Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hi, this is Rachel and Recovery. We've got a special guest with us,
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dr Anna Psalter, and she's going
to tell us a little bit about
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herself and then we're gonna ask her
some questions. This is Annasalter. I
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am a psychologist and author. I've
written three academic books and and five mysteries.
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I also do a lot of training
and I've been working in the field
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of sexual abuse for close to forty
years. Now. Okay, uh,
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dr Anna is going to answer some
of these questions that are written up for
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her, and she's going to do
her best to answer them. Um,
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okay, first question, z Z, how did you get into this work?
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Well, the odd thing is that
when I was in graduate school in
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the seventies, I didn't have any
courses and sexual abuse. Really everybody thought
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it wasn't a problem. Back then, I was told that incest was one
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in a million. I never even
had a lecture in child sexual abuse or
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adult sexual assault. Then when I
got out of school, I went to
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work at a community mental health center. It seemed to me that every second
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child was sexually abused, physically abused, neglected, or emotionally abused. And
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I realized I didn't have the skills
I needed, so I started trying to
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adapt the skills that I had in
working with children with other kinds of problems
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and adults, and that worked pretty
well until the course started sending sex offenders.
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And I really knew, I believe
from the beginning at insight oriented therapy
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was not the right approach for sex
offenders. So I got a small grant
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from the State of Vermont. I
ran around the country looking at programs that
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had been treating sex offenders. Found
one in Seattle, Washington that I thought
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very well of used polyglove graph and
plethysmograph, did not use insight or in
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the therapy. I started writing up
my report and it just kept getting bigger
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and bigger, and it ended up
my first book, Treating Child sex Offenders
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and Victims of Practical Guide. After
that, I was kind of stuck,
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as it were, because there were
so few books at the time that the
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book kind of went everywhere, and
I ended up training and Europe and in
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Australia and New Zealand a bunch of
other places on sex offenders. Um,
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can you give us a little bit
of history of the psychology and sexual abuse?
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Well, when I wrote my first
book, I looked back to see
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what since psychology had made of of
sexual abuse. And we all know that
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Freud got it right the first time. His women, his patients, women
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patients reported high levels of sexual abuse, and he gave a talk on it
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and did not get The talk was
not well received, and he went back
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and decided that women had made it
up. These are all edible fantasies.
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So that story is so widely no
and I didn't really go into that in
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the book. But what I discovered
that really surprised me was in this country
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in the last century and a half, sexual abuse has largely been blamed on
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the victims. Women were considered hysterical, they brought it on themselves. I
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was described as a form of child
acting out. Uh, the offenders were
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portrayed as the victims, and the
children were portrayed as offenders. I've never
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really been able to make sense of
that. I've seen it over and over,
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I documented, I read paper after
paper which took that point of view,
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But I can't tell you that I
understand it. I never have.
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It seems so ridiculous to me,
But it's only really been in the beginning,
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in the late seventies and eighties that
victims were treated in any sense as
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victims. And even today, victims
are frequently attacked as having made up the
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story to get back at someone,
or having the story implanted, or they're
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simply confused, or they have bad
memories, on and on, the attacks
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still go on. I mean that's
a huge issue in our country today.
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Um, what do you find the
most surprising in your work with predators?
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Well, with all kinds of violence
offenders, The thing that's so surprising to
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me is they are not the masterminds
people think they are. Uh. Sex
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offenders come into varieties. There are
other tap roots, but they're two big
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ones. And one tap root is
these are people who are just sexually attracted
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to children. Uh. They didn't
choose it, they discovered it. We
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think now it's a sexual orientation.
Uh that those groups, that group can
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be very successful in their lives.
That can be college presidents or Nobel Price
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winners or Olympic coaches, on and
a. And they just what's wrong is
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they're sexually attracted to kids. They've
got what I call a divot motor.
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Ah. The other group are those
who are antisocial and they just don't care
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they'll use anybody they other people are
objects to them. Some of them will
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rape adults and and molesque kids.
So I spent a lot of years looking
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at articles that had fifty seven circles
and ovals about the origins of child sexual
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abuse. Came to the conclusion it's
really very simple. It's like a car.
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There's a motor in a car.
There's a motor in their brakes.
