[music] 00:08 Jackie Strohm: Welcome to PA Centered, a podcast designed to help listeners be a part of the solution to end sexual harassment, abuse and assault. Each episode, we will take on a topic or current event to help spark conversation and break down barriers to building communities free from sexual violence. [music] 00:31 JS: Hi everyone. I'm Jackie Strohm, the Prevention and Resource Coordinator at the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. I'll be your host today as we're joined by Tammi Burke, Manager of Community Services at Victims Resource Center to talk about male survivors of sexual violence. Tammi has worked at Victims Resource Center for 31 years. The majority of that time was spent providing services to victims of crime, specifically with adult survivors. Hi, Tammi. 01:00 Tammi Burke: Hi, Jackie. 01:01 JS: So we were lucky enough to have Tammi recently facilitate a webinar on the same topic for Pennsylvania Rape Crisis Center staff, but we feel it's such an important conversation that we also wanted to talk about it on the podcast. So my first question that I have is thinking about whenever we talk about sexual violence, we hear less often about male survivors despite the high rates of violence that they experience, and so could you start off by telling us about how many men and boys are affected by sexual violence? 01:37 TB: Jackie, and I think that society is well aware that women and girls are often victims of sexual violence, but somehow society fails to recognize that men and boys are also victims of sexual violence. I think many centers know one in four girls are sexually abused and one in six boys, but I don't know if society recognizes that one in six boys are victims of sexual violence because we spend a lot of time talking about female sexual violence. One in 33 men will be victims of sexual assault in their lifetime, and it's estimated that 92,748 men are raped in the United States every year. One out of every 10 rape victims are males, and I don't know if we ever recognize that either, we know how often women are sexually assaulted. 02:22 TB: The Department of Defense statistics state that 38 military men are sexually assaulted every day. Every day. And it's estimated 300,000 inmates are victims of sexual assault each year, and that... So when I really try to think about males and how often they're victims of sexual violence, if we took out 25% of the population of males who've been sexually assaulted, we looked at Beaver Stadium, you know, Penn State stadium that could fit 106,000 people. If the audience was solely male, that would mean that at least 25000 men have been or will have been victims of sexual violence. And I think that a lot of us aren't aware of that, and I also think that these stats might be a little bit off because I think it's under-reported. So what I often wonder is if there's that many, where are they and why don't we know about them? 03:28 JS: Yeah, and that's why we wanted to have this conversation, right? Like you said, our Rape Crisis Center staff should hopefully understand the magnitude of this problem and how it affects male survivors, but the general public might not be as aware of how often, like the statistics you just read to us, how often it's happening every single day, and you mentioned that we might not even have all of the statistics, right? Because of reporting. 03:57 TB: Right. 03:58 JS: So could you talk a little bit about some of the barriers to reporting and why you think so few men are coming forward and why they report less often? 04:11 TB: So I think there's different barriers to males reporting. One is society barriers, one is our agency barriers and community agency barriers, but also male barriers. So we'll look at the society barriers. I think the huge part is the lack of awareness, as we said before, all the statistics... I don't think many people know. I think I know, and people that work in centers like mine have a good idea, but I think the rest of the world have no idea how often it happens. It's also, I think society's response to male victimization is really different when the victim is a female. I think that males who express their feelings openly are considered weak and unstable and unreliable. The cultural norms of masculinity versus female norms of femininity, and I think many of the times that we hear the words men and sexual assault, I think people automatically assume that males are the offender. And we forget that. So think about being a male and think about going to tell somebody and are they going to think that I'm an offender? Society has failed to recognize even the fact that boys were sexually abused until Sandusky. 05:26 TB: I remember clear as day when that happened, and a couple of different things happened. I remember somebody saying I had probably been at the agency about 20 years, and somebody's saying, "I'm enraged that this happened to these boys," and I said, "I've been enraged for 20 years." This isn't just happen... And I'm glad that things came to light. Not that that happened, but do you know what I'm saying, it brought a little bit of a focus that this can possibly happen to males. And I also thought about... At that time, when we talk about how differently people respond and society responds, I was at one of our county courthouses right around the Sandusky, when that was going on, and what happened was, I was waiting with defense attorneys and attorneys, and it actually was a defense attorney who walked in and he knew everybody in the courtroom, and we were waiting for something to happen, and he started... Actually made a joke about it, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh." And somebody turned to me and said, "What do you think?" And I said, "I don't think there's anything funny about sexual abuse." But they wouldn't have said the same thing if it'd been a female. I really think that everyone's response would have been really different had they been females. I think that they think that it's impossible for a male to be raped. 