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Going “all in” against your flashbacks is a winning hand

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One of my favorite pastimes is playing poker — and I had to put my best poker face on the other night when an unexpected flashback snuck up on me.

As survivors of sexual assault, we try very hard to forget about some of the particularly dark experiences we have gone through in our lives. And try as we might, those experiences are always with us and are ready to sneak up on us and offer a reminder of what happened and how it affected us.

The Rape Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) defines a flashback this way:

“A flashback is when memories of a past trauma feel as if they are taking place in the current moment. That means it’s possible to feel like the experience of sexual violence is happening all over again. During a flashback it can be difficult to connect with reality. It may even feel like the perpetrator is physically present.
Flashbacks may seem random at first. They can be triggered by fairly ordinary experiences connected with the senses, like the smell of someone’s odor or a particular tone of voice. It’s a normal response to this kind of trauma, and there are steps you can take to help manage the stress of a flashback.”

In my home town of Wayne, Nebraska, the local Eagles Club hosts a poker league run through a national organization. It’s free to play and there is a core group of about 12-16 people who show up every Wednesday night to play poker, talk about local events and catch up on each other’s lives and families.

I had been sexually assaulted in Newman Grove, Neb., a small town of about 800 people located a little more than an hour southwest of Wayne. The experience took place just a few weeks short of my 10th birthday, an event that, even 42 years later, still pops up now and again — like last week.

I had mentioned that I lived in Newman Grove at one time as we were talking about towns in the area, and a lady at the table said SHE had lived there as well. She graduated from high school around the time our family had lived there and asked me if I remembered any names from when we had lived in the community.

The first one that popped up was the name of my attacker — then a troubled teenage loser, today a convicted sex offender who is on the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry for the rest of his life, thanks to an event that, unexpectedly, came up in conversation with my poker friend.

She had graduated from the local high school a year after my parents moved us out of town to another community. As we were talking about some of the places in the community like the golf course, the local nursing home and the school, she had mentioned that a friend of hers — who was not mentally sound — had been sexually assaulted by my attacker.

As we talked, it became apparent that there was a connection between myself and her friend — one that sent me into flashback that required my best poker face to keep from coming unglued over my chip stack.

Twenty years ago, I had been working as a sports writer at the Norfolk Daily News. This was during a time when the move from traditional cut-and-paste page design to digital page layout with software like Quark Express or Adobe Pagemaker (later Adobe Indesign) was how we put the newspaper together.

Some of our pages were digital, while others were still laid out the “old fashioned” way, so one afternoon as I was waiting for the image processor to spit out the negative of my page, I happened to glance at a paste-up page that contained the “public record” section of the newspaper — court cases, divorces, marriage licenses, arraignments — and started scanning the names to see if there was anybody who I might know.

As it turns out — I did: my attacker had been arraigned on charges of sexual assault of a vulnerable adult.

Twenty years later, my poker friend mentioned this friend of hers and the connection, and it all came together . . . this friend of hers was attacked by my attacker some 20 years later, and could have faced a then-maximum sentence of five years.

After talking with the county attorney, it didn’t sound like he would face anywhere near that length of a stay in the state penitentiary. I asked if there was anything I could do to help him get the maximum penalty, and he had a suggestion — write the judge a letter, explain my connection to the case and tell my story.

In a three-page letter to the judge, I explained why I had an interest in this case and proceeded to tell him how the defendant had sexually assaulted me and threatened to kill me if I ever told anybody about it. The nightmares I had and the impact it had on my life was something I didn’t want somebody else to have to go through.

Amazingly, that letter helped our attacker get EXACTLY the maximum sentence allowed by law at the time, along with a lifetime membership on the state’s Sex Offender Registry (here is his entry, in case you’re wondering). It was justice delayed, in my case anyway, but the friend of my poker friend and I both got it and he wound up with a much longer stay at the Nebraska State Penitentiary than he no doubt was counting on.

I was able to reset myself as my friend and I talked about my experience, and thankfully my ability to put on a good poker face really minimized the potential chaos that might have happened had I not recognized what I was feeling right away.

You may not play poker, but you can minimize the impact of a flashback by doing these four things:
1. Tell yourself that you’re having a flashback — Remember that the actual event is in the past and you are a survivor of it. It’s over, you’re still here. Everything is OK.
2. Use your senses to return to the present — What do you see, smell, hear, taste or feel around you right now? I touched the felt of the poker table, shuffled my poker chips, talked to the other players at the table, took a sip of Mountain Dew and kept reminding myself where I was and what I was doing, using my five senses.
3. Breeeeeeeathe — take some slow, deep breaths to calm yourself down. A panic attack or a flashback can cause the body to act abnormally, so make sure you’re taking some good, deep breaths to get more oxygen in your body and help calm you and relieve the stress of the flashback.
4. Feel safe and BE safe — For me, staying in the room and trying to distract myself by talking with the other players helped me out. Maybe you just need to go home, sit quietly or meditate, read a book . . . find something to help you feel safe and take your mind off what caused the flashback to begin with. Remember — what happened has happened. It is over. You’re OK.

Flashbacks can be triggered by almost anything, so the sooner you figure out what your triggers are, the easier it will be to manage your emotions and ride through — or even around — those trigger moments and minimize the number and severity of flashbacks you have.

If you are seeing a mental health professional, talk with them about your experience and ask for their help. There are plenty of tools available to help you — to borrow a poker phrase — go “all in” and get through a flashback successfully. You can also call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) chat with RAINN online at online.rainn.org.

