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The Wayfarers are Experts & Investigators Navigating the Reality of What it is to be Human with Evidence & Experience: Fruits > Faith
Kristin is a Relationship Investigator, Former Teacher & Human Development Specialist
Matt is a Criminal Trial Attorney, Former Prosecutor & Advocate for Juveniles
H.C. “Hil” is a Criminal Investigator, Veteran, Retired FBI Agent & Cactus Expert
PIETY & NERVOUS SYSTEM WARNING - SOMETIMES WE USE RUDE WORDS! Topics include Drugs, Sex, Death & Violence and also Abuse, Neglect, Abandonment & Betrayal.
We use raw and vivid imagery and choose words that explore what is real.
So what we say is we we identify as the Wayfarers, and we introduce you now as another one of the Wayfarers. And it and it comes from an idea of the reason why we picked it is the idea of being a lifelong learner and that you're never landing really, on anything but constantly in search for growth, progress, and those types of things. And it stems from also this theologian from the the group that we're affiliated with, he identified as a wayfarer's theology, which is to never be fixed, to constantly be open to to new things and new, you know, new changes and and and openness. And he identified that in conjunction with being a church of dissidents. And I really liked that because that's definitely been our journey of being dissidents and being heretics in virtually every group that we've been a part of, including my my my last faith community as it were as a prosecutor.
Matt:And I really did find prosecution being a little cult as I as I got out of it. And so that's so so what we what we said, that was our tagline is is that we are interested in fruits, not faith, and ideas over beliefs, and that we talk through the issues rather than talking around the issues. And I thought that's a really particularly good framing for when it comes to sex, death, drugs, and violence. Oh. And so our topic today will jump in with sex.
Matt:Sex, consent, and child sexual abuse. And so what better person to come and talk about these topics than what we call Hillary, is it? Subject matter expert? SMI? SMI.
Matt:Yeah. I did start saying SMI because
Carli:I was
H.C.:Carly, he's called me a lot of things before but not that.
Carli:I have been called worse. But
Matt:Carly is our subject matter expert on topics that are so avoided and misunderstood and that is child sexual abuse. And so let's dig in. I thought I'd start with a couple of things. First, what and anyone can jump in as as well, but, Makar, the first one's for you is, if you start to point to a couple of just the so one of the prevailing myths and misunderstandings about child sexual abuse, what would be just one?
Carli:I think the first one that comes to mind is that any victim of CSA or child sexual abuse is going to run and tell right away. And that we know over and over and over again is just not the case.
Matt:Yeah. The one that I thought about is that people don't appreciate just how common and how prevalent and how many people they know have that experience and will never tell, have never told, and may never told. So we're here now talking about telling, talking. So approximately how many kids have you talked to about these tops types of subjects?
Carli:Somewhere in the thousands. I don't know the exact number anymore.
Matt:You haven't kept track of that, I take it.
Carli:Not anymore. There was a time and place.
Matt:Yeah. And then the other so so the concept or the idea of telling, talking. You know, in our family, we have we have a mantra, a rule that is everyone in the home gets to think their thoughts, feel their feelings, and talk about the thoughts that they think and the feelings that they feel. And that was something that I I learned in part from you and other people about how important it is to make that a a principle and to to make sure that kids at a very early age are free to do that. Now before we get into some of the other things, the other thing I wanted to talk about for a second is this idea for the maybe it's it's what you all think about the idea that I've heard.
Matt:So I wanna run a want to run it by you about the idea that acute and severe childhood trauma and especially things like childhood sexual abuse is a numinous or a spiritual experience. I just use a word I know that can be loaded for some people. So, I'd love to get just anyone's impression about the use of that word and the concept of child sexual abuse as a spiritual experience.
Carli:I would say that specific term ruffles my feathers a little bit. I would use the terminology maybe spiritual trauma or spiritual damage, spiritual inflection. I've experience.
Matt:And I've heard spiritual injury and even spiritual emergency.
Kristin:When I hear spiritual, I do think of identity because these can be kind of this identity crisis. So it's a spiritual and like finding themselves. It it does present an injury, a an obstacle.
Matt:And the what I how I heard it from it was actually a, oh shoot, end of life doc. Oh, is Is it palliative care?
H.C.:Oh, mean that palliative care?
Kristin:I think, yeah, palliative care.
Matt:Yeah. It was a woman who who who worked worked in that area and she talked about the idea of spirituality simply being about identity and personal work and coming to an understanding of reality and one's existence and the relationship between their self, their being, and another person or their environment or reality and from that perspective, that helped me at least say, okay, I I I also bristled when I heard that. And and but with that context, I thought, okay, that makes sense to me because when a kid, especially, experiences something very very traumatic very impactful especially something like a sex crime that just fundamentally changes their sense of self their sense of who I can trust, who I can't trust, what a parent is, what loved one is.
Kristin:It's really connection with all.
Matt:And so often it affects one's relationship with their taught or perceived deity, God or religious community. So what what are your thoughts on on that?
Carli:I think given the context, it's I can understand where it's coming from. I think my concern is that people will interpret that word or misinterpret that word experience as it's not so bad. It's just an experience like every other childhood experience that helps to shape you.