06:38 TB: I think that men are often met with society, from invalidation and victim-blaming statements such as, "How could you let that happen?" They minimize the impact of the sexual assault and sexual abuse on male victims. Then we have agency barriers. I think one of the huge barriers is that the lack of outreach. I think many males have no idea that centers across Pennsylvania are for males and females. I think when you think about a Rape Crisis Center, I think we think about females and we think about kids, so one of the agency barriers is not doing enough outreach. Again, and I mentioned earlier that I think that male sexual abuse is understudied and under-reported. I think some people working at agencies are uncomfortable, they don't know what to do when it comes to a male. Lack of resources. I don't think that we always make ourself approachable. I don't think that all centers make their selves approachable, like by doing things that say, "Hey, we serve males." And sometimes I think it's personal bias. And I think in order for centers to really become more supportive of males it has to start from the top down. 07:55 TB: We need the Board of Directors, we need the Executive Director, any other managers, all the way down. We need the support from them. I know that when I was doing a male survivor support group, when I would do a female support group, I ended with T-shirts and we did the clothes line project for the women, but I couldn't do that with the males because it was for females, so we came... We did some brainstorming and we talked to the male participants, and we came up with... We would do the same thing, but we would do it with sheets, and they were able to cut a piece of a blue sheet out, whatever size they want to display how they were feeling and what they wanted to express. They did that and I brought it back to my office, and it was handsewn on top of the clean sheet, and that was the executive director who sat and handsewed that. So I've always had the support through the agency, and I think that the directors and the board need to recognize that the importance of supporting our work with working with male survivors. 08:58 TB: And then male barriers... It's gonna go back, they're not saying anything because responses by society and community professionals. I've worked with males who said that they've gone and they've talked to other professionals out in the community who've even grimaced when they started to mention that. I had another male that I had met in a drug and alcohol facility, and I said to him, he had disclosed his past victimization, "You come in and talk to me," he said, "I already talked to a therapist for 15 years." Finally one day he agrees to come in and talk to me, and I started doing some counseling with him, and he looked at me like, "What are you doing?" And I said, "We've gotta talk about victimization." And I said, "Did you do that work before?" He said, "No, I saw her for 15 years. She never asked me any questions about the sexual abuse," but I thought... That might even been her own... Being uncomfortable with it. Their question about their sexual identity, you know, that often males who are victims of sexual violence, have been sexually assaulted by another male or sexually abused by another male and that's really confusing. And they're really worried about... 10:03 TB: They question their own sexual identity, but they're afraid to say it out loud because they're afraid other people will question their sexual identity. I think, and there's lack of support and the lack of resources. Things that we don't wanna talk about, but even confusion about their bodies responding that's so evident and nobody wants to talk about that, and I think that those are the important things to... And there's a confusion regarding that. They're seen... If they're afraid that they tell, they're going to be seen as weak, unmanly. Boys and men are socialized to see themselves as tough and strong, and we do that every day. Society... Not we, I shouldn't say we... I think society does that when we're raising kids in general. If we had a little girl and she was skipping at a picnic and she fell and she started crying, every... The society would pick her up, tell her it's okay, give her a kiss on the knee and whatever it might be until she stopped crying, but when it's a little boy, in many times, society responds really differently, like "Be a man." Really? Three? Be a man? "Shake it off, stop your crying, and stop being a girl," and we go on. 11:08 TB: So we kind of already shut them down at age three and younger, so they're kind of taught to act like a man. And what they're taught is that good men are physically strong, they're heterosexual, they're unemotional. They show no pain. They're brave, they're courageous. They're not feminine. They're the ones that are in control. They show no fear, and if you fall out of the box then they've gotta ask themselves, "Am I really a man?" So that's part of the fear with us with male barriers, and like I said, I've been doing this for a long time, and I've worked with many males that... I often think about the one male that I worked with who was 75. It took him... He was age 75 by the time he walked into my office and I thought, "What could have been a little bit different for him had somebody talked to him 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago?" You know, the difference. So that's some of the things I think that we need to change and we need to work on. And then if we can work on some of that, maybe it would decrease the secrecy and the delay in reporting and the shame. 