Friday Fun Client Stories

Every once in a while, there is a client you just can't bring yourself to like. Several years ago, there was a client in the ER who was car jacked. Once I arrived in the ER, I found that actually, she'd consumed a 12 pack of beer and then went out in her car looking to score some drugs. She found a dealer on the "wrong side of town." In addition to taking "payment" he also sucker punched her, raped her, and took off in her car. (Law enforcement weren't entirely sure she'd not offered her car as payment for the drugs because she couldn't specify how much money she'd given him.)

She was very drunk and very high and very unhappy. She used as much profanity as I've ever heard from a client in the ER -- some of it hurled towards me and some towards the nurse. She was as unlikable as a client could get. When the doctor finished the pelvic exam, she immediately tried to get off the exam table. The problem was that the table had been put up high for the doctor's convenience. She fell off the end of the table and landed on her hip/butt.

She didn't even feel the impact of falling from a table about three - four feet up. I was relieved when I could leave the ER and never see her again.

The next day, she called our office. Now sober, she was feeling quite embarrassed over her behavior. She apologized for her abusiveness. And, since that almost never happens, my feelings about her changed immediately. It was nice to see someone take responsibility for their behavior towards people trying to help her. And, it was nice to let go of feeling resentment towards her - or the guilt for feeling that resentment.

Brick Wall

We have dubbed this week the week of the brick wall. As in, hitting yo head up against it.

A co-worker attended a community forum on substance abuse thinking she could find allies for her prevention work. When someone in the audience brought up the issue of prevention, the DOCTOR on the panel said "I'm sure prevention has it's place, but it's largely ineffective." My poor co-worker was horrified that a member of the medical profession would adopt an attitude that addiction is a given if you have the genes for it - so we might as well just channel all our resources into treatment and not prevention.

Then, I attended a meeting in which many agency leaders were treated to a lecture by someone completely unqualified about our internal controls and bookkeeping practices. The person lecturing us, in the manner of a school teacher who has just caught students cheating on a test, is a board member of an agency that just faced sanctions from funders because their director was a criminal and their lack of oversight allowed it to go on for quite some time.

Oh, and we distributed cds with a positively messaged hip-hop style song urging men to take up the cause of ending rape. An employee of a local youth organization took several to hand out to the kids they serve. Today, the director of that organization stomped into our office, slammed the cds down on my desk, and declared that they would not be giving those cds to their kids. Um, because if you don't mention rape it won't happen?

A co-worker attended a lunch meeting today - and she was treated to the leader of a local non-profit substance abuse group blather on and on and on about how his organization is single handedly saving the whole world by getting two prostitutes off the street.

And, our local united way is sponsoring a "best legs" contest. They have one category for men, but three for women based on age. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it kinda sniffs of being sexist and exploitative.

Oh, and my volunteer who was on call this past weekend saw 4 clients in the er -- ranging in age from 10 months to 16 years.

Maybe we'll save the world next week. This week, I think they won.

Rape is Bad

Recently, I was participating in a state wide planning meeting - and we decided we needed to come up with a quick and easy to understand definition for us to use with people who don't work in this field but who we need to understand why what we do is so important.

I suggested "rape is bad."

They liked it, but ultimately decided to go with one that was a tad more informative.

But, at the heart of it all - just remember "rape is bad."

For those of you who don't have the history on this movement - here's the quick version. During the late 60s and early 70s, we experienced what is often referred to as the second wave of feminism. Women were getting together and discussing their lives. Many found they shared a history of sexual and domestic abuse. From these discussions, groups formed to bring attention to the issue of abuse -- and to create services for the abused. The first rape crisis centers were very grassroots and varied greatly by community. During the late 70s, 80s, and 90s rape crisis and domestic violence centers opened across the country. Now, most communities in the US have some form of response to violence against women/children.

But, the influence of this movement has also marked a change in our thinking about crime. We have moved away from thinking of prisons as solely places to reform criminals and more like places where reform can take place, but that the function is also that of public safety by keeping criminals away from the general public. We also have seen the rise of "victim rights" thereby improving the experience victims of any crime.

These days, you can find that most sexual abuse or domestic abuse centers are professionalized while still holding on to many of the grassroots ideals. You will also find that the public understanding of abuse has grown tremendously - and that currently there is a real push to make these organizations responsible business partners with governments and the community.

So, blog against abuse. Donate your time, expertise, money, resources, or voice to your local agency. Vote for leaders and judges who will protect the rights of victims. Or, simply know how to get in touch with your local agency just in case you ever have a friend who needs the information.

