RESPONSIBILITY EXERCISE

Published April 25, 2022 by Nan Mykel

THE SITUATION: Mary and her husband live on the south bank of a river. Her husband wants her to stay at home and not cross the river to the town. She wants to go to town.

There is a bridge across the river, but men have been robbing and killing people who cross the bridge, and Mary’s husband won’t give her money for the ferry.

Mary begins saving money out of the grocery money and begins crossing the river to town on the ferry while her husband is away. Finally, she meets a man in town and takes him as a lover. She crossses the river more frequently and he gives her money to get back home.

He gets mad at her one day and refuses to give her the return fare home. She asks the ferryman to let her charge the return trip but he refuses, saying it is against company policy. Finally, she crosses the bridge and is killed. The discussion question is, Whose fault is it that Mary was killed?

The scenario was presented to 25 men in a prison Level I sex offender education class. Read the scenario’s description and reach your own conclusion before reading below:

Results are as follows: Fifteen men felt it was Mary’s own fault. One man added that “she should have stayed home.” Nine men felt it was the husband’s fault. One thought it was the lover’s fault, and ONE decided the fault was with the man who killed her–in other words, the person responsible for the killing was the killer.

I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN…

Published August 30, 2018 by Nan Mykel

In order to respond to a recent blog posting by a survivor, I got out a book I wrote and published in 2014, and re-read it. Because the world is so threatened by anything that smacks of sex offending or incest, it’s basically never been read. I published it through Create Space and did nothing to publicize it. Oh, I sent a note to the local paper which was discarded, but I write, I don’t push. After 4 years I have only 282 blog followers, but I love them all. My county library was disinterested in helping to sponsor a presentation on the book, and I didn’t push. A follower wrote something positive about the book but I didn’t know enough to pick up her review and run with it (thank you).

But the thing is, it’s good and valuable and I’ll soon be 83 and no one will have profited from it. Sooo–I’m going to try and schedule a discussion of it at the county library, knowing that the incest offenders, for whom it was primarily written as well as survivors who I also believe can profit from it but are ashamed, will probably not show up. I have one friend who I believe will attend–won’t you, Alexa?

The discussion will be based on the book Fallout: A Survivor Talks to Incest Offenders plus her journal including dreams, drawings, and reflections. I treated sex offenders at Hocking Correctional Facility for 12 years, and spent two or three years researching the literature. At first I began to write on just my experience as a survivor, and the damage incest causes, but then I realized that would be too easy to discount, so I began the research.

Since I used to be a clinical psychologist before I got too old, the session will hopefully involve give and take more than preaching.

I’m kinda scared to do it, but I figure if I announce I’m going to do it I’ll follow through.

(I think I can.)

SCHEDULED THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1 st, 6:30p.m. Big Meeting Room, Library,

Athens, Ohio, but they want a sponsoring organization so I’ll push through that situation.

ONE PARAGRAPH PER CHAPTER – Chapter 12: After He Returns [from prison] Then What?

Published February 2, 2017 by Nan Mykel

From FALLOUT: A Survivor Talks to Incest Offenders (and Others) by moi:

Family of origin members do not want to believe the perpetrator is really a “sexual pervert,” They want to believe that it was a fleeting anomaly and and that after treatment and/or incarceration he is his “old self” gain. They will often send their own child off for a walk in the park with the perpetrator in order to reassure themselves that their family member is trustworthy once again. Red alert! Red alert! This is an extremely dangerous tendency. Do not put any child in harm’s way as a test! In their deterination to reassure themselves that their beloved transgressor is really a regular guy, family members may cooperate with relapse prevention plans on a a temporary basis only, not a life-long basis, as is required if re-offending is not to occur. One offender who had been in treatment lived acrss the street from a playground. After his release his wife confided that she was not letting him go over to the playground “yet.”….[Unfortunately, there is always the risk of re-offending]. (p. 118)

ONE PARAGRAPH PER CHAPTER – Chapter 5: Hurdles in Treatment

Published January 27, 2017 by Nan Mykel

From FALLOUT: A Survivor Talks to Incest Offenders (and Others) by moi:

I observed that it is not at all unusual for men with both sons and daughters to be convicted of molesting a daughter, while denying any molestation of a son. I suppose sons are more reluctant to report than daughters, feeling that it casts aspersions on their masculinity. When one man’s family (excepting the admitted victim) visited him in prison, the father made fun of the length of his son’s hair, and asked him if he wanted a bobby pin. The young man in question had been reported to be depressed and self-mutilating. Later, after I had queried the father, the son wrote a letter assuring me that his father had never molested him. (p. 68)

ONE PARAGRAPH PER CHAPTER – Chapter 4: Treatment

Published January 25, 2017 by Nan Mykel

The field of sex offender treatment is still young and was in its infancy in 1986, when our program began. As staff we diligently read master pockets and took lengthy histories, searching for etiological clues that might suggest the best treatment approaches. We turned to the research, the professional literature and professional organizations, even became clinical members of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. We attended annual conferences. We ordered books, had a victims’ group visit the program, attended training workshops, watched Oprah and Geraldo, and developed a mneumonic device to aid the overlearning of child sexual abuse. We came to realize that we could not think in terms of a cure for sex offending, only of decreasing the likelihood that the men would reoffend.