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Suicide really is NOT the solution

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When I was 40 years old, I felt as if I’d had enough.
A combination of situations had led me to stand at the edge of the Missouri River, not more than a quarter-mile away from the apartment I was renting in the city of South Sioux City, Neb. There were a number of factors that led me to the edge of that deep, murky water that was flowing quickly to the south, where all I kept telling myself was, “Take two steps, and all this pain will be gone.”
A lot of things were happening in my life at that time. Less than a year earlier, I had left a newspaper job to start up a business, but that business failed miserably, leaving me tens of thousands of dollars in debt. I had to take another newspaper job in a town two hours away from my teenage daughter – the same one I had promised, several years earlier, to stay in the area until she graduated from high school so I could be part of the events she would experience as she grew up.
On top of all of that — I was trying to run away from the pain and despair that I’d been carrying around for years as a survivor of sexual assault. The memories of that spring evening 30 years ago, in 1976, had lingered long into my adulthood. I still had nightmares about my attacker’s threat to “finish the job” if I’d ever told anybody (which I did). The negative self-esteem issues that came after this horrible event continued to tamper any positive experience I should have enjoyed in my life, and when you combine that with everything else going on in my life at the time, it seemed suicide was the only solution available to end all of these bad things I was experiencing in my life.
One thought, however, stopped me that summer evening from taking those final two steps. That thought was this — who will explain all of this to your children? They will never know WHY you committed suicide, and they will carry that with them for the rest of their lives.
Ultimately, I walked away and cried all the way home that evening. Even though I made the right decision, I still beat myself up about it — “You’re not even tough enough to kill yourself,” I thought. “You can’t do ANYTHING right.” — and wondered WHAT the solution might be.
This is National Suicide Prevention Week, and my hope is that if you are reading this AND are contemplating suicide, that if you take ONE THING from reading this post, that is be this – suicide is a PERMANENT solution to a VERY TEMPORARY problem. No matter WHAT you are dealing with as a survivor of sexual assault . . . suicide is NOT the solution.
Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, with more than 42,000 people taking their own lives ever year. Suicide is most prevalent in men, who commit the act 3.5 times more often than women. White males accounted for 7 of every 10 suicides, according to data from the year 2014, and middle aged white men have the highest rate of suicide. (The fact that I’m a 50-year-old while male makes ALL of those statistics all the more disturbing, on a personal level.)
That visit to the river 10 years ago wasn’t my first attempt at suicide. On two previous occasions, a breakup with a girl was the inspiration for my attempts. A bad breakup with an old girlfriend pushed me to the edge, pulled away by my best friend. The second time was in the aftermath of my divorce — I tried to drink myself to death, but forgot that my tolerance level for alcohol isn’t all that great, so I got sick and passed out, rescued that night by a family member.
This last effort, though, was all on how bad I felt about what kind of person I was, because of the fact that I had been sexually assaulted as a child. Even though it had been 30 years since my attack, I still carried that pain around and let it run my life. Even 10 years AFTER, I still catch myself thinking about all of that, and am thankful to have had the support and encouragement from a lot of wonderful, helpful friends, family members and professionals who have worked with me to help me deal with all of that crap that I’ve carried for so long.
Today, life is much better for me. Walking away from that last attempt has allowed me so many wonderful life moments. I’ve watched both my daughters graduate from high school. The oldest made me a father-in-law in the spring of 2014, and a year later, I became a grandpa to the most beautiful little girl in the history of mankind (OK — there MIGHT be some bias in that statement, but let’s not lie . . . I know I’m right, and that’s all that matters.). My youngest is an honors scholar at a major university and has grown into an amazing young woman who, I’m sure (and again, I MIGHT be biased), is going to do some amazing things to make her mark on this world. I’ve made so many new friends and acquaintances, started up a business with my best friend and look at life with a much different perspective than I did in the summer of 2006 as I stood two steps from taking my own life.
For those who are living with the aftermath of a sexual assault attack, there are two things I want to leave you with here.
First – you are not a VICTIM of sexual assault. You are a SURVIVOR. I want you to repeat that to yourself over and over again until the negative word (victim) is erased for your subconscious vocabulary. We use words to describe ourselves TO ourselves, and a lot of times, those words have a negative emotion or memory attached to them. That you are here today, alive and standing on the right side of the grass IN SPITE OF THE FACT that you have been through that experience – you SURVIVED it. You are ALIVE. You are MOVING FORWARD. Only SURVIVORS do that. It’s not easy to tell yourself that, and it’s even more of a challenge to actually BELIEVE it sometimes. Trust me — you ARE a SURVIVOR, and each day that passes is evidence that you are the ultimate winner. Once that becomes a part of your daily mindset (and, yes, I know it’s not easy, but don’t stop trying), you will find life to be a much better experience.
Second — If you are contemplating suicide, there is a wealth of information available at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention website. Click on the “Find Support” link and you will find some useful resources – whether you’re thinking about it, or are concerned or have lost a loved one to suicide. Seek the help of a good, qualified therapist – talk to your pastor or priest – seek the counsel of a close friend or someone who has gone through what you are experiencing. Do not allow yourself to continue on this thought pattern that suicide is the only solution . . . because it most certainly is not.