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With sex offenders, with those who
are sexually attracted to kids, there's a
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problem. Is the motor part of
the problem. Now, of course,
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you can have a normal arousal pattern
and still attack a kid for other reasons.
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So some of them don't have a
deviant motor, but all of them
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have a failure of brakes. What
keeps the rest of us from acting out
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sexually and inappropriate ways is fear of
consequences, common sense or moral code empathy.
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Un you may think the sixteen year
old babysitter is gorgeous, it doesn't
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mean you're going to attack her on
the way home. You may think you
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may be attracted to your wife's sister. It doesn't mean that you're going to
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rape her or even come on to
her. We have control cognitive controls,
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say to us, I don't think
so, not a good idea. Uh,
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these guys have a defect in the
controls the brakes, and some of
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them also have a defect in the
motor. So the most surprising thing for
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me is it's a lot simpler than
I think most people think. Um when
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dealing with a domino case such as
a three year old being sexually abused by
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a five year old, or a
five year old being sexually abused by a
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nine year old, and a nine
year old being sexually used by a thirteen
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year old and a thirteen year old
being sexually abused as an adult, what
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do you what's going on in this
situation? All are victims. But when
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do the age of accountability or emotional
capability on victims become responsible for their own
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actions by adolescence these age groups.
First of all, this happens lesson people
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think. When we use polygraph backup
the majority of adult sex offenders we're not
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do not say that they're abused as
children. When you don't use a polygraph
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and you just ask them, two
thirds of them say that they were sexually
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abused as kids and blame they're abusing
other people on their own molestation. So
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you have to remember that sex offenders
are not always transparent. But when little
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kids act out sexually, they it's
and they were sexually abused by someone or
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prematurely sexualized by another kid in some
way. They're usually Uh, it's like
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a form of post traumatic stress remembering, except we have memories and kids engage
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in play. Now. Of course, I'm distinguishing between abuse and sex play
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between children. When two kids of
the same age get involved in exploratory sex
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play, there may be no abuse
involved at all. Uh. You can
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tell the difference by whether one kid
is significantly older, one kid is manipulating
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into the sad agree kind of thing, or is that well, show me
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yours and I'll show you mine.
Is children exploring their bodies and each other's
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bodies. Oral sex is a much
more adult form of sexuality, but the
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kids who act out sexually are,
with some exceptions, uh, generally recreative.
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If it's not normal sex play,
if it's oral sex, if it's
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penetration, and so forth. They're
usually recreating something and it is a process
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of reliving it. But adolescents are
older and they have the capacity for cognitive
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breaks. Little kids also don't know
that there's anything wrong with the behavior typically,
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and adolescents do so in spite of
that. With adolescents act out sexually,
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it is uh, it's more serious, and I would always put an
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adolescent in treatment who had either use
force with appear or acted out sexually with
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a younger child. Nonetheless, most
adolescents, a vast majority who act out
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sexually as teenagers did not do so
as adults. There is a big bulb
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of all kinds of crime and adolescent
sexual crime, violent crime, property crime,
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and the vast majority of that crime
disappears when they transition to adulthood.
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Adults sex offenders are a whole different
thing that definitely need treatment and in many
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cases confinement. Okay, do you
think if caught early enough in adolescents that
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can make a difference for some predators? Oh? Absolutely, I would definitely
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recommend treatment at the earliest stage possible. I think we are much more hopeful
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about our about adolescent offenders. But
one of the reasons is that the comparatively
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speaking, there are a few fewer
adolescents who act out because they are generically
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attracted to kids, and more of
them act out because they are juvenile.
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Delinquents and they're engaging in other kinds
of crime as well, and that tends
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to resolve as they for the majority
of them, as they reach adulthood.
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So the sexual crime when it's it's
easier to treat when it's not based on
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a deviat preference for children. Um, what do you think of the story
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of Lot and his daughters and the
way that was written start the history of
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victim blaming? Well, I think
it's definitely victim blamed. The victims are
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blamed for getting their father drunk and
having sex with him. However, uh,
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I have no idea if it's the
first episode. I have a cynical
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suspicion that somewhere in a cave wall
there's a depiction of sexual assault in which
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the child is the aggressor. It
seems to be a very old form of
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misogyny. So I don't know that
it's the first instance, but it's definitely
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an instance. Okay, Um,
how does situation of cult or incest situation
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differ from sexual abuse from a teacher
or someone outside of the family for a
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predator, Well, for the victim, I think incest is is probably the
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most devastating form of abuse. If
you're abused by someone outside the home,
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you can go home. You have
safety, and they don't have twenty four
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hour a day access to you.
