Letter from the President

Joanne Twombly, LICSW

Excerpted from the November, 2003 NESTTD Newsletter

Dear NESTTD Members and Supporters,

 I started out writing the presidential letter and a book review, and as I wrote the two got closer and closer, then entwined.  I rewrote, struggled to differentiate, and then just gave up and let integration happen.  It is true that sometimes integration allows for more flexibility, sharing of the possibilities/qualities of formerly discrete items. It’s efficient, and nothing gets lost since I’ll say all I wanted to say just in this one!

When I set out to review Anna Salter’s new book Predators, Pedophiles, Rapists, and other Sex Offenders:  Who They Are, How They Operate, and How We Can Protect Ourselves and Our Children and in process reread Anna’s previous book, Transforming Trauma, I realized why I’d at first decided against reading the new book. I bet I’ll have a lot of company.

It’s likely that many of us will stop reading right with the title and come up with lots of reasons not to read further like:  I know I should, but it’s too disturbing; I don’t work with perpetrators; I don’t work with children; or (my favorite) I’ll put it on the to-read-later pile.  I live with my own kind of denial system, or, as Janoff-Bulman would call it, my Basic Assumptions about trust, safety, etc…  I notice it when I read about some terrible car accident (…but I’m careful when I drive…) or murder (…I’d never let anyone like that get near me…).  And I live with my own in-the-box style minimizations like:  I know enough about perpetrators, I don’t need any more information!  Salter’s books don’t let anyone get away with denial or minimization, and in return for getting out of the box, you get solid, sobering knowledge and research that opens up a critical dimension of awareness.  Yes, it does means your assumptions will be shattered or at least shaken, and then work must be done to incorporate the new knowledge, and build a healthier more comprehensive set of assumptions, something like:  The sun is still shining, and I know more about protecting myself and my children, more about helping my clients heal and more about helping them learn to protect themselves.  I’d say that’s worth it!

Another way of looking at it is: fair is fair!  If we require that clients look at the things they don’t want to, we need to be open to looking to them ourselves!  Roland Summit in his forward to Transforming Trauma wrote, “This book makes it clear that it is not enough to study one polar aspect of the victim-perpetrator syncytium*…Until now, we have dared look only at pieces of the victimization picture puzzle, like gathering corners, frames, and central clusters without risking the difficult moves that would integrate the several fragments into a coherent picture….We have done this like a dissociating child, not in a conscious preference for ignorance but in the relentless avoidance of insufferable pain.”  This challenges us to move out of our comfort zone and to read these books. Transforming Trauma is about treating victims, and the new book is about preventing them.

In Anna’s forward to Transforming Trauma she writes:  “What does the clinician who treats adult survivors need to know about sex offenders?   How do sadistic and nonsadistic offenders think differently, and what are the different footprints they leave in the heads of survivors?  How does trauma affect the worldview of victims?  Exactly how can clinicians help their clients shake free of an internalized perpetrator?  What are the steps of therapy for adult survivors?  Finally, how can trauma not be just endured, but transformed?”  I found this very readable book to be filled with material valuable to my work with clients.  Think about how many conferences and talks you’ve gone to that are about treating victims, and add it up.  Most of our training has lacked this piece, in the same way much of our training in the past lacked information on dissociation.

Her book Predators, Pedophiles, Rapists, and other Sex Offenders:  Who They Are, How They Operate, and How We Can Protect Ourselves and Our Children, I found to have equally compelling information, but is written with an  edge that made it a less easy read. In addition, I felt somewhat battered by Salter’s accounts of horrible crimes.  What I came to realize and needed to look at, is my own reluctance to facing the realities she writes about, not to mention the times I’ve put myself at risk.  One example was letting a man soliciting for some worthy cause during a torrential downpour come into my house to make a phone call.  He said, “Here’s my office number, you can call and check me out.”  I thought, “That sounds responsible.”  I let him in and nothing bad happened.  In Predators, I read that was the same ploy the Boston Strangler used to gain access to one of his victims…  Anna’s description of another offender chilled me further, “His camouflage is expert, and he knows us far better than we know him.  We have our own reasons for not wanting to see him for who he is, and he knows that too.”

This book is a gift to us. It contains chapters on different offender categories, and then chapters on “Staff Seductions,” deception, and finally one on “Deflecting Sex Offenders,” a chapter parents should be required to read as a minimum requirement to having kids!  Anna does the work many of us do not. She’s researched, collected an enormous amount of information and distilled it into these two very helpful books. 

Good reading and a good fall season to all,

Sincerely,

president@nesttd.org

* syncytium:  A multinucleate cell, or a mass of non-cellular, undifferentiated protoplasm (definition provided just in case there’s someone else like me and my computer’s Spell Check who didn’t know the word).

Salter, PhD, Anna,  Predators, Pedophiles, Rapists and Other Sex Offenders:  Who They Are, How They Operate and How We Can Protect Ourselves and Our Children.  NY:  Basic Books (2003).004. Connie is a warm, funny and wise speaker, and author of the must-read book nce

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