Sex Abuse

Secrecy, guilt and shame.

I want to touch on a subject no one wants to talk about, which is sex abuse and the resulting pain and destruction. I can’t talk about that subject without also commenting on how we are all impacted by the way our society treats sex offenses and sex offenders.

One of the key things I was taught when I first went into Torres* as a volunteer was that I was not to ask a man in white** why he was in prison. I was told that when and if he wanted to tell me, he would.

Turns out, a number of men in my families during the weekend retreats I participated in, as well as some of the men I mentored, were incarcerated for sex offenses. Through them, I met other men whose lives had also been blighted by wearing the stigma—Sex Offender/SO.

I have encountered the pain and wreckage wrought on the victims, families, perpetrators and society as a result of secrecy, guilt and shame surrounding sex.

Our religious institutions have failed us on subjects of sex.  Rather than offering help, hope, healing, forgiveness and reconciliation for victims and their families and for perpetrators and their families, our religious institutions have defaulted to silence and shame.

Our criminal justice system, including our legislators, courts, jails, prisons and probation, do absolutely nothing for the victims and families of sexual offenses or for the families of perpetrators and they make recovery for perpetrators extremely difficult.

I certainly don’t have the answers but I know where the answers can be found by people of goodwill utilizing understanding, love, acceptance, encouragement and hope coupled with medical care, counseling and financial resources.

*The Torres Unit is a Texas state prison near Hondo, Texas.

**In Texas prisons, all inmates wear white.