For men and boys, a silver lining amid sex abuse scandals

(CNN) — Advocates and therapists for survivors of male sex abuse say the recent scandals at Penn State and elsewhere may help men who were abused as children, and boys being abused today, step out of the shadows and get the support they deserve.

They also hope society can become better educated about the issue.

"The allegations have kick-started a public dialogue about sexual violence and the community’s responsibility," says Jennifer Marsh, who directs hotlines at RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. "It’s a conversation we have to have and can’t shy away from."

If increased Web traffic and calls to hotlines are any indication, the tide for men and boys may, in fact, be turning.

National organizations like RAINN, MaleSurvivor and 1in6 — a reference to research estimates that one in six men have been sexually abused as children — all report increased attention since the story about former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky first broke in early November, setting off what seemed like a domino effect of allegations at Syracuse, The Citadel, the Amateur Athletic Union and elsewhere.

RAINN saw a 54% increase in traffic to its online hotline in the week after the Penn State story made headlines. Though RAINN does not ask the gender of hotline visitors, Marsh says the organization has anecdotally seen "a significant increase of male visitors."

The experience of two organizations that specifically exist for the benefit of men and boys may be even more telling.

Words matter in Penn State perjury case

MaleSurvivor, which provides resources, information, discussion boards and recovery retreats, received nearly 135,000 online visits in November, a dramatic jump from its monthly average of 100,000.

Likewise, website traffic at 1in6 has boomed from an average 475 visits a week to as many as 1,200, according to a founding board member.

Calls to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) also have gone up, both locally and nationally, by 20% to 30% since the recent wave of stories broke, says David Clohessy, the organization’s executive director.

Both hope and desperation could be driving the increase, he says.

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Survivors of clergy sex abuse who didn’t come forward before — or did but didn’t feel heard — may see the overwhelming attention and outrage and believe this is their time to talk. And they may be motivated by the realization that society has not progressed as much as they had hoped.

"There’s an assumption that surely, after all these [Catholic Church] lawsuits and payouts and scandals, surely no institution ignores child sex abuse these days," Clohessy says. "So when they see the stories out of Syracuse, Penn State and The Citadel, they might think, ‘My gosh, I better come forward.’ "

Another motivation to speak up now, Clohessy says, is thanks to the wonders of the Internet.

The stories in the news have prompted men, who may have put aside thoughts of their former abusers for years, to search online for their abusers’ names. Clohessy says these men are finding out that maybe the teacher who officials vowed would never teach again is now offering private music lessons in his home, or the coach who was ousted has a wife running an in-home day care center. Betrayed by false promises and outraged, some of these men are compelled to act.

They’re not alone

Coming forward for any survivor of sexual abuse is complicated, and it’s only more so for men and boys, experts say.

Men may have a harder time seeing themselves as "survivors" or "victims." Even identifying what they experienced as "abuse" can be a stretch for some, says Jim Hopper, a clinical psychologist who’s worked in the field for 20 years. And strolling into, or calling a hotline affiliated with, a "rape" or "sexual assault" crisis center? That may be years off, if that day ever comes.

It’s for this reason that 1in6, which Hopper helped found, avoids using labels. With pages like "Sorting It Out for Yourself," 1in6′s website offers a safe entree for men to explore whether something that might have happened to them as children is affecting them today — whether it’s fear of intimacy, drug dependency, pornography or sex addiction, Hopper explains.

The 1in6 stated mission is "to help men who have had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood live healthier, happier lives."

Jim Struve, a psychotherapist in Salt Lake City, has worked with male sex abuse survivors for 35 years. He helped organize the first conference exclusively for male survivors, which brought 450 people from 14 countries to Atlanta in 1989. He served on a committee that would establish the National Organization Against Sexual Victimization of Males, which later merged with and became known as MaleSurvivor. He’s facilitated 35 weekend recovery retreats for the organization since 2003.

Like Hopper, he says language matters.

"How males are asked about abuse influences their answers," he says. "If you ask most males, ‘Were you sexually abused?,’ they will answer, ‘No.’ But if you ask them behavioral/descriptive questions like, ‘What age was your first sexual experience?’ ‘How old was your partner?’ or ‘Was this sexual experience consensual?’ … men will often describe situations that are abusive, while not defining them as abuse."

One in eight rape victims is male. One in six men were sexually abused as children. These are facts that experts like Struve say need to be heard, repeated and accepted.

Male survivors "have been in the shadows," says Struve, who runs therapy groups for male survivors both at his private practice and through Salt Lake City’s Rape Recovery Center. His groups are filled to capacity with waiting lists.

"Most men think ‘I’m the only one.’ But that’s dramatically shifted," he says, as more men face their past and realize they’re not alone.

The surge of recent stories also has given hope to those not working exclusively with men.

"We feel very optimistic about the fact that we’re at a time in our history when so many male survivors will come forward," says Megan O’Bryan, president and CEO of the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center. "Ten years ago, we wouldn’t have been in that place."

Why now?

It was nearly 10 years ago that the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal in Boston blew wide open, spawning an abundance of similar allegations across the globe.

