Back in the early 60's in New Orleans where I grew up, it seems like there was a subculture where CSA was practiced regularly. In retrospect, it seems like it was pretty pervasive. It's as though the general social attitude was "as long as you don't do MY kids, it's none of my business." These days, even the suspicion of CSA brings the whole world crashing down on the head of the abuser. Back then, when abusers were caught, often it was just swept under the rug and never talked about. At least, not in front of the kids (like me).

I know for a fact that there was a man we called "Uncle Jim" who lived just down the street from us, and who actually had a "playroom" in his barn where he would abuse young girls. One of my sisters was repeatedly abused by this man, and my other sister probably was too, although she remembers nothing. Eventually he was found out and his barn mysteriously burned down, and he moved shortly thereafter never to be heard of again. But I suspect he just moved his shop to a new location.

I was never part of this abuse (I guess he didn't like boys, thank God) but I was abused by 4 different people with no apparent connection to each other.

This makes me wonder just how widespread unreported, unpunished and un-stopped CSA was back then?

I'm certainly glad that this is not tolerated anymore. Does anyone else have similar suspicions or evidence of widespread, organized sexual abuse back in the 60's? If I could prove this (even if just to myself) it would answer a lot of questions.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Lazarus

Hello Lazarus, I have learned a lot in the short time I have been on this path to healing. One thing I learned is that CSA is not a new problem. It has been known, and documented for Hundreds, if not thousands of years. These sick people have been on the earth a long time, and It is something that often gets passed down from generation to generation. I'm not sure of any explosion of CSA in the 60's, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't one. Even now, in 2007, it is a topic that gets far too little attention.
Best wishes and warmest regards,
Scott

Lazarus, Roadrunner (he's not much older than you I think) has made NUMEROUS references to the notion that back in those days, perps were like phantoms, moving from town to town and never getting pinned down.

"I'm glad he didn't like boys".........yeah I hear you there!

I don't know about the 60's esp cause I wasnt yet born then..
But I wouldnt say a culture of abuse... Subcultures... yes.
I was abused by a lot of different man... but that was because my 'mother' would trade me for drugs and money and such.
I do think police and government do more against it then in the 60's though... but not nearly enough.
Esp. not if posession of drugs, to name something, gets more years in jail then possesion of childporn or even r*pe.
I guess it was also more of a taboo in the 60's then it is now.

Xavier

I Recall......when i was a boy.talk of a man in another town...........who slept with boys.......as far as i know nothing was done about it...i do recall hearing about this one boy about 14 allways getting in trouble..........yet all you could hear was the fact that he was sleeping with this man...........such a troubled boy...........but yet it continued on............nothing was done about it..........just poeple talking rumors..........it was as if it was the boys fault

Lazarus,

I think it's pretty clear that CSA was common in the 60s, but way underreported. The bastard who abused me between 1959 and 1963 was a Scout leader, and a friend of mine and I were abused together for a year beginning when I was 13 and he was 12. Two years ago we talked about things and came up with a list of other boys we think the perp also abused - it amounted to about a third of the Scout troop. The perp's son refused to attend his funeral, by the way.

Many of the clerical abusers exposed in recent years had records going back decades; the Church just kept shuffling them around to new locations where they weren't known. In one book I read it also talked about perps who get through hundreds of boys over long spans of time; the cops bust them and head straight for their PC, which sometimes contains lists of the victims: names, ages, private attributes, and what the abuser did with them - a kind of sick trophy book.

Much love,
Larry

Hmmm....

That's one I have no proof on, but I would say yes, this subculture did exist. We know it exists today, mostly via the internet and the "boylover" sites. It's horrifying, terrifying, abhorant, and disgusting, but yet it exists. No reason to believe that there was not a network even then.

John

Others have posted on this site about institutionalised abuse in the past - this was in the UK (I know that it was the case). This occurred in what at the time were called 'care'homes. There was even a drama/documentary on television regarding this topic ( it was excellent, the way that it was portrayed even though it was very upsetting to watch).

I believe that in my town of population approx 15k at the time, that there was only one perv that abused outside of the family (the one I unfortunately met) - how many abused within the family, I don't know (although I do know now that there was at least one, with several victims).

It's obvious now, that the church in general had a broom that swept many cases under the carpet, so who knows what the total is!?

Best wishes ...Rik

I can't speak to the 60's necessarily, but rather the 80's (it's relevant simply to know if this was how it was in the 80's then it was at least as bad in the 60's...at least that's how it's relevant in my own mind...)

Anyhow, my mother told me that she learned I was being abused and that she got me out of there right away (I was only two, and don't really remember) but that she never reported it because "It just wasn't something that you reported back in those days."

While horrifying that this was the prevailing thought at the time, I'm just glad to see that it is changing.

I have no idea if this post was relevant, but it's what came to my mind reading this thread...

I know how things would have gone for all involved if I told (in the late 60s and early 70s) It would have been SO burried you'd need a back-hoe to dig it up today.

Why? My perps were of the preferred class of boys (star jocks), all headed for great things.

How do I know it? I know how things were handled when I used a knife on one of them in defense of an additional rape. And you know what??? I think it would go the SAME way today in that F-ed-up little culture.

