Category: Sexual Assault

Psychiatric Help

I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.

So, I often get asked “Bobbie, if you’re having such problems, why don’t you get help?”

Well, truth be told I have tried to get help in the past. I honestly have.

I get a lot of these

This isn’t the first time I’ve been turned down, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this won’t be the last time that I am turned down.

My current nurse practitioner had arranged for me to see someone on the north shore. But once this counsellor found out about my history and my issues, they suddenly weren’t taking bookings until next year.

My nurse practitioner has actually been the only one so far who has shown an interest in my issues. When I started having severe problems back in May of this year he had no reservations about getting me on escitalopram.

I’ve had counsellors over the years. Some were good, a few were bad, but most were indifferent.

The problem that we run into is not a single counsellor has ever run into a high functioning person with so many issues.

  • Dysfunctional household – check
  • Intergenerational issues – check
  • Abandonment issues – check
  • Sexual abuse – check
  • Prolonged sexual abuse – check
  • Multiple perpetrators of the sexual abuse – check
  • Graphic and depraved sexual abuse – check
  • Blaming the victim for their own abuse – check
  • Blaming the victim for someone else’s abuse – check
  • Receiving unwarranted “conversion therapy” – check
  • Parent threatening the victim with physical harm or death – check
  • Untreated major depression – check
  • Untreated severe anxiety – check
  • Untreated CPTSD – check
  • Inability to form relationships- check

So, it’s obvious that I’m not going to be a case that any counsellor is going to want to engage with. Counsellors, just like everyone else, want the cases that will end in success. Nobody wants to take on cases that are almost certain to end in failure.

People like me are not supposed to hold down employment or keep our noses clean. We’re supposed to be barely functional wrecks.

People like me are supposed to be dead from suicide. I know of three from the CFB Namao matter who meet that criteria. I know others who have had a very rough run at life as well.

And if we’re not dead from suicide we’re supposed to be alcoholics, or heroin junkies, or on crack, self medicating ourselves into an early grave. I’m still amazed in all honesty that I’m not pushing a shopping cart down the alleys collecting bottles and junk to trade for money.

I would guess that another issue that prevented me from receiving counselling is that I’ve never had anyone advocating for me.

My father should have advocated for me back in 80 – 83, but he couldn’t take responsibility for his family and would often insist to me that I was only acting up in order to get out of what I had allowed the babysitter to do to my younger brother. In other words I was faking “major depression”, “severe anxiety” and a host of other issues as a way to shed the blame I deserved for what had happened to my younger brother.

My mother couldn’t advocate as I don’t think she knew bugger sweet all about CFB Namao or my life thereafter.

My stepmother? I don’t think she honestly knew what was going on as I don’t think that Richard had ever been truthful with her about the events of CFB Namao, or why Marie left in 1977, or just about anything else.

So as I stumbled and bumbled through life from one breakdown to another, there was never anyone there for me ensuring that I was getting the help that I needed.

And I’ll bet you that most of these counsellors, upon hearing my issues, can’t help but wonder what it is I expect to accomplish at the age of 50.

It’s not like I’m 15, or 20, or even 30. I’m 50.

I’m not suddenly going to find a boyfriend and get married and live happily ever after.

I’m not suddenly going to find a girlfriend and get married and live happily ever after.

I’m not going to become less disgusted by sex and sexual intercourse and start having sex.

I’m not all of a sudden going to become everyone’s best friend and start drinking and hanging out in bars with them.

I’m not suddenly going to stop having recurring nightmares about the abuse on CFB Namao or my father’s own anger outbursts.

These counsellors must be thinking to themselves “WTF? Why Me? I’m not a fucking miracle worker”.

So, my journey for a counsellor continues.

And please no, I don’t need healing crystals, or magical chants.

The gender bias of sexual assault

I’ve often wondered if the fact that I am male has a had an impact on how my abuse at the hands of P.S. and Captain McRae has been viewed by the authorities.

Society expects girls and women to be the victims of sexual assault.

Society also expects that boys and men will be the perpetrators of sexual assault.

Things get really turned upside down when boys or men are the victims of sexual assault.

And things really get turned upside down when males are the victims of other males.

When I was receiving my counselling from Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke the area of concern wasn’t so much that I had been sexually abused but was that I had been caught having sex with another boy.

In the aftermath of being caught in P.S.’s bedroom I had often wondered if I would have gotten in trouble if I had been a girl instead of a boy. Even at age 8 I understood the gender bias that existed.

When I used to swap clothes with Megan on CFB Griesbach, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a girl. It’s just that I couldn’t understand why boys couldn’t wear dresses. I’d like to think that I was ahead of the curve with understanding that artificial society enforced gender roles were harmful and toxic. But more than likely it was just that I couldn’t understand why it was wrong for boys to wear dresses. And still no one has been able to explain this to me.

I remember girls on base who got touched by same age boys during episodes of “doctor”. The father of the girl would often unleash a can of whoop-ass on the boy who touched his daughter. The father of the boy would often give his son an “understanding wink” as if to say “good job son!”. The daughter never received any type of admonishment for the game of doctor as there was no way possible that the girl could have instigated it. But again, that’s just one of society’s biases, “girls are weak and can only be victims, boys are strong and can only be perpetrators”.

While living on CFB Griesbach I had developed feelings for a boy my age. He lived two doors down from me in PMQ #68. Nothing sexual at all. But we did kiss one day. His father was furious. Mine was even more so telling me that if he ever heard reports from another parent on base that I had kissed their son that he would “break my fucking neck” and that I would never have to worry about kissing another boy again.

Now, I realize that male-on-male child sexual abuse also existed out in the civilian world and that in the civilian world the victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse weren’t treated all that fairly. I still have a copy of an actual educational film from the ’60s called “Boys Beware” in which a teenage boy is groomed by a hebephile and coerced into sex. The hebephile is arrested and the boy is sentenced to juvenile detention. But there was possibly something else at play in the Canadian Armed Forces.

In 2014 when the French magazine L’actualité published its bombshell stories about sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces, one of the stories it ran was about male-on-male sexual assault. The writer of the article was told that male-on-male sexual assault in the military was all about control, humiliation, and punishment, and not about sexual gratification.

Is this why male-on-male sexual abuse was not taken all that serious in the Canadian Armed Forces? Obviously the victim must have done something wrong and deserved to be sexually abused, right? Don’t forget, the men sexually abusing other members of the Canadian Forces often had children at home. If these men participated in the sexual humiliation of other male members, how likely were they to take the sexual abuse of their sons as a serious offence. If these men participated in the sexual humiliation of other members, how likely were they to abuse their own children as a form of punishment or to exert control over an out of control child?

Let’s say that a soldier of the Canadian Forces had an out of control teenage boy at home, and if this member of the Canadian Forces had been involved with episodes of male-on-male sexual abuse in the military as a form of humiliation or punishment, would it be feasible that this member might also make use of male-on-male sexual abuse in an attempt to reign his son in and bring his son under control?

Oddly, when Maclean’s ran the English versions of the L’Actulaite stories they dropped the entire article about male-on-male sexual assault. Is French society that much more advanced that it can handle topics like male-on-male sexual abuse? Are the Anglophones of such delicate sensibilities that Maclean’s was worried about causing their English readers to faint, and swoon, and need PTSD counselling?