While that story certainly grabbed headlines, the publicity may not have spoken to men in the same way the allegations at big university sports programs have.

These recent stories reach a wider audience, including the sorts of men who flip first to the sports page, tune into ESPN or worship at the altar of football or basketball.

And that may help account for the increase in accusations and calls to organizations, SNAP’s Clohessy says.

"In my experience, many people, including many survivors, seek out the entertainment news and sports news and deliberately turn away from the horror that is often in the ‘news news’ section," he says. "Anytime child sex crimes make it into entertainment programs or sports programs, it does, in fact, bring more survivors of abuse forward and forces them to think about what they’ve experienced."

Another way in which men appear to be coming forward is through the legal system.

Take, for instance, the influx of calls to the attorney referral line offered by the National Center for Victims of Crime, a Washington-based resource and advocacy organization that helps crime victims rebuild their lives.

Requests for referrals in the area of child sex abuse have tripled since the Penn State story broke, says Mai Fernandez, the organization’s executive director. And while some callers have acknowledged that the statute of limitations in their states will probably prevent them from suing, she says men are adamant that they must do something.

They’ll say things like, "If I can’t sue the guy, I want to expose him in some way so he can’t hurt others," she says.

Kelly Clark, a Portland, Oregon, attorney specializing in child sex abuse cases, says he’s seen several significant developments specifically triggered by the news.

He says he’s gotten about 40 calls from people who want to explore their legal options. Of those, he says about a dozen live in states where they’re still within their statute of limitations. He’s also received a flood of calls from former and existing clients in need of emotional support. News reports showing people initially more concerned about the Penn State sports program and its legendary coaches than about the victims left them reeling, Clark says. And then they saw Sandusky’s denials.

"When child abuse survivors see denials of credible allegations, it tends to send them into orbit because the thing they’ve fought their whole lives to overcome is the fear that people won’t believe them."

Looking ahead

The spotlight has, indeed, stirred a wider conversation. Male survivors may be looking inside themselves and reaching out, just as advocates look and plan ahead.

Like so many other organizations, Childhelp, which helps abused and neglected children, has felt the fallout. Calls to its hotline have gone up, but so has the group’s determination to do something in response to what’s in the news, says Daphne Young, the group’s public relations director.

While initial conversations had already started with the Foundation for Global Sports Development – a nonprofit previously known as Justice for Athletes — Childhelp has ramped up the partnership to launch a campaign called "Blow the Whistle on Child Abuse," a crisis intervention and prevention plan for young athletes, their parents, coaches and educators.

The goal is to roll out the campaign in April, Young says. She also says the organization is taking on legislative initiatives, including one that would make it against the law to witness child abuse in action and not intervene and report it.

Other groups are also putting forth proactive measures. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website now has on its homepage links specifically tied to the Penn State scandal, including a collection of resources and articles on child sex abuse, including literature about prevention and risk reduction, answers to common questions and a piece about bystander training.

That men are calling hotlines and visiting websites in greater numbers also signifies an increased need for services tailored to them, such as additional male support groups, says Karen Baker, the center’s director.

"They’re examining things that happened in their own lives. … There’s a lot of soul searching," she says. "Men are calling in. They’re reading about it in the news, and it’s triggering them."

She and others say the swift and serious response from authorities, and from those who’ve come out in support of survivors, is emboldening men and suggesting that times are changing.

"When this kind of story broke with the Catholic Church, it was perceived as still being swept under the rug. This time, there’s outrage and heads are rolling," she says. "In that regard, maybe this is going to be a blessing for some people. Maybe it’ll be the tipping point."

This is not unlike what we have seen before in different contexts: 

–in 2002, when the Boston Globe broke the story of widespread abuse and cover up in the Boston Archdiocese, very quickly after that we saw abuse survivors stepping forward around the country:  Chicago, Milwaukie, Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami, and other places.  Soon, so many victims—literally thousands of them—had come forward that, within two years, the bankruptcies started: Portland, Tucson, San Diego, and elsewhere, as Church officials struggled to comprehend and respond to the massive scope of the problem.  Representing survivors of abuse at the hands of Catholic priests all around the country, and then representing more than 40 claimants in the Archdiocese of Portland bankruptcy, I saw this first hand.

–last year, in Spring of 2010, when for nearly two months Paul Mones and I tried the Kerry Lewis case against the Boy Scouts of America in Portland—resulting in a nearly $20 million verdict against BSA for its decades-long practice of ignoring child abuse in its programs—my office received over 650 phone calls—yes, that’s right, 650 phone calls in about 10 weeks—from men abused as boys in Scouting, all over the country, from the 1960’s to the 2000’s.  And now, as we are handling cases against the Scouts in over a dozen states, I see the same thing happening elsewhere.

–any child abuse lawyer who does very much of this work will attest that as the scandal at Penn State broke over the last three weeks, more victims have come forward to tell their stories: abuse in the Mormon Church, the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, schools, athletic leagues and elsewhere. Indeed, so prominent has been this dynamic that Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR’s fine religion reporter, did a story on it (in which I, along with Mitch Garabedian, a fine Boston lawyer, was interviewed), pointing out that the Penn State story was prompting abuse survivors in other contexts to come forward.