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Erin’s Law now getting support in Congress

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I wanted to pass along this information I received from Erin Merryn, the author of “Erin’s Law” who has worked so hard to try and get this legislation passed in every state in the United States. She has 26 states that have passed this law, and this will be a big boost to waking up feet-dragging states like New York and my home state, Nebraska, toward making this the law in EVERY state.
The following is a news release Merryn received regarding a bill that is being co-sponsored in Congress by three U.S. senators:
U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Dean Heller (R-NV), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) today introduced bipartisan legislation to help protect children from sexual abuse by funding school programs that provide age-appropriate lessons to primary and secondary school students on how to recognize and safely report sexual abuse. Twenty-six states have passed a version of “Erin’s Law,” legislation that requires public schools to provide child sexual abuse prevention education to students and professional development for school personnel. Gillibrand, Heller and Feinstein’s Child Sexual Abuse Awareness and Prevention Act provides federal funding for schools to develop and implement or expand these programs for students, parents and guardians. In 2013, there were a total of 60,956 instances of child sexual abuse reported to Child Protective Services agencies in the U.S. However, this estimate only represents cases of child sexual abuse reported to and confirmed by child protection authorities. Many such cases are never reported to welfare or legal systems.
“Our children need to have an age-appropriate understanding of sexual abuse and know how to safely report to an adult if they have been victimized,” said Senator Gillibrand. “Erin’s Law is helping to fill an important gap in our prevention and awareness work, and the Child Sexual Abuse Awareness and Prevention Act will make sure schools have the resources needed to develop or expand these programs and provide parents, guardians and school personnel with the tools to help prevent and respond to child sexual abuse.”
“As a father of four children, I know parents want to protect their children and provide the safest possible learning environment for them,” said Senator Heller. “This legislation equips local school districts with the resources they need to develop or enhance child sexual abuse awareness and prevention efforts. Providing parents and children with the information to recognize child sexual abuse is a key weapon in stopping these heinous crimes. I’m proud to introduce this bipartisan legislation with my colleague, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, to ensure states, like Nevada, have the tools to help stop child sexual abuse.”
“Sexual abuse can scar children for life and we must do everything we can to prevent it,” said Senator Feinstein. “Children are more likely to heal if abuse is detected early, which is why we must ensure they are taught what to do if they are being abused and school personnel are trained to spot the warning signs.”
“For five years I have been traveling from one state capital to another trying to pass Erin’s law in my mission of all fifty states requiring that personal body safety be taught,” said Erin Merryn, Erin’s Law Founder and President. “The biggest hurdle I face in each state is Erin’s law being an unfunded mandate. It is my biggest road block. With this bill passing it will play a significant role in Erin’s law getting passed in the next 24 states. This funding will be an answer to my prayers in my biggest battle for Erin’s law. Kids’ lives are waiting to be saved and we must educate them. I didn’t have a voice but I am going to ensure every child in America has theirs.”
“When it comes to stopping sexual violence and ensuring its victims get the help they need and deserve, knowledge is power,” Scott Berkowitz, RAINN Founder and President. “This legislation will help educators learn to spot abuse and will help kids recognize when it happens to them and empower them to reach out for help. We are grateful for the leadership of Sens. Gillibrand, Heller and Feinstein and for survivors like Erin Merryn, who bravely step forward and remind us all that while we’ve made tremendous strides, our work is far from done. We look forward to working with Congress to pass this law to address sexual violence and protect America’s children.”
Twenty-six states across the country have passed a version of Erin’s Law, named after childhood sexual assault survivor and advocate Erin Merryn. Erin’s Law emphasizes the importance of educational programs that help prevent sexual abuse by using age-appropriate techniques to instruct children on how to recognize and report sexual abuse. Research has consistently shown that educational programs designed to prevent child sexual abuse are effective at teaching children skills to identify dangerous situations and prevent abuse. Such programs have also shown to be effective at promoting disclosure and reducing self-blame by victims. Two other critical aspects of Erin’s Law include professional development for school personnel and information for parents and guardians in how to recognize signs of child sexual abuse, talk to children about child sexual abuse, and how to respond when a child discloses sexual abuse.
The Child Sexual Abuse Awareness and Prevention Act provides additional funding to advance Erin’s Law. Erin’s Law requires all public schools in states to implement prevention-oriented child sexual abuse programs. The programs established through the federal grants can be developed in partnership with community-based services and non-profit organizations with expertise in child sexual abuse prevention or response. The initiatives can be designed to include topics on how to recognize child sexual abuse, how to safely report child sexual abuse and how to discuss child sexual abuse with children. Gillibrand, Heller and Feinstein’s legislation serves as a complement to the Helping Our Schools Protect Our Children Act, allowing states and school districts to use federal grants to provide professional development to school personnel regarding how to recognize child sexual abuse. These personnel include: teachers, principals, specialized instructional support personnel, and paraprofessionals.

