Before Opheim’s scheduled release in March, according to news reports, concerned residents of the town packed a community meeting hall to hear the terms of Opheim’s release, meet his social worker, and express their fears of living alongside a convicted sex offender.

Although Opheim will live in a halfway house, be accompanied by a social worker in public at all times, be forced to consent to regular polygraph testing, and wear a GPS tracking device, residents were still uneasy.

“Why wasn’t he left in the St. Peter community?” asked one. “I don’t understand why he had to move.”

Others at the town hall meeting asked officials why it had been  decided to release an  accused predator into a community with so many children.

“We think it’s time,” Assistant Hennepin County Attorney George Widseth answered. “Is there a way [that we] can take a dipstick and run it down his throat…for a certain measurement? No.”

But he didn’t reveal the state’s own uncertainties about whether to continue the kind of post-custodial oversight that is required to ensure that Opheim never molests a child again.

Minnesota is one of 20 states that have civil commitment programs, which allow for the indefinite detention of sexual offenders after their criminal sentences are completed.

In order for offenders to be held under the program, a court must determine whether they are sexually violent predators, incapable of controlling their impulses, and too dangerous to be allowed back into communities.

In 1997 the U.S. Supreme Court in Kansas v. Hendricks held that civil commitment programs are constitutional if the commitment is non-punitive.

Expansion of Programs

In the early 1990s, states with flush budgets began expanding their civil commitment programs to include sex offenders, as part of a tough-on-crime approach to high-profile, brutal sex crimes.

At the time, civil commitment once seemed the best solution to protect communities from released offenders who may once again commit brutal crimes.

Under what are usually called “Sexually Violent Predator” laws, prosecutors could file petitions to commit offenders if they believed those offenders were likely to re-commit.

Offenders are evaluated by court psychologists who must prove that they are unable to control their impulses.

Since there is no accepted or scientifically valid way to predict whether an offender will commit another crime, psychologists usually use an assessment tool called the Static 99 to evaluate risk, which rates sex offenders on standard criteria, including the sex of their victim(s) and number of crimes.

The Static 99 was created by psychologists R. Karl Hanson, Ph.D. and David Thorton, Ph.D.

Scores are then compared to recidivism rates of similar sex offenders. Once an offender is committed, the laws stipulate they must have access to treatment.

But ballooning costs and new court challenges are forcing state leaders to rethink.

States like Minnesota are finding that, while there’s no easy way to “measure” whether a sex offender is ready to be reintegrated into a community, budget concerns and court challenges have made detaining them indeterminately no longer an option.

“At the beginning, there was a genuine thought that these were going to bonafide treatment programs,” said Eric Janus, Dean of the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul.

“The idea was that people might be committed for several years, and they’d work their  way through a real treatment program and a majority of them would be released. But it did not develop in that way.”

Facilities differ.

Washington, the first state to pass a civil commitment law, holds nearly 300 sex offenders on an island in Puget Sound. The offenders are “Level 3,” the most dangerous category of sexual predators.

The imposing facility is bordered by concertina wire, but residents are allowed to roam the inside of the facility relatively freely. They participate voluntarily in group therapy sessions.

Others are more state-of-the-art. A $388 million, 1,500-bed facility in Coalinga, California has stores, a library and a barbershop.

Both states, and many others, are struggling with runaway costs of the programs, totaling into the millions—especially at a time of budget restraints..

Offenders typically remain committed for years, sometimes decades. The number of offenders released differs from state to state—Wisconsin has released nearly 70 offenders, while Pennsylvania has released only one—but generally it is difficult to be released from commitment.

$180,000 a Year

On average, civil commitment programs cost taxpayers more than four times what it costs to imprison someone for a year. The most expensive programs can cost up to $180,000 a year, per sex offender.

Lengthy civil commitment cases can cost states thousands, or millions, in legal expenses.

“Civil commitment is like a roach motel,” said Al O’Connor, an attorney with the New York State Defenders Association. “They go in, but they don’t come out.”

New York State’s program costs over $170,000 per year.

“Every year,” added O’Connor. “it becomes a greater and greater drain on the mental health budget.”

Toward the end of the 1990’s state budgets began to tighten, but the civilly committed population continued to rise.

In Minnesota, according to Janus, “the buildings were filling up. The bureaucrats were coming to the legislators and saying, ‘We need millions to build more buildings. That was contradictory to the nation that these programs were stop gap measures.”