All of this is what I call “the Avalanche Dynamic,” and it is something I have thought a lot about.  I’m sure the mental health professionals in the child abuse field can explain the psychological dynamic, but what I have seen is that, for most child abuse survivors to come forward and break their silence, to tell someone—their spouses or parents, their counselors, a lawyer—what happened to them as children, there has to be some sort of a triggering event.  It can be, and often is, a news story about abuse, it can be an unexpected (and often unwelcome) confrontation with some reminder of the abuse, it can be watching a child, often their own, at the same age as was the victim at the time of the abuse.  But most child abuse survivors need some trigger, some precipitating event, to embolden them to come forward.

Now, cynics, of course, often assume something else is going on: that the survivors are “jumping on the bandwagon” or “reaching for the money” or other ignorant ideas.  To see these in action, just scroll down to the “comments” section anytime you read a new story about “more victims” coming forward to name their abuser, or anytime a new civil lawsuit is filed for monetary restitution and justice.

But what is actually happening is that survivors are realizing, in a flash, in an explosive moment, several things at once, things they might have vaguely known but never allowed themselves to consider:  “maybe I wasn’t the only one”; “I guess it wasn’t really my fault”; “maybe they’ll believe me now”—and similar sentiments.  Remember that when a child is abused, there is a kind of “splitting” that goes on in his or her mind, and the trauma and shame of the abuse often gets “parked” or “shoved away” into the recesses of the conscious mind, and some part of the child “decides” that the safest way to handle the fear, trauma, guilt and shame, is simply not to think about it.  And they don’t.  For decades, often.  And then, some triggering event happens, like the child abuse scandals in the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, or, now, Penn State.

Which brings me to the other fascinating thing I have noticed in “the Avalanche Dynamic: the closer to home is the triggering event, the more likely it is that the victim will break silence.  So I have had survivors come see me when their own abuser was publicly named, but not before, even if there has been much publicity about abuse in general. The Kerry Lewis case was one of those, where eight men eventually came forward to name their Mormon Church ward and the Boy Scouts for their abuse, after the first two brothers broke the silence of how they were abused by a Boy Scout leader in their Mormon Church troop.  One man came to see me in the midst of the Catholic scandals, when he took a job in a building across the street from the parish where he had been abused, and every day he had to listen to the churchbells ringing. He had been reading about priests abusing kids in Boston, and Chicago, and elsewhere, and he was not triggered.  But setting up professional shop across the street from the scene of his abuse, and he was jolted into breaking out of his silence. I have had Mormons come see me only when a story broke about abuse in the Mormon Church—despite any amount of publicity about abuse in the Catholic Church, or in the Boy Scouts.  I have had Boy Scouts call me, not when some event about abuse in Boy Scouts broke open, but when they read a story about their own abuser.  For whatever psychological reason, the fact is, that the closer is the trigger to their own story, the more likely survivors are to come forward and break their silence.  And so the Penn State story brought forward first, other Sandusky victims, then the victims at the Citadel, Syracuse, and the gymnastics context: all either related to sports, to academia, or both.  The trigger was close to home.

So, next time you read about an “avalanche” of survivors coming forward in response to a breaking new story of abuse in some new context—for instance, a major American University’s football program—don’t be surprised.  That’s how it happens.

Then, it hires a credible outside source to do an investigation and make recommendations.  And so now that Penn State has hired former FBI director Louis Freeh to investigate how Jerry Sandusky was apparently able to abuse kids right under Penn State’s nose for a decade, we have one more thing in common between  Penn State and the American Catholic Church.  Many will remember at the height of the Catholic scandals the Church hired the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to do studies on the extent of the problem within the Church, and the extent to which the various diocese and Archdiocese around the country were in compliance with the new “protocols” for child abuse cases created in Dallas amidst the media frenzy of the exploding scandals in 2002.  Fewer will remember that that project has foundered over and over again either because the Catholic hierarchy has not fully cooperated with John Jay—many dioceses failing to provide data—and because the questions that John Jay was asked were artificially narrow, something I have written about before.

So now Penn State has hired a certified tough guy with impressive law enforcement credentials—FBI Agent, Federal Judge, FBI Director—to come in and do an investigation.  But the devil will be in the details, again.  Buried deep in the stories about Freeh’s selection has been comments to the effect that “the scope and budget for the investigation has not yet been determined.”  Aha, I see.  We don’t know what Freeh will be allowed to investigate, or whether PSU will give him enough of a budget to do a credible job.  Well, until we know those things, no one should assume that Penn State is really serious about getting to the bottom of all this. 

After all, we’ve seen half-hearted measures like this before.  Just ask the folks at John Jay.

Some readers will recall that, last year, I, along with lawyers from my firm, as well as my co-counsel attorney Paul Mones, won a jury verdict in Portland against the Boy Scouts on a sex abuse case, the total award being nearly $20 million– $1.4 million in general damages and $18.5 million in punitive damages—the largest single child abuse verdict in American history.  In that trial, Paul and I were able—for the first time ever in any courtroom—to get introduced into evidence the entire BSA Perversion Files system, some 20,000 pages of records, reflecting over 1000 instances of child abuse within Scouting from 1965-85.  For articles on this trial and on the Perversion Files, click here.  For previous posts of mine about the trial and the files, click here. 