H.C.:And I'm feeling a little different about it. When you said spiritual experience related to child sexual abuse, I'm thinking, oh, where's Matt going with this?
Matt:Is he SMI? Yeah.
H.C.:So I thought, Okay, well, spiritual experience to me is always positive. Child sexual abuse is negative. And I'm thinking, okay, maybe Matt's thinking spiritual experience means when you feel something, you're not really sure where it's coming from. So in other words, if you're experiencing something spiritual, you're maybe thinking you're receiving inspiration. This kind of overcoming you, you've never experienced this before.
H.C.:So you're trying to process it and what it is, it's a negative, it's the opposite of what you think spiritual is, but it's something you're not accustomed to. In other words, if you're going along and you're driving, you get thoughts and all of a sudden something comes to you and you think, wow, this is what I've been searching for. And you describe it to someone as a spiritual experience, they take your word that, yeah, it's a spiritual experience. But if you feel this experience from child sexual abuse, that's a different kind of experience and you don't know what to make of it. You haven't named it something because you've never experienced it before.
Matt:These ideas of wonder, awe are always, I think viewed as whether it be mystical or, oh, isn't wonderful? Or this, but it really means, I cannot contextualize this. I don't understand it. I don't know.
Kristin:When it's existential and that's in the spiritual realm.
Matt:Mhmm. But I've asked this question with so many people, Carr, and I hadn't I'm really happy you pressed on that point of saying, well, there are many types of experiences and there are only there are certain events, certain especially mind and bodily stimulus that are particularly injurious and just particularly I'll stick with her injury. And now we get the word which I think is so often overused trauma. Capital T, trauma. We understand trauma when an accident, a fall, an event that results in
Kristin:an a physical injury. Physical injury, yeah.
Matt:When you go to hospital or urgent care. Yeah. And this is a injury.
Kristin:Yes. I and like I I like spiritual injury.
Matt:Mhmm.
Kristin:That does make a little more sense of the word spiritual because if you do think of it as good, good positive experience, this one's is injurious to to the spirit. To your Incarnate yourself.
Matt:Could you talk a little bit about, I guess, this idea of I always think of person's crime as something that, you know, my world we we work in. Person's crime as opposed to property crime, right, as opposed to homicide. And the person's crime so often has both a body and a mind component. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that duality a little bit, especially in the context of a sex crime. Sometimes they might be the I guess if I'm right is there a connection between body and mind injury as it relates to this thing versus an assault, a slap, a real domestic violence or what we say child physical abuse?
Carli:Yeah. It's very different in some cases. In some cases, you're going to have the what people traditionally think of a violent assault that is going to be physically, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically damning across the board. But in others, you may not have a particularly harmful physical action, at least to begin with, or in some cases at all.
H.C.:But
Carli:there still is that sense that this isn't isn't okay, isn't right, and that incongruence between the event that's happening and knowing that it's not okay can create a whole bunch of conflict and often is kind of the jumping off point for that trauma.
Matt:Have you had experiences of situations where the abuse happens at such a young age that a child doesn't even understand what the significance of it is or what it is until much later. Is a reality?
Carli:Yeah. Especially in children, young children who don't have any language yet to even be able to internally understand what's going on, let alone put a name or a context to what's happening. Some of them have really no idea that what's happening is wrong or bad until they have something to compare it to being a peer or the way that they can now contextualize the way other adults in their life behave or some of the actions themselves of the person who's doing it to them. There's once we start to develop language and then start to develop along the way critical thought and other things, we really start to see kids that have this almost visceral idea of, oh my gosh, this has been going on for x number of years and I had no idea that this was even a bad thing.
Matt:Mhmm. And assume that that reality contributes in part among other things to failure to disclose, the failure to talk about it or even the inability to begin to talk about these things.
Carli:Yeah. There's a huge amount of internalized shame and guilt in kids who have been carrying these secrets for years and years either not realizing that they were wrong or just coming to realize that they were wrong and then trying to figure out in their very childlike brains. Well now what do I do with this? I've been going along, so to speak, with this for years or this has been happening to me for years and I haven't said a word. How then do I turn around now and say, oh wait this bad thing has been happening to me when it's been who knows how.
Matt:Could you talk a little bit more about shame and kind of the idea of shame and maybe describe what that complex emotion is and what that, you know we use that use that like capital T Trauma, shame is something I think talked a lot about and it's become kind of popular to mention but I wonder if you could double tap on that concept a little bit.
Carli:Well, I think that we pair societally the words guilt and shame together because oftentimes they are felt together but they are not the same thing. Guilt is usually an appropriate emotion or response to a behavior that we have done. That in some way either broke a moral or emotional. Rule or guide or has hurt somebody else. Usually that, like I said, usually that's an appropriate response to whatever it is that has happened.
Carli:Shame on the other hand is more of an internalizing of a characteristic of being bad, of being wrong, of being broken, villain the adjective that you'd like, but it's usually that internalizing sense of self that the individual as a person has now become bad.
Matt:Right. The kind of the action, I stole something, that was a wrong thing, I oughtn't have done that. I hit my sister, I oughtn't have done that. Whereas this is, I'm bad, I'm evil, I'm broken, a character, the internalizing and making that a part of you. Yeah.
