Tag: modern yoga

This is perhaps the most important and powerful post I have ever published in this blog.

And I didn’t write it.

I asked a friend and fellow yoga teacher to write not only about the topic of sex abuse in the modern yoga world, but also comment on how he feels the subject has been treated in the yoga blogosphere over the last year.   My friend requested anonymity and also being a trauma survivor, I honored his request.

His post may upset some and with good reason because this is a charged topic.  But the writer believes he has relayed it in a way that will not  cause more hurt to people who have already been hurt by these issues even if they don’t agree with him.

This is a long post so grab some coffee and a comfy chair, read and digest these words.  Then read it again.  And again.

Talk amongst yourselves.

_____________________________________________________________________

“SEX, LIES, AND YOGA”

It isn’t easy to write about the sex scandals that have plagued the yoga community in the last three years.  At least it isn’t if you or your friends have been involved in them.  But in recent discussions with a good friend on these matters, it struck me that much of the online and media discourse on the scandals serves more to create anger than to provide insight into the specific incidents and into the process and repercussions of abuse.  The language we use, the way we discuss these events is important because it is the only means to communicate what took place and how.  If done thoughtfully (and you don’t necessarily have to read this as “delicately”) then it can lead to (more) accurate accounts and meaningful discussion.  If done without regard for the power of language and an assessment of our emotional state, then discussion won’t likely be fruitful and may ultimately do more harm than good.

And so the idea of this piece was born.  Even though I have been a victim of abuse I don’t speak from a point of authority on abuse in general.  And despite being friends with some of the people involved in three of the scandals of the last three years, I can’t speak with authority on these scandals in particular.  Mine remains one point of view based on my experience and my interactions with the victims, perpetrators, and their friends and family.  But I offer a point of view that, at least as far as I’ve seen, has not been shared and is not typically shared when these things occur… a different way of seeing these problems, their players and the role of the community, whether or not it is involved in the discourse.

There is an element of vulnerability in these events that can be so overwhelming so as to make it feel deeply inappropriate to publicize the feelings, let alone the details.  You see, for most of those involved, these atrocities are not primarily about yoga, nor about the community, but rather about personal loss, failure, shame, and/or the betrayal of a friend, teacher, spouse or lover.  Their primary concern is not how to keep these things from happening again but dealing with the repercussions of the abuse and of its publicity.

They are facing spouses, families, children, friends and coworkers with details and implications of events that are tough to understand even as you are in the middle of them, perhaps especially if you are in the middle of them.  They face anxiety attacks, sleepless nights, constant tension in their relationships, stress from daily or weekly reminders of the events via online message boards, the hard work of admitting what went wrong and the even harder work of healing from it, facing consequences or making amends.

The yoga is incidental in most cases, a vehicle of opportunity rather than the cause (at least most of the time).  There are definitely elements within the context of the teacher/student relationship which create opportunities for impropriety… and things occur when opportunity meets tendency.  But this is no different than any other opportunistic vehicle.

Statistics are easier to find for some professions than others but somewhere between 2-10% of sexual misconduct rates seem to be the agreed upon statistic for primary and secondary education teachers, college professors and teaching assistants, clergy, physicians, psychiatrists, massage and physical therapists.  If these low percentages don’t really hit an emotional chord, consider that in the last 10 years, more than a quarter of U.S. school districts have reported cases of sexual abuse by teachers and coaches¹.  Let me stress that this is for reported cases and, by most accounts, the majority of incidences of rape and abuse are believed to go unreported.²

No one is immune from abuse, not men, not the elderly, not the rich or the powerful.  But certain populations bear the brunt of the statistics with women in their teens, 20s and 30s showing the highest incidence of rape.  Sexual abuse and misconduct is a trickier realm than rape both in terms of definition and, as a result, legal repercussions; and for both these reasons, as well as the desire by most professions to maintain a good image, statistics on sexual abuse by profession are tough to find.  We expect that no job is safe, though certain professions seem to offer more opportunities for abuse than others.  The general trend seems clear: the likelihood of sexual abuse/misconduct increases proportionally with:

• the level of intimacy of the relationship,
• the duration of the sessions,
• the length of time the relationship is sustained,
• the amplitude of the power differential,
• the amount of unsupervised interaction,
• the emphasis of physical contact, and
• the level of ease with which a victim can be effectively manipulated.