What the IV/Perversion Files showed was a remarkable similarity to what we have seen in other contexts. As a child sex abuse attorney who has represented over 300 victims now, of abuse in the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, the Boy Scouts, and other youth organizations, I can see the way that the abuse dynamic has played out in all of these contexts.   Here, then, are some of the similarities in abuse cases in those three settings:

1.    The abuse was shrouded in secrecy.  Child abuse thrives in secret, and abusers know this.  So they almost always threaten or coerce their victims into silence and secrecy.  This is one of the most damaging aspects of abuse for children, that they feel trapped and unable to do anything or say anything.  At the same time, the institutions involved, whether the Catholics, the Mormons or the Boy Scouts, also shrouded their abuse problem in secrecy: the Catholics with their “secret archives” in which reports of abuse were hidden (for stories about the Catholic problem of secrecy, click here); the Boy Scouts and their Perversion Files, and even the Mormon Church’s still-secret internal system for tracking abuse and keeping it hidden from members (for stories about Mormon abuse, click here)

2.    The abuse arose out of relationships of trust.  Almost always in these three contexts, children were abused because they trusted their priests, Scout leaders or LDS leaders implicitly.  And always, the organizations had taught these children and their families that they should trust such men: the Catholic Church with its emphasis on the power of the Church and the supposed holiness of priests, the Mormon Church and its theology that every person assigned to a specific calling was placed there by God, and the Boy Scouts, with their oaths, emphasis on duty and honor, and the high esteem with which Scouting was held by society.  And so, for a victim of abuse, up until the time the abuse began, the trusted adult was doing the exact kinds of things that a child would expect a trusted adult to do: building a relationship with the child, spending time with him or her, teaching, mentoring, playing the role model.  The fact is, most molesters are nothing less than geniuses when it comes to understanding children and winning their trust.  And so, naturally, when these relationships progressed to the point of absolute trust, abuse was possible.   The fact is, that the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts all received tremendous benefit from these trust relationships—families were loyal members and supported the organization generation after generation.  And so their protest these days that they should not be liable for abuse arising out of these relationships of trust rings hollow.

3.    When abuse became public, the organizations opted to protect themselves and not the children.  One of the main lessons that came out of the Portland trial last year was that  juries are outraged when they believe that a child-trust organization responds to an abuse problem with cover-up, denial, minimization and blaming the victim.  All of these responses are ones that the Portland jury saw from the Boy Scouts in child abuse cases, and are consistent as well with what we know about the response to child abuse from the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church, the only difference between these latter two organizations being that the Catholic Church child abuse problem has been in the process of being cracked open now for almost ten years, while the LDS/Mormon Church has managed to escape the kind of public scrutiny brought to bear on the Catholics.  But all three organizations—Boy Scouts, Catholic Church, and Mormon Church—have responded to child sexual abuse problems in their midst by keeping secrets, tolerating abusers in their organization, and avoiding reporting allegations of abuse to law enforcement, almost always in an effort to avoid bad publicity for the organizations. 

The public, parents and law enforcement are rightly indignant when they learn the extent to which these three organizations, which still enjoy great social prestige and status, to this day do not require mandatory reporting of child abuse allegations to law enforcement without exception.   Likewise, when stories like the Richard Turley story, mentioned above, break, the public is stunned to see the way an organization like the Boy Scouts of American operates in the face of a clear danger to children. 

As a child sex abuse attorney who has been representing victims of abuse for well over a decade, against dozens of institutions of trust in dozens of states all over the US, I would like to believe that the work that has been done by child abuse survivors over the last decade has made these organizations safer for children than they were twenty or thirty years ago.  And while I still think this is true, I also know how far we have to go.  But I am not yet an old man, and while it is true that I am sometimes tired, sometimes discouraged, and sometimes angry, yet it is also true that I am not going away anytime soon.  Nor are the hundreds of other fine attorneys around the country who do this work going away, nor the thousands of prosecutors working to put pedophiles away. Nor, finally, are the adult survivors of childhood abuse—some of the most courageous and resilient people I have ever met—going away.

Since my work for children who were sexually abused involves frequent cases against the Boy Scouts of America, recently, I was interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as the Victoria Times-Colonist newspaper regarding the highly charged story of Richard Turley, the pedophile Boy Scout leader who sexually abused boys for decades in both the US and in Canada.  The crux of the story is that Turley was able to go from the US to Canada, and to have a second career of sexual abuse of Scouts there, despite that the American Scouts had repeated warnings of his sexual dangerousness to boys.  The CBC story and related news articles rightfully expressed outrage at these circumstances, and openly wondered how these things could happen.  In this blog, I will draw parallels between the Canadian and American experience with the sexual abuse of Boy Scouts.  In a follow up to this blog, I will note the similarities between Boy Scout sexual abuse and abuse in other “institutions of trust” such as the Catholic Church and Mormon Church sexual abuse cases.