“They wound up this machine and they can’t politically stop it,” O’Connor said of New York’s law. “Once you have the law, you can’t stop putting people in the facility, because God forbid, one gets out and they go and do something. It becomes a scandal.”

Political pressure, both in state legislatures and judicial districts, often makes it exceedingly difficult to release offenders.  It’s a common aphorism that the only way to leave St. Peter’s, and other civil commitment facilities across the country, is in a body bag.

In 2003, just as officials were crafting plans to begin releasing low-level offenders back into communities, a Minnesota sex offender named Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. abducted and murdered a 22-year-old North Dakota college student after he completed a 23-year sentence for attempted abduction.

After then-Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty pledged not to release any sex offenders, Minnesota’s committed population exploded. Current attempts to reform Minnesota’s program—and increase opportunities for release—have fallen short after a 2011 legislative audit pointed out it was becoming financially untenable.

“Almost all the legislation that exists now is based on the exception, rather than the rule,” said Dr. Fred Berlin, director of the Sexual Behavior Consultation Unit at Johns Hopkins. “It’s legislation enacted when a horrible crime with lots of publicity occurs. It begs the question of whether we’re really going to have the most effective public policy.”

“It’s a radical concept,” Berlin added. “What we’re basically saying is we’re going to deprive someone of their liberty, based on a future crime we fear they’re going to commit.”

Court Challenges

The slim likelihood of release from commitment has been the basis for many lawsuits against states’ sexually violent predator laws.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld state and federal sexually violent predator laws partly because the programs purport to treat sex offenders with the goal of releasing them back into the community.

However, the Supreme Court also ruled in Kansas v. Hendricks, that mental health treatment is “merely an ancillary, rather than an overriding, state concern,” and programs do not necessarily become punitive if they fail to offer adequate treatment.

But problems within the system go beyond a failure to provide mental health treatment. The Minnesota Security Hospital in St. Peters, from which Clarence Opheim was released, has recently been rocked by scandal. In late March, CEO David Proffitt was fired after reports of rampant mismanagement. The state’s Office of the Legislative Auditor is now investigating the facility as well as the hiring practices of the Department of Human Services.

Meanwhile, the committed continue to challenge the laws.

Sex offenders have filed reams of pro se filings over the years. A handful have moved into higher courts, and some states have been ordered to improve conditions or treatment programs at their facilities.

Early this year, before judges approved the release of Clarence Opheim, a Minneapolis-based law firm took up two suits against Minnesota’s program—including a class action suit on behalf of 14 plaintiffs currently housed in Minnesota’s Moose Lake facility.

David Goodwin, part of the team that’s litigating the case, said the plaintiffs allege they are not receiving adequate mental health treatment, and are being housed in a criminal facility without criminal protections of due process.

Goodwin said detainees at Moose Lake are subject to unannounced search and seizures and are locked in their cell-like rooms for ten hours a day.

“As a person off the street you walk in and think, my goodness, this is certainly a prison,” Goodwin said. “There’s double razor wire, and cameras, and guards in every room. It’d be hard to argue that it’s not a prison.”

Moose Lake did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

Minnesota officials’ fear that the suits could successfully challenge its civil commitment law precipitated Opheim’s release into Golden Valley.

Lawmakers in Minnesota and other states have suggested extending sentences for sex offenders.  Prison, where states don’t have the burden of providing mental health treatment, costs less than civil commitment facilities.

“Many of these people do need treatment,” Berlin said. “If people say, let’s just give them all tougher sentences, put them in prison and do nothing else, there’s nothing in prison that will erase these attractions or successfully help them resist acting upon them.”

Berlin said he advocates for inclusion of outpatient treatment, and structured transition programs into communities, into civil commitment programs.

“We need a criminal justice component,” he added. “But we also need a public health component.”

“Political Space” Needed

Last January, William Mitchell held a symposium on Minnesota’s civil commitment program. A number of key legislators and officials attended, Janus said, and agreed that “there needed to be political space to make changes both in the admissions side, as well as the discharge side.”

It was a positive step, Janus said, adding, “What political leaders have hoped for in the past is that they could take care of the problem by tweaking the criminal sentencing rules.”

“But even if you increase the length of sentences there will always be sex offenders getting out of prison,” he continued. “Inevitably, there’s always the potential that someone will commit a recidivist crime. Prosecutors know that they could be held responsible for those crimes if they fail to use the available tools.”

Some states, however, have experienced successful release of sex offenders.

Arizona has released the most sex offenders out of any state, with 69 in provisional release and 81 fully discharged, as of 2006.

