Wade Robson and James Safechuck, The Trauma Lady sees you. You are so brave, and I am so sorry. Trauma Lady Trigger Warning: This post explores the sexual abuse of little boys, and how emotional manipulation can keep them quiet about it for years, for decades, even forever.
So who raped Michael Jackson when he was a child and convinced him it was love?
The question keeps occurring to me as I read articles about “Leaving Neverland,” the documentary in which Wade Robson and James Safechuck describe how Jackson sexually abused them as children.
I haven’t seen the film. I probably won’t when it comes to HBO this spring. Licensed therapists were said to be on hand for the Sundance screening on Friday. Reviewers came away shocked, sickened and deeply saddened. Families are devastated and enraged.
I am concerned that the population at large is not prepared for this documentary, even after hearing about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church for decades. “Leaving Neverland” will make us contemplate the deeply wrenching outcomes of child sexual abuse. Associated suicide rates are hard to come by, but most of these 32 symptoms of male sexual abuse survivors are self-destructive.
Survivors will be triggered, particularly those who have not yet come to the realization that they were sexually abused. The arc of this realization can take years, even decades, and often goes to graves, because there is something far more complicated than the sex involved. It is love. There is an involuntary emotional bonding on the part of the abused. This type of emotional manipulation does not undo itself when the sexual contact ends.
It’s a long, drawn out, horrible realization—and survivor estimates are staggering. MaleSurvivor.org says one in six males are “sexually abused in childhood and one out of every four males will experience some form of sexual trauma in their lives.”
I hope HBO intends to have a hotline available for triggered survivors. This will not go well without one.
Back to the question of Jackson himself. The reviews provide sufficient details to beg the question—where did he learn about stealthy rendezvous rooms, sworn secrecy and perhaps most revealing—the insistence that his behaviors were all about love?
Sexual “love” between men and boys has a name—“pederasty.” It’s been around for thousands of years. It is depicted across time in art. Sometimes, civilizations accept it, sometimes not. But the conviction that this is a legitimately mutual and consensual form of love absolutely ignores the adult outcome of the child—depression, sexual confusion, rage, addiction and premature death.
A child who is sexually inculcated by an adult has been robbed of a fundamental part of their own identity. They are robbed of the chance to be who they otherwise would have become had they made their own sexual choices and not been emotionally coerced into them. The energy spent just in surviving the experience is unimaginable.
Anyone the least bit familiar with the 40-year-old North American Man/Boy Love Association will understand that there are men who fervently believe that “love” differentiates a sexual relationship with a child from sexual abuse. An international umbrella organization, the International Pedophile and Child Emancipation, or IPCE, “is a forum for people who are engaged in scholarly discussion about the understanding and emancipation of mutual relationships between children or adolescents and adults.” (IPCE Newsletter, July 1, 1997.)
Much of the way Jackson described his interaction with young boys was framed with “love.” He came off like a spokesman for NAMBLA in the Martin Bashir documentary, saying, “Why can’t you share your bed? That’s the most loving thing to do, to share your bed with someone.”
To ask if Jackson himself were raped as a child is not to imply that abused children inevitably become abusers. They do not. He learned his model of love, however, through conditioning, so if he himself had not yet come to the realization that he was abused by someone he loved, he would not have considered his behavior toward Robson and Safechuck abusive—as they did not, for years, because they genuinely loved him and they thought he genuinely loved them, and as far as he was concerned, he did.
I am concerned that this point will be consumed by the schism once again forming between those who believe Jackson’s denials and those who do not, and who cannot get past their own revulsion toward him to see, not only the victims, but this type of victimization and how it continues to be part of our “civilized” fabric because we vilify victims with that very revulsion.
We have to stop it. It’s blinding us to an enourmous amount of pain. The pain of children being sexually abused by someone they loved. It is devastating, lest we forget Whitney Houston.
We disbelieve, shame and ostracize them. We make the journey from victim to survivor as difficult as humanly possible with our unwillingness to bear witness humanely because we are so terrified to confront our own pain. To just say…
I am so sorry.
You did not deserve this.
It was not your fault.
If you are on the journey from victim to survivor, here are some resources from MaleSurvivor.org. If you are triggered, consult “Tips When Triggered,” and if you are in suicide crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline — 1-800-273-8255.
You’ll be OK.