First, about the Canadian story.  That a Scout leader would be able, after he was caught abusing boys, to go from troop to troop, whether in the US or in Canada, may be stunning, but, given what we know about sexual abuse in Scouting, should really not be surprising. (For a comprehensive look at the problem, albeit from 20 years ago, see Patrick Boyle’s Scouts Honor, click here.)  Last year, I was lead trial counsel in a major Boy Scout abuse trial in Portland—which resulted in a $20 million verdict against BSA—in which the perpetrator had admitted to abusing 17 boys within one Scout troop, and yet was not permanently removed as a Scout leader, such that he had access to and abused more boys, including the one we represented at trial. (For my past blogs on the general topic of abuse in Scouting, including the Portland trial, click here.)  Likewise, in other cases, we have seen similar warnings about Scout leaders go unheeded. So, really, the Canadian experience with Turley, while stunning, is not unique in Scouting.  How can this be?  Well, to answer that question, it is necessary to talk about the Scouts so-called “Perversion Files.”

For decades, up until around 1990, the Scouts main “system” for protecting boys against the risk of sexual abuse was these “Perversion Files” or “Confidential Files,” also sometimes called the “IV (ineligible volunteer) Files.”  The purpose of this system, according to the Boy Scouts, was to prevent a leader accused of misconduct from re-registering as a leader anywhere in Scouting.  The problem, as we proved in Portland,  is that the system didn’t work.  In Portland, for the first time ever in any courtroom, a jury saw in evidence an entire block of the Perversion Files—all files from 1965-1985—some  20,000 pages of records, representing over 1,200 documented instances of sexual abuse of Scouts. What those documents showed were thousands of stories of abuse in Scouting, by trusted leaders against trusting boys and their families. The Portland jury heard stories of Cub Scouts being forced to view pornography with their nude Cubmaster, of Scoutmasters who befriended, groomed, seduced, and then molested, sodomized or raped boys of all ages, from Cub Scouts, aged 7-10, to Boy Scouts aged 11-17. The files showed stories of devastated boys and outraged families and parents.  Too often, incredibly, some of these abusers were on “probation”—meaning there had been some complaint previously about their conduct, but BSA executives decided to leave the leader in positions of trust.  The Cubmaster who showed pornography to Cub Scouts was such an example.  As I said, the system often simply failed to keep out dangerous Scout leaders or to prevent the sexual abuse of Scouts.

The Portland trial also showed that the numbers are nearly beyond comprehension. Given that the average pedophile has somewhere between 5-25 victims, one could reasonably conclude from the 1200 files from 1965-85 that at least 6,000-30,000 boys were abused in Scouting during those two decades.  If you then consider that only a fraction of all abuse is ever reported—perhaps 5-10%, according to experts—the likely numbers of boys abused in Scouting becomes staggering.  Add to that the fact that BSA admitted that these files had been kept for decades before the 1965-85 timeframe, and we can begin to see the outlines of the tragedy that played out under the auspices of the Boy Scouts.  (For more stories and articles about these Perversion Files, click here). 

Now, in the Canadian story of Richard Turley, the question the reporters wanted to know was whether the Canadian Boy Scouts had a similar system as did the US Scouts.  I do not know the answer to that question: but I did have for the reporters two questions in reply: If they did not have such a system, then what system did they have for screening potential leaders?  And, second, if they did have a system of IV/Perversion Files, how do the Scouts explain the ease with which Turley was able to go from troop to troop, region to region, nation to nation, abusing boys, despite the knowledge within the Scouting hierarchy that he had abused boys?

These questions about the Canadian experience also highlight what I believe to be the main lesson from the Portland trial about the sexual abuse of boys in Scouting: that for decades, despite knowledge of the rate at which Scoutmasters and other Scout leaders were abusing boys, despite knowing how it was happening—for example, lots of one on one time, time spent with the Scoutmaster outside of official Scout activities, sleepovers at a Scout leader’s home, etc—the BSA did not fundamentally alter their program to put more effective safeguards in place, they did not train leaders and parents in child abuse prevention, and they did not warn Scouts, parents or local Scout leaders about the documented and clear danger of sexual abuse by Scout leaders of Scouts.  That failure to act was, we argued to the Portland jury, the reason that so many boys were sexually abused in Scouting.  And that failure, as the CBC story showed, was one of international proportions.

According to archdiocesan officials, the sex abuse allegation against Fr. Altstock is the first one lodged against him.  He retired from active ministry in 2001.  The abuse in this case began during the last year Archbishop Cornelius Power led the Archdiocese of Portland and continued during the leadership of Archbishop William Levada, presently Cardinal and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. 

This week’s filing continues the now over 15 year history of Kelly Clark and O’Donnell, Clark and Crew of representing victims of priest abuse against the Archdiocese of Portland.  Links to past articles and presentations we have done on this topic can be found here.