Psychiatrists and psychologists who maintain longer term, more frequent, more emotionally intimate doctor/patient relationships, and who enjoy longer sessions with their patients, see a much higher rate of sexual misconduct suits than non-psychiatric physicians, who typically see patients less frequently and who rarely devote more than a few minutes per session.  The opportunities to confuse the relationship, to act on sexual impulse, and to manipulate are much higher with psychiatrists/psychologists.  That isn’t to say that they will occur: the inclination has to be there.  But without the opportunity, the inclination will likely not be realized.

Within the yoga community we have a range of interactions and a number of elements that make us a vulnerable:

• Power differential between teacher and student
• A context of physical contact
• Emotionally intimate interactions
• Frequent (often weekly) sessions
• Long (hour+) sessions
• Unsupervised private sessions
• An emphasis on the body’s ability or potential

Add to this that many classes are sexually charged either via flirtatious banter, skimpy attire, or through what is generally considered healthy discussion on the effects of practice on sex and sexuality, and the boundaries can be blurred easily and the context of the relationship shifted.

But as with other professions, the tendency has to be there.  Opportunity alone is not causal.  Left-handed Tantric practices aside (these are not standard in most yoga classes, though they have played a role in some of the high profile abuse cases of the past 20 years and seemed to feature prominently in at least two of the cases of the last two years), we do not have much that is inherent or unique in modern Westernized yoga that makes us more vulnerable to abuse than any of the professions I listed above.

We also have nothing that makes us immune to it.  Much of the West (and the U.S. in particular) entertains a culture whose values and norms make it difficult to discuss sex dysfunction and sexual abuse openly.  The deep sense of shame associated with both the perpetrator and victim mean that the latter are not likely to come forward and the former finds himself surrounded by an enabling community that is either insensitive to, under-educated about, or willing to second-guess their perception of suspicious behavior.

This culture despises complexity in ethical matters.  It’s much easier when lines drawn crisply between what is right and what is wrong, between who is innocent and who is guilty.  Blur these lines and the sense of discomfort is palpable, the discussion becomes confused and the ability to come to agreement on the motivations, on a resolution, or even on the sequence of events, more difficult.  Oftentimes, when an abuser is accused, there is a camp that comes quickly to his defense, using examples of his good public and private work as proof that he is in fact a good man as if good works and sex abuse were mutually exclusive.  Sex abuse is not something that only bad people do.

Lastly this culture still maintains high levels of inequality especially when it comes to gender, gender roles and sex.  Misogyny is standard in corporations and households.  Gender roles are frequently laid out in advertising and all manner of public media.  Market research and advertising offer some insight into our culture’s high regard youth, vitality and beauty and tends to ignore the experience of those who don’t fall into those two categories.

It is within the context of these values that sex abuse is framed and with it perceptions about who is likely to be a perpetrator (an inclination that often goes against the collected data), who is likely to be a victim, where and when the offenses are likely to occur, and the mechanics of the process.  It is also within this context that we frame the emotional implications and what we decide is the appropriate response to it.  This is not insignificant.  It plays a major role in how we discuss the problem, its players and in how effectively we can come to identify solutions.³

Hindsight on the myriad of sex abuse scandals of the last few years (including the Catholic Church, college sports, and high schools) betrays a Victorian intolerance for discussion of these matters.  More often than not anecdotes reveal how so many bystanders were willing to look the other way either out of shame, fear, confusion or self-interest, and it’s only after the offenses became especially repugnant, numerous, or public that they responded.  Once details become public, the response is generally emotional, and the call for retribution louder than that for understanding.

Problems in the yoga community have been no different.  Each time a yoga sex scandal erupts, it is typically only after the offenses have been going on for months, in most cases years.  There are multiple victims, there were others who knew or suspected what was going on, perhaps some even helped or took part in the offenses.

