OUT OF HARM'S WAY

    Over the years, as I've progressed through my own healing, I have met some wonderful people along the way.  Most of them have been women.  A few of them (in, I've noticed, increasing numbers) have been men. I guess I first noticed it in college. I had a wonderful friend who was certain I was going to hate him once I knew his secret. I don't know what I managed to do to earn or deserve his trust, but he told me. And when the world didn't end, I didn't throw him out of my dorm room, and I treated him with just as much love and tenderness as I had before, we had essentially both become different people. On another occasion, still in college, I called in sick to work one night to stay with a friend who didn't have enough tears to wash away his grief from a stolen childhood. There are others, though I wish I could say there are not. And with each of them, I have seen them as no less of a man afterwards, and no less deserving of compassion and hope.  It is to these men that I dedicate this page.  

    I don't want to get cheesy or melodramatic.  I do want to bring attention to a problem that has too long lain silent.  Too many men suffer in silence, afraid that they are alone, afraid that they are less 'of a man' because of what has happened to them.  Like women, many are afraid they won't be believed, and if they are believed then that holds a different set of problems all its own.   It is so easy to neglect the needs of men who have been abused, either as children or as men.  We don't want to believe that it happens.  We don't want to believe that males can be this vulnerable.  We don't want to believe that males can be what we might perceive as weak.  And so we leave them to their own devices, with no help or comfort.

   This is slowly beginning to change.  There are more resources "out there" to be had, if one only knows where to look for them.  Books are being written.  Articles and studies are being written.  Web sites are being constructed.  All with the common goal of educating the  general public on the condition of the abused men in our societies.

   Below you will find links to some of the best sites that I have come across in my searching.  If you take one thing away from these pages, let it be this: no one, male or female, adult or child, deserves to be sexually assaulted in any way, shape, or form.   May you travel in peace.

There are more sites that will go up here on this list.  In the meantime if you know of any sites that should go here,  or if you have any suggestions, please let me know.  In the meantime, whether you are a survivor or have a loved one who is a survivor, I wish you luck and a healing garden.