POSTED: 1:42 pm PDT July 6, 2011

PORTLAND, Ore. — Nine former students of one of Oregon’s best known “tough love” boarding schools, a facility east of Prineville that was shut by the state two years ago, filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging emotional, physical and sexual abuse.The suit is being brought by attorneys Kelly Clark, Steve Crew, Gilion Dumas, Kristian Roggendorf, Peter Janci and the Portland law firm O’Donnell Clark and Crew, who often bring child abuse cases in Oregon and around the nation.The suit alleges claims of battery, negligence, and infliction of emotional distress against Mount Bachelor Academy and its parent companies, Aspen Education Group and CRC Health. The suit seeks more than $14 million in compensatory damages, and punitive damages will be sought as well.An attorney for the school’s operator later issued a statement denying the charges. That statement is in full below, after the rest of the release about the lawsuit’s allegations:Located 26 miles east of Prineville, the controversial “therapeutic boarding school” known as Mount Bachelor Academy was closed by the state of Oregon in November of 2009 based on the findings of an investigation related to charges of systemic abuse and neglect.According to a report by the Oregon Department of Human Services, Mount Bachelor Academy reportedly used “punitive, humiliating, degrading and traumatizing” tactics as “treatment” 00– an approach some say stems from the Synanon self-help group of the 1960′s, which was rejected as a cult by mainstream mental health community by the late 1970s. At the time of its closure in 2009, Mt. Bachelor Academy reportedly had more than 75 staff supervising approximately 90 students who were being charged a tuition of $6,400 per month.“The so-called ‘treatment’ that these children were forced to endure on a daily basis at Mt. Bachelor Academy is obscene. Not only did the program ‘break kids down’, it did nothing to build them back up,” said Kelly Clark, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “We intend to prove that this wasn’t education, it wasn’t treatment and it wasn’t ‘tough love’ – this was abuse.”The plaintiffs in Wednesday’s suit, who all attended Mount Bachelor Academy in the late 1990s, allege: that they were subjected to regular psychological abuse and shaming, including being required to reenact traumatic experiences (such as prior instances of child sexual abuse) in front of their peers; that they were subjected to extreme isolation and prolonged deprivations of food, water, shelter, and basic medical care; that students were required to go days with little or no sleep and were also regularly forced into “chain gang” style labor; that phone calls to their families were limited and were monitored by Mt. Bachelor Academy staff; and that parents were instructed by staff not to believe their children if they claimed malfeasance or abuse – i.e., the children will lie, it is all part of the treatment process, parents were told.The allegations in the lawsuit are consistent with the findings by the Oregon Department of Human Services. In late 2009, following a seven month investigation, DHS found multiple incidences of “abuse and neglect” and “serious violations of Oregon’s licensing standards.”The DHS report cited nine substantiated claims of abusive practices, including “punitive, humiliating, degrading and traumatizing” activities such as “sexualized role pay and reenactment of traumatic events, such as prior physical or sexual abuse.” The state also found that these were not isolated incidents; instead, “many of [the abusive] behaviors fell within the range of behavior expected, encouraged or condoned by the Mount Bachelor Academy program itself . . . .”DHS determined that “MBA poses a serious danger to public health or safety of children . . . [and] should not be permitted to continue operating as a therapeutic boarding school for children.” Thereafter, in November of 2009, the state gave Mt. Bachelor Academy 72 hours to shut down its program and remove students from its facility. The facility closed on November 3, 2009. Later, in October 2010, as part of a settlement of a suit by Mt. Bachelor against the state contesting the DHS findings of abuse, Aspen Education Group and CRC Health Group (the parent company’s of Mount Bachelor Academy) agreed that DHS had reasonable cause to believe that abuse or neglect had occurred at the school, and that DHS had a reasonable basis to investigate and to seek corrective actions.The lawsuit names Mount Bachelor Academy and its parent companies as defendants. Those include Aspen Education Group – a national conglomerate of therapeutic boarding schools which, at its peak had nearly 40 youth programs throughout the United States – as well as Aspen’s parent company, CRC Health Group. CRC Health Group is a large national healthcare corporation owned by Bain Capital, a private equity firm with $65 billion in assets.4Wednesday’s lawsuit is part of a larger response to decades of abuse and mistreatment in so-called “tough love” facilities – both inside and outside of the Aspen Education Group.According to previous news reports, at least four children have died in Aspen-owned facilities since 2004. One of those incidences occurred in Oregon in 2009 – the death of student Sergey Blashchishen during a wilderness hike in the Redmond-based Sagewalk Wilderness School.Blashchishen, a minor at the Sagewalk facility, collapsed in August of 2009 while hiking on his second day Aspen’s Sagewalk program. Staff had reportedly ignored repeated signs of a serious medical problem, and the boy died at the scene. The lead sherif’s investigator on the Sagewalk case recommended that the Lake County district attorney file homicide charges. Sagewalk had previously been the subject of the nationally broadcast ABC television series “Brat Camp” in 2005.As Peter Janci, one of the Plaintiffs’ attorneys explained,“Many ‘tough love’ schools have been a breeding ground for abuse – isolating vulnerable kids and subjecting them to debunked so-called ‘treatments’ by unqualified staff, while their parents are kept in the dark and bilked out of tens of thousands of dollars.”Problems of abuse, injury and even death are present throughout the “tough love” industry. Some reports indicate that more than two dozen teenagers died in such facilities between 1990 and 2001.The lawsuit is one in a growing number of actions by individuals who survived these facilities, only to be left with serious, long-term psychological injuries. Several weeks ago, a civil suit was filed against Silverado Academy in Utah for claims related to a staff member’s sexual abuse of at least 10 boys.Previously, in 2006, attorneys for another group of individuals filed a major lawsuit alleging neglect, fraud and abuse against the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools and related entities. That suit is still pending in federal court in Utah, and now includes 353 plaintiffs who allege they were wronged by therapeutic boarding schools and their related entities.“This is a watershed moment in exposing organizations that have profited from broken promises to desperate families,” said Clark. “We believe that institutions like Mount Bachelor Academy need to be exposed for what they are and held accountable for the permanent damage they have done to the lives of vulnerable teenagers entrusted to their care.”Clark and his firm are among the most prominent child sexual abuse attorneys in the nation, having brought over 300 claims against such organizations as the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, the Boy Scouts of America and dozens of other youth-serving organizations.Clark has twice won landmark child abuse cases at the Oregon Supreme Court, and last year was lead counsel in a six week sex abuse trial against the Boy Scouts of America resulting in a jury verdict of nearly $20 million.—A response from Greg Chaimov, a lawyer with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, on behalf of client Mount Bachelor AcademyWhile we have not yet had the opportunity to evaluate the allegations in the complaint filed today, we would like to go on record that Mount Bachelor Academy was successful in resolving the dispute with the Oregon Department of Human Services last fall after abundant evidence was collected that showed the allegations of abuse made to the Department were unfounded.DHS initially took action based on students’ allegations, but withdrew its orders, including the suspension of Mount Bachelor Academy’s license, after further information became available. Given the favorable terms of the settlement agreement, we agreed to dismiss our various legal proceedings against the state. We also independently decided to leave Mount Bachelor Academy closed due to the fact that the sudden and erroneous closure of the campus effectively shut the program down the year prior.For over two decades, Mount Bachelor Academy (MBA) positively changed the lives of over 1,000 troubled young people. MBA was a program specifically designed for troubled students who had failed to progress in other settings. It was designed to help kids confront the worst of their behaviors and take ownership of them, whether that be substance abuse, sexual acting out or other issues. This approach proved successful at producing positive, life-changing – and, in some cases, life-saving – results. The numerous positive testimonials provided by families and students over the years further attest to the success of MBA.MBA and its parent companies never condoned or participated in the mistreatment or deprivation of any students. As we understand, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit attended MBA prior to its acquisition by a nationally recognized network of therapeutic schools and programs that espouse comprehensive best practices and safety protocols. While we cannot comment on specific allegations from individual students due to HIPAA privacy regulations, we vigorously deny any and all charges of mistreatment.