Daniel Montaldi, who served as the former director of Arizona’s civil commitment facility until 2010, recalled that the state began  accepting residents into its facility, located on the grounds of the state hospital in South Phoenix, in 1999.

The facility was built to hold 300 people, said Montaldi, who now works in Florida’s civil commitment program. “It was meant to be a mostly full confinement program, and people weren’t meant to get out.”

Less Restrictive Alternative

But Arizona’s sexually violent predator law allows for the committed to participate in a Less Restrictive Alternative, or LRA.

Around 2003, Montaldi said, “we took half of our administration building and made it a halfway house for offenders who had done really well in treatment. They could start off by having one outing a week, or month, where they could go out into the community with a staff member present.

“They would have GPS monitoring. Then you could progress gradually, where the guy could go out into the community by himself, and he could go to work, and our surveillance team would monitor him.”

Offenders who had progressed that far in the program would eventually be given a sponsor, be forced to submit to polygraph tests and physical surveillance.

“The advantage in Arizona was we could base our LRA program in the facility itself, but he would gradually pick up some freedoms, where the last step was living in the community after he’d already proven himself with the freedoms he already had,” said Montaldi.

“You didn’t have this dilemma where, ‘I’ve either got to lock him up completely or have him living in a neighborhood.’ ”

“The legislature,” he added, “also didn’t pay a lot of attention to the program,” he added. “It was the idea that if you stay out of the newspapers and you don’t have re-offenses or escapes, we’re not going to interfere a lot. That gave us the room to innovate.”

But when the facility suffered an escape in 2010, officials were forced to rein in its LRA program.

“An extensively developed community reintegration program is a fragile flower,” Montaldi said. “It’s very vulnerable, because suppose the guy is in the community and he escapes. You may catch him the next day, but if it makes the news, you’re going to get a strong reaction.”

With the Arizona model, he said, “you’re taking some risks that you wouldn’t be taking if you just put them behind walls and left them there forever. But our view was [that,] eventually, these guys are going to get out.

“At some point, a federal judge could shut this all down. At some point, the whole thing could go away, and you’ll have a whole lot of guys who have had no experience in the community, and suddenly, they’re out there.”

“The other part of what’s going to happen is that these guys are getting old,” Montaldi added, “You’re going to have the problem of needing nursing homes for sex offenders.”

On Thursday, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced that through an initiative dubbed “Operation: Game Over,” several major gaming companies had removed the profiles of more than 3,500 registered sex offenders in the state. The day before, a Louisiana bill forbidding registered sex offenders from using social networking sites was approved by a state House committee. (A similar bill was signed into law in Illinois in 2009 and put on hold in California in 2011.) Late last month, Match.com, eHarmony and the Spark Networks signed a “joint statement of business principles” to attempt to screen out registered sex offenders.

First, to the legal concerns: The ACLU filed a lawsuit in response to an earlier version of the Louisiana law, which seemed to apply not only to social networking sites but to most of the Internet, claiming that it was “overbroad” and would infringe upon “free speech rights under the First Amendment.” It was already signed into law but was struck down in February on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.

OK, so banning sex offenders from accessing most sites on the Web is unconstitutional, but what about banning them in more limited ways? Constitutionally speaking, where can the line be drawn? There are already strict restrictions placed on where sex offenders can live in the real-world — how far can we go in limiting their existence in the virtual realm?

Those questions are being sorted out on a law-by-law basis, says Ruthann Robson, a professor at CUNY School of Law. The revised version of the Louisiana bill more narrowly focuses on sites just like Facebook, but it could still include professional networking sites like LinkedIn, she says, and it’s still “infringing upon a group of people’s First Amendment rights.” She also underscores that it’s “creating a new crime [i.e. using Facebook] based upon their previous conviction.”

Courts have imperfect guidelines for evaluating these cases, she says. “If you’re convicted of a crime and you serve your time, there are very few things that extend beyond that — like some states have felony disenfranchisements and that sort of stuff,” Robson explains. “But when the United States Supreme Court upheld civil commitment and sex offender registries and all of that, they talked about it as civil and as not criminal.” Now, in evaluating whether bills like the one in Louisiana infringe on First Amendment rights, courts “don’t have an analogy, so sometimes they go toward criminal law, as though these people are in prison and as if this is part of punishment.”