The community fractures into two or three major camps: those incensed by the wrongdoing and who want some kind of rectification or compensation for the victims, those who question the reliability of the accusations, and those who withdraw.  The latter is the group most often populated with victims, perpetrators and the close friends of each.  This isn’t because of cowardice but because it is to this specific group that the events are most personal and it can be devastating to see personal details of your life, especially of moments that you are ashamed of, deeply affected by, or which you consider especially personal, play out in the public sphere amidst typically scornful, often inaccurate commentary from what feels like anyone who can muster an opinion.  So the high profile rhetoric rarely comes from the people most involved in the issue.  The typical script vilifies the accused perpetrator, victimizes the abused and simplifies the situation down to a structure that makes sense to the average person, that fits into preconceived notions of these incidents and which allows even people with few facts to have an opinion and even a plan of action.

It is uncomfortable in the face of such atrocities to do nothing in these circumstances.  It feels not simply inappropriate but unjust to do nothing.  But most of us who practice Yoga can appreciate that nothing is the space that we aim to linger in during our practice.  And this is with good reason: it is a space created precisely so that whatever intuition, ideas or emotions come, they are not an immediate, habitual response.  Clarity is not achieved by jumping to conclusions and it rarely comes from preconceived notions.  This space can become a double-edged sword for those who have suffered abuse or experienced sexual impropriety in the context of a yoga teacher/student relationship, since practice itself may be directly associated with the perpetrator and the actions.  But this association is specific to the victims and it isn’t out of place to suggest that practice and the thoughtfulness we try to achieve during it is precisely what is necessary when dealing with these kinds of difficult, sometimes ambiguous, often complex situations.

While working at a GLBT Community Center I was faced with this complexity when a very sexually aggressive 13 year old began to frequent the center propositioning our male volunteers for sex.  The level of aggression was flabbergasting.  He would find his opportunity by waiting for the volunteer to be alone and then use sexually charged conversation, emotional connection, seductive physicality and even threats to manipulate the volunteer.

We were faced with an uncomfortable situation.  Clearly this was a child.  Had he succeeded in seducing any of these men and the two been discovered, it would have been clear to everyone that the adult had committed the wrong-doing.  And yet the adult was not the aggressor.  The adult was not following the typical script we expect: finding opportunities to be alone with the child, offering them something desirable, hooking them with charged conversation or the use of threats.  The scripts were reversed.

We learned in discussions with authorities who were familiar with this kid that he’d been found coercing other boys his age to perform sexual acts in school, behind library stacks, and in fairgrounds.  He was clearly a danger to our male volunteers and visitors… and they to him.

Eventually he moved on from our center.⁴  But the relief of his absence left us with difficult questions: Was this child a victim, a perpetrator, or both?  Most of us assumed he had to have been abused at some time in his youth; but was that our expectations playing out or reasonable deduction?  Was he playing out a script that had been used on him or was it coming from another source inside him?  In a practical manner, did it make a difference on how we should respond?

Victims tend to be painted as afflicted if they acquiesce, overpowered if they fight and fail, brave if they fight and overwhelm their attacker, and impressionable if they never seem to question the wrong-doing is wrong at all.  There is rarely discussion around what actually makes abuse what it is, its characteristics and requirements.  It’s unnerving to ponder the question of whether or not it is abuse if a victim enjoys the act (you can read here that their bodies respond to the physical stimulus or that their minds respond to the situation with arousal), even part of it… especially so if they partially instigated it or maintained the relationship willingly.

In the same way the typical script around perpetrators paints them as either innately perverse if they have no history of abuse or mental illness, or affected by their own abuse or mental illness and driven by an unseen and uncontrollable urge established there and left untreated for years.  It’s rarely considered that their actions may be increasingly frequent missteps in judgment that create a habit, that they may be people fighting an inclination that they know to be wrong but which brings them immense satisfaction even as it creates increased guilt, or that they are people with genuine feelings for what we come to know as their victims and who let these feelings and their own issues of self-worth guide their actions at the expense of others.  Perpetrators are not always calculated and sometimes don’t realize the morality of what they are doing.  Often they may not perceive a power differential at all.  Sometimes the feelings that fuel these ethically and morally suspect actions are genuine.