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Making Erin’s Law a nationwide effort

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If you’re reading this blog, chances are good that either you are a survivor of child sexual assault or you know someone who is.
It is not something that is new to the world — children have been sexually assaulted by family, friends, neighbors, etc., for as long as human life has existed. Children are easy to manipulate and easy to abuse, and those in positions of power (in relation to those children) have been doing it for far too long.
Let’s make 2015 the year where children fight back and stop this horrible, violent attack on the youth of our world.
One young woman who has already made this her lifelong quest is Erin Merryn. Her tireless effort to make “Erin’s Law” the law of the land throughout the United States has already achieved recognition and she is picking up supporters in states where the law currently does not exist, and I have been involved in efforts to make the law happen in my home state of Nebraska.
Quoting from the Erin’s Law website, here is what Erin’s Law is all about:
Erin’s Law is named after childhood sexual assault survivor, author, speaker and activist Erin Merryn, who is the founder and President of Erin’s Law, which is registered with the State of Illinois and the IRS as a 501 (c)(4) non-profit social welfare organization.
After Erin introduced the legislation in her home state of Illinois, the bill  was named Erin’s Law after her by legislators and it has caught on nationwide.
“Erin’s Law” requires that all public schools in each state that passes it implement a prevention-oriented child sexual abuse program which teaches:
— Students in grades preK – 5th grade, age-appropriate techniques to recognize child sexual abuse and tell a trusted adult
— School personnel all about child sexual abuse
— Parents & guardians the warning signs of child sexual abuse, plus needed assistance, referral or resource information to support sexually abused children and their families.
More than half of the states in the U.S. have either passed Erin’s Law or have it under consideration in their respective legislatures. Her home state of Illinois was the first to pass the law in February of 2011, and the states of New Mexico, Utah, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Louisiana, South Carolina and Vermont passed the law in 2014.
Here in Nebraska, a modified version of Erin’s Law was introduced by State Sen. Dave Bloomfield. The difference between LB143 and Erin’s Law is that the Department of Education would be required to draw up a template for a child sexual abuse policy that school districts in the state would have the “option” of incorporating into their schools. Obviously, this is not enough, and Bloomfield has told me on numerous occasions that any attempt to change LB143 to make the policy mandatory would be grounds for him to pull the bill, as he feels — erroneously, I might add — that the requirement would be an unfunded mandate, which he is opposed to.
Sen. Bloomfield’s support of his own legislation is, at best, tepid. He had a chance, during the 2014 session of the Nebraska Legislature, to make the bill his priority bill and open the door for school districts to introduce child sexual abuse policies in their school. Instead, he chose a bill that would give motorcycle riders the option of riding without a helmet (motorcycle riders are required to wear helmets in Nebraska). When asked how he could justify this decision, he told me that he had 94,000 motorcyclists in the state who, he felt, should have the freedom to choose whether or not they wanted to risk their lives by riding without a helmet. How this trumps more than 300,000 children under the age of 18 in the state to have the tools to keep themselves safe from sexual abuses, to this day, defies logical thought.
One of my personal goals for 2015 is to overcome this close-minded “representation” within Nebraska’s governing system and get THE version of Erin’s Law passed. With a new governor and a number of new state senators on board, the opportunity to help the children of Nebraska couldn’t be better.
I would encourage you to check out the Erin’s Law website at www.erinslaw.org and get involved in the effort to make Merryn’s law the law of the land in all 50 states. More than 20 are already on board — let’s make a nationwide effort to make every state an “Erin’s Law” state.

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Nothing is surprising anymore

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Nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to being a survivor of sexual assault.
Since publishing my book “Call Me A Survivor” two years ago, I’ve been out speaking publicly about my experience. I’ve told my story, over and over, to people of all ages, races, genders, shapes and sizes. I’ve spoken to thousands of school-age students and adults about what I went through.
After one of my first speeches, a young lady came up to me with tears in her eyes, hugged me, and thanked me for telling my story. She didn’t have to tell me that we had a shared experience as survivors of sexual assault, but it was clear to me that what I had said about my own experience had made her think about her own experience.
That’s part of the reason why I talk about my own experience in front of people – I know there are countless men and women, young and old, who have been through this experience and have had to live with it for however many years. I was somewhat fortunate in that my perpetrator was brought to justice (his didn’t come as a result of my case, but I was able to get some sense of closure many years later – details are in my book). Many of the people who experience sexual assault are intimidated or otherwise forced into a vow of silence, allowing the criminal to walk away from the crime without punishment.
The hardest part for a sexual assault survivor is bringing their perpetrator to justice. Those who commit these crimes will use any and every possible act of intimidation to silence their victims. Threats of violence (if not the actual act), legal maneuverings, withholding of opportunities, bribes of money or gifts – a perpetrator will play any and every card in the deck to keep their victims silent. And the higher they are in society, the easier it is for them to get away with it.
More and more these days, survivors are coming out and speaking about what has happened to them, and it seems to get more play in the mainstream media when the crime involves somebody who is famous or well-known to the majority of the population. These crimes, more often than not, challenge our way of thinking, particularly if the alleged perpetrator is somebody well-known in our society.
Recently, stories have come out regarding legendary comedian, TV personality and Jell-O pudding pitchman Bill Cosby. I don’t have to tell you what he’s done over the course of his career – if you’ve lived in America more than 30 minutes, you know about everything from the “Fat Albert” cartoons he authored on Saturday mornings to “The Cosby Show,” one of the all-time great situation comedies in American TV history.
His comedy albums in the 60’s and 70’s were pure comic genius. I’ve had the opportunity to see his shows on TV and attended one live a few years ago, and his unique perspective on everything from raising children to being married have always made me laugh hysterically.
When these stories first came out, it was hard for me to believe, as I’m sure it was for anybody who has seen the guy over the last 50 years. He comes off as pleasant, friendly, intelligent – not the kind of guy who would sexually assault women.
A story posted on the Washington Post’s website, though, paints quite a different picture of the real-life man from the one we’ve seen on TV and on stage – numerous accounts of women who were drugged and sexually assaulted by a man who held considerable influence in American entertainment and society, and it’s taken these survivors 30-40 years or more to come forth and tell their stories.
Of course, Cosby has not been arrested or charged with any crimes relating to these stories, and attorneys for the family have gone out of their way to discredit the individuals who claim they were attacked by Cosby. His attorneys are spending a lot of time and effort trying to get us to believe that these crimes never happened and that these women are opportunistic individuals who are trying to benefit financially at the expense of the integrity of a comedy legend.
As much as I have enjoyed Cosby’s work over the years, though, I have to wonder if there isn’t something to these stories these women have come out with. One person telling a story is one thing – but when it’s multiple individuals telling very similar stories in how they were assaulted, it’s hard to just dismiss it, regardless of Cosby’s standing in American entertainment history.
Also, consider that a number of major corporations who have been, or were planning on, doing business with Cosby – people like the NBC television network, Netflix and others – are suddenly pulling the plug on these relationships with the comedian. These corporations wouldn’t be so quick to sever ties unless there was some fire fueling the smoke, would they?
If there’s anything I’ve learned with this experience, it’s that the phrase “Now I’ve seen (read, heard) it all” will quickly be proven wrong. What ultimately becomes of the situation between these women and Cosby remains to be seen. Regardless, it won’t be something that will surprise me.

