International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation Volume 3 2022 58
Carl shared the experience of feeling alone:
I was at a men’s retreat. Yeah, I looked at myself.
I thought, “I’m around all these good, holy
men,” and yeah, I felt dirty. I felt dirty that day
because I thought about that I had never told
anyone, and I just felt so ...so ...like I was
alone around all these guys. (Carl, personal
conversation)
Each man found a way to overcome this feeling of
being alone by connecting with others who had had
similar experiences. Adam stated, “And some of the ...
some of the best [finger quotes in the air] therapy that
I’ve had were ...were people that also experienced it.”
It was this connection with other survivors that served
as impetus for Adam and Carl to disclose. As Carl
stated, “[Another male survivor] helped me find the
only counselor I told really about the details.” And Bob
described his sense of connection this way:
You feel like, uh, you’re part of a club. It’s not a
very good club. At least you have people who
can actually ...you just feel closer to these
people because they’re in the same situation you
are. I mean, they’ve went [sic] through the same
horrible stuff that you have. (Bob, personal
conversation)
Throwing Grenades
All participants were aware that their stories were
disrupting to others. To reiterate some of their
respective stories, Adam described the discomfort
he knew others experienced this way: “What are you
gonna say to somebody after they throw that grenade
in your lap?” He then used the same metaphor as he
described disclosing to his mother about the abuse:
“You know, initially [my mother] was shocked by, you
know, the obvious grenade that I threw into her lap
but, um, she did believe me.”
This acute awareness of the reactions of others as they
told their stories was a shared experience. As Bob
stated when he described finally disclosing to his wife,
“It was just ...it was a weird feeling, plus I didn’t want,
um, I wanted [my wife] to know, but I didn’t want to
burden her.”
Carl also shared the idea that disclosing was
burdensome to others:
I haven’t even told my wife or kids that I’m doing
this interview with you. They know that I was
abused. Um, I disclosed, you know, told them
about my abuse, but I never told them about the
rape when I was 16 until like a month ago. Any
time I bring it up, they, um, they ...they get
upset. It’s like this thing that is there but is best
left alone as far they’re concerned.
Monsters in the Deep
The participants each described a sense that the abuse
they suffered had taken on a life of its own within
them, as if the abuse they experienced had become an
entity in itself that controlled them in some way. Adam
described it as a monster within: “…if you can’t talk
about it, it has you in its grasp and it’s this big secret.
It’s this nasty monster that you can’t escape.” Adam
repeated this later in the interview: “You know, there’s
some days that it just creeps up on you, that monster
that’s trying to drag you down.”
Bob alluded to the same monsters within: “…There’s
one of two ways this could have gone for [me]. [I]
could have become a monster, too, or [I] could choose
to slay the monsters.”
The monster of this experience of abuse lives deep
inside each of these men. As Bob described, “I’d held
this inside so deep for so long that it was driving me
crazy.”
Adam summed it up this way:
I’ve been to six different therapists in ...in my
life, and I have ...I have yet to find one that
I really felt was willing to go into that rabbit
hole with me and to help me address it now on
a deep, meaningful level.
Each man described how the monster deep within
would sometimes take control, and as a result they
would engage in behaviors they did not want to do. Bob
and Carl described how the abuse, prior to disclosure,
therapy, and healing, led them into alcoholism, drug
use, and marital infidelity. Bob summed it up best:

ISSN: 2710-4028 DOI: https://doi.org/10.54208/0003 59
I’m not going to say it wasn’t my fault. I made
the choices but it wasn’t my fault, if you know
what I’m saying. It’s hard to explain, because it
was just ...it’s such a ...because I didn’t know
what was wrong with me. I think that’s part of
[disclosure], too, the freeing aspect, why I was
doing what I was doing because I couldn’t even
explain it to myself, and now I had an answer.
For each of the men, the abuse and its consequences in
their lives had become a monster that lived deep within
them. Disclosure was an attempt to invite someone to
go into the deep with them to confront the monsters
they believed live there.
That’s Not What I Wanted
The final theme that emerged in the lives of the three
participants was an experience of being engaged in an
activity after disclosure that they did not want to do.
Adam described his experience after he had disclosed
to his mother:
Uh, she has two sisters, and they have ...I have
cousins, and they all live out of town but she
wanted to have everyone to get together and to
discuss it, which I didn’t want that but that’s
how ...that’s how it unfolded. It wasn’t so much
about what I wanted or didn’t want, but, you
know, that my aunts came in, and we had a big
powwow and actually had a confrontation with
my grandfather, who came in to this meeting.
Bob described a similar experience. The therapist
began spending time in session using the Internet to
find the perpetrator of Bob’s abuse, so that Bob might
confront him. Bob explained,
I just started remembering, and we were talking
and, uh, we actually found him, looked him
up, because she wanted to know, if he was still
alive, if I wanted to confront him because she
had done it with other patients. ...but I never
...I never did want to confront him but that’s
how it came about when I started disclosing.
Carl likewise described a sense of losing his autonomy in
the therapeutic process after disclosing his experiences
of sexual abuse to his therapist. The therapist decided
that Carl’s alcohol use should be the primary focus of
clinical attention. Carl described feeling coerced into
submitting to an inpatient drug and alcohol treatment
program: “I wasn’t gonna go to counseling or go to
treatment, and [the counselor] kind of talked me into
[going to inpatient alcohol treatment], and I didn’t
want that.”
For Adam and Bob, the person to whom they disclosed
thought that confrontation of the abuser was necessary,
despite their objections. In Bob’s case, the person was
a mental health counselor. Carl felt the counselor to
whom he disclosed dismissed his experiences of CSA.
He felt forced into attending inpatient drug and alcohol
treatment, and the counselor never returned to the
topic of CSA when Carl returned from the inpatient
program.
All three participants described initially feeling
alone but overcoming that feeling of aloneness in
disclosure. Adam, Bob, and Carl were all acutely
aware, in the moment of their disclosure, that sharing
their experiences was emotionally disruptive to
the individuals to whom they disclosed. They were
hypervigilant for clues that they should stop disclosing
before they overwhelmed the one with whom they
shared their stories. Each of them longed, however,
to tell their stories to someone who was willing to
experience that emotional disruption, to confront the
effects of the abuse in a deep and meaningful way.
All three of them felt like their personal agency had
been wrestled from them when the ones to whom
they disclosed began to address what was important
to them instead, though not to Adam, Bob, and Carl.
Understanding these experiences has significant
meaning in clinical responses to adult male survivors of
CSA who disclose their abuse in a therapeutic setting.
Discussion
The clinical implications of this research are broad. In
this section we discuss how this research may influence
our methods of assessing CSA, the relational nature
of disclosure, and the importance of respecting the
autonomy of those who disclose CSA.
Assessment of CSA
All three participants made statements during their
interviews that affirmed the barriers prior researchers