Betrayed as Boys: Psychodynamic Treatment of Sexually Abused Men, written by psychoanalyst Richard B. Gartner, PhD, is a fascinating and eye-opening look into the therapy process of men who were sexually abused as boys.
The subject of sexual seduction by older women is explored in chapter two, Encoding Sexual Abuse of Boys, asking the question “Are boys in charge of sex with women?” As example, a scene is described in which a teenager is seduced by his babysitter, a woman in her twenties.
Gartner writes, “Imagine for a moment that the sexes are reversed…For most of us, the joke is suddenly no longer funny. We understand that young girls should not be in bed with their babysitters, and we would consider the man the predator and the girl the victim…This imaginary reversal of the sexes highlights our double standard about sexual abuse.”
The next chapter asks Can Women Rape Boys?
While writing memoir, in addition to Gartner’s book on sexual psychology, I also researched California Penal Code from the late 1970s and realized what I experienced was considered felony statutory sexual seduction of a minor.
If one is under eighteen and the perpetrator twenty-one or older, the violation is elevated from a misdemeanor to felony. The law also stated the age of consent had been eighteen since 1913. In other words, a teenage boy could not legally consent to sex with a woman in her twenties, as was my case.
The penalty being up to four years in state prison and having to register as a sex offender once released.
Excerpt from my forthcoming memoir: “She was playing adult games with my teenage life. My parents and anyone who knew, did nothing. A police officer spoke to me about the situation, but without charges filed by my parents there wasn’t much he could do.”
Pamela Smart and Mary Kay Letourneau are two well-known and highly publicized stories of older women having sexual relationships with teenage boys.
Spin magazine shocked readers with an expose on Letourneau, in Statutory Rape: A Love Story (1998), asking “How can we reconcile the soft-spoken church-going mother with a woman capable of wanting, pursuing and having sex with a teenager?”
In a 2017 jailhouse interview broadcast on cable television, Pamela Smart still maintained having sex with a teenager was no big deal, despite the fact she altered three boy’s lives.
More-recently, actor Jimmy Bennett claimed actress Asia Argento (who played his mother in a movie) assaulted him in a hotel room when he was seventeen. Bennett stated publicly that he “was ashamed and afraid to be part of the public narrative. At the time I believed there was still a stigma to being in the situation as a male in our society. I didn’t think that people would understand the event that took place from the eyes of a teenage boy.”
We’ve since read more headlines exposing female teachers and older women caught seducing teenage boys. It’s in the public conscience now.
My experience did not involve murder (as did the case involving Smart) or a teacher, but I was a teenager and she a much-older married woman. Despite our age difference, her husband, or two young daughters, plus knowing I was gay, my perpetrator decided we should be together, hoping it might change my sexual preference.
The scandal began in a Pentecostal church. In fact, her husband was my Sunday school teacher and youth pastor. I’d been to their home, where he’d counseled me.
The Spin article also states, “A 1997 study indicates that a victim – a boy who believes he consented – is likely to have a long-term positive assessment of the sexual relationship.” This was not the case with me because I had already identified as gay.
Another excerpt from my forthcoming memoir: “I’m one of those persons who remember their first experience with the opposite sex as traumatic, mostly because I knew I was gay, and being led into intimacy with a much-older married woman (and mother) didn’t feel natural to me.”
The purpose of memoir is not to seek revenge or humiliate anyone, but to reconcile one’s past, and hopefully contribute to a better understanding of an issue.
My memoir is the true story of a teenage boy and the older woman who seduces him. It’s revealing, no-holds-barred, and the first in a trilogy, from bullied and molested, to happily-ever-after.
Mine is a story of a teenage boy’s coming out detoured, the consequences of an intergenerational relationship, and the effect the affair would have not only on their lives but also their children.
It’s a story of a teenager, uneducated and unprepared for an adult world, and at times using his only asset to survive. Hustling on the streets of San Francisco as the AIDS pandemic emerges, exposing the subculture of an underage survival sex economy during the late Seventies and early Eighties.
This is also the story of conforming to societal standards despite an inherent desire to be something other than what was expected; and the result of pretending to be what one is not. A story of overcoming small town secrets and seduction, revealing one’s past, and ultimately becoming the man I was meant to be.
. . .
In a YouTube video for Vera Institute of Justice, “one of the world’s most prominent and respected psychoanalytic training centers,” Richard Gartner discusses similarities (and traits) found among men sexually abused as boys.
These include anxiety and depression, trust issues, a tendency to stay away from children, and development of a tough exterior persona (to mask victimization). Also discussed, how those able to seek treatment are more successful at overcoming sexual abuse.
To watch Understanding the Aftereffects of Boyhood Sexual Abuse, click here.