Of course, many people believe that there are compelling reasons for that. As anyone who has ever watched TV news knows, some offenders use the Internet — whether it’s through chat rooms or a social networking site — to victimize children, but the threat is overblown, according to research from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force. Bullying poses a greater threat online than sexual solicitation, and children’s greatest threat of sexual abuse comes from someone they know — a relative or family friend — not from a stranger on the other end of his or her Xbox. Still, protecting kids from predators with unprecedented access to them is important; there is no debate there. The question is how much good will be done by banning sex offenders from online venues populated with kids.

It’s too early to say for sure, as there isn’t any solid research. “We will have to wait years before we know whether re-offense rates change from the 10 to 15 percent that most long-term outcome studies show,” says James Cantor, a clinical and research psychologist and editor-in-chief of the scientific journal “Sexual Abuse.”

It’s important to acknowledge that these attempts are easily circumvented by those willing to break the rules: For example, to make it onto a gaming platform, a New York state sex offender only has to create a new username that officials don’t have on file. Sure, it’s now a crime to do so — but so too is abusing children. Similarly, the online dating sites are only screening out sex offenders who provide identifying information that matches what is on the registry.

A major concern, in terms of both effectiveness and fairness, is how some of these approaches inelegantly lump together all kinds of sex offenders. The Louisiana bill applies only to those whose victim(s) were underage, but the video gaming initiative does not, even though the aim is to protect children. The online dating sites, which are presumably aiming to help protect members from being assaulted on dates, target all manner of sex offenders (while still allowing in suitors with, for example, a domestic violence rap sheet).

“Not all sex offenders are the same, and it is usually a mistake to treat them as if they are,” says Cantor. The legal category can includes a wide range of offenses — from public urination to child molestation. That’s an extreme example — one signaling the need for registry reform above all else — but it’s also true that there are important individual distinctions in terms of the risks of re-offense.

Until we have more definitive evidence on these differences — which would require hard-to-come-by research funding — Cantor says, “These people would best be treated on a case-by-case basis: An offender who used networking sites as part of his offense would be banned, but offenders using them for pro-social purposes, such as participating in support groups, would be encouraged.” After all, these days so much normal social interaction happens online.

It isn’t just that Cantor disbelieves in such broad and ineffective restrictions but also that it might backfire. “One of the best ingredients in rehabilitating sex offenders appears to be helping them reintegrate into their community, not isolating them,” he says. “It’s when offenders feel that there is nothing left to lose — no job, no family, no place to live, no social contacts — that they can be most willing to flout the law and do something stupid.” In general, he says, the “‘one size fits all’ approach is often counter-productive as well as expensive to enforce.”

There are echoes here to the debate over the online classified site Backpage, in which there is general agreement over the goal of eradicating child trafficking but disagreement over how that can be achieved. In the case of restricting sex offenders from certain online venues, the question isn’t whether the aim of protecting children and adults alike from sexual abuse is necessary, but rather whether these are effective, beneficial and fair ways of going about it.

When it comes to men, I suck. I know that it stems from my dad abandoning our family when I was 2, a horrible stepfather who emotionally abused me and then tried to sexually abuse me at 15, and basically just a childhood full of bullshit. I just don’t really deal with that stuff, because I was sent to counseling as a child, and I feel like it was the only thing that kept me from turning into a hooker on a street corner in Vegas. It just seems ridiculous to dwell on the past. Plus, I think I turned out pretty good … but …

I am coming up on twice divorced. I got married at 18 and left him at 20. I was the 4.0 kid in high school, extremely shy, had never dated before, and getting married at 18 seemed like my best bet. He was emotionally abusive, so I left at 20. I had fallen crazy in love with another guy who didn’t want me once I left, and so I was single for a brief time. Then I met my current husband, fell crazy in love, we moved in together and got married within a year, and now here I am all these years down the road and we’re getting divorced. I consider him one of my best friends, but we made horrible marriage partners. Now we’re trying to live together, raise our kids, and have our own “modern family.” It’s going OK. Some days are great. Some days I want to stick a fork in my eyeball. We’re doing this because we think it’s not only best financially, but it seems unfair to punish our kids when we can get along and maintain the family unit.

Now, here’s my biggest problem. God. I cringe to write this. I fell in love with a very unhappily married man. Of course, I see him on a daily basis. Can’t escape it. Would totally get fired for seeing him. I thought he would leave months ago. Shocker! He hasn’t.