Rape and Oppression

Rape is oppression.

Rape is, regardless of what the federal government believes, a hate crime. The vast majority of victims are female and the vast majority of the perpetrators of this crime are male. It's a fact. Yes, there are female perpetrators and Yes, there are male victims. However, it still remains a fact that those cases are far less common.

The society wide consequence of this fact is that all women must fear rape - and thus must conform to a fairly silly code of conduct in order to "protect themselves" from rapists. By silly code of conduct, I'm talking about includes, but is not limited to, how women dress, how they conduct themselves in business and socially - being friendly but never actually flirting - and keeping doors and windows locked, looking over our shoulders, and never never having the blinds or curtains open if we change our clothes. Nudity, even in private, is scandalous. Women who are known to have a drink or socialize are suspect. The real kicker is that most of these behaviors are ignored or over looked - until a woman is raped. Then, suddenly any behavior is reason she "deserved" it.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it prevents our society from addressing the phenomena of rape as it truly exists and it allows individuals to blame the wrong party for the crime.

And this is why rape is oppression. I know that people around the country are talking about the issues of oppression as the Jena 6 situation is rehashed and reexamined. Racism is oppression. And so is rape. As you talk about the Jena 6 situation, remember that oppression is one of those ills we, as a society, have been combating for generations. All oppressions. But, we must be honest with ourselves about the perpetrators of oppression - and the victims. We can't come to conclusions and remedies until we first see the issue clearly.

swimming upstream

My agency recently undertook a change in our prevention programming. In the past, we specialized in the one time, twenty minute program to anyone who would give us a room and an audience. It wasn't the most effective "prevention" tool - but it was a great way to help people in our communities know help existed and wasn't at all scary.

Now, we are creating - out of thin air - new programs designed to work with high risk populations to create attitude and behavior changes. Also, rather than telling women and children to confine their activities or change their functioning to avoid rapists, we are working to make parents more responsible for looking after their children and teaching men that rape is bad. It's exciting, but it also means that it's something of a crap shoot. If we knew exactly why people commit sexual crimes - then it would be so much easier to prevent.

So, last night our Prevention Coordinator went to a community forum on alcoholism in order to see how the community reacts and considers problems of this scope. She was horrified when a medical doctor dismissed prevention efforts as "they have their place, but they are largely ineffective."

Sigh.

If the local community thinks that you can't prevent alcoholism - what chance do we have to convince them that rape is not part of the normal relationship between the sexes?

Exploiting Women, keeping the profits

As always, you can find my source article by clicking the title.

You know how the Miss America Pageant likes to say they don't exploit women or encourage women to define themselves only by their physical attributes because they are the largest scholarship source for young women in the country? Well, apparently, NOT.

The article cites how pageant winners who try to collect their award scholarships, find red tape, fine print, closed up organizations, and unreturned phone calls.

I don't know for a fact, but have always heard that there are profits to be made in pageants. It seems to me that the fact that so many young women find that the scholarships they earned through pageant participation don't actually exist to be proof positive that many of these pageants are exactly what the critics say they are -- opportunities for individuals to make profits off the bodies of women.

BOOO. HISSS.

Friday Fun Client Stories

What a long, busy week. Meetings - trainings - client calls - more than the usual hubbub. I suspect we have hit that point in which most productivity is achieved --- you know - that magical time between the end of summer and the holidays. Pretty much, from early September to Halloween is the most productive time of the year.

Here is this week's client story.

One of the aspects of victimization that bothers folks the most is just how the event totally consumes the victim's life. Intrusive thoughts - being "on guard" all the time (not just in case the perp is encountered but also other people's reactions both good and bad). Lots of times when victims shut down or insist they don't want to continue working with the court system it's because really they just want their lives back without every waking moment being about the rape.

Several years ago, I had a client in the ER who experienced the type of rape we are taught to fear most. It was a terrifying and violent assault. The perpetrator threatened her young child with serious injury to buy her cooperation. But, she used her smarts and managed to get him out of her house before he harmed her child or had the opportunity to harm her more than he already had.

Also, she was one of those rare victims who was very expressive in her pain. She wailed. You know how you read about women grieving and the wailing and tearing of hair and beating of breast? This is what I saw with her. It may have been the only client I've ever had who was that visibly upset in front of us.

After the rape, she would come to my office and curl up on our couch and cry for 45 minutes. She didn't want to cry in front of her children - but she felt like she had to "let it out." As you can imagine, she got tired of being this sad, this upset constantly.

Then, her child provided her with a distraction. The child shoved a popcorn hull up her nose and it got stuck. My client spent a day going from doctor to doctor looking for someone who could remove it. Finally, late in the afternoon - she found a doctor willing to remove it. Later, she told me that she realized that the whole day she was running around to doctors, she wasn't thinking about the rape. She realized that it felt good to set it aside for just a few hours.

The next week, when the child did it again - she knew which doctor to visit. And, it was the last time they had pop corn in their household for quite some time.

Not just dealing with the "system" . . . .

There is a link to an example article in the title -- if you want to go there.

One of the problems with helping college students who are raped is that they aren't just reporting one crime, they are taking on a huge system - some times single handedly.

First, most rapes on a college campus involve people who know each other. Also, they quite frequently involved heavy drinking. Add into the mix the circumstances are often not the sort of activities students really relish admitting to their parents -- heavy drinking, partying, sexual games, tiny bits of clothes, hiring of strippers, porn, etc.

Second, when a student reports a rape in college, they have two judicial systems to work with most of the time - the local criminal courts and the campus judicial boards. The goals and operations of the two groups are often exactly opposed to each other, too.

Thirdly, it is nearly impossible to keep the identity of the victim or alleged perpetrator secret in such a small environment. Even when students attend schools that are small towns, this sort of gossip and information spreads quickly. People are quick to make judgements and proclaim those judgements regardless how foolish, flimsy, or ignorant their information or knowledge of the case is. Very often, the logic is something as simple as "gee, that guy sat next to me in stats class two semesters ago, and he never tried to rape me - so she must be lying." I'm not kidding - that is frequently the level of thought that goes into "on the street" judgements. It becomes even more difficult when the accused is someone well known - like a popular fraternity member or athlete.

And, lastly - at least for this post - we are often dealing with people who have self esteem issues or new to adulthood or haven't yet fully formed their values. College students often come to campus with their own childhood abuse, substance abuse, mental health, etc issues. Adding a sexual assault to the mix can sometimes lead to incredible confusion and wavering resolve about pursuing charges.

I haven't yet figured out how exactly to meet all the needs of college student clients. They have so many stresses on them to begin with - they are being asked to navigate through a very complex and sometimes contradictory system, and sometimes can't help but feel as if the whole of the university community, the fraternity system, the athletic department, and/or the whole world is against them at the same time. I'm never surprised when victims want to "stop cooperating" with the justice system. I don't blame them. No matter how often we answer the phone, hold their hands, or reassure them that they are doing the right thing - we can only be next to them - in the end, this is a battle they have to be ready for themselves. And, that's asking the world.

One Thing I learned . . . more to come

The link to the web site is in the title.

During one of the conference lunches - we watched the movie War Zone by film maker and activist Maggie Hadleigh-West. It is an in-your-face confrontation of cat calling, crude comments, and other aggressive street behavior men display towards women. It is graphic, and at times scary and other times heart breaking.

If you go to the web site - you can watch a trailer for the film.

I took quite a few notes/observations during the film - but the one I was most struck by was that the behavior of men who harass women on the street are behaving exactly the way pedophiles behave. Pedophiles will tell you that they will engage many children in their search for the one who will respond to them. That becomes the child they target for sexual attentions/abuse.

Men who cat call random women on the street are functioning in the same mind-set and behavior pattern as pedophiles -- which is terrifying.

In the movie, Maggie comments that for years her mother told her to beware of strangers, and it was some time before she realized what her mother really meant was to be aware of men.

Sad that we must raise our daughters to fear the world around them - and that we can't, at the same time, be candid and honest about what exactly they should fear either.

National Conference

I'll be away for the rest of the week - attending the national conference. YAY! I'll be learnin' me something. I can't say what, but something.

Heh heh.

Pleasantly surprised

The community in which I live supports a small university. For the longest time, this school was little more than a regional school that drew students primarily from the surrounding counties. There were a few "outside" students -- but not many. It was, until recently the very definition of a "suitcase college."

A few years ago they recruited a new chancellor who had growth on his mind. (Truth be told, he saw this school as a stepping stone in his career and didn't much care what he did to people or the community so long as he moved up the ladder of his life.) For those who aren't terminally geeky - there is a population bubble of college aged folks -- so, colleges have been scrambling to expand and attract these extra kids to their schools. The big name schools, as always, can pick and choose the students they want - but the small regional schools have to find ways to attract kids.

The new chancellor decided that football would be the golden ticket. He has been talking football since he arrived. Even when people pointed to the million dollars to field a team, the multiple millions to build facilities, and the financial drain to maintain it all - he pushed and pushed and pushed. This year, they finally got football. Even though the chancellor has raised student fees at least twice to support it. And, he diverted funds from 14 new faculty positions to support it. And, there doesn't seem to be a stable long term plan for sustaining it. This weekend, they played football on campus.