If you are betrayed by a family member,
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they do tend to have much more
access to you over a longer period
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of time. In terms of offenders, what the research shows is that they're
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the majority of them are probably not
generically aroused by children. About half of
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them are also molesting outside the home, and that's the group that's more likely
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to have a devent preference. But
many incests, defenders offend not because they
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have a generic attraction to five year
ols, but because they feel entitled.
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As one offender said to me,
my home is my castle. I'll do
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what I god damn will please.
Uh had offenders say this was actually a
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female offender say, I brought them
into this world and I can take them
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out of it. And she did
beat her preschool children unconscious regularly, So
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it's entitlement. Sometimes it's revenge against
the spouse she had, she had an
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affair, so I got back at
her by molesting her daughter or our daughter.
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That doesn't make a lot of sense
to most of us, but that's
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actually a very frequent thing for offenders
to say. So it may be revenge.
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Uh, it may be pouting.
You won't have sex with me.
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If you'd had sex with me,
I wouldn't have had to have sex with
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Susie. There are a lot of
other motivations that are involved in incest.
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Then there are typically an out of
home offending. Um, since there is
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putophavilia and the janet component is there
all is that also a part of incests
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for those who act upon their pedophea
inside of their families. But the research
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is showing that an attraction to kids
appears to have a genetic basis in some
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cases, or at least congenital.
In other words, you're born with it.
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You don't have to be abused or
whatever. You just when you're eleven
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to thirteen and you get interested in
sex, you're thinking about little kids and
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not necessarily peers or older adults.
But as I said, many incest offenders
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molest for other reasons entitlement, power
and control, revenge, And we don't
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there's no research I'm aware of it
suggests that those offenders that that type of
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offending has a genetic basis. Okay, um, can you tell us a
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little bit of difference between pedophilia and
just a sexual abusion. I think we've
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pretty much hit that. But if
there's anything else you'd like to add,
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yes, there there is really a
lot of people equate pedophilia with say,
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child molestic And the truth is pedophilia
just means that you're sexually attracted to children.
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It doesn't mean that you act on
it. So there are very likely
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people out there, uh, who
are sexually attracted to kids who don't act
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on it because they're horrified by it. And there are also molesters who molesque
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kids who are not generically attracted to
that particular age group. There's a lot
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of overlap. Of course, it's
like a Venn diagram. There are some
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pedophiles who don't offend, a lot
of pedophiles who do offend, and and
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there are child molesters who aren't pedophiles
but they still offend. And this is
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important because, for example, in
the Woody Allen case, one of the
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defenses for Alan was, well,
no other children have come forward, so
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he didn't molest his daughter Dylan.
Well, he may not be a pedophile,
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and he may still have molested.
In fact, I think the evidence
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is pretty compelling that he did molest
his daughter Dylan. It may not have
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come from a generic attraction to kids. That may have come from dynamics of
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wanting to get back at Maya Pharaoh
or some other uh, some other reason,
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his obsession with Dylan from the time
she was born, whatever. But
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we need to make a distinction between
being attracted to children and acting on it.
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Fair enough, Um, can you
tell us a little bit about sadist
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You mentioned those, and that's you
know, a whole different level. I
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feel like it is a whole different
level. Most stadious attack adults satis are
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people who are sexually aroused by pain, suffering, terror, and humiliation.
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I think if most of us saw
a child or an adult being tortured,
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uh, we would throw up.
I mean, it's it's a nightmarish thought
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to even see something like that.