I just want to be happy, Cary. Oh my God, I so just want to be happy and I feel like the moment I get happiness then I go and do something stupid, mostly with a man, and fuck myself over again. I don’t know how to escape this. I’ve tried reading self-help books and I saw a counselor, whom I didn’t really like at all, and overall I think I’m an incredibly insightful and curious person about myself, but when it comes to actually NOT doing this shit, I fail. I can see myself doing it. I can admit to doing it. Then I go and do it anyway. It’s as if I have to learn everything the hard way.

I’ll take whatever advice you have. Lay it on me.

Sincerely …

Me

Dear You,

Here is one concrete thing you can do right now: Call a moratorium on all intimate sexual relationships. Stop seeing this married man. Conduct your relationship with your husband in a platonic way. Spend time alone when possible. Care for yourself and your kids. Do your job, eat, exercise, bathe, read, clean your house, pay the bills. Stay away from romantic relationships.

Do this for a set a period of time, say, three months.

Don’t worry about having any great insights during that time. Just give yourself some breathing room.

This may really help you. It may sound like a drag, or downright inhuman, but give it a try. For one thing, it will show you that you really can live without romantic entanglement. That alone will broaden your choices.

So just try it. And if you find you just can’t do it, that will show you something, too. That will tell you that you have lost the ability to choose whether to get involved with men or not.

While you are going through this period of conscious abstinence, you will want some help understanding your past and how it affects you today. You mention that you’ve seen counselors. I suggest you seek long-term psychotherapy, perhaps for a year or two.

Nobody can say exactly how your early experiences are affecting your behavior today. But it’s a safe bet that what you are going through is connected to your experiences as a child. The only way to really understand those connections is to take the time to unravel your past. It is a kind of learning. It involves experimentation, observation and adjustment, and then more experimentation and observation. The only arena to really practice this in is your actual life. So you meet with a good therapist and talk about what is happening, then you go out into your life and when you repeat your problematic behavior, you take note of that, and then talk about it, and together you evaluate what happened, and visualize new solutions, new behaviors, new ways to handle the same situation, and then you go and try that out, and report back. So it’s a long-term process. There’s a lot to learn.

Dwelling on the past may seem illogical until you consider the logic of the unconscious. The unconscious is not logical in a thinking way, but in a poetic or mythic way. It seeks dramatic solutions. It seeks poetic justice. Having been wounded, we seek out people like those who wounded us, not because we seek to be hurt again, but because  the irrational, poetic, dramatic unconscious believes we can set things right if we reenact the past.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy can often help with this sort of thing. It helps us to find the thoughts behind this behavior. In choosing a therapist, ask about CBT, and whether the therapist uses it and thinks it may help.

Is it true that you need to be in a relationship, any relationship, no matter how perilous, chaotic, dangerous and unsatisfying? I think not. I think you can prove that to yourself by abstaining for a period of time. Then, having gained some breathing room and some self-understanding, having learned to take care of yourself, you can eventually begin to date again, choosing carefully.

Take baby steps. No rushing. You’ve got time.

Anyway I think that I have suffered something like maybe post-traumatic stress from that time. I am now gay, and yeah maybe that’s an attempt at workin’ this whole sorry shit out. I’ve thought about that. In fact I fought being gay for most of my life because I really truly saw it as just fuckin’ evil madness. That’s true. In my earlier years I sorta made a pact with myself that I’d off myself if I ever acted on my impulses.

But it wore me down I guess and I gave in. Now I’ve talked to some counselors about this, really just hints and not the full story. For years and years I couldn’t even talk about it at all. But then I tried and no sooner than I’d start I’d break down and just sit there and bawl like a baby, totally unable to go on. And I was all grown up then. So I’ve never ever told anyone the full fuckin’ story from beginning to end. The thing about counselors is that in my opinion they are just doin’ their job, that they really don’t give a shit about me, at least in the way that I want. And I’d die before I’d ever tell a woman because they would just get all motherly on me and treat me like a child, a fuckin’ baby. No, I always figured that if I told someone, really told someone and not just throw out hints, that it would have to be a guy. I think that a guy would get it more and that I’d get the response that I want, which is basically, “Man! that fuckin’ sucks! I’m sorry you had to go through that shit!” End of story.

Now I want to know just why I have this overwhelming urge to tell somebody, to come clean? This fuckin’ urge drives me nuts. I always thought that when I found the right guy, Mr. Right, that he would be the guy I told. But I haven’t found that guy yet. I’ve thought about seeing another counselor and being completely open and honest when I do, but truthfully I have no stomach for that. I’ve had both good and bad counselors in my life. They’re not all good. Plus I’d be just another interesting, at best, case in their career. So like I fought being gay, now I’m fighting this maddening urge to really open up. I don’t know why? Talkin’ about the past can’t change it! It’s fuckin’ done with! I don’t want anybody to “do” something about it because nothing can be done! But it seems to haunt me all the time.

