No, Actually, I'm Not A Child Molester, Thanks

The BBQ Pit
61

My statement was quoting the post above me. I wouldn’t know a hymen if it popped me in the eye.

The point I was trying to get across, which evidently, throws me into lunacy, is that parents should be diligent about making sure their children are not harmed. Knowing the things my father did to me when I was an infant tells me that their had to be signs that either my mother did not notice, or did not care to notice. It wasn’t until I told my mother what he did that she took us away. Meanwhile, I had been having all sorts of problems “down there” and in retrospect, my mother said she SHOULD have known, but that she was so naive it never occurred to her.

So get off my fucking back you judgmental piece of shit, stop questioning my sanity in ways you have no fucking concept of how many country miles you are from being even close to correct.

I have issues that persist to this day. I am a reasonably normal, well-adjusted, tax paying, home owning, job having decent human being. I’m also the one that attempted to save my half-sister from the same fate I had by going through the legal system, appealing to her mother and family, and had no other choice than to know he was doing the same fucking thing to another child, 20 years later. And if given the choice, he’d do it again, to anyone around.

THAT is the world I live in. THAT is the world my daughter has to live in. When you look your mother dead in the eye, deal with her resenting you for “stealing her husband” even though she doesn’t have the balls to admit it, when you see children thrown to the wolves for parents who don’t give a shit and you are doing every. fucking. thing. possible. to make it so the world SHE, my daughter, lives in, is different from the one that I lived in, then you come on over, have a cup of coffee and decide who in this scenario is a lunatic.

I consider myself incredibly fortunate that I have dealt with those fears and had enough therapy to not be a fruitcake about men being around my daughter. Her first babysitter was a guy. Her last babysitter was a man and wife. Her relationship with her father means the world to me. That in no way means that I don’t look her over a bit every time she comes home from the babysitter. If suggesting to parents that they be aware of what can be out there and take reasonable means to do so, makes me a lunatic, then by god, I’m a lunatic.

One of my favorite scenes from a movie was an Adam Sandler movie about him finding some kid/being a dad or whatever. He needed to give the kid a bath, but was nervous about what was right, so he had the kid bathe with his swim suit on. We call it “getting all Scuba Steve.”

It kills me that their are predators out there. It kills me that decent, caring, kind men have to feel bad about interacting with children because of that. It kills me that people don’t understand it isn’t the creepy guy under the bridge they have to worry about. Child molesters, especially ones like my father, go out of their way to be appealing to children. Hell, there was never a weekend that their wasn’t a houseful of kids at my fathers house. EVERYONE trusted him with their kids. I can imagine how Hal feels. I can also imagine how military dad feels. I have a much harder time understanding how SUV guy feels.

So fuck you and get off my back.

62

One of the ladies I work with was having a shit-fit a couple of days ago because her son is going to have a male teacher next year in the 3rd grade. Shocked, I asked her what the problem with that was.

“Well, you never know! I don’t want my son alone in the room with a MALE TEACHER at that age!”

I calmly tried to explain that she was being irrational and sexist, and that for a large variety of reasons, her son would be just as safe as he would be in a female teacher’s class.

“Well I don’t care, I don’t think men should be allowed to teach before the 7th or 8th grade!”

I gave up.

I understand being protective of your kids, but some people take it WAYYYY too far, to the point of being irrational, destructive and insulting.

63

I can’t describe (I’ve tried, but had to keep deleting what I’d written as too vehement) how insulted and infuriated I am by the attitude that every post-pubescent male is a molester until proven innocent.

Perhaps we should all just be burned at the stake.

64

Now imagine you’re gay.

65

Turek: I can imagine. I was told when I was growing up that because I had been abused, I would abuse my children. At 18, I was begging for a hysterectomy. I would have rather been childless than ever allow that possibility. The reality is, we all have choices. I chose good mental health.

Knowing the void left by having no steady, sane male figure in my life and my brothers life, I do appreciate how important men are to raising healthy children. We are both better parents because we understand.

Irrational, undirected, blanket fear is terribly unproductive. It would be easier if parents were able to say “watch out for the freak under the bridge” but it has been proven time and time again, that that isn’t the problem. So where does that anger go? Unfortunately, for decent, caring men it gets directed at them too.