Matt:Right? Yeah. And I as you say that, the thing that I was that came to mind is the idea of a false narrative of being. And a false narrative that may be external that you may pick up from someone else or have been instructed by an ideology or a people or whatever, but it's it really is this internalizing a false narrative that you start to tell yourself.
Carli:Mhmm. Absolutely. Sometimes it is almost a doctrine or a statement that has been given to us by an external source, be it the offender themselves, parents, an institution, our schools, our faith based institutions. But even beliefs themselves believing in a certain doctrine or faith can then if there is behavior that falls outside of that doctrine or faith can lead to that narrative that we then start to take ownership of and we claim it and begin to tell ourselves over and over and over again.
Matt:And what is the effect of shame and the experience of shame as it relates to sexual abuse and especially the talking about sexual abuse?
Carli:Bottom line is is that shame generally is one of the biggest obstacles to telling about what's happening. There's so much belief wrapped up in that sense of I am bad, am wrong, I am broken, that it's almost like one, if I do tell nobody's going to believe me and two, if I even if they do believe me, what do I deserve to have done at this point after all of the things that I have brought into this situation? So there's this like sense of responsibility or ownership of the things that have been done to them and it is a huge hindrance in terms of children deciding that they have someone or place a person, someone to tell.
H.C.:Carly, what kind of a toll does shame take on an individual's body? In other words, they're reluctant or afraid or whatever emotion to report or to talk about it, but they're holding something in, what does that do? Do you have knowledge of how that affects the physical characteristics and health of an individual, especially at developmental stages?
Carli:Yeah, I mean, we definitely see an increase in unwanted behaviors. We see an increase in drug and alcohol abuse. We see a huge increase in self harm and suicide rates. See an increase in incarceration. It's basically you name it, you name a negative outcome and they are tied to child sexual abuse.
H.C.:Would you say it's one of the biggest stressors that exist? You you have loss of certain things, you know, job, Moving,
Matt:illness.
H.C.:Yeah, all of those, where would that rank up do you think?
Carli:It's hard to say because child sexual abuse is not a, We give it this like singular name, but it's almost like on a spectrum. You know you you have the kid who was touched by a neighbor kid at six years old and that's their only experience of child sexual abuse. Then you have the child who's been repeatedly sexually assaulted by a biological parent for years and years and years, and that level of trauma is going to be hugely more impactful than the first example. It's hard to, I guess answer that in a simple way, but if we're talking about more the latter experience, the impact is going to be grossly, grossly high.
Matt:Okay. Mhmm. And I and I think of some of these other events, death of a death of a loved one, dealing with a terminal illness, traumatic moves that happen. There's the idea of the ACEs, adverse childhood experiences. I think that's a little we need to be careful in only saying what that Kaiser, there's a Kaiser Permanente study that kind of talks about it.
Matt:To be, it's meant to just kind of be a guide, not a rigid, I guess script or this is a prescription. It's misused and yet when we look at all the various injuries that can happen psychological injuries, spiritual injuries, those other ones, there are so many spaces and opportunities to process and talk about those sharing stories. If you talk about the death of a loved one, you're going to get other people sharing when my mother died, when when my son died. These are we're sharing of stories gets to happen for people that have those experiences but this one, these are these are essentially secret things that are done in secret places and secret ways that maintain again these narratives and these false narratives that become passengers
H.C.:on the the
Matt:the beam without the ability to share stories or have somebody help contextualize them in the moment or later. I think that makes them this event particularly unique.
Carli:And also so taboo, right? This is not a topic that gets talked about and it's also not a topic that in a lot of cases when somebody does get brave enough and maybe sick enough of what's going on to tell it's not often something that is responded to with any type of appropriate reaction. It's often anger and questioning and disbelief and confrontation. And if you talk about some of the other. Adverse childhood experiences, if you're talking about growing up in poverty,
Matt:let's
Carli:say hugely impactful. However, mostly when a child talks about living in poverty, they're going to get an appropriate response Right. From the people that they're talking to about it.
Matt:What did you do that makes you poor?
Carli:That's right.
Matt:What were you wearing that makes you poor?
Kristin:Yeah. Absolutely.
Matt:Interesting I've learned from Kristen recently with her some of her training and experience recently is now the impact on the nervous system and on the gut of these type of very stressful events because it is it is this type of mind work that's done. The stock of mind injury and and again spiritual injury has such so taxing and stressful on the system that impacts gut, nervous system, pain and these types of things. Did Yes, I and get that
Kristin:responses to other, you know, we'd say normal interactions. This is now a part of them in even just regular connections with others. And it takes us like we see disease might not come for years because it's been taking a toll inward on us, our organs and our system.
Matt:And and as as diagnosis come up with processing disorders and the ability to focus and and and other other health issues, you are seeing these this experience, childhood sexual abuse, a common connection to ADHD and Yes. I won't list them all, but all the ones that could be there, this tends to be a part of the experience that then is part
Kristin:It of the social can be masked by sickness like people who might they Now they think their child has anxiety when it's completely masked. Know, tummy aches all the time or I was saying regression earlier. Kids might start, you know, having constipation issues or wetting their pants or things that their parents are treating this medical issue when there's not they're not getting to the crux of why and what's happening in Is their
Matt:there any one behavior, the way a victim responds, is there a typical or expected victim behavior to say, oh, that's evidence that it That's why was wanting to go. No.
