Stand tall, speak up, make the world a safer place

New Haggard accuser: 'He really thought he was invincible' - CNN.com: "Grant Haas told CNN he began receiving text messages from Haggard in January 2006 that were 'out of the ordinary' -- questions about what sexual positions he enjoyed, what drugs he used. He said the approaches culminated in a hotel-room encounter in July of that year, when he said Haggard offered him pills and masturbated in a bed they shared."

It doesn't matter what gender Person A or Person B is; if a person in a position of power and authority over another person - adult over child, teacher over student, preacher over flock - uses that power and authority to manipulate or intimidate someone to engage in sexual relations of any nature, that person is a huge scumbag. Period.

Yet male victims vastly under-report incidents because we as a society throw 5 million kinds of bullshit onto the male sexual identity, and unreported scumbags typically go on to victimize someone else. So to every male victim willing to come forward and speak publicly about it, I say kudos. Speaking out and going public is a brave act and it will - not just hopefully, it absolutely will - help other men, and that will help other boys and girls and women and animals and the general mental health of our society. Eventually, we will reduce the stigma to a point that little boys will say something the first time someone does something bad - a key point, because abusers often test a victim first by doing small inappropriate things before they do big sexually inappropriate things. And to the fellows coming forward today, I think you stand on the shoulders of a group of men who finally broke the code of silence in the Catholic church and took a big stand against molester priests.

I know it's hard for bystanders to hear these tales, and I know it is tempting to avoid the messenger along with the perpetrator. It's easy to joke, to pretend it doesn't affect us, to hide behind gender stereotypes and lewd jokes about sexual orientation or "scoring." It's hard to admit that boys and girls and men and women cannot always protect themselves from predators, and it is disgusting to realize just how many predators there are out there. Just thinking about it makes me sick. But I realized something when I listened to those now-grown former Catholic alter boys on NPR however many years ago - every time I ignore it and hope it goes away, every time I turn away or turn off the TV or radio or click off to a less bothersome story, I am letting it go on. The only right answer to any victim of abuse is "that's terrible and it never should have happened to you." If we want a safe place for our children, our neighbors, our spouses, nieces, nephews, and friends, we've got to man up and tolerate the discomfort of hearing these stories and gulp down the bile and say "thank you. Thank you for being brave enough to speak up, so this doesn't happen to someone else." And then we have to stay there, not run away, and admit that we are powerless to fix it, that we are clueless about how to help it, but that we care enough - for the victim AND for our society - to stay and try to offer, if not comfort, then at least fellowship and acceptance.