult time, but I continued in the field and worked harder than ever for the safety of children.

  The case that caused this crisis in my career was one that I had worked three years prior to leaving the state agency to go to graduate school. An eleven-year-old foster child had come from one of the most dysfunctional families I have ever worked with. The children were picked up initially for shoplifting. As it turned out, these skills were valuable in the life of this family. The children were trained and sent in to retrieve merchandise. Investigation revealed a pervasive pattern of abuse and neglect. The children were placed in foster care, but quickly sabotaged every placement. Candace was placed in a therapeutic foster home in my caseload. Because of all the family incest, I knew Candy was highly sexualized, and I set up many safeguards so the foster father would not be in a situation where Candy could for her own purposes falsely accuse him of inappropriate behavior.

  After many months in the home, I let my guard down and allowed the foster father to transport the little girl from one of her many appointments to Wednesday evening church services to accommodate the family’s busy schedule.

  Now three years later, after being out of the home for two years, Candy had disclosed that her foster father had abused her on these occasions. No one believed it. He was such a good man. He worked so hard for the community, his church, and his family. Everyone just knew that Candy was making it up. But the allegations had to be investigated. He had to be asked.

  When asked, he admitted his guilt. All he had to do was deny, and that would have closed the investigation. Instead, he told the investigator that he was so ashamed of what he had done that he had promised himself and his God that should he ever be asked, he would not lie. He said that he had never had the courage to tell on himself. After Candy left their home, he told his wife that he did not want them to foster any more girls, but he never gave her reasons, and he certainly never told her the truth. They were good foster parents to two foster sons, who were immediately removed when he admitted guilt.

  Perpetrator after perpetrator never even sees a courtroom even though they are as guilty as hell. They deny and get away with it. This man admits and goes to jail. I wonder if this was truly in the best interest of society.

  Mike, my foster father, came from Cumberland Gap, Kentucky. In some ways, he was the product of his environment. In Appalachia, twelve-year-old girls might become wives. At seventy-something, his daddy married his third wife, who was still a young woman, and fathered his last set of offspring. Mike, a child from his father’s earlier marriage, was the first and only person in his family to earn a college diploma, and he was a successful businessman. In many respects, he was a humanitarian, but I wish
he had done all he did for me without molesting me. I struggled to have healthy romantic relationships for years.

  This is worth repeating: Not every child-sexual-abuse offender is beyond help. We have to treat each case on its own merits. We have to work with victims and abusers. We have to value human beings. Our job must be to reclaim all the victims.

  I was at the neighborhood pharmacy one morning when Randy the pharmacist approached me with a problem. He told me that his friend, who was married to a woman with a thirteen-year-old daughter, had confided in him that the little girl had accurately accused him of sexual molestation. Before Randy uttered another word, I told him that I was a mandated reporter and would have to report if he divulged names.

  Without identifying the family or, even, being too specific about their history because we lived in a very small town, Randy began to share the story. The stepdaughter had gone to her mother and disclosed that her stepfather had been touching her inappropriately for months. The mother immediately confronted her husband, who did not deny it. He did not want to lose his family, so he agreed to move out temporarily while they all sought therapy in a neighboring town. The family thought that the client-doctor privilege meant that they would be able to handle this confidentially. What happened next compounded the tragedy. The therapist said that he would see the mother and her daughter, but he didn’t treat “those kinds of people.” Furthermore, he was a mandated reporter, and he would be notifying the state agency.

  I told Randy that the family could expect an investigator in short order. I suggested that the man continue to live separately, to avoid all face-to-face contact with his stepdaughter, to find a therapist who would work with him and a therapist who would work with his wife and daughter. I told him that the man should continue contact with his stepdaughter in the form of cards and letters. He didn’t want her to feel abandoned, but he wanted the investigator to see that he was not trying to influence or coach the child in any way. I tried to help him institute things that the agency would want him to do before they asked it of him. He was not prosecuted, but the family unit did not remain intact, he lost his job, and he moved from his community of origin. Often the public backlash is more damaging than the justice system.