arts

    

Author Mike Lew 

Real Voices, Real Recovery, Real

Hope for Men Surviving Sexual
Abuse in ‘Leaping’,

BY CHRISTOPHER KAUFMAN

lmost two months ago,

the editor of Out in the

Mountains asked if I
would be interested in reviewing
Leaping Upon the Mountains,
Mike Lew’s follow-up to his
seminal work Victims No Longer,
for many years the only accessi-
ble book available to male sur--
vivors of childhood sexual abuse.
I blithely threw out a “Sure, I’d
be happy to review it” answer,
knowing that the book was
‘already on my shelf at home,
ready for me to crack the spine. It
had been sitting there since I
bought my copy from Mike at a
survivors’ weekend over a year
before. ‘

And there it had sat for
over a year, on my bookshelf,
next to my bed, looking forlorn,
gathering deeply symbolic dust
and waiting for me to brave the
deep emotional waters it prom-
ised. And then my editor started

calling, wanting to know whether _

she needed to replace my review
9n the publication schedule with
something else, and I said, “I’m
doing it, no problem — any day
ncw,’I’ll turn it in.” So I found
myself, on the night before the
deadline, going for a marathon
reading session and writing the
review the day of the deadline.
I'm glad I have an editor that
knows how to crack a whip, even
as I sit here on the edge of tears,
filled with the sadness of these
men’s stories and overjoyed with
their victory over their abusers.

 

Now, I tell this story not
to demonstrate that I’m a champi-
on procrastinator, but rather to
note that reading a Mike Lew
book is not a task to be lightly
undertaken. It’s hard reading. It
requires a ‘strong commitment to
conscious emotional work. When
I found Victims No Longer in a
remainder pile, I bought it blindly
without really understanding the
journey I was about to begin. I
had never told anyone the full
story of my own childhood
abuse. I had no idea how deeply
the hurt and pain caused by my
abuse had affected my life, my
ability to form healthy relation-
ships, and my relationship to
abusers of power. I credit Victims
No Longer: along with an amaz-
ingly supportive partner and a
champion therapist, with turning
my life around and bringing me
to a new, and healthy, under-
standing of my body, my sexuali-
ty and my community.

It took me almost two
years to read Victims No Longer,
but I plowed through Leaping
Upon the Mountains in two
nights. It’s a shorter work and it’s
fiully dedicated to survivors’ own
stories of recovery. Unlike
Victims No Longer; it’s not a clin-

ical self-help guide to the process
of recovery but rather a series of
writings by male survivors on
their own experience of recovery.
Mike has created a vehicle for
men to talk about what they did
in their healing work; he allows
the men’s voices to drive the
work, and he does not analyze
their words or try to fit them into
a dry clinical modality. In so
doing, Mike has supported our
ability to understand boy victims
of sexual abuse as real people,
with a deeply human instinct for
survival. We get to see the men
who have contributed to this
book as our friends, neighbors,
co-workers, spouses and lovers.
We come to understand that They
are Us. We are Them. ‘

With the Catholic
Church sexual _abuse scandal
overwhelming the airwaves, it’s
easy to forget that survivors of
childhood sexual abuse are nor-
mal people who live in“o_ur com-
munities, our neighborhoods and
our homes. Boy victims of sexual
abuse have never before received
as much attention as they have in
the last several months. It’s easy
to start seeing the sexual abuse
scandal, as depicted in the media,
as a caricature or a parody.

With each news story of
another fallen priest and another

‘ bishop in denial, the scandal

starts to feel like an overwrought
movie-of-the—week. We start to
cheer each new revelation as
growing evidence that an oppres-
sive institution is crumbling.

continued on page 23

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