Kristin:I'm gonna tell you as a teacher, you can you really it it can go to where one like a child is having, you know, severe behavior issues in class all the way to now this is they become a perfect model so nobody ever questions them or looks at them or has any hint that something inward is wrong with them.
Carli:Yes.
Kristin:They believe something like the shame. Something's wrong with me so I have to be perfect on the outside. And they might live a life that these are the kids also that are raised, you know, everyone tells them, oh, your child's so wonderful or oh, they're just the model student or you know their personality is wonderful and all of those are just dings on their shame because they don't feel that. And so it really masks even the more of a perfectionism. So you really have a range.
Kristin:You really can't. Right? Not one, oh, this child's being abused because of this behavior.
Matt:You're saying even and you know, I was talking about the lack of focus. So a kid might become even more focused or hyper focused in school.
Kristin:Or in athletics or they put everything towards what they can control. Because everything else is out of control.
H.C.:I wanted to ask you, Carly, from your background and experience, is there training that someone can receive that would allow them to be able to determine what the signs are during interview, for example? So maybe key questions, body language, the way the questions are answered or not answered, do you feel like you can sit with someone for a period of time, regardless of what they say one way or another and determine whether or not they've been sexually abused?
Carli:No. I mean, there are times when I have a better sense of behavior in that there is a some type of conflict or trauma or something going on with a kiddo, but just having sat with them short of them telling me what they've experienced. No. There's not a I mean, you can pick up on certain cues and you can. You can read body language, but all of those things can be attributed to something else.
H.C.:Mhmm. What
Matt:about like You could
Carli:have a kid who's like, you know, so fidgety and you feel like, oh my gosh, their anxiety is so high. It must be that there there's something going on in their home and yet. It may just really come down to the fact that they have really unmedicated ADHD and. That's the crux of it.
Matt:What about things like affect? If, well, they didn't cry or they're laughing and giggling while they're talking about it, therefore we can't believe them. Is this something you've heard in the past as well?
Carli:I hear it a lot and usually it comes from more of the lay belief of what's associated with child sexual abuse. But truthfully, that's another really broad spectrum of what you're going to experience. You'll have kids that will come completely stone paced and never have any emotion at all. You'll have kids that Will laugh because some of it's like nervous kind of energy going out or because to them it is so ridiculous what has happened that they just don't know another way to express it. I mean, the range of possible emotional expression is huge.
Matt:Now is there any research on this concept? I've heard the word accommodation before. Does that have any meaning?
H.C.:Yeah. Tell
Carli:me Basically, about way that children process and accommodate the things that have they have experienced in a way that's meaningful and makes sense to them. And sometimes how it can then present into the world.
Matt:So when we say accommodate, it's we're we're talking about the way they are surviving and maintaining an existence in a very stressful, difficult and challenging reality. Am I right about Yeah. No. I have heard of this idea of cycle of violence. Because a lot of things I'll hear people say all the time, Well, why would the kid go back somewhere to a place where they have been abused?
Matt:Of the examples I think of are especially in the systems institutions whether it be the you know, The United States Olympic controversy in Penn State and some of these school programs and certainly, the religious context where it's either a religious leader or even a religious member. Why would a child go back to a place, a home, whatever where abuse has happened? Is there an understanding of why that that would be? And is there some process that, that could be articulated?
Carli:Yeah. I mean, it's kinda multifaceted, but just to start with, for some kids, they don't have a choice. If they're returning home. If they are going to church on Sunday because that's what mom and dad tell them that they have to do. If they're going to school and that's where their abuser is.
Carli:Some other organizational attendants like the Olympics. Some of those kids have literally spent their whole lives with that being their only focus, their only goal. So they may not either literally or more emotionally feel like they have a choice, a different choice to make. But there's also, you know, there's so many other factors that go into play in a lot of these situations. There are good things that can be involved with that setting, with returning back to that setting.
Carli:It may not be if we're talking about a home or a family situation, it may not be that that's that person is in the home all the time. There may be a stable, loving relationship with other people in the home. If we're talking about. A church or a school situation. Oftentimes kids will find meaningful, relationships with other people there, and it might be the only kind of safe harbor that they have, and so not returning would be basically eliminating what they have in place for them to cope with what's going on.
Carli:Right. So there's many reasons that kids can find and sort of Navigate. Make sense of in their brain to why they would continue to keep going even though they know that that abuser is going to be there.
Matt:Now the other thing that you hear all the time is, well, if if it's true that the person was that that was accused is an offender or has done something, then every kid in that person's sphere or every other peer with it with that kid is going to also be a victim. We are definitely going to find other victims, all victims. Right? This is how predators are. Could you speak to that a little bit?
Carli:Yeah. Well, it that one's two part. One, there is this generalized belief that if somebody who has been accused is a true offender, everybody's gonna know. It's like this, you know, they're wearing a neon sign that just says offender and we're all gonna be somehow intuitive enough or trained enough or whatever the case may be, but we're all going to know that this person is an offender. We're going to be able to tell just by looking at them that they are, you know, giving off the weird heebie jeebies and nobody should be around them.