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It’s just a dream

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It’s been almost 40 years, and still they come.

They don’t happen near as frequent. These days, they maybe come a couple of times a year, just a little reminder from the deepest recesses in my vast memory bank that it’s still out there.

When they DO come up – wow, does it shock the system.

I was your typical kid growing up in the 70’s. I had the occasional nightmare, as all kids do. It caused me to jump out of my bed and make my way in the darkness to mom and dad’s bed, where there was the known security of my parents to keep the monsters in my mind at bay.

That all changed in the spring of 1976 – when I was sexually assaulted.

Those silly little nightmares about monsters and scary people chasing me in my dreams became full-on night terrors. I dreadedgoing to sleep at night. I’d beg to stay up and watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and even The Midnight Special on Friday nights . . . anything to avoid going to bed and battling the visions that were going to come, no matter how hard I tried to stop them.

Even the act of getting ready for bed was an exercise in insanity. Our bedrooms were upstairs, but I could recall my attacker’s last words before he let me go: “If you tell anybody, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

I could picture him bringing a ladder that was tall enough for him to gain access to my room on the second floor. One window looked out to our spacious yard. Another was positioned over the back part of the house, where an addition had been built. The roof to the addition was low enough, I reasoned, that my attacker could climb up there and break through the other window in my room.

Because of that possibility, it became a nightly ritual for my parents to have to actually inspect my room before I could feel comfortable enough to sleep in it. They had to check the closet. They had to look under the bed. Sometimes, they’d have to look out the window to make sure nobody was there. Only when those inspections were completed to my satisfaction, could I finally feel a sense of security that I wasn’t going to be attacked in my own room.

The problem was – nobody could secure what would go on in my mind once sleep came. There was no way anybody could stop me from being attacked from the inside.

And the attacks would come – almost on a nightly basis. Sometimes, I’d wake up from a nightmare, get up to get a drink of water and shake off that memory, then fall back asleep and experience another one. I wet the bed so often that my parents had to put a plastic cover over the mattress, saving them the frustration of having to try and clean a urine-stained mattress over and over again.

It was always tough for me in those early years, because the attack happened in a small town of less than 1,000 people, and my attacker was the older brother of a classmate. I’d get a daily reminder of what happened to me every time I walked into school. I doubled my pleasure (sarcasm alert) during the second semester of sixth grade when my attacker was assigned as a teacher’s aide for my PE class. Talk about having to LIVE your nightmare – when I walked out of school the first day of the semester, shaking and in tears, my mother wanted to know what was wrong. When I told her my attacker was now my teacher’s aide, it unleashed a fury that I’d never seen out of my mom.

We moved from that town after I finished sixth grade, but I wasn’t able to leave the nightmares behind. They followed me to our new home, and it took a while for me to become comfortable with having a bedroom in the basement. While my parents’ bedroom was directly above me, there was a window in my room looking up to the outside, and I had many a nightmare involving my attacker tracking us down and coming through that window. I’d have to inspect my closet almost every night before I went to bed, and I looked under my bed more times than I care to count, thankful each time to see nothing more than the red carpet that my parents put in my room.

Moving away to college, the nightmares seemed to subside. I started drinking and experimenting with drugs around that time, and I guess I’m not sure that they ever happened on the nights when I was loaded on some intoxicant. I do remember, though, that the nightmares would still pop up – sometimes they even involved other people in my life. Family members, friends, other adult figures – they would all make appearances in a variety of roles, from being an onlooker to actually being the one chasing me.

These days, the visions and faces seem more like a blur. I’m not sure if it’s because the action is happening so fast, or time is fading some of those visions, or if maybe the memory of the experience is losing its punch in the process of experiencing these nightmares. This most recent nightmare found me back in that place – on an old, rickety bridge with chipping, faded white paint located behind the local swimming pool, face down with my pants at my ankles, with a garbled, unintelligible sound serving as my attacker’s voice. I remember the colors of that evening’s setting sun piercing through the trees, which were just starting to show their spring buds on branches that reached out, as if they were hiding the rest of the world from the horrible crime that was taking place on that bridge.