The stories men tell on this board, about their children, often bring me to tears. Hell, even on Survivor last night, the hamsters got visits from family. One girls father came. As she ran to her father and he ran to her, I looked at my husband and said “Wow, you have another good 20 years of Katie running to you like that to look forward to.” When they teamed up and won the competition, to us it was the “father/daughter won.”

Keep being good examples guys. You make my heart explode with joy. For every psycho-mom out there, there is one sitting back crying, knowing there ARE good fathers out there, even if they weren’t lucky enough to have one.

Lisa the Lunatic

66

Thanks, Auntbeast. You have my sympathy for your situation, my respect for how you’ve handled it, and my appreciation for your attitude.

67

My Hal-like stupid story:

Back in the spring, my not-quite 2 year old daughter was having trouble breathing, and wound up being admitted to Childrens Hospital. The room she was in had another kid in it - a 10 or 11 year old girl. My wife spent the first night at the hospital while I was home with the other kids, but we were going to swap for the second night. The mother of the other girl heard my wife planning this with me on the phone, and complained to the nurses that a man shouldn’t be allowed to spend the night in the room with girls in it. Note again - this is a Childrens Hospital, so they have parents spending the night all the time, and even have fold out beds for it. Luckily the nurse told her that they don’t have an anti-Father policy, don’t plan on implementing one, and if she was unhappy with that, she was free to either spend the night in the room with her own daughter, or discharge her from the hospital and take her elsewhere. She chose neither.

My wife told me all this after our daughter came home. I’m glad I didn’t know about it earlier, since the other girl was completely in love with my daughter and was a delightful companion to her while we were there.

68

But can you define “raising” in the above statement? I ask in the context of same sex parents.

For the record, I do not think Auntbeast is a lunatic, I fully endorse the perspective that men can be good people and good parents, and I think Hal’s situation sucks.

69

Becuase the stupid child-molesting hamster gets deja vu.

70

Yeah, it all comes back to gay issues in the end, doesn’t it?

71

The point was that if you’re gay, you’re assumed to be a child molester by many people.

72

My story: Before I bought my house, I rented a house on a street where about two-thirds of the households were families with kids. After several months, I noticed that young children running or biking down the block would either turn around right before they got to my house, or cross the street. A little while later, I learned that the man living across the street and one house over was telling parents “Look, there guy living in that house is in his 30s and single. Don’t you think that’s a bit odd? If I were you, I wouldn’t let my kids anywhere near there.”

Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be the same fear where I live now. Still, I’m reluctant to talk to children on the street, because I just don’t want anyone to think that I’m a child molester. The local newscasts here have far more sex offender coverage than any place I’ve ever lived or visited, and I fear there’s far more paranoia about it than in most other cities.

73

For those getting the pitchforks and torches ready for Auntbeast, let me just jump in and remind you that back on page one, she was the first to bring up the idea that the other dad might be a molester, but when **Hal **said no, he really doesn’t think so, **Auntbeast **didn’t press the issue at all. In fact, she became very sympathetic and tried to present the other dad in the most positive spin possible: “Ya know Hal. Being the father of a daughter, you can sympathize with this man. Especially since he is in the military and away most of the time, his ability to protect his daughter is limited. It is possible that when he is home, he is overprotective to make himself feel better about being away.”

These, to me, are not the words of a bigot. They are the words of a person who was victimized, is now cautious, but isn’t condemning everyone with a penis. They are the words of a reasonable person who is a little gun shy, with good reason.

threemae, I’m really surprised at you. You usually come across as pretty reasonable, but this post really isn’t, at all. It’s the equivalent of the (apocryphal) “All men are rapists” nonsense. As others have said, it’s bigoted and sexist in the most heinous way - it limits men and women alike and pre-judges all men on the actions of a few.

There are plenty of female abusers as well. They are even more underreported than men, because boys are less likely to “tell”, and be believed, and all too often it’s considered a macho thing to have an older woman “show you the ways of the world”. Are you going to wrap your (hypothetical) kids in bubble wrap and not allow them any personal contact at all? If you’re that afraid, then I sincerely hope you don’t have kids ever, because there are far more realistic fears that will shortly overwhelm you.