Carli:So that's the first
Matt:Creeps aren't very successful. Some of the creeps are, but they're if you're really creepy, probably not gonna be as successful. Right?
Carli:Probably not. No. If you're the guy walking around in the black trench coat all the time,
Kristin:You're probably not gonna be
Carli:that successful. Right. With no windows in Like the Window
Matt:Window is is banned with free candy written on
Kristin:it. Right.
Carli:And puppies. Like, you're probably not gonna be the one.
Matt:The guy asked his daughter now, somebody says, hey, are you going to I got candy. Are you going to come here? Yes. No, no, no. Oh, see.
Kristin:Anyway. Get back to you. But
Matt:the second part there.
Carli:The second part that not all children are going to be victims. Even if they're in the same home, the same church group, the same classroom, the same sports team. Not all kids are going to be victims and it's not. It's not truthful and it's not fair to say that. If this really occurred, every other child within this person's orbit would be a victim as well.
Carli:Because it's not what the research shows and it's frankly it's it's dismissive of the children who have experienced this.
Matt:Right. And I've heard the term target child before. Does that have any meaning to you?
Carli:Yeah. You can have kids within any setting, really. It could be a public arc. It could be a school. It could be a home where you have one child or a number of children, but not the totality of children in that space who will be.
Carli:Targeted will be focused upon And really when we're talking about targeting kids, there's a couple of different things at play. One is just going to be access. You have access to that kid on a regular basis and particularly unsupervised access where I have a minute, have two hours, I have all day, but enough time to do whatever it is that they're looking to do. And then there's also things like what are the characteristics of that child? Are they the child who is like your daughter likely to speak up and say that's not how we do things here?
Carli:Or are they the kid who sits in class and tries to be perfect and tries to people please and keep every water smooth because of the dynamic that's going on at home? And that's, you know, that's another. Another factor. What are the vulnerabilities of this child? Is this a child who is growing up in poverty who maybe doesn't speak fluent English or doesn't have developed language yet?
Carli:Is this a child who? Has mental or physical limitations that would make them an easy target? There's a lot of factors that go into this kind of idea of targeting a specific or a set of children.
Matt:And am I right? What might make a child vulnerable in one context may be different. There may be different vulnerabilities in another context. Based even on offender preferences or the dynamics that are there socially or institutionally that and so that's not to say, one factor is that if the more we can encourage kids to speak and be assertive and not shy, I guess, to describe one is a good thing. But to say that there's only one form of vulnerability, that would be unfair.
Matt:Am I right about that?
Carli:Absolutely. Yeah. Because if we take it even just as simply as preference of gender, you can have an offender who really likes little boys and you can have that entire list of vulnerabilities present in girls within that subject's radar, and they may not offend on a single one of those girls, even though all of those vulnerabilities are there because that preference is for young boys.
Matt:Gender isn't the only preference. There are some offenders who age is is the the preference and they're, you know, they're agnostic as to boy or girl. It's really this age range that they're in. So that's there's no one size fits one approach which complicates the response, the ability to process and the myths that we think can exist in order to protect. Often prevention policies or techniques may prevent in a very narrow circumstance, but can't and doesn't or maybe can't protect in every scenario that may exist.
Matt:Am I right about
H.C.:that? Yeah.
Carli:Matt, you and I were talking the other day about the fact that prevention policies are put in place for the behavior to monitor and sort of contain the behaviors of rational rule following your general average citizen, but prevention policies are not put into place for what we would consider to be true predators of kids because it's really dang hard to make a policy that's going to cover every behavior that may be tried in order to successfully complete whatever it is that they want to complete.
Matt:The idea that an offender won't act out sexually or otherwise if there's other adults in the room or other children in the room? What do you say to that?
Carli:I say, what about the grandpa who's sitting with a kid on their lap and fondling them under a blanket or under their clothes while the rest of the family is sitting in the room.
Matt:Yep. And what's the impact of something like that on the kid?
Carli:Well, it's multifold, but, what we see is a really increased sense of helplessness in that scenario because to the child this is an act that's being done in the open with everybody else around and yet nobody has done anything to stop it, to help them to come to their aid. So there's that increase in helplessness and then what's the point in telling? Because to that kiddo, everybody should already know they were in the room when it happened.
Kristin:Or if they do tell they're nuh-uh, we were there. We didn't see that. We didn't see that. Right.
Matt:You're lying. And then accusation.
Kristin:Right. Stop the abuse. It only Yeah.
Carli:Perpetuates it and can also have negative repercussions to the rest of their relationships with that family or whoever else happened to be there when it occurred.
H.C.:Alright.
Kristin:Especially for a child trying to develop trust in another connection. That would mean, that would just be a crusher to to a connection with that that child for the rest of their life. They could I mean Yeah.
Carli:Yeah. It could be. Cases.
