Abstract: Conservative estimates place the number of male victims of sexual child abuse at 1 in 7 boys. This paper will engage in a needs assessment of mental health services for this population, and point out the various problems that arise in the acquisition of those services. It speculates that several issues must be address:

1. •Men must be informed about the prevalence and nature of this problem.
   

2. •Therapists must be educated about behavioral signs in men that tend to be caused by sexual abuse.
   

3. •The society must be reeducated about victimization and encouraged to move beyond the limited view of men as emotionally shut down/shut off individuals, which encourages me to avoid knowledge about their own abuse and encourages the society to devalue the needs for mental help services for this target population.
   

4. •Mental health providers must be encouraged to provide services for male sexual abuse survivors.
   

One of the very real problems faced by any writer in this area is the relative lack of data concerning the paucity of mental health services for male sexual abuse survivors. Other than statistics retained by insurance companies (that pay for the treatment of only those persons who can afford medical insurance - who are overrepresented by whites and middle-income persons and therefore is not an accurate representation of the overall population) there are few statistics on this problem. Therefore, much of this paper is based upon anecdotal information and observations of various authors in the mental health field.

Introduction

It has been estimated that 1 out of 5 women and 1 out of 7 men “have been or are being sexually abused as children (Bass, Davis, 1994; CASA, 1999). With a national population of 200 million, of which 52% are females, that means that approximately 27 million females and 20 million males are victims of sexual abuse. It is, therefore, true that the number of female sexual abuse victims is larger than the number of male victims, but not substantially more. However, the cultural blindness that exists concerning the prevalence of male sexual abuse and the profound negative effects this abuse has on male victims’ ability to form healthy relationships displays the extent to which this society wishes to defend social notions of male prerogatives in the face of strong evidence that many males are unable [and unwilling] to fulfill those cultural demands due in part to their victimization as children.

In spite of the prevalence of this issue, though, while many mental health providers have services for female and male children, upon entering adulthood many of those services for male survivors disappear. As social workers, this should be an area of great concern for us. We devote a great deal of professional energy to sexual abuse issues faced by women and children, but often fail to adequately provide resources for those children when they reach adulthood. Additionally, we do not provide sufficient assistance to adult males who are sexually abused during their adulthood. Some services of this kind exist at rape crisis centers, but because many males are unaware of these services, they are reluctant to come forth with requests for assistance with working through their trauma.

Sexual abuse issues have a certain uniformity for both females and males; sexual abuse is traumatic irrespective of the sex of the victim. However, male sexual abuse survivors have a different experience with the aftereffects of such trauma, due to the different expectations that our culture has of men and their ability to cope with their abuse. Since males simply aren’t allowed to be victims [or at least not allowed to be seen as such], this cultural blindness creates immense issues of confusion for me (Lew, 1990). Males are often more damaged [than females] by society’s refusal or reluctance to accept their victimization, and by their resultant belief that they must “tough it out” in silence (M.A.L.E., 1998). Further, this blindness creates many issues for men when it comes to constructive mental health intervention. Very few mental health providers have services to address this issue for adult male survivors. In part, this is the case because male survivors, due to cultural messages which say that men are not supposed to be victims of sexual assault, do not come forth with a request for such services; and, as a result, few providers are motivated to provide such services. The result of this double-bind is that even if a male survivor has the courage to face his abuse or begins to have memories of it and chooses to work through those memories, he often finds that services for vulnerable populations of men who were sexually abused are minimal or often non-existent. It is also true, though, that few mental health professionals have been adequately trained to recognize and treat the traumatic outcomes for male survivors (Lew, 1990).

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Mariposa Men’s Wellness Institute was founded in 2001

to help men become emotionally healthy.