I braced myself for what I assumed would happen. This school is already known for its' party atmosphere - which has only gotten worse over the years. I assumed I wouldn't sleep through the weekend because I'd be called to the ER to assist a student who had too much to drink and became a target for a perv.

And, I wasn't. Nothing. No calls. Nary a beep. Nada. Zip. Of course, lots of kids don't report immediately - so I'm not getting comfortable yet. And, just because no one showed up in the ER doesn't mean a rape didn't happen - it could just mean that it went unreported. Which worries me more.

A little something different for Friday

I actually thought up a good "Friday fun client story" yesterday . . . but then, a thing on television made me decide to table it.

And, I'm hoping to get some input from folks - or at least get a conversation started.

What would your DREAM JOB be? Now think - not just some fanciful "beer taster" -- consider the good and bad aspects of any job before you say it. My husband says that his dream job would be to arrange educational seminars for the national Holocaust museum. He wants to work in an environment that respects and appreciates his intellectual abilities, with other people who are interesting and intellectually stimulating, and within a subject/area he finds particularly interesting.

I thought about it pretty much all evening - and I really and honestly could not think of a job I'd honestly rather have than the one I do now. I'd like to have a bit more respect from my community. Perhaps a bit more pay. But, by and large, I wouldn't swap jobs.

There is a second part to the question - and this is left over from about a year ago. For the past year or so, my agency has struggled financially. Although all the "blame" doesn't rest in one place, it has been easier for me to direct all my angst towards a particular group. I feel that this group doesn't respect my agency (or me) the way we deserve to be respected. It's been a long year of bitterness and growing as a person.

So, in the midst of all this angst, I read about a foundation that gives non-profit leaders the money to take a sabbatical for themselves. It's something like, oh say, $50,000.00 plus money to pay for your replacement, and the requirement is that you must do something different from your job for 4-6 months to develop yourself and renew yourself. Just as I was reading this online, my husband happened into my office and found me in tears. Just the thought that someone would pay me to take time to renew myself was just too overwhelming at the moment. Heck, I'm misting up now just thinking about it.

I knew immediately what I'd do with a sabbatical like this . . . I'd take cooking classes in exotic places -- like Italy and Mexico and Paris.

So, today, discuss amongst yourselves . . . What would your dream job be and why? And, if someone were to give you $50,000 to spend 4-6 months doing something other than your job to renew your own spirit, what would it be?

Sad Trend

Naturally, because we are concerned with human welfare in this office, we are interested in issues surrounding parenting and helping parents keep their kids safe.

One of the trends I see more and more that makes me sad is how much media is devoted to giving parents information about basic parenting. Right now, I have a "Born Learning" poster over my desk - that urges parents to do things like "talk, sing, and read" to your child and establish a regular routine for the household.

I always assume such is something that would come "naturally" to parents. I was read to everyday when I was a child. I have lost my own voice more times than I can count reading to children.

Today, a co-worker found a book online on parenting. It had such complex suggestions like "ask your child how school went that day" and "have clean clothes for them." Again, if you can haul yourself out of bed and get dressed each day, wouldn't normalish conversation and clean clothes be something a parent would think of on their own?

Not only is this a sad trend -- but I also wonder if those parents who already do everything they can think of to create a safe, warm, and loving home but still find themselves struggling or fighting battles everyday -- what do they think? Is it really helpful to hear "sing to your child" when your child is slamming doors and screaming "I hate you"?

Surely, our society can offer parents more support than that. Surely.

I "respect" Bob Herbert

As always, the link to the article in question is in the title.

I want to make up t-shirts that have " I respect Bob Herbert" on them. I don't want the cutsy heart because it would be too confusing and reek of exploitation. But, I really think this guy gets it. Not just "women's" issues - but issues concerning how some humans treat other humans.

In this article - he reacts to the Mayor of Las Vegas being nearly gleeful at the thought of how much money his city could make if they legalized prostitution. Herbert points out that in many respects, Las Vegas is the epicenter of sexual exploitation in the US. It's disheartening to think that this Mayor completely disregards the real face of sexual exploitation and prostitution in his city -- or the costs to his city because child abuse, runaways, drugs, violence, and gang activity all run in the same cesspool as prostitution and the sex work of Vegas.

This article has me envisioning the whole of Vegas sliding in to hell in the "handbasket" my grandmother use to cite -- with the Mayor like a cherry on top. sigh.