12:16 JS: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. In my line of work, I talk about prevention all day with folks, and a lot of the things that you're describing, centers are working on those things in schools and community groups, trying to really get away from those myths about what it means to be a man or a woman, move away from those traditional gender stereotypes, but it takes all of us to make sure that we're raising the next generation of kids who understand that it's perfectly normal to have emotions and to have feelings and... Yeah, I think your example about the children hurting their knees, we see that play out all the time, and so I think you're right, if we could really start trying to get these messages out to kids and to caregivers, right? 13:11 TB: Absolutely. 13:12 JS: Parents and caregivers. As young as possible that we'd be able to maybe turn this around a bit, but... So not just talking about the barriers, but talking about some of the long-term effects of keeping it to themselves or not receiving help. I know you talked about your client who was much older when they came to talk to you, but what are some of those effects and how does it affect men who are survivors who don't disclose for most of their lives? 13:48 TB: And I think that we know that males are less likely to report sexual abuse, to identify the experience that they had. Sometimes they can't even identify that it's abusive. And to seek support, formal treatment. Post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, alcoholism and drug abuse, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts, problems in intimate relationships, under achievement at school and at work. I often wonder how many... If we could have educated more of the teachers, would they've been able to pick up on some of that. And that males, adolescents who were sexually abused are three to five times more likely to engage in delinquency. I've done outreach to some of the local juvenile detention centers. I think that we need to be aware of that too. And I've done some trainings with the detention centers just so that they have a better idea of how often male sexual abuse and sexual violence happens. I think confusion of emotional needs with sex, multiple compulsive behaviors, physical and emotional symptoms, self-victimization, really big, high-risk taking, chaotic relationships. And as I said earlier, throughout my 31 years that I've worked with many, many male survivors between the ages of two and 75... So when you asked me to do this, and I was thinking about some of the things that I thought was important to say, I really thought about a lot of those males, those men kept just popping through my head over and over again, the boys, the men... 15:30 TB: And what I can tell you is that I think that we have... No matter what the situation is, a lot of people have in their mind what a victim looks like. The males that I worked with, they came from all different walks of life. They were Marines, they were National Guard, they were truck drivers, they were homeless, they were those with addictions, they were construction workers, they were businessmen, they were inmates. All walks of life. This is the other part that I thought about is that when agencies aren't becoming more approachable... And it's across the United States, I'm not talking about Pennsylvania, it's across the United States, 'cause I've had the opportunity to meet with men that finally had the courage to pick up the phone, and they were denied services. I'd done a training in Minnesota and I had... It was absolutely wonderful and I was kind of honored about the experience, but I was part of the... I was able to present at the Male Survivors International Conference, so there were men from all over. And I got to work with the survivors. And there was two different men that really stick in my mind, one was from Minnesota, and he said that he picked up the phone to call somebody in his late 20s, 'cause he's couldn't deal with it anymore, and he called the center, and the center said, "If you're over the age of 13 and you're male, we won't talk to you." 16:48 TB: Will you imagine the first time you pick up the phone and that's what happens? I also met another man who could not find services in his city. He was from the East Coast. He became a flight attendant, and every time he had a layover, he was looking for somewhere where somebody would help him work through his past victimization, and I thought that was really sad, to think that he had to go all over the place, and so when I worked with these men, they were fathers and they were brothers, and they were sons, and they were partners, and they were friends, so for anybody listening, the majority of these men that I work with, never told anybody until we did some of the outreach and we talked to them, or by word of mouth, they found out about us. I want people to think about... Just for one minute, I want you to think about one of those males in your life that you really love and you really care about, and they finally make the decision to reach out, and they have no idea who to call, or they finally make the call and they're turned away. 17:47 TB: And that's the stuff that really needs to change, Jackie. And it starts with us. As I work with those males, some of the things that I learned from them. I think I know a lot of this is hands-on stuff. I know I did a lot of reading and a lot of trainings and all those things, but it was hands-on in working with them. The ones they said, they didn't know who to call, that not all social services were willing to work with males, males don't cry, especially Marines. "I worked out my whole life to be strong and to prove to others that I am a man." "I really thought that when my 17-year-old babysitter was touching me, they were teaching me about sex, and when I finally told somebody, he told somebody else in her family and they said that's just part of a learning experience." But then... This is this 11-year-old. Again, that's when we think about that, and I think that's why males are often confused by that, is that society's response. If we had a 30-year-old male who was having sex with a 15-year-old girl, we'd call him a child molester or sex offender. 19:01 TB: And we would be upset by that. And then we have a 25 or 30-year-old female having sex with a 15-year-old boy, and he's talking to his friends about it and they're like, "Ooh, way to go." Even some dads are patting him on the back going, "That's my boy." We need to start seeing that differently, that's not a male's first sexual experience, that's sexual abuse. But the man that kinda stuck out in my head, he finally tells somebody about the babysitter, and when he was telling me that in one of the groups I was doing at drug and alcohol, he really believed it was okay, he really thought that that was a normal, everyday thing. I work with men that are afraid to hug their children or to touch any children in their family, their nieces, their nephews, whoever it might be, they're afraid to touch a child. They won't do any parts of the caretaking, the child caretaking at home. They don't wanna give their babies a bath, or the kids a bath, or take care of diaper rash. I've had an adult male call me that his wife was working, and he was home with the baby and the baby had diaper rash. And at certain... Like twice a day or something, this baby was supposed to have cream put on her and he couldn't do it. I mean, I had to talk him through the hotline, and explain to him that he wasn't being abusive, there was nothing wrong with that, that he just really needed to put the ointment on the baby. 20:14 TB: One of the things that I learned from men is that you don't need to be a male to work with males, I think that was a big question people would ask me, especially when I started the male support group, people were like, "Tammi, you're female." I'm like, "Well, somebody has to do it. I don't have a male working for me, and I don't think all centers have males working for them." But I think about this one guy, he was part of the group, and I was outside waiting... The group started in the evening, it was in the summer time, so I was outside waiting for them to come in 'cause I had to keep the door unlocked, and he comes walking down, he's complaining about another agency he had been at, and that he doesn't think females should be working with males, and I looked at him and I go, "I'm a female." 20:58 TB: And it was like the first... And he kind of like did a double take and I thought, he didn't notice the gender. He just felt like if he felt safe and supported, he could talk. So I think they don't worry about, question about we only have females working at centers, we can still provide that service. And then when... This is a huge one, I think when they question or society questions their sexuality, because nobody talks about it, nobody talks about the impact that it has. I think that they try to prove to themselves and others that they're heterosexual. That's one of the things I worked with a male in the beginning, and he would often talk about dating situations, and I finally figured out, I mean, this is early on before I was really doing the work, I thought that's what he's trying to tell me or trying to prove to himself. And I think... I mean, I could go on for a long time, Jackie about all the things that the men taught me. 21:57 JS: Yeah, it sounds like they've taught you a lot. I know I'm learning a lot, and I hope folks that are listening are able to pick up from all of the lessons that you learned and the experiences that you had to figure out how they can work better with the male survivors in their lives, which really leads me to my next question, and you've talked about this a little bit, but there are misconceptions that people have about working with male survivors, especially like you just said, right? Does it have to be a male who's doing that work? And so what advice do you have for counselors and advocates who are working with this population? 22:35 TB: I think one of the things is to really kind of... I don't like to use the word myth, but dispel them, do you know what I mean? That we need to say... Number one, they're not offenders, and I'm gonna say that again at the end, they are not offenders. Because these myths make it harder for men to talk about the experience of sexual assault, make it harder for them to find support, make it harder for them to report the offense to the police, and it also makes it harder to prosecute someone who commits a sexual assault. 23:03 TB: Do you know what I mean, if we don't have a victim that's willing to... That is really struggling with coming forward or not getting what they need throughout the criminal justice system. And also when we think about the myths, the stronger the individual believes in the myths or the stereotypes of male that report rape or sexual assault, the more they'll place the blame on the male victim and they take away the blame from the offender. When we are really looking at these myths, with any sexual assault victim, Jackie, and we know that we find ways to judge and to blame victims for lots of different situations, about the way they dress or what they were wearing or if they were drinking or whatever it might be, but the more we fall into these myths and these stereotypes about male survivors, we're gonna place the blame on the males and we're gonna take the blame away from the offender, and this means that we need to educate ourselves and the community on the impact of male sexual violence. 