The familiar script ignores all this and tries to make the victims pure and the perpetrators either evil or victims in their own right, depending on whether or not there’s an explanation for their actions that arouses pity.  It does this to make it easier to understand, to limit the problem, the people, the repercussions and the solution.  And because it’s easier than the reality, the tendency is for anyone with little information to prefer to listen to this script than to the people involved.  The script is so familiar that when it is used in public media it rings immediately and unquestionably true to the audience, which fuels it further until it’s the only story being told.  This happens in the absence of reliable sources and objective reasoning.

A few months back a popular yoga blogger posted a detailed analysis of an accused abuser, a well known and long respected yoga teacher.  It was detailed to the point of describing the abuser’s inclinations and needs and his relationships to others, including his victims and his family.  It aimed to paint a picture of pervasive dysfunction.  The blogger based his assessment on some available accounts of the events (namely clips from old and new letters of complaint about related wrong-doing by this teacher, articles stating the reported charges, and press releases from the two organizations this teacher belonged to).  I posted a comment to his blog entry asking him if he had met or spoken with either the perpetrator or any of his victims.  The next day he replied “no.”

I knew the people he was talking about and I knew that the blogger’s assessment said more about the blogger than about the incident, the perpetrator or the victims.  I still remember my friend crying on the phone, telling me that something was terribly wrong.  “I’m in such a dark place,” he said, without going into details.  I later learned of his offenses.  They were numerous.  They were heinous.  And they had reportedly been going on for many years.  I could hardly understand how these actions fit in the same physical space as this person I respected and loved.  Moreover my friend had been involved with women I knew, with women he’d met at the same events I’d attended, and that much of this had been going on at those same events, right under my nose, and I’d never seen the clues in anyone’s behavior: not his, not his victims’.  I soon learned that others I knew and respected in the community had suspected or known of this behavior for years and had either ignored it or attempted to intervene in ways that optimized privacy (and minimized publicity).  The latter is not meant to suggest nefarious intent as I can’t say exactly why they made those choices at the time.

For weeks I couldn’t go a day without a phone call or email from someone asking what was going on, if the rumors were true, or to relay their own involvement in the matter.  It was painful and confusing and the time between interactions was filled only with dread about what details the next message might bring.  But I forced myself to listen and to continue as awful as it felt, because I refused to continue to be in a space that allowed me to be oblivious to these incidents.  A space that, I felt, I had revisited too many times.

It is never easy or simple to discuss abuse, especially with an abuser or a victim.  It was still awkward to talk about this but given the circumstances, given how obviously critical it was to have these discussions, I finally was bold enough to ask questions that were uncomfortable, personal and which, under any other scenario, would have been deemed inappropriate or not my place to ask.

I learned that some of my female friends had been propositioned for sex and they’d turned him down and, at least according to their accounts, the discussion had ended there and their friendship continued as if nothing had ever been mentioned.  Some had been coerced into a relationship.  And some remembered the details differently with each conversation, the earliest of which portrayed more guilt and less anger.  The later conversations were harder.  It was not lost on me that there were at least two potential processes at work here: (1) the revelation of memory that comes only after analyzing events again and again and (2) the creation of a story that makes sense of how things could have happened.  It was not clear which was dominant at any given point.  And so listening became an exercise in sitting with ambiguity.

So if I, who had been a bystander watching these events and talking to the perpetrator and his victims, still hadn’t come to a conclusion of how things had occurred or what had motivated them, how could this blogger who had never met either, let alone spoken to them?

The entry added absolutely nothing enlightened, gave no insight into how these things can occur let alone how they did occur, and offered no value in how to prevent them in the future.  All it did was create a script that was convenient, which aimed to look analytical, but which was ultimately inaccurate to the situation and to the topic of abuse in general.  What was most interesting and disturbing to me was that someone with no direct resources would think that the story they can create in their mind is worth publishing as authoritative.

The blogger and the majority of comments mostly offered speculation on how these issues could have gone on for so long, who must have known, who was ultimately responsible, and inherent issues with yoga today that lead to these problems.  For the latter, the discourse was mostly limited to three culprits:

1. The guru-disciple relationship or guru culture,
2. The lack of accountability within our community, and
3. The lack of legal follow-through.

Although there are understandable reasons for the conversation focusing on these elements (namely distrust of authority and frustration at the injustice), I believe that it betrayed a lack of knowledge of the incidents in particular and of abuse in general.

1.   The guru-disciple relationship has been a target for many years now and both recent and distant accounts of abuses in this relationship have rightfully contributed to skepticism of its value by those who have never been a part of it and by those who have been directly and indirectly involved in instances of abuse.  Its self-imposed and pronounced power differential sets off alarms for many, especially those who have grown up with an independently-minded spirituality.  The associated cult mentality has also added to suspicions.  The dominant attitude among detractors is that gurus are nothing more than men with inflated egos looking to take advantage of others sexually and financially, that they always do more harm than good, or that the level of good they can do is never worth the risk of harm.  However, there were two major problems with attaching this discussion to this incident:

a.   Few in this conversation seemed to grasp that the teacher they were discussing was not a guru of any sort, that he in fact refused to use that term, and that his students would never call themselves disciples.  None of the victims’ accounts suggested they enjoyed a traditional guru-disciple relationship in character, let alone name.  There were some accounts of a cult-like atmosphere within the closest circle of students/teachers, which some have confused with guru-disciple relationship or guru worship.  Some of the women who had brought forth charges were not students at all, though, but therapy patients.  Others were fellow teachers.  If anything, based on the published accounts, the culture of this teacher’s organization could be accused of having an established hierarchy and intolerance for dissenting opinions or the questioning of authority.  From a Western point of view, it could be called a cult of personality.  The conversation, however, mixed this instance (and by default its cause and cure) with that of the high-profile abusive gurus of the last 30 years but ignored instances of abuse by doctors and therapists, which would have been equally if not more relevant to the situation.

b.   By virtue of the latter, there were explicit and implicit assumptions that eliminating this guru-disciple relationship would eliminate or greatly reduce the incidence of abuse.  It would not.  Abuse permeates professions, religions, and households where there are no gurus and no disciples.  The power differential (and some of the other vehicles I mentioned earlier) creates the opportunity, not what we call it.⁵  If the goal is to genuinely address the power differential, then discussion would include the culture of celebrity within yoga, the status of “senior teacher,” and  common practice of teachers hiring their own students to work at studios or assist them.  Each of these establishes the teacher as someone to be admired, respected, and obeyed.  Whereas with gurus, the draw for the student would be spiritual development, in the previously listed cases, the draw may be popularity, attention or financial gain, each of which can be (actually has been) exploited by a teacher.  But conversation never ventured to these topics, suggesting (to me) that blaming the guru-disciple relationship may have more to do with distrust of authority (especially in this very foreign form) and less to do with a real understanding of its contribution to opportunities for abuse.

2.   From the discussion on the lack of accountability within the community it was clear that what people were incensed about was the fact that more people weren’t talking about this, that it was either so typical or unimportant to others that it didn’t warrant discussion.  But this is response is not rare.  For those who are friends or family, even coworkers of perpetrators, the response is not simple or immediate, nor is it predictable.  It depends on the personality, on their own history of abuse, of their own involvement in this particular instance of abuse, and most important, on the strength of the bond they shared with the perpetrator.  For many people, when a friend commits a crime or injustice, it isn’t immediately justified to end the friendship.  This has nothing to do with supporting the crime or in believing that it did not occur.  You can love someone who does bad things.  And that love can be stronger than the angry calls from the crowd.