I’m not sure what I was more frustrated with when I woke up from this latest nightmare – the fact that it happened, or that it was 2:30 in the morning when I was awakened and couldn’t fall back to sleep (this blog is being written at 4:45 a.m., more than two hours after the nightmare). I’m grateful that I don’t have to experience these nightmares any more often than I do, and I’m hopeful that the day will come when this particular nightmare never comes again.

It will never undo the fact that I was sexually assaulted – but I’m looking forward to the day that I won’t have to re-live the experience in my dreams again.

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When filling a stadium isn’t something to be proud of

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If you’re like me, you love watching football.
Whether it’s a Saturday afternoon or evening cheering on your favorite college team, or spending Sundays watching the NFL and trying to figure out if your fantasy team is mopping up against your buddy’s team, there’s nothing like watching football on TV.
OK, there IS one thing better than watching it on TV – being AT the game, for example. Between the tailgating, hanging out with friends and fellow fans, making a ton of noise and cheering the home team on to victory, you can’t beat that experience.
Stadium 2013Being a fan of the University of Nebraska football team, the Husker faithful is proud of the fact that there hasn’t been an empty seat for a Husker home game in more than half a century. Since October of 1962, every game at Memorial Stadium has been a sellout, the seats full of red-clad Husker faithful, cheering Big Red on to victory.
With the recent additions to the stadium, the capacity for a Husker home football game now exceeds more than 90,000 people. In fact, 91,585 fans jammed the old yard recently to watch Nebraska take on the University of Miami (Fla.) on national TV.
Can you imagine – more than 91,000 people in one place to watch a football game? Now, ponder this thought – what if every one of those fans was a survivor of sexual assault?
It’s an odd thing to think about, but if you were to take the Centers For Disease Control study that found 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are survivors of sexual assault, and applied those ratios to the current K-12 enrollment numbers quoted by the Nebraska Department of Education, you’d have enough to fill up more than two-thirds of Memorial Stadium’s capacity.
Throw in the kids who are between infant and preschool age living in the state – and now you’ve filled it up well past capacity.
That there are THAT many children in this state who are potential survivors (we don’t use the word “victim” within these walls, which I’ll explain in a future post) is a staggering and appalling thought. And these are just the kids we’re talking about in a state with a population of just over 2 million – can you even begin to imagine what the number of children who are survivors – including those who are still going through the experience – could possibly be?
And, as those of us who have been through the experience can attest, this is not something that children simply grow out of. The physical wounds may heal, but the emotional scars and the mental hurdles are there for a long, long time. This isn’t something that just goes away – especially if the survivor’s attacker is a close friend or family member. It’s something that is always there for us to deal with.
HOW we deal with the issue is the important thing. I’ve used just about every tool imaginable, from faith and prayer to alcohol and drugs. I’ve drank massive amounts of alcohol to dull the pain. I’ve smoked, ingested and popped about every kind of drug you can think of at least once. I have talked with more than my share of psychologists, psychiatrists and other “head doctors” about it. I’ve prayed and spoke at length with my Higher Power about the experience.
While the drugs did little more than suspend reality for a temporary period, I’ve found that talking out my issues has been the biggest source of comfort for me. Whether it’s with a therapist, your pastor or a friend with a good ear to chew on, getting it out in the open and talking about it is sometimes the best therapy that’s available.
That’s something that I try to tell people when I speak publicly about my experience. I’ve had the chance to speak to teenagers and college students at a number of venues in my home area in recent months, and it makes my day when one of them comes up to me and thanks me for speaking out. Sometimes, they’ll share some of their story with me. Other times, the look in their eyes and the way they carry themselves as they thank me says all that needs to be said, and I hope that, by speaking out, it gives them the courage to do the same thing and seek the help they deserve to have to help them realize that they, too, are survivors.
One day, I would like to be able to say that the number of survivors of sexual assault wouldn’t be enough to fill up a meeting room at a local coffee shop. Filling a stadium full of Husker football fans is impressive – that you can fill that same stadium with every child in Nebraska who is a survivor of sexual assault isn’t something my state can be very proud of.

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Award-winning story helps break the silence