Matt:And these offenders know that and are relying on those context to keep them quiet or for other reasons may you know, the idea of I wanna I wanna talk about the concept of grooming because that's another term that's been misused, overused, know, has meaning in a very clinical and in a forensic context, it's been used. But I take it then, if you abuse a kid with around other kids, that can be the effect of normalizing the behavior for the kid who's not being offended at the time, so they may be able to move on and potentially collect other victims. Did I get that right?
Carli:Yeah, that's right. Look what I just did to your teammate and she didn't say anything, so it's fine. This is totally acceptable behavior. This is just what happens in our group. This is, you know, yeah, it absolutely starts to erode that understanding of personal boundaries and what's appropriate, what's not appropriate and.
Carli:With that same intent of one being able to do what it is that they want to do and then two concealing not having that child tell what happened.
Matt:Yeah. And so that word grooming, could you just touch on that a little bit and talk about what it is maybe even what it's not, but particularly what it is and the purpose behind it.
Kristin:So, I mean,
Carli:forensic definition of grooming is basically a breaking down of sexual boundaries and what's appropriate and what isn't. There are all different types of grooming that are going to be effective or not effective again depending on your offender and depending on your target. So in a child who is Vulnerable, let's say because they don't have a safe space to be able to tell anyone the amount or scale of grooming that's going to be required is probably really small because there's no one for them to turn to in the first place. It may be that. Like you said, they see one incident of some type of contact with another kid, and that's all it takes for that erosion of their boundary to think, this is normal.
Carli:This is what we do. For other kids who maybe have had some education in personal body autonomy and. At least know that. This is not Okay behavior. There might require more of that erosion of boundaries we might have.
Carli:We might see an introduction to inappropriate, jokes and that kind of behavior. We might have
Matt:Butts pee private parts.
H.C.:Right.
Matt:Yeah. Now it introduces those those images and those topics and body parts and the introduction of talking about body parts as normal, showing body parts as normal, pornography, tickling, wrestling.
Carli:Exactly. Yeah, you may see an escalation from just the talking to now we're going to look at these pictures because this is what we do within our circle, whatever that might be. And now we have an introduction of pornography and look at what's happening in this picture. Don't you want to try that? That looks like you know it's.
Carli:It's that erosion of boundary.
Matt:And I've I've I've heard of instances of games and that that are in in in dark rooms or in in other rooms where there's moving and putting people on laps and there's it seems like inadvertent contact and all these types of things that just but it's playful and it's normal and
Kristin:It just slipped in. It didn't happen to every child there.
Matt:It didn't happen to every child and Yeah. No. It's do you remember the game? Sorry. I had to.
Matt:Twizzler. Twizzler. Hillary. Oh my gosh. I do.
Matt:I do. Well and and I think some of these games with the songs and the and the things that can be that can cause distortions. And so you're not really paying attention to what's going on in the body because you're aware of other things with your eyes and your ears and your and what
Carli:Especially if there's, like, a big distractor, like, if you have a time limit, like a what's that stupid game that kids play where they're you know, you eliminate a chair after the music goes
Matt:out. Musical chairs. Yeah.
Carli:Yeah. There you go. Like, something like that where there's a big distractor and you're very focused on whatever the point of the game is
Kristin:is an
Carli:excellent tactic for, unfortunately something like that because it's very distracting and you're very much focused on one singular task.
Kristin:So details aren't if you're focused on one, especially younger children, the other details aren't. Right.
Matt:Yeah, now the idea of grooming. The other term I've heard that's sometimes related or conflated is the concept of engagement. Is engagement a part of this process as well? And what's
Carli:the It is different. Although they can overlap and it's not uncommon for one to begin and then another to come in and then it's not a linear process.
Matt:Right. Not a dot. Mention this. Then yeah. It's not like a video game.
Matt:A video game that you're Right. The levels. Levels and now I go to this. Right. Okay.
Carli:Right. But engagement is basically that, well, there's two kinds of sides to this. There's one very simple. It is a position of power where that power is utilized to gain compliance, be it through the child themselves, through the family, through other kids that are there that allow access to a specific child. That power can be used in physical ways in terms of violence that can be used in terms of threats, that sort of thing, and that's pretty cut and dry.
Carli:We can all understand that well. Perhaps not the parents of children, but we can understand at least how that could happen. You have somebody who threatens somebody else and or threatens the child themselves and the child's complies with what's going on. So that's the first half. The second half is more of a relationship building.
Carli:It's a building of a relationship with the child. Building of a relationship with their family, with their extended family, with other church congregants, with other teammates. You'll often hear people say. You know, they do those interviews of like the neighbors after the fact, after there's been like 17 kids found in a basement of somebody's home and you'll hear the neighbors say, well, always thought he was such a good guy. Well, oftentimes that is the case because they come across as very charming and they spend the time to build these connections and build these relationships in ways that are meaningful and also can kind of fill in the voids of those vulnerabilities that we were talking about earlier.
Carli:Like for instance, if you have a family who is in desperate need of transportation and childcare, oftentimes these offenders will be the ones who are more than willing to drive mom or dad to work and then I will be glad to stay with the kids So while you're at work during the it fills that. Vulnerability or that void or it could be a void for the child themselves. You know, they just really don't have another, say, adult figure, another male adult figure in their life, right? Or they don't have somebody who's just willing to. Spend an hour or two with them.