Friendship and love are often talked about as if they are unconditional.  Indeed they are deemed less than perfect, less than true, if they come with conditions attached.  What if the conditions look like this?  It is unrealistic, I think, to expect total and perfect decency in all aspects of life from someone.  But different people have different tolerance levels for the indecency of others and the disappointment it brings.  Where some consider it a failure of character if you let disappointment taint that love, others consider it a failure of character if you hold onto a relationship with someone who is responsible for so much harm.  How do you offer true friendship and still have compassion for those your friend affected?  How do you simultaneously have compassion for perpetrator and victim when you have strong family or friendship bonds with both?  This isn’t an easy conflict to resolve, and people resolve it in different ways and on their own time.

For those who didn’t share that bond with the yoga teacher, it’s also not clear that the immediate response would be outrage.  People go through stages of denial, indifference and numbness, none of which have any expression of anger.  It is precisely how most Western societies respond to rape and sex abuse.  We live in a country where one in every four college age women is a survivor of rape.⁷  Statistics for women in general vary but they typically suggest 17-25% of women are rape (and attempted rape) survivors.  This is an astounding number.  And yet there is no general outrage and the statistics remain unreasonably high.⁸  How is it that most people aren’t outraged?  Statistics suggest it’s out of habit.

3.   Lastly, and most telling of our culture, is the anger at the lack of legal follow-through.  The most uncomfortable and problematic part of this is the difficulty in differentiating illegal behavior from immoral behavior.⁹  The sexual abuse that has taken place over the last few years in the yoga community is not easy to wrap your head around.  The group of people that we have come to see as victims did not all experience the same things to the same degree, and the level of intimate involvement prior to the abuse varied.  Some women were sexually involved with their abuser for months or years and enjoyed attention and gifts.  Some of these women were married.  Many continued their relationship with the abuser even after the first incident they considered objectionable.  Some of the victims were therapy patients who were manipulated into believing that the treatments, which came in the form of sexual practices, would cure them of serious ailments.  Some women were seduced with money, gifts, or power within the community.  Of these, some were threatened with being cut off from their spiritual community when they tried to leave the relationship.  Some women were taught powerful, esoteric practices, which enjoy little expertise in the U.S. but lots of notoriety; they feared losing their access to these if they left.  Some enjoyed what it felt like to do something taboo.  Some felt guilt long before the scandal broke.  Some felt guilt only after.  Some women were propositioned for sex and turned the perpetrator down in what was described as an uncomfortable but amicable scene; and their friendship continued unaffected.  But some women were raped forcibly.  Some seduced.  Some deceived.  Some women escaped the abuse at great cost, including the loss of their jobs and their social circle.  Of these, most tried to forget the situation and never attempted to publicize their experience until the scandal broke.  For many of those, it was the only way to protect themselves emotionally.  Still some attempted to address the problem head on and found little or no support from their employer and colleagues.  Some considered going to the press.  Some did.  Most did not because to publicize the incident would bring to light details that would destroy their families.  Others managed to establish boundaries with the abuser and maintained their job and friends.  Of these some continued to introduce their young, unknowing female friends and students to the abuser despite their own experience; they never offered them advice or warning.  Some were in love with the abuser and felt used after learning his relationship to them was not unique.

There is no protocol in our legal system to deal with these complexities.  The tendency is to take some of the situations above and relegate them to “true victim” and others to “regretful accomplices.”  Some of this comes from misogyny.  Some of it comes from its uncomfortable complexity.  Some comes from simple ignorance.  We are not all the same.  Our samskaras affect us in different ways according to our qualities.  And so the manifestation of these situations will naturally look different.  It is not inappropriate to call each of these women victims, I think, but it is inappropriate to assume that the term “victim” always means the same thing.

I have chosen not to use names in this entry.  Not the victims, not the perpetrators, and not my own.  I put a lot of thought to this and realized that what I needed to say has to do with a process that has been going on for so many years it is beyond names.  Parts of it should be public and parts of it, I think, we would do well to keep private or at least leave in the hands of victims to address and reveal in their own time.  Moreover, some of the people I have referred to in this piece are good friends, people I love and respect and I am certain that those that I do not know directly, whose stories have come to me via friends and fellow teachers, are loved and respected by someone.  This does not mean that I support what has happened. It also does not mean that I hope this goes away.   Having been a victim of abuse before and having my own friends victimized in these events, this is a topic that is more personal than I can put into words.