I now have this friend, a straight guy, whom, I guess, that I can say that I love. Not in a gay way. I’m not into him that way, but more like a brother. When I started coming out, especially at work, I had some good experiences and, of course, some bad. I found that my women friends could roll with it much better, but my guy friends had a real difficult time. Even though I told them straight out they would deny it and act like I was totally wrong. You see, I’m, as they say, “straight acting, straight appearing.” The trouble is that I figure that I’ve been gay since junior high. Some of my friends are now, at best, my former friends, but this guy whom I mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph stuck by me. Later when I tried to end our friendship because I figured that no straight guy could ever really get a gay guy, he told me to “fuck off, he was gonna be my friend no matter what the fuck!” Man, you can’t help but love a guy like that. But anyway, I’ve been thinkin’ about tellin’ this guy, this friend, my story, but I’m really really afraid of loading him down. I love the guy. I don’t want to do anything wrong here. So some days I feel close to tellin’ him but other days an alarm goes off in my head and says, “Don’t! don’t fuckin’ do it!”

If I really love the guy then I’ll do what’s best for him, not what may give me some relief. So my question or questions: Why am I plagued with this urge to open up, to spill my guts, to bleed in public? And: What should I do about it? Ignore it? Wait and see if our friendship can take it? You’ll probably say see another counselor. That truly is last on my list. I’d rather ignore and fight it than go through that shit again.

Well man, I appreciate your ear. And I’ll appreciate any thoughts on this fucked up story. You know, it’s pitiful but I think I may know the answer, man. I’ll see if you agree with me. But probably the right answer is: Just hang in there, keep your mouth shut, and find Mr. Right! Because it’s just not about tellin’ your story, it’s about finding love. Oh Jesus! What a fucked up world!

Love ya, man. Keep doin’ good!

Sign me “Steve,” there are a lot of fuckin’ Steves in this world!

Oh P.S.: Now don’t think of tellin’ me to go straight! I had this counselor once who told me, “You’re NOT gay, you’re just hurt!”  I thought, “Tell that to my dick!” No man, I’m gay, no doubt about it! And after all this time I’m just startin’ to be happy with it. It’s startin’ to feel really good.

Dear Steve,

We’re not just mechanical beings. We live in a moral and spiritual universe and you had a moral and spiritual crime done to you and so you’re in a moral and spiritual hell. And that’s the truth. And you’ve glimpsed what it might be like to start climbing out of that hell, and you want to climb out of that hell, but you’re scared, and I don’t blame you. There are a lot of cruel, ignorant, unfeeling people in this world who cannot deal with the truth of others’ suffering.

Some people could not deal with this. But then there’s this friend of yours. He is genuinely a good person. You can tell him. He’s not going to walk away from you. He probably already senses your pain. For all we know, he may have a story of his own to tell. So I say find a quiet, private place and tell your story. If it helps to write it out first, then write it all out and then read it to him.

He is not going to think less of you for telling him what was done to you, nor for feeling the pain in front of him and crying it out.

I’m walking a thin line here between sounding like I even pretend to know what you’re going through and just stating the facts. I think the fact is, once you tell your story you will be on a journey. Your life will change. You will see that as a part of humanity, you do have a moral and spiritual core, and it operates in powerful ways. That’s about all I want to say. The point is that we are not just mechanical. You share your story because life is not just about the mechanical, much as we’d like to stick to it being all mechanical. There is a moral and spiritual universe. We are living in it. When evil is done to us, it affects us, and we then are put on a course of correcting that effect. That’s where you are now. You’ve begun the process of correcting that evil, by writing to me. Now, I’m just a bystander, cheering you on. I’m shouting, Go, tell it, brother! Tell what happened! Tell it and get it out of you!

We use all these metaphors for the changes that happen as we tell our stories, and a lot of the metaphors don’t sound right. Of course they don’t sound right, because they’re only metaphors for what actually happens. But basically, there are reasons for us wanting to tell our stories; there is something that happens when we do that, and we do change, and life does get better, and I hesitate to try to put it in words because it will sound like more metaphors for things that don’t really seem real to you now.

I can say that I have walked through life with similar locked-up feelings and locked-up stