Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding little guide for survivors and counsellors, 25 Feb 2005
A brief little book - 80 pages - but tightly packed with ideas and information. It begins with a number of accounts by men who have experienced sexual abuse (from males and females, as child or adult), and progresses to a short analysis of sexual abuse of children. Much contemporary focus is on the abuse of children, and there are much more extensive analyses in a wide range of formats - survivors' stories, academic social work or psychology texts, etc.Sarah Stott, however, offers an excellent, condensed review of the impact of abuse on the child. She does not claim to provide the definitive account - simply enough information for you to read in a few minutes and get an immediate understanding of the impact of the attack on the victim, and a vision of the mindset of the attacker. It's fundamental stuff which should reassure anyone who has survived ... or is attempting to survive rape. Put simply - the child will interpret the abuse as somehow his own fault. The range of emotions and reactions are an honest attempt by the child to comprehend what happened. If you've been there, you will recognise these responses, you will recognise yourself. You are not alone, and you are not to blame. Stott goes on to review the rape of adult males. It happens much more often than most people realise, but is discussed much more rarely than child abuse. Rape of an adult is still too shrouded in fear - of being inadequate, of failing to protect yourself despite all the macho images, of having given off the wrong messages ... or being somehow to blame. Males - gay and heterosexual - get raped by people who want to demonstrate their power. You are not to blame. Again, anyone who has been the victim of rape as an adult will recognise the emotional symptoms. The author goes on to look at recovery, at the steps you can take to ease the pain and free yourself from guilt and fear. She offers practical advice on getting help. But the greatest help and advice she offers is in understanding. I'm a Probation Officer and social worker. I work with men who have been raped (often in prison), and with men who were raped as children. I've found this a book I can share with them ... one which can be quickly and easily read, one which will stimulate insights and free people to talk about their experiences and nightmares, one which helps them understand and begin to take a step forward. An outstanding, vital little book which I thoroughly recommend to anyone who has been abused and does not know where to start, to anyone who's partner or loved one has been abused, and to any professional working with people who need help, reassurance and friendship.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Well-intentioned but lacking in depth, 12 Jul 2007
This is a very brief book, an overview really, of 73 pages. For the male survivor, as distinct from someone who is not a survivor wanting to find out a number of facts about sexual attack with a few short descriptions, the book is likely to prove a disappointment, and much better help can easily nowadays be found elsewhere.
It suffers from a current vogue of generalising about what men are in terms of "being afraid to show their emotions", "reared to show emotion only through anger and sex", and other descriptions which though having the intention of trying to show men it is "allright to show emotions, really" etc in fact show that the book, frankly, has been written by a woman with certain attitudes towards men as Other.The attitude is liberal, but patronising, and indeed misleading. It is not really what the male survivor is wanting or deserving to hear, however "sympathetic" the approach of the author.
Again, the symptoms as described of effects longterm and short-term are not really thorough enough to be of use. There is overall a kind of slightly feminist-but-sympathetic approach which in this area is not one that is useful for survivors themselves. Survivors are humans, like female survivors, and we find it difficult to speak of certain things not because we have been reared to be, or are "macho", but because, as women find too, it is very difficult indeed to speak of these things. Men are not cultural stereotypes, and this book quite simply could not have been written by a man, let alone a male survivor.
It's quite reasonable, quite sound in a number of its summaries. But I think of a male survivor urgently needing some help and support for the first time. And I would say, quite definitely, this is not the place to for him to find it. Much better going to a male abuse support website such as Survivors Swindon, and reading the factual information pages there. I got much help from these, and many have. And above all, Mike Lew is the author you want to read: Victims no Longer, 2nd edition. There you will find numerous case histories from the inside, and the best advice in book form for male survivors of sexual abuse to come to terms with their past and start to turn their lives around. There is a future, but Mike Lew and Survivors Swindon is more likely to point towards it for male survivors than this well-intentioned but crucially lacking book by Sarah Stott.
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