As a child sex abuse attorney who has represented many, many victims of priest sexual abuse, Boy Scout sexual abuse, Mormon sexual abuse, and child sexual abuse in a variety of other contexts, I have seen firsthand the deep need that survivors have for a genuine apology from those who harmed them—the perpetrators of the abuse and those in institutional positions of responsibility who failed to protect children from abuse. In my last blog, I posted on the nature of a true apology, and examined some pseudo-apologies, explaining why such half measures do not achieve any healing or forgiveness.  In this post, I want to tell a story of one of the very few true apologies I have ever seen in doing this work, and one of the most genuine apologies I have ever seen in any context.

A number of years ago, the parents of a four year-old little girl came to me deeply distraught at having learned that their daughter, along with several other children, had been repeatedly molested by an employee of a large athletic club, part of a national chain company. This 22 year-old man, who was soon after convicted of multiple counts of child sexual abuse, would often worm his way into the child care area of the club, and was allowed by unsuspecting childcare workers to play with the children.  During this play, he would frequently abuse these small children, as a hidden video camera later showed.  As the situation became clear during the criminal investigation, the parents became convinced that the club had been badly negligent, both in failing to do a full background check on this man, but also in failing to supervise the child care area, as the videos made plain.  The parents wanted accountability and they wanted change, so that this did not happen to anyone else, but they did not want to file a lawsuit if they could avoid it. So we made an out of court claim against the athletic club and they offered to mediate the claim. 

A few months later, after a day with a skillful mediator, we settled the claim—for a confidential amount of money for the future needs of the child. We also secured an agreement that the organization would do a comprehensive review of their child safety policies, bring in outside experts to assist with this project, and include my clients in the process every step of the way, allowing them to have input and to make suggestions.  And—most important of all to the parents—we negotiated that an executive of the company would come to Portland and meet with them face to face, to make a personal apology for the company’s mistakes. “An apology,” I said to the mediator, “not some meely-mouthed statement of regret.” I was thinking of all the half and pseudo apologies I had heard from so many people in positions of responsibility for the safety of children at the end of cases, so many bishops and bureaucrats and insurance executives.

So it was that a few weeks later we had a meeting in my office—the parents, me, two lawyers for the company and the executive.  I must admit, when I was first introduced to the executive, I was disappointed.  I guess I had expected some silver-haired CEO with an air of “top guy”—but instead here was a young woman, not much older than my clients, perhaps in her mid-thirties.  She introduced herself as the “Vice President for Human Resources”—meaning she was in charge of writing policies regarding the supervision of employees.  So, clearly she was the one who would head up the “policy review” process outlined in our settlement.  But who was going to make the apology? I wondered.  It didn’t take long to find out.