What I do believe is that before adding to the chatter and the vitriol, it is well worth it to delve deeper into these situations both via the body of knowledge that has been collected over the years of victim testimonials and well-researched documentaries on the topic, and through discussions with people who are involved.  It isn’t wrong that the mind’s response at these events is often to well up with rage at the unfairness and the suffering of others.  But it is critical that these feelings be contained if they are mostly based on a story those same minds have created to deal with the information, rather than on knowledge and analysis of the actual events.  If we don’t, whatever our actions, whatever our words, the response is ultimately more about how we feel than about the well-being of others.  Rage is never advocacy; and ignorance, however understandable, never leads to a solution.

Footnotes

¹  According to the American Association of University Women.

² These statistics would be suspect if they weren’t so consistent.  They tend to be largely based on surveys conducted in representative local populations and the numbers are assumed to be adequate estimates for national populations (which may not be the case).  Based on these surveys, the minimum rates for unreported cases of rape and abuse tend to be around 52% with estimates increasing to 75% in some populations.

³Pedophilia offers us a good analogy.  The majority of pedophiles are men.  This likely comes as little surprise to most.  It is generally understood that pedophiles who molest little girls are straight and pedophiles who molest little boys are gay.  It was this faulty reasoning that led to the Roman Catholic Church equating their pedophile priest issue with a gay priest issue.  The problem is that pedophilia doesn’t function within the same parameters by which we understand sexual orientation.  Pedophiles who are straight identified (meaning they have no expressed or repressed attraction to men) may still prey on young boys.  As a result of this misperception, it’s likely that the Catholic Church’s attempted purge of gay priests won’t affect the existing rates of abuse since there is no higher predisposition there.  They enacted a solution that does not fit the problem but rather their idea of the problem.

⁴ We changed our volunteer hours twice, swapping male and female volunteers to throw him off and it was clear from the terribly disappointed look on his face as relayed by our lesbian volunteers that he was not happy with this.

⁵ The extreme case of guru worship can be likened to military culture, where the strict hierarchy forbids subordinates from questioning superiors and where there is a unique and fully segregated culture from the mainstream that makes communication to an external population (and the latter’s subsequent understanding) difficult, if not impossible.  The military, of course, has what we now understand to be a long history of abuse and cover-up of abuse.  The latter is, in my opinion, the piece that makes guru cults susceptible to long term abuse.  It isn’t that the abuse is more likely to happen (read here in terms of number of likely perpetrators) but rather that there is a vehicle for the abuse to be covered up and to continue to occur by the same perpetrator.

⁶ In my teens, a close friend of my family’s was discovered to be a serial killer who had been murdering prostitutes for the better part of a year.  In that year he’d visited our home and offered the same warmth and humor he had always offered.  When he learned that I had gone to art school he gave my father an expensive drafting table so that I could use it.  He was kind, concerned, and his kindness and concern as it related to us never came with conditions.  My mother was asked once if she was regretful about having had him as a guest in the house, especially near her kids.  Her response relayed perfectly the point of view that people are complex and multi-dimensional, and that relationships, in turn, must be as well.  She said “Not at all.  He was our friend.”

⁷ From “Assessing Sexual Aggression: Addressing the Gap Between Rape Victimization and Perpetration Prevalance Rates” by Elizabeth Kolivas and Alan Gross

⁸ Most surveys show a drop in the incidence of rape in the last 10 years within the U.S.  Statistics on the magnitude of this drop vary.

⁹ I specifically avoid the use of the term “unethical” here because it can suggest different things depending on the profession.  I use “immoral” to try to relay the idea that the infraction would be considered by most people, regardless of profession, to be irresponsible, inconsiderate, or generally lacking in morality.