Boys Beware

The attitudes of society in general towards male victims of child sexual abuse has always been less than desirable.

Males have always been seen to be the instigators of sexual assaults and never the victims of sexual assaults. If a male was he victim of a sexual assault, it was becuase he was weak, or defective, or even a budding homosexual.

Under the criminal code as it was prior to 1985, the charge of “rape” only applied to males having intercourse with females. In Canada, rape was never a crime that could apply to males.

Male teens have always been an outlier if you will. Most laws that involved an adult having sex with an underage male put the male child at almost equal fault with the adult perpetrator.

“Ralph was arrested, Jimmy was released on probation into the care of his parents”

And let’s be clear. Ralph isn’t a normal homosexual. Depending on how old Jimmy is, Ralph is either an ephebophile, a hebephile or a pedophile. And yes, heterosexuals can be ephebophiles, hebephiles, or pedophiles

This was the attitude towards male victims of child sexual abuse in the ’60s. The Canadian Armed Forces have always been about 20 years behind civilian society. Canada, for the most part, decriminalized homosexuality in the ’70s. In 1973 the APA, the American Psychiatric Association, removed homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses. It would take the Canadian Armed Forces until 1994 before it stopped discriminating against homosexuals and ceased treating homosexuality as a mental illness. So yeah, almost 20 years behind the times.

I can undertand why society may be more protective of females. They’re the ones that risk getting pregnant. Sure, boys can’t get pregnant, however they can suffer just as much psychological damage as females can.

Being blamed for the abuse causes issues of self worth.

Being shamed into silence causes trust problems.

The child will sometimes have great difficulty understanding why one adult enjoys sexual touching while other adults will be repulsed and disgusted.

Many times, in small closed communities, the abused child is seen as defective, that there is in fact something wrong with the child. This also happens in a large open community to a certain extent, but in the civilian world the possibility that two neighbours work for the exact same employer are pretty slim. The idea that everyone on the same block works for the same employer is even less likely. And the idea that everyone in the same town or city works for the same employer is just about impossible. There are numerous articles that look at the merits and shortfalls of “Company towns”.

It would turn out that I wasn’t the only dependant from CFB Namao that was prevented from attending activities such as hockey or basketball or swimming. And I would imagine that this same attitude prevailed on most of the other bases in Canada.

Canadian Forces Administrative Order 19-20 formed the policy for how the Canadian Armed Forces were to deal with suspected homosexuals. CFAO 19-20 was in force until 1994.

The Canadian Forces Military Social Workers that sexually abused male children were put in contact with on the bases would have been expected to deal with Canadian Forces service members as per the policy of CFAO 19-20. And yes, CFAO 19-20 didn’t apply to military dependants, but there is no way that the military social workers were going to switch off their military training when dealing with sexually abused male children.

The Criminal Code prior to 1985 had a charge called “Buggery”. Buggery is one male having anal intercourse with another male. The odd thing about buggery is that it was a charge in which both parties were considered to be equally culpable. It was implied that buggery had no victim. Usually though, the police would only prosecute the party that was over the age of 18.