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I can still remember the look of stunned silence on the faces of the talk show hosts.
lt happened almost 30 months ago, late on a Sunday night. A good friend of mine was hosting a live sports talk show on a TV station in Omaha, and the topic of discussion was the Penn State sex scandal story that had broken a few days earlier.
The story was already a few days old when my good friend, Travis Morgan, and his sidekick were discussing the issue of the Gerry Sandusky scandal that had rocked the world of college football. Almost immediately after reading the grand jury investigation, my world was rocked as well.
As a survivor of sexual assault, the news of what Sandusky had done to numerous young boys reopened some old wounds that I had been working hard to close up regarding my own experience from more than 35 years earlier. The “experts” on TV spent all of their time talking about everything BUT what they should have been talking about – how will this impact the Penn State football program, how this would impact the legacy of legendary coach Joe Paterno, is this a unique situation or are there other coaches out there abusing their authority, etc., etc., etc.
Travis and his co-host were going down the same road, and as a fellow journalist and sports writer, I could appreciate him wanting to hear from his viewers and get their opinions on these same sports-related questions. But he had a devoted viewer with a different question that needed to be answered – what impact is this going to have on the kids who Sandusky attacked?
When I called and asked that question, I began to talk about my own experience as a survivor of sexual assault. I had the TV on mute to avoid any feedback and was letting it all hang out. As I made my point, my friend’s mouth dropped and he stared back at the camera – he was blown away with the news that an old friend of his was, for better or worse, talking about his experience on live television in front of a potential audience of hundreds of thousands of people.
Fast forward a little more than a year – Travis is a native of the small Northeast Nebraska town of Walthill and took over as the new sports director at KCAU in nearby Sioux City, Iowa. It was a homecoming for Travis, as he had worked previously at other stations in town and was a local boy at heart. His station had broadcast a story about me earlier that summer after I began work on “Call Me A Survivor,” but he wanted to follow up with a feature on my experience and inform viewers on some of the facts and figures surrounding child sexual assault.
I know how much work can go into writing a major feature story sometimes, but doing something for TV is altogether different. We did two interviews – one at my house and one at the station – and he shot a variety of other footage of me, from my first major speech about my life and my book to video of me working in my job as managing editor and sports editor of The Wayne Herald. He started working on the story in January, but it would be five months before the story hit the air. Click here to check out his story.
The story was very well-received, according to comments I heard from people who saw the story, and it’s a fantastic piece that Travis put together. It was SO good, in fact, that the story was recently honored by the Iowa Broadcast News Association as a first-place feature story. I’m thrilled that Travis thought enough of the story to do such a wonderful job on it, and considering his talents and what he did to put the story together, it was a very pleasant surprise when I ran into him at a hockey game and he told me the good news about the award.
I think back often to that Sunday night in November when I first told my story to an audience on live TV and, literally, stopped the program in its tracks and stunned the host with news about his friend that he was not even aware of. It took a lot of courage for me to talk about my experience on a live program like that, and I’m thrilled that my good friend felt enough of the story to make the most of his talents as a storyteller and broadcaster to share my experience with his viewers and be awarded with a first-place honor as a result of his efforts.
I hope the video of his story that is attached here will help survivors open up and shatter the silence by telling their stories of survival from child sexual assault. Silence is no longer an option, and I encourage fellow survivors to tell their stories to someone, anyone and everyone.

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Dream Theater’s lyrics speak to our experience

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Recently, I had a chance to attend a concert and thank the band for a specific song that speaks close to the heart of survivors everywhere.
I’ve been a big fan of the progressive rock band Dream Theater. A friend and colleague turned me on to this band when they first started achieving some national fame for their song “Pull Me Under” and I’ve been a fan of them ever since.
To call these guys brilliant in what they do would be like calling water wet. The musicianship displayed by each of the members of the band is out of this world, so it’s always a big deal for me whenever they put a new album out.

Had a chance to meet Dream Theater at a recent concert in Denver (that's me in the center holding copies of my book that I presented to each band member). With me are band members (from left) John Petrucci, Jordan Rudess, Mike Mangini, James LaBrie and John Myung.
Had a chance to meet Dream Theater at a recent concert in Denver (that’s me in the center holding copies of my book that I presented to each band member). With me are band members (from left) John Petrucci, Jordan Rudess, Mike Mangini, James LaBrie and John Myung.

This past fall, Dream Theater released a self-titled album, which in and of itself was a change from such album titles as “A Dramatic Turn Of Events” and “Black Clouds And Silver Linings.” But when I got through the opening instrumental track, I was ill-prepared for the surprise that was to follow as the song “The Enemy Inside” began.
I’m a big fan of good lyrical arrangements, and as I began to understand the words to this song, the meaning behind the lyrics left me overcome with emotion as I realized how much it spoke to my own personal experience as a survivor of sexual assault.
For many of us, reliving the experience is a common occurrence and one that leaves us dealing with a variety of emotional baggage. The lyrics draw this out immediately in the first verse:

Over and over again
I relive the moment
I’m bearing a burden within
Open wounds hidden under my skin

The pain is real
As a cut that bleeds
The face I see
Every time I try to sleep
Staring at me crying

I’m running from the enemy inside
Looking for the life I left behind
These suffocating memories
Are etched upon my mind
And I can’t escape from the enemy inside

For many of us, the only way we feel we can deal with the memories is to suffer them alone, feeling there is nobody out there who would understand the hell that we’ve been through. Our loved ones know SOMETHING is wrong, but we’re not about to allow them inside our minds to see what that hell looks and feels like, as the second verse portrays:

I sever myself from the world
I shut down completely
Alone in my own living hell
Overcome with irrational fear

Under the weight of the world on my chest
I fall and break as I try to catch my breath
Tell me I’m not dying

I’m running from the enemy inside
Looking for the life I left behind
These suffocating memories
Are etched upon my mind
And I can’t escape from the enemy inside

We look upon ourselves, incorrectly, as a problem to others. We may feel we have nothing to offer the world because we are broken as human beings. We chase after whatever solace we can find, many times in a bottle or some other form of self-medicated relief, knowing that even that relief from the pain that we feel is temporary:

I’m a burden, I’m a travesty
I’m a prisoner of regret
Between the flashbacks and the violent screams
I am hanging on the edge

Disaster lurks around the bend
Paradise comes to an end
And no magic pill
Can bring it back again

I’m running from the enemy inside
Looking for the life I left behind
These suffocating memories
Are etched upon my mind
And I can’t escape from the enemy inside

After listening to this song and understanding the story behind the song (guitarist John Petrucci wrote the song after talking with a number of fans with military experience who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder – PTSD – after their service in Iraq and/or Afghanistan), I felt that the band needed to hear from somebody who was touched in so powerful a manner by their lyrics.

callmeasurvivor-bookI got in on a meet-and-greet event before their concert in Denver, and took the opportunity to thank each of them and present them with copies of my book, “Call Me A Survivor” as a token of thanks for that specific song. It was great to meet these guys in person and get a group photo with them before the show, and in our brief conversations I found them to be very friendly, not your typical rock stars by any stretch of the imagination. The members of Dream Theater seemed genuinely enthused by a fan giving them such a unique gift and I’m hoping that I hear from them at some point down the road to hear their thoughts about my book and my experience.