Carli:Each week, take him to the library, take him to the movies. They don't have somebody else who's willing to step in and coach their team so. It's really though it's about that connection and that relationship establishing, because once you have an established relationship, it makes it much harder for a child then to want to turn around and say this person whom is filling some of the needs in my life that I don't have elsewhere or is helping my mom and dad in ways that they've never had before is hurting me. We got to make it tough.
Matt:And so this is where we hear about gift giving and preferential treatment. And you're my favorite, you're the special, that relationship and building trust both with the child, but also with any adult, especially that's within the sphere of influence of that child because that's a way to ensure that child again not report and not tell.
Kristin:Yeah. It's also we need to remember what it really looks like. It's not like it's necessarily happening every single time that child is with the abuser or the perpetrator or it so there's it could not even be gifts, it could just be that, you know, for three or four weeks this person is there always and giving and giving and helping the family and then it happens. And then again, then it happens. So it's this, it's so confusing for the child, even if there's not the gifts or the don't tell anyone, you know, all of the things that can happen in situation of abuse.
Kristin:But that's so confusing for a child too because it is they love and care about this person in their life for those things and then Yeah.
Carli:They want to get them in trouble.
Kristin:Gets covered. Yeah.
Carli:Yeah. You'll often hear kids say when they finally do tell, if they do tell, you'll often hear them say that they don't want anything bad to happen to this person. They just want the abuse to stop. Right. They just want it to be done.
Carli:And if everything else could stay exactly the same, they'd be more than happy with that.
Matt:Right. And to really still loving the offender and hating the offense and what's happening. They would love for the relationship to remain and for the abuse
Kristin:to stop. This is really confusing with like two and three and four year olds that are just learning how to talk, right? And you know, the kids that I've worked with, those that age is, they don't want to remember that bad. And they wanna go back and have the good experiences. So it's very confusing.
Matt:One case I worked was male victim and a much older female offender. And the kid was asked, Tell me another time when you were together. He told the time about going to a movie, getting some food and talking. They said, Well, tell me about that. They said, That was one time nothing happened, and we had a great day.
Matt:And what was interesting is the offender commented on that same day in the same movie. And that one, it was the memory of the non offense day that really broke my heart is that it revealed this was a relationship that this boy needed and was lacking in their life. It just really highlighted and stopped being academic for me in that moment. And both of these people really became real. Even that offender stopped being a monster in my mind because she wasn't a monster in this boy's mind.
H.C.:And
Matt:yet what she did was egregious. Yes. Egregious and perpetually. And so what I hear then there is this direct relationship between the type and level of engagement and concealment.
Carli:Yes, very much so. Because really that's the well, the purpose of engagement is to get this access to be allowed to do whatever it is that they want to do with this child and then for them not to tell. Yeah. Because it's too complicated, because it's too hard, because they don't want the person to get in trouble, because they don't want to upset their parents, because they don't want their parents to lose their job, whatever the case may be. They don't want to tell and sometimes don't feel like they can tell because there's so much riding on that relationship with that individual.
Matt:Yeah. I heard a colleague of mine used to say that we know about the cases where there is no engagement. We call those child murders.
Carli:That's right.
Matt:There's a way to that's the way to shut the kid up. That's the concealment is the death. You know, kind of an aside, was there's been a new push in some of these states to reinstitute the death penalty for child rape situations, and there's an interesting interesting debate. We'll we'll take take the wayfarers will cover that at another another day, but one of the the trainings that I got was saying, well, one of the reasons why they took that away is because that raises the instance instances of child murder if death penalty becomes the punishment for that type of crime. This is complicated, goofy stuff, but it goes to this idea of engagement, if there are potentially certain consequences or unintended consequences when you say, boy, we're going to seek the death penalty on these cases, and is there a risk that that results in increased homicides?
Carli:Yeah, I could see that. Absolutely. Because then on the offender's point of view what what is there to motivate me to just rely on the fact that they won't say anything if the consequences then death or let's say one hundred years in prison for each count or whatever the case may be. Something so without possibility of life that
Matt:Right. So some of these these harsh, tough on crime positions that that are for especially political and optics. Yeah, it's complicated sometimes in how
Kristin:Not they do to mention
Carli:the fact that we know that offenders many times have been victims themselves in a different lifetime. And so then it really becomes complicated because. You know, it's this like. Kind of juxtaposition of how do we maintain that we support victims when our offender is a victim and yet we want the offender to be put to death because they've done what's been done to them and oh, then it really gets to be a mess.
Matt:Right. Yeah. And I've I've talked to a number of of offenders. I've represented them as a criminal defense attorney and and I've had also had people that I prosecuted, you know, as a former prosecutor call and and and I've been able to ask pointed questions after they've gone through treatment and and things like, hey. Can I ask you what did bring you to that?
Matt:Do do you have he said, yes. I have an answer, and I'm not gonna get into it today. But then we had a conversation, and it was very fascinating for them. It wasn't an excuse ification. It wasn't, Oh, I'm justified.
Matt:But they really had come to an understanding of what brought them to that place. And it did reveal some humanity, which I didn't expect to experience. Again, this isn't excusification, we're not saying it's okay, we're not saying it's not and yet to ask why and pursue those reasons are not, I don't think it's denigrating to a victim or to society to say it is fair to try to understand some of the motivations and the reasons why these things happen. I think it's critical too, so that we can work more on prevention, as well as response. But right now, we're getting neither a lot of prevention nor much response.
H.C.:Yeah.
Matt:Of this inability to talk about things till often so much later, when now when there's so much time done, I hear people say, Well, now I'm ignored or I'm dismissed or it's, Why are you talking about this now? And we don't wanna hear it now. It's so long ago. And that just now brings back and rips those, what seemed like healing scabs wide open, and those same feelings of shame and embarrassment, and just come pouring back and then the person re internalizes and re entrenches. And now there is in fact no safe person that can understand me.
Carli:Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about it just in the terms of completely separate from any type of abuse, but thinking of it just in the terms of grief. I think we've all either experienced ourselves or know someone who has lost a significant person in their life. And six weeks, six months, a year goes by and they're still grieving and the people around them are like, dude. It's been a year. Can you get over it?
Carli:Now imagine that this is a traumatic experience from childhood and you're 60 years old and you're saying, I got to talk about this now and people are like, for real?
Matt:Right.
Carli:Why?
Matt:Right.
Carli:Get over it.
Matt:And when you have a loved one or a the the offender is a loved one and a known person, it just again, all the things that you said about why they won't wanna tell in the engagement, certainly time doesn't make that easier. No. Fact may make it more difficult.
H.C.:Absolutely, yeah.
Matt:And now we're again in this perpetual and reinjury of the spirit, of the identity, of the mind, of the nervous system, of the gut. Because I just think about how, you know, that pit in the stomach as the person has to think about it, wants to talk about it, starts to begin to tell, and then it shut down and now has to retrench.
Kristin:Especially if they've been scared to tell their whole life. And then if they do finally get a little bravery no matter what age, and and they're treated like that or it offends, you know, like like it's one of their it was one of their parents' friends and you know, why didn't you tell me? There is this disbelief feeling for the for the victim of and that was what they were scared of their whole life.
Carli:Right.
Kristin:You know, and it happens. It's
Carli:It goes back to that, like, belief that we have that, oh, I'm gonna know if anybody's a predator and they're around my kids. So if parents are then confronted with, hey, your best friend has been diddling me for the past fifteen years, why didn't you tell me? Because there's that sense that incongruence of self of, well, I think that I should know. But now I'm being told that I didn't and becomes a. A conflict even just within the parent themselves of how they respond and what do they do with this information.
Carli:And oftentimes it is not, at least initially, it's not responded too well.
Matt:Yeah. Well, is a, we're nowhere near done. And this is the first of a multi part series on this topic where we talk through the issues, not around the issues. But I wanna pause and stop for today. And the next time we pick up, I wanna talk about how disclosures do happen and the typical types of disclosures when a kid or even a not so kid finally does come out and start to tell how it's commonly told, how they come out, some of the impact and the idea of disclosure disasters and the consequences of these things, as well as when somebody tells how reliable it is and the process of ideas of disclosing everything at once, or if there's a different process, the concept of piecemeal disclosure.
Matt:And but I want to end, I guess, at least for today, kind of where we began. Because as we were starting to have this conversation, one of the reasons why I brought up spiritual experience and really spiritual injury is because of how common these injuries are and these events are within faith based and religious communities, and how the idea of sin and bodily sin contributes so greatly to shame and the inability to put language to certain things and the inability to feel to have anyone in your sphere to talk about these things with, to even talk about nudity or genitals or sex acts that are going on.
Kristin:Yeah, when some of those words aren't even allowed to, no one's ever talked to about it. There's not education. No. Body parts. It's not even okay to talk about it in your home.
Kristin:So there's so much that that shame and inward what do they do with it?
Matt:And I want to end there and consider that as we continue on to talk about disclosures because I do hold the opinion that a spiritual injury of this type can become an elevating spiritual experience if one can find somebody truly of safety and security and a person that they can share and contextualize their story with and how that can be a connecting experience to the being, to the self, to the mind and to another. And we can take a spiritual injury, a spiritual emergency, and in the processing and in the talking about it with the right person in the right way, that can be a very healing, helpful and elevating experience for the person, as well as both the sharer and the shared. And so not to say, because that experience happened, this happened. No, but it's a good thing now and I learned from it. Well, maybe that's a whole another can of worms, I guess.
Matt:But this idea of identity and reunification, oneness does tend to happen and has the ability to happen when one is given the opportunities and the tools with which to talk about that or write about it and use language and truthful story in turning a false narrative into a contextualized reality.
Carli:I remember reading a quote once that said it's not the idea of pain itself that is so traumatizing, it is the idea of being left alone with that pain and I think that goes very much to what you're saying. I wish I could remember who said it, but that goes to the heart of this discussion, I think.
Matt:I think so. And rather than again, just talking around the issues or even about the issues, through the issues includes arming people, and especially adults who care about others, and care about kids to have the tools to be the person of safety. Because my goal isn't just prevention. If that was my goal, it would drive me crazy. Would be SMI.
Matt:The goal is for effective and proper responses, tools, and more of them.