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January 29, 2005

Center hopes film helps break the silence

He was in second grade, about 7 years old, when he tried to speak out. Scott Trobec drew a picture, depicting a male relative as a smiling devil holding a knife and showed it to his mother.

Upset, she brought it to Trobec's father, who asked him how he could do such a thing.

"Because he's mean to me, he's like the devil, he hurts me," Trobec said.

Not questioning him further, Trobec said his father walked away.

It was the only way a little boy knew to how to reach out. Trobec wouldn't try again until he was 38 years old.

Trobec's story and others are included in the documentary "Stories of Silence: Recovering from Boyhood Sexual Abuse," which debuted Tuesday at the Tau Center. Producer Ethan Delavan, who lives in Seattle, said he showed the film in Minnesota because it is home to the National Child Protection Training Center, as well as a number of his interviewees, including Mic Hunter, an author of books about male sexual abuse.

The center, housed at Winona State University, trains professionals to recognize, report and respond to childhood abuse and is developing a university curriculum to prepare future mandated reporters.

Delavan said he hopes to get his documentary aired on public television or at film festivals.

If people don't know someone affected by childhood sexual abuse, Trobec said, they aren't forced to deal with its existence. But, by watching the documentary, they will know someone, and by their awareness of the issue, prevent abuse.

"That's what's driving me," Trobec said. "If you have a society that

can't (talk) about the subject, there simply isn't the ability to protect kids."

When his parents didn't understand what he was telling them, Trobec said he gave up, thinking he must deserve the suffering he and his sister were experiencing.

Most childhood sexual abuse occurs within the home, Trobec said, and involves a person others least expect.

"If you don't put out a good image to people," he said, "you're not going to have access to children."

Trobec said studies have shown sexual abuse is on the rise because in today's stressful society, perpetrators take their anxiety out on victims.

"Survivors recognized something has to be done about this," he said. "It stops with our generation."

About two years ago, Trobec, 43, a St. Paul, Minn. accountant, co-founded the Survivors Network.

Victims can feel so isolated, he said, but when they come together, they realize they're not alone and healing is easier. If adults don't publicly share what happened to them, Trobec said secrecy continues and so does the abuse.

The pain

Men featured on the documentary said the effects of abuse on their childhood was detrimental and affected their adult lives.

"I didn't know where all this rage was coming from," said Chris Logue, who wrote a book about his experience so teachers and police officers could recognize signs a student might be enduring abuse.

Perhaps such insight could have prevented much pain in the life of Paul Dymit, a custom brick layer, who lives in Crystal, Minn.

He said he ruined one marriage, was addicted to gambling, and was on the verge of suicide, when he was hospitalized for depression.

I wanted to die, he said, so I couldn't hurt more people

He finally admitted to doctors and his wife what happened to him as a teenager.

Dymit, 32, said he had filled the void of abuse with various addictions, which repeated the cycle of shame and guilt.

A neurologist on the documentary also discussed why the brain shuts out memory of abuse, which is why victims might not fully recover memories of incidents until years later.

It's like a car accident, where you know what happened before and after, Trobec said, but blank out on what happened during it.

Dymit's abuser, a Jordan High School teacher, was convicted and imprisoned on four counts of sexual criminal misconduct against Dymit and another student. Dymit was 29-years-old before he called police, but because of his report, other victims came forward.

Dymit said if he had heard a speaker like himself talk while he was attending school, he probably would have spoken out then.

"For every case that you see on TV or read in the paper, there's probably numbers more happening in (your) town, churches, schools, communities," he said.

The silence

Some of the men on the film said though some of the ways they acted in childhood signaled they were being abused, but no one ever asked them if they were.

Logue said his book inspired one teacher to ask a student, who was acting sexually inappropriate in class, if anything had happened to him.

He immediately told her a family member routinely raped him, Logue said.

However, Trobec said some children might be quiet. He said he was already being hurt for doing nothing wrong, so he didn't want to give his perpetrator a reason to abuse him.

With professionals' lack of training about child abuse, Scott said the center's work is important for building awareness. He said he hopes Winona understands the valuable resource it has, and the respect the center is gaining will make WSU renowned.

"It does your heart good to know there are people (working) to prevent it," he said.

Posted by Nealus at January 29, 2005 12:25 PM

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