For these guys, they get high that
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they tell me is better than crack, better than cocaine. I've had people
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say that more than once they get
Even those who can also get uh,
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can ejaculate to consensual sex would tell
me that the high is greater and the
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the thrill is greater, and it
lasts longer. When they are hurting or
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controlling so someone or torturing or making
them suffer. Does that kind of get
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into the fifty shades a great kind
of thing? Or is that people do
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ask what's the difference in people who
joined s and M clubs and people who
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abduct strangers. The difference is probably
the level of psychopathy, in other words,
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how much of a conscience they have. We do have people who are
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turned on by pain and inflixing pain. I don't personally think that's healthy,
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but there are people who are turned
on by it. But they have enough
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of a conscience that they only engage
in that behavior with people who agree to
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it, and they, uh,
they have a safe word that the person
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says, and they stop the activities. They're not going to jump out of
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a bush at anybody because there they
have too much of a conscience. And
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when you get, for example,
sadistic killers, they are almost inevitably psychopaths
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and sadists they don't have a conscience. Okay, Uh, speaking of sociopaths,
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can you tell us a little bit
about those? Well, we don't
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use the term sociopaths so much anymore
because people used it in two different ways.
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Some people used it to refer to
people who are antisocial. They may
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be in a gang. Uh.
They may have loyalty to the gang,
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or to their relatives, or to
somebody, but not to the larger society.
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They didn't buy into the social contract. So they'll rob and mug whatever
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you and I. But they have
the capacity for loyalty. Other people used
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it to mean psychopaths, people who
don't have any loyalty to anyone. These
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are the people. These are always
the people who snitch in prison. Are
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they actual uh, psychopaths, So
usually prefer I usually call them psychopaths so
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people are clear what I'm saying.
And they are. That definitely has a
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genetic component, and their brains seem
to work differently from other people's brains in
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a in a variety of ways.
They don't have a conscience. Now they're
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not. It's still different from being
a satist because a psychopath does whatever they
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want. But they may not have
any interest in torturing anyone. They may
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be checked forgers. They may be
somebody who uh who sets up a Ponty
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scheme for stocks. They just don't
care who they hurt, but it's in
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the service of what they get,
of what they want. Whatever it is
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whether it's rape, or whether it's
money or uh, or whether it's the
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thrill of fooling people satist do.
The point for sadist is the hurdy that.
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Um, that's the point, and
so that the two groups are different.
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But you don't really want to run
into either one of them if you
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can help it fair enough. UM, I've got a few more questions.
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I was trying to get them through
them pretty quickly. Those who have trauma
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bonds with their abuse and have wanted
to repair their relationships with their abews.
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Have you ever seen a healthy repair
within a family? Yes, I really
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have better s. I had,
for example, an offender who molested his
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twelve year old daughter and he kept
leaving the He kept moving out the house,
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and he would say to his wife, I, Um, you don't
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understand. I can't stay here.
I just can't stay here. You don't
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understand. H And he uh moved
back in. He went into treatment,
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He cooperated with treatment, and one
of the things we did, oh my
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gosh, one of the things we
did was identify a mood he gets in
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before he abuses of isolation and feeling
sorry for himself and things like that.
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And his wife would call and say
he's in that mood again, I'm bringing
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him in. Uh. And I
saw another guy who molested his grandchildren and
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and I didn't he actually he didn't
even get an attorney. He said to
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the judge, I hope you send
me to prison. Maybe I can make
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up in some small a way for
what I've done. So But but frankly,
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it is rare. In general,
people think way too much, not
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way too much. They only think
about whether the offender is going to reoffend.
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But they don't realize is for many
victims, they're never going to not
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be afraid if he's in the house. So it's re traumatizing for many victims
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and their mental health suffers. That's
a separate issue from whether he's going to
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reoffend. Well. And the other
thing is, I mean, when you're
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trauma bonded. I mean, I'm
I'm a prime example of this. I
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mean I was actually used by my
dad and uh, I mean I was
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very much bonded to him. He
was the guy who protected me from my
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mom because she was a borderline and
morderline rage is real, and it can
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be very devastating for a child.
And you know, he in a lot
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of ways was my protector from all
of that. Yeah, really, I
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didn't address the trauma bomb part.
It is true that many children are put
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in situations where the offender actually offers
more protection than the non offending parent.