I am also a victim of child sexual abuse, and, speaking frankly, I think the best thing we as a society could do would be to become LESS freaked out about the whole thing. Not only because we’re beginning to persecute innocent men, and other innocent men are withdrawing from the child rearing process out of fear, but because, ultimately, it’s not the end of the fucking world. Would I be really, really pissed if it happened to my baby girl? Hell, yes. But I would also tell her immediately that not all men are like that and she will heal and become a full, healthy, loving sexual person in her own time. (And, of course, ditto for my son.) What broke me was people telling me I was broken, not some labial abrasions and a broken hymen.

74

On the gay thing, during the whole Foley mess I was so angry to hear Pat Buchanan on Hardball running his mouth about the dangers of gay men being in Congress because of the threats they posed to pages. That’s when he started rattling off statistics about the prevalence of gay priests accusd of pedophilia. And while Chris Matthews expressed disagreement with his bigoted views, I felt he didn’t say nearly enough to shut that fool down.

With Buchanan’s logic, why should any man be allowed to serve in Congress? Most crimes are overwhelmingly committed by men, straight, gay, or otherwise. I can’t see how he can sleep out night, knowing that our country is being run by people who any minute now could start going on murderous, testoterone-induced rampages.

75

That’s not what I read in Hal’s post. I read that the father starts getting upset over innocuous, supervised situations, such as when the child is playing in the room with both present.

76

I have a great deal of empathy for parents and their fears about the world. I marvel at the process that has allowed me to grow more comfortable with the developing independence of my 11 year old, and how much less hypervigilant I am with our 5 year old.

However, being worried about the safety of your own child around a guy while you are in the same room as her is really extreme. I can hardly imagine what he envisions might happen. (Particularly with the assumption that the child is still in diapers. Does he think that Hal might have slipped him some roofies so that he might not be able to see what happens? What is this guy going to do when his child goes to Chuck E. Cheese? Is he going to go commandoing into the plastic tubes to make sure no pederast is lying in wait?

I’m a bit loathe to put thoughts into the guy’s head, but it does make one wonder about whether he is fearful of his own feelings or not.

I think that suggesting a routine check of the hymen is quite extreme. If you wish to be that invasive and scary about it, you may still be able to buy a chastity belt somewhere.

I also second WhyNot’s observation that a good deal of the damage comes from how we respond to the abuse after it has occurred. I worked with an adolescent girl in therapy who helped me to see this most clearly. Now, was she simply in denial about the effects of her experience? I don’t know. I do know that there was no purpose to trying to make her feel like she should have been overwrought in order to then make her come to accept her status. Most of the work involved addressing her mother’s feelings about the damaged status of her child.

77

Thanks for defending me.

I wanted to quote that. I want to quote it everywhere. I want everyone to read it three times fast, five times slow. I still think I need to read it some more.

78

I understand that it works for the two of you, and other survivors, but there are plenty of people who feel that the physical, psychological trauma they went through was in fact hurtful unto itself. Trying to deny that could be as harmful for them as focusing on society’s reaction has been for you.

79

I guess this puts my personal experience in perspective: when I was in college I was walking down the street and a group of children came up to me and in the course of conversation asked me for my bike lock, which I gave since it was broken and of no use to me. A couple months later, during which I didn’t talk to them at all, they see me on the street with an older female guardian and they say hi to me, whereupon their guardian bitch tells me not to interface with them again. Yeah, okay, next time I’m gonna just be silent and have them think I’m a deaf mute, or tell them to go to hell and get off the streets with their hoodlum bikes, or maybe say “hey, I can’t talk to you, everyone thinks I’m a child molester” :rolleyes:. But a person rolling up to me in a truck and telling me that, then asking where I live would be a lot scarier.

Of course I’ve been in plenty of situations where someone expressed views that were sort of :dubious: to me or been seemingly overly fearful of me due to my gender but nothing compared to the stuff I’m reading now.

80

I’m not sure anyone has suggested that there aren’t people who experience significant emotional distress, or that anyone should make an effort to deny that. I do think it’s important to recognize that, like anything, there will be a range of severity of a person’s response to such an event. It can be as harmful to be pushed towards regarding it as a devastating and overwhelming event as it would be to deny that someone should feel devastated and overwhelmed.