(Now, I should say at this point that I recreate this conversation from memory, not notes, which I did not keep, and so I might not have all the dialogue just right. But I remember it like it was yesterday, such an impact it had on me.)

”I’m so glad you agreed to meet with me,” started the young woman, clearly nervous and unsure of herself, “for I am absolutely committed to changing our policies so that nothing like this ever happens again, and we will do whatever it takes to make sure of that.”  Hmmm.  A little blunt, I thought, but so far, so good. 

She was then silent for a long time and looked down.  Her voice changed, she shook her head and looked directly at the parents.  “No, wait…Before we start that process,” said she, “I want to say something first.  I want you to know that I’m a parent, too. I have a five year old, a beautiful five year- old little boy”—at this her eyes started to well with tears– “and I just want you to know that, if this ever happened to my child, I would be so upset, so angry, so enraged, I don’t know what I would do.  I cannot even imagine what your life has been like for the last several months.  So I am here to say how very sorry I am at what happened to your daughter.  I just cannot imagine your pain and anger….”  Now, at this point I expected her to stop, as I had seen happen with so many other organizations, after a representative had given some version of “I’m sorry this happened to you.”   After all, though this young woman was obviously sincere, so far all she had really done was to show deep empathy for what had happened to this family. Now, don’t get me wrong– deep empathy is great, and I wish more organizations would practice it as genuinely as did this executive.  But so far, it wasn’t an apology. It was just an expression of empathy. 

But not for long.

“And I want you to know that I know, and my company knows, that we completely failed you here,  and we failed your daughter”— by now, real tears flowing down her face and her voice breaking—“ and I am so, so sorry. I would give anything if we could go back and prevent what happened to your little girl.  I know that we can’t do that, and so all I can offer you, on my own behalf and on behalf of my company, is a genuine, deep, unconditional apology.  I am and we are very sorry and apologize to you and your daughter.”

You could hear a pin drop. The parents were still. The mother slowly started to speak.  “You know,” she said, “that is all I really wanted to hear.  What you said really matters to me, and I believe you that you and your company are sorry….Thank you.”  “Yeah,” echoed the father softly, “I appreciate your kind words, and I accept your apology.  Now we can all go to work to change things so that this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”   And so we did, and the organization is now significantly safer for children than it was before.

The power of an apology is an amazing thing, if it is given sincerely and without equivocation, as this story shows.

For More Information:
Michael Beaty (360) 695-7909
Kelly Clark (503) 306-0224

Vancouver, Wash—Two adults today filed suit in Clark County Superior Court against the La Center School District for childhood sexual abuse they suffered as second-graders at the hands of their teacher, Robert David Ryan, in the early 1980’s.  The suit contends that the District was negligent in its supervision of Ryan at Mary Gabrielson Elementary School and because of the school district’s negligence, the plaintiffs suffered severe and permanent mental, emotional and psychological damage. The teacher would routinely fondle students under the pretext of having them sit on his lap, or sit next to him, while he ostensibly gave instruction, according to the lawyers for the victims, Vancouver attorney Michael Beaty and Portland attorney Kelly Clark. 

The second grade teacher had worked for the school district for about 10 years prior to his arrest. He was charged with the sexual abuse of 14 of his students between the ages of seven and nine years old. The teacher plead guilty to two counts of “Indecent Liberties” on June 2, 1983 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison and an additional 10 years of probation. According to court records, the teacher later admitted to abusing about 25 students and that he had not “expressed in any guilt or remorse for his actions.” The teacher’s last known address was in Missouri.

The plaintiffs, now in their 30’s, are both Washington residents, though one is currently working out of state. “We see the way in which a child abuser can use his authority and position to manipulate and abuse children, especially when those who are supposed to be supervising him are not doing their job,” said Beaty, a Vancouver trial attorney who has previously represented hundreds of personal injury victims.

“This teacher was audacious—covertly abusing kids in the presence of other kids, and in plain view of other teachers and staff,” said Clark, who frequently represents victims of child sexual abuse.  “This administration clearly was not paying attention to the rumors and warning signs.”

According to the attorneys, both adults have had significant consequences from their childhood abuse:  trauma, early onset alcohol and drug abuse, chronic anxiety, long-term depression and repeated failures in relationships.  “They are just starting to deal with the impact that the abuse is having on their lives,” said Beaty.  “They know they are in for a long road.”

 “What these two have suffered are the signature symptoms of the crime of abuse,” said Clark, who regularly represents child abuse victims in cases against churches, schools, and other youth organizations, including the Boy Scouts—against whom he won a $20M verdict in May of this year in a Portland trial.  “When this kind of thing happens to a 7 year- old, it is like vandalism to the soul, and it takes decades to recognize and repair the wreckage.

Under Washington law, a lawsuit does not state the amount of money sought, and the suit says only that the plaintiffs “seek damages in an amount to be proven at trial.”  According to Beaty, the case should come to trial in about a year.

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Read the Official Complaint Here.