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I mean that was in the case
of the woman who would beat her children
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unconscious. She let men come in
the house and offend them. They were
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inevitably kinder to the children than than
she actually was. Uh. And this,
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the trauma bond issue, is important. It's really important because judges will
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will use it sometimes she wants to
see her father, she wants to go
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back with her father as an indication
that the guy isn't risky. And that's
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a totally different issue because he has
got has twisted this child into caring about
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him, and children are open hearted
and they're frankly easy to manipulate. Doesn't
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mean that he is any less guilty. So I wish judges knew more about
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the concept of trauma bonding than they
do. Some offenders, even in situations
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for the non offending spouse is not
abusive, it's some offenders. Offenders are
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very good at getting kids to love
and to trust them. That's their entire
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operation. That's how they that's how
they get access to kids. And because
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they're successful in that, we should
understand that they're more risky, not less
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risky. Yeah, I can see
that. M H. What do you
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find the most difficult when dealing with
the rose color colored glasses society? Yeah?
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I wrote chapter in my book about
rose colored glasses, and people have
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all these sayings to make themselves feel
safe. You know, everything turns out
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for the best. I have a
guardian angel. People are very trusting h.
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And the odd thing is I wrote
the chapter on sadist. I wrote
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chapter on what I called rose colored
glasses. I thought everybody would be upset
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about the chapter and said this because, frankly, it's a horrible chapter in
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terms of the descriptions of what some
of these people do. And I never
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got any complaints about it, but
I had hate mail over the chapter on
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rose colored glasses. You just want
us to go around being depressed. One
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person in the field I sent it
to said, I never recommend your book
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to anybody. She said, because
I have a neighbor who I have a
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neighbor who doesn't lock their doors.
She says, if I don't lock my
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doors, they may rob me.
One day, but if I locked my
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door, they robbed me every day. I'm usually pretty calm about responding to
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emails, but I that really annoyed
the heck out of me. And I
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wrote her back and said, if
we were just talking about a VCR,
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you might have a point, but
we're talking about the health and safety of
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our children, and we can't afford
your kind of denial. Um. And
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I believe that. I believe that
parents have to be aware, that teachers,
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coaches, uh that there's just a
tremendous amount of sexual abuse in society.
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And I end book by talking about
the fact that when my kids were
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little, I was the parent on
the sidelines with the lounger and the baseball
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cap. You know, I was
at the practices. I learned to score
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baseball, so I have an excuse
for hanging around the team. I was
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the team manager or whatever role.
Parents got in so many activities that when
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my son was a senior in the
baseball coach asked the team for recommendation for
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which parents would do it. Five
kids raised their hands and recommended me and
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then instead of their own parents.
But I felt those were the risky situations,
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and parents just assume that they can
drop their kids off with at practice.
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Uh, nothing's going to happen.
I don't. People are too trusting.
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Yeah, now you're completely right about
that. Um. What do you
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do for self care? Because all
of this has to be emotionally taxing.
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Um. I live in the mountains. Att. I take pictures of bears
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when I can find them. Actually
several showed up on my deck, so
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they weren't too hard to find.
I do wildlife photography. I wrote the
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mysteries just because the good guys always
win. Uh. One speaker I heard
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said her advice for people in the
field about having a about a personal life
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was have one Ah. This is
not I do this work, but this
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is not my whole life. I
write, I take pictures. I hike
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an hour and a half to two
hours a day. I ride horses.
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This is what I do. But
I try not to get sucked into the
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world the whirlpool. Uh. And
I have to have that balance. Last
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question, how, how is doing
this work impacted your faith? Faith?
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Yes? Yes, I don't have
any Okay, I I believe. I
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guess the faith that's the closest for
me is Buddhism because they speak of compassion
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unkindness. I've just been an expert
witness in too many Catholic church cases,
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uh, Protestant church cases. I've
got a Jehovah's witness case right now.
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You may not know, or you
may that in the Jehovah's witnesses there have
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to be two witnesses or someone is
not believed. So if the it's open
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season on children, as long as
the perpetrator doesn't confess, he has to
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confess or someone else has to see
it, or the child is not believed.
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So as far as organized religion goes, I'm sorry. I'm just not
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a fan. I've seen too many
abuses in all of the major religions.
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I completely understand that. Okay,
well, thank you for your time,
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and maybe we can interview another time
and another day about something else related to
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this, of course, And thank
you for your work. I think it's
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really important and I always admire people
who turned trauma into uh it's something that
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helps other people. So uh work, like the work you're doing, is
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very very much appreciated. Thank you. Okay, all right, guys,
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thanks for listening. Tune in next
Thursday and UM. As always, you
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can follow us on social media and
listen to us on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks
