Tuesday night saw the Cortland Anderson Auditorium in the Scripps building playing host to a screening of Boys and Men Healing, a documentary from Big Voice Pictures about male sexual abuse and its survivors. The 58-minute-long film was screened before an audience of about 70, young and old alike.
After the film, co-producer Simon Weinberg and Dr. Howard Fradkin, the founder of MaleSurvivor.org, hosted a panel along with three male survivors of past sexual abuse.
Weinberg and Fradkin discussed the film’s origin and the motivation behind its production. Big Voice Productions’ previous film, The Healing Years, was a documentary focused on female survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
After the film’s release, Weinberg said, he started receiving calls from crisis centers.
“They liked the film and what we were doing, but they asked, ‘What about the men?’ ” Weinberg said. “So when we looked into it and saw how many male survivors that were out there, we decided we wanted to make a film for them as well.”
Boys and Men took four and a half years of production, Weinberg said.
According to a study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2006, as many as one in six men are sexually abused before the age of 18, despite the popular belief that males are rarely victims of sexual assault.
Dr. Fradkin addressed this and other male sexual abuse myths during the panel, stating a desire to “break the silence” surrounding male sexual abuse.
“We want to create a dialogue for people to speak their truths,” Fradkin said. “This film is for everyone to speak their truths, because that leads to freedom, and freedom makes doors open.”
Boys and Men Healing addressed several different kinds of male sexual abuse, from childhood to adulthood to prison rape, as well as its effects on the psyches of victims. The film focused heavily on the recovery process and the healing lives of its subjects.
After the film, several survivors both on the panel and in the audience spoke out about their own stories — some for the first time in their lives. One of the panel’s survivors spoke about how he had held the secret of his abuse since the age of 11 before finally telling his wife when he was 56 years old.
Others, such as Grant, one of the panelists, found that they had repressed their memory of the incident.
“I had forgotten it all except for a few memories,” said Grant, a recent Ohio State graduate. “I felt like I was disassociating, like I was watching a real-time movie of my own life.”
Grant’s memory returned after a breakdown sent him to the ER. It was here that he had what he called an “aha moment”, during which he remembered the abuse suffered at the hands of his mother.
“Part of the way that I learned to cope was to shield myself from other people so they couldn’t hurt me,” said Dan, a fellow survivor and panelist. “So I never really developed the skills to deal with people. ... When you start to deal with this stuff it’s like being naked, vulnerable.”
Fradkin and Weinberg will continue their tour of screenings, with their next stop being a screening at Ohio State University today. Dr. Fradkin encouraged survivors to speak out and share their stories, to know that they aren’t alone.
“You have to be disloyal to dysfunction,” said Fradkin, “You have to open that dialogue. That’s what this film is all about.”
rm287608@ohio.edu