As for the concert itself – it was magical for me personally to hear them open the show with “The Enemy Inside.” From my seat in the third row, I had my hands raised as high as they could go and sang along with tears in my eyes. The three-hour show was amazing from start to finish, but the emotional release of hearing them play “The Enemy Inside” live was something I’ve never felt before at a concert.

I’ve listened to the song a number of times since the show, and it still hits me as a reminder of what I’ve been through and serves as inspiration for me to continue to speak out about my experience as a survivor of sexual assault. I’m forever grateful that a band like Dream Theater was able to capture that emotion and those feelings that survivors of violent experiences – whether it’s fighting in a war or dealing with the aftermath of sexual assault – in such an amazing and hard-hitting fashion.

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Suicide is never an option

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I was answering questions during a school presentation after telling my story as a survivor of sexual assault, when a young man raised his hand.
The middle school-aged boy was of a stocky build, wearing glasses, a T-shirt and jeans. He had already asked a couple of questions about my experience, then came up with a question that left me stuck without an answer: how many people who are sexually assaulted end up committing suicide?
It was something that I had talked about in my own experience, how I stood along the bank of the Missouri River convincing myself that taking my own life would end all of MY pain. And it’s a thought that many other survivors of sexual assault have contemplated in their lives – and, sadly, a number of them have successfully followed through and ended their lives.
Suicide is the ultimate act of desperation that many sexual assault survivors turn to in an effort to end the depression that they have experienced in their lives. Many studies have shown that suicide is the result of untreated depression, the final act of a victim who feels there is no other way out.
According to an article on the suicide.org website, about 1 in 3 survivors of sexual assault will have suicidal thoughts at some point, and about 1 in 8 of sexual assault survivors will attempt suicide. They are numbers that are, to put it in kind terms, disappointing.
There were several thoughts that pulled me away from the edge of the river that summer evening in 2006 – chief among them was the impact that my suicide would have on my children. My oldest daughter was a sophomore in high school and was the one thing in my life that had always been a positive light in the darkness I was living in. I couldn’t imagine what my family would be able to tell her. She had very little knowledge about my experience as a survivor of sexual assault, so it would be a tremendous burden on both her and my family to try and help her understand all of that.
Another thought that kept me from taking those final two steps was a thought that, in retrospect, is a cold and incorrect assessment of the mind of someone who contemplates, or completes, a suicide attempt.
A school administrator who I have a tremendous amount of respect for was discussing the sudden passing of an employee of the school who had committed suicide. It seemed a logical thought at the time when he said that it was a selfish act for that individual to take his own life.
Over the years, as I’ve contemplated my own dance with death, I’ve come to the belief that it is not an act of selfish behavior, but one of utter desperation by the individual who feels he (or she) simply wants the pain to stop. In the vast majority of cases, it’s not PHYSICAL pain, but the emotional suffering and the mental anguish that, left unchecked, can drive an individual to the point where they feel the only way out is by taking the ULTIMATE way out.
For those of us who are survivors of sexual assault, the biggest, toughest and most persistent opponent we will ever face is not the individual who physically attacked us, but the person that we see in the mirror every morning. The story that individual tells every day, more often than not, is more damaging than anything our attacker did to us.
My best friend is a brilliant graphic designer who lives in Denver, Colo., and also has the best pair of ears a friend could have access to. He has trained as a life coach and has helped a number of people through some difficult personal circumstances, and he helped me dig out of the hole that I had found myself in with some really solid advice.
The best thing he ever told me was a very simple statement – energy flows where attention goes. Some people know it as the Law of Attraction, which essentially states that like will attract like and we are capable of drawing positive energy into our life simply by turning our focus away from the negative and keeping it on the positive.
For me, this was a very difficult challenge because, in my mind, that stigma and the experience that I had as a survivor of sexual assault was something would never go away. I will ALWAYS be a victim of sexual assault, and that negative mindset was a perfect fuel cell for the depression that I was experiencing to thrive in my mind.
Ultimately, I came to the realization that I have a lot to offer the world, as does EVERY individual who has been through the horrible experience of sexual assault. I’ve found happiness and, ultimately, forgiveness in the experience and now look upon myself as a survivor.
That doesn’t mean there are never any “down” days in my life. Some days are challenging as I continue my daily existence, but I know that suicide is not an option for me to consider. I refuse to add to those statistics, and I want to help others who are going through the experience to understand that suicide is not, nor should it ever be, an option to overcome the pain and emotional suffering that a survivor of sexual assault experiences.
If you’re having thoughts of suicide, or want to help somebody who is, call 800-784-2433 (800-SUICIDE) or 800-273-8255 (TALK). There is a wealth of information available on the Suicide.org website as well.
No matter where you are at in your experience as a survivor of sexual assault – don’t think, for one second, that suicide is a way out. You have far too much to offer this world to consider that as a viable alternative to the pain and depression you now face. Get help and know you have so much to offer this world.