24:01 TB: So start by believing, know the stats that I talked about and recognize the fact that they're probably under-reported, and then find ways to become more approachable. And so when we think about maybe being uncomfortable with that, I know that I said this a couple of times, through different trainings that I've done, we've gotta get comfortable being uncomfortable. Nobody wants to be uncomfortable, we don't. But I think as a counselor or advocate for 30-some years, I've been in a lot of situations that were uncomfortable, but I did what I needed to do. So... And the more that we do, the more comfortable we become, the more experience that we have in working with males. So number one, provide the same services you would to anybody else. Anybody else. You don't have to know all the answers. I tell people this all the time in the communities, you don't have to know all the answers, all you have to do is be kind. Just be kind and listen. It's okay if you're not comfortable at first. Just keep doing it. I think that it's important that we do more of the outreach, and if you can get yourself out there to other community settings where there's males and females, but that we can just talk about, "These are the services that we provide and our services are to males and females." 25:27 TB: And that we don't just provide services like the crisis, the initial crisis. It's years later. It's years later. So go into all different groups, all different age groups, you'll be shocked. I did a mandated reporting training one time to foster grandparents, and somebody came up to me at the end and said, "I never told anybody." And they were in their 80s. It's never too late to reach out to anybody, it's never too late for somebody to seek services. Recognizing that it can affect anybody, again, Marines and the Army and the truck drivers, and all those people that we think are big and tough. Sexual assault does not discriminate, and sexual violence doesn't discriminate. And I already mentioned this before, but we need to start from the top down. I think that... And dual centers, I think it might be a little harder for them to work, sexual assault, domestic violence centers, because I think when we think about domestic violence the majority of the time it is a female, but although it does happen to males... And you still need to be open to talking to them about that too. But I think for many years, they probably... There weren't males involved in their services. 26:34 JS: That is a lot of great advice. And I know you've talked about how important it is to do outreach, and so I guess I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that by answering my last question, which is: What can rape crisis centers do to better serve male survivors in their communities? 26:56 TB: It's the outreach. They're not coming to you. They do exist. So now we have to go find them, and I figured that out a long time ago. They weren't coming there. So, outreach, outreach, outreach, outreach. Going to providers and talking to them, but then the more you have the opportunity to talk to the other agency's clients, the better. Go in and talk for a few minutes. Drug and alcohol, that was where I first started. I went to rehabs, and then I ended up doing groups in the halfway houses, but just going in and talking. They're incarcerated, so that we gotta reach out to... There's PREA. I won't spend a whole lot of time talking about the Prison Rape Elimination Act, but in the counties that I serve, I had... Well, one just closed, but I had two state prisons that I made sure that I did outreach. I had connections with them, and in all three counties, I have connections with the county jails. 27:53 TB: Also that includes services to females, the county jails. The military. I did some work with Tobyhanna, and I was able to attend some of their sexual assault response team meetings, and at one time before the person took another position, the Sexual Assault Response Coordinator used to attend Luzerne County sexual assault response team. So making yourself available and opening. Word of mouth. The more that you get out there and say, other people are gonna recognize that our agencies are here and that we provide those services. Make sure that when you're doing information tables that there's stuff about the services that you provide the males. I mean, PCAR has a male brochure. 28:34 TB: When I talked earlier about the Blowing in the Wind project that during sexual assault awareness month, I made sure that that was hung up. I actually have a couple of those sheets now because I was able to meet with a lot of survivors to complete that, but they get hung in different places. They would be hung at some of our local colleges and universities. Educate yourself so that you can go out into the community and make referrals. You gotta be like educate. So you wanna get the referrals, we need to know the information. Recognize your personal biases, become more approachable, and I know I said that, but these are the most important things. Recognize that personal bias, become more approachable. Taking the first step, becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable. Attend trainings, look it up, find them, they're out there. Educate the community agencies and the males on the number of services. 29:28 JS: That's great. It sounds like there are so many things that people can be doing to better serve male survivors in their communities. So Tammi, I wanna say thank you so much for joining us to talk about male survivors. That's unfortunately all the time that we have today, but I wanna thank everyone for listening to this episode of PA Centered, and to find out more information, you can visit us at pcar.org. Thanks. 29:54 TB: Thank you. [pause] 38:39 JS: If you or a loved one needs help, a local Sexual Assault Center is available, 24/7, call 1888-772-7227 for more information, or find your local Center online at pcar.org together we can end sexual violence. Any views or opinions expressed on PA centered by staff or their guests are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of PCAR or PCAR's funders.