I think these things are decided locally, and by the local prevailing culture. Some places never change!

Rob,



I don't mean in any way to speak against you, and by the way, I appreciate the way Little Robbie stood up for himself against those bastards. What's fucked up isn't his use of a knife, but the fact that a little boy needed a knife to prevent another rape.

Anyhoo....a big difference between then and now is the instant and universal access we all have to information via the Internet. I think that is revolutionizing things in a way that will have huge consequences in the future. Something happens in Podunk, and a minute later it's known around the world. I want to find out more about the perp who abused me, and 10 seconds later I know he died in 1994 and where he's composting in Pennsylvania. And of course there's our community here.

Information isn't action, of course, but look how much MS itself is able to do, largely through the Internet. The world isn't the same kind of place it was when you and I were boys; it's a LOT easier for us to support and talk to each other and work for our own recovery and that of our brothers. I didn't get hauled in on a pile of turnips, not the last pile anyway, but I'm hopeful.

Much love,
Larry

I grow up in Canada and was abused as a child by a man that befriended my family (as well as other families in the area), starting in the late 60’s and up until the mid 70’s. Today I realise that most adults in the community did hear about “the guy who likes boys” and so and so the “fruit” (as they called him). People confused homosexuality with paedophilia, and really most adults at the time couldn’t distinguish the two. Therefore, because most people where uncomfortable with homosexuality they simply were also uncomfortable with hearing about “the guy who likes boys”! So, more and more boys continued to get molested by this guy, and later his victims were taunted by others as being “a fruit” simply for hanging around this paedophile.

I think the main reason while children continue to get sexually abused is the same as it’s been for 1000’s of years, “adults find this subject just too uncomfortable to talk about”. Guys, this makes us “major mould breakers”. We can do ourselves, our communities, and the world a great service simply by talking more about CSA.

Lets keep up the great work!

Scotia

I just discovered this old thread about Culture of Abuse, emphasizing abuse in the 60's.

My abuse was in the 40's and 50's. I was almost 4 when the stuff of pufferfish story part 1 occurred. In sunny California, near Hollywood. The area now boasts a sign that says it's a wonderful safe place for children.

http://www.malesurvivor.org/board/ubbthr...2889#Post212889

Then there were the pufferfish stories parts 2 through 4. Parts 3 and 4 took place in Colorado.

Then pufferfish story part 5 happened in the general area of Washington DC in 1951. Scouts. Lots of abuse was going on then. The other boy scout troop was led by a predatory pedophile.

http://www.malesurvivor.org/board/ubbthr...9028#Post219028

Puffer

The concept of "childhood" as separate from smaller adulthood and needing to be treated differently is in Western culture only about 100 years old, give or take. In the decades when children were sent to work in coal mines and meatpacking plants, do you think anyone outside of the immediate family would have cared if they were used for sex too?

Remember Oliver Twist? "One boy, boy for sale!" It's fiction based on common reality at that time. Likewise the historical novel "The Alienist" describes child brothels as being legal in New York City circa 1900. Blogger Andrew Sullivan published a letter from a reader who recounted having complained of abuse by a priest in the first half of the 20th century; the boy was beaten for lying and never spoke of it again. In 1927, serial killer Albert Fish kidnapped a 4-year-old boy and took him on a streetcar. The kid was only in his pajamas, in daytime, in winter, crying hysterically for his mother. None of the passengers or driver gave a damn. Fish got him back to his lair... tortured, raped, killed, and ate him. Sex researcher Kinsey in the 1940s encountered a man who casually described having had sex with hundreds of children since the 1920s. A member here, lapchinj, has described how the boyporn mags in which he was forced to appear in the 1960s weren't even illegal, sold on newsstands. As recently as 1980, 14-year-old Steven Stayner escaped from his kidnapper who had enslaved him for 7 years... but the perp only got 5 years, solely for kidnapping, because authorities refused to prosecute him for rape, because they thought acknowledging that at all would be too much of a stain against the boy.

In general, SOLs on sexual abuse prosecution show a primitive and ignorant mentality that continue to this day to deny justice to many victims... including some of the Sandusky victims, including other posters here, including me.

My thoughts exactly, SS.

Context is revealing.

SS,

I think this (changing views on csa) and other instances like this commit a fallacy of logic. Your examples demonstrate this very well.

What I mean is that some folks see human culture as linear as time itself...that current society is subject to chaos theory...as in "things were perfect at one time"----garden of Eden or whatever....and we continue to lose order to the point we're left with a lack or morality and creeping depravity that gets worse with each generation. Of course that's bunk. Humanity has alrady carried the good and bad...it just manifests itself differently with subsequent generations.


If you have seen "The Shining"...there is the point where the phantom bartender Grady says to Jack, "You have always been here..." Evil has always been with us...but tolerance for it evolves...

Will

Pop culture is changeable but underline things like relationships in families and parental capacities to give support and love to child are in one completely different time scale and very difficult to change. No matter on laws enforcement, CSA shocking cases and rising of public awareness.
I've read in "Victims no longer" somewhere how children are considered as objects in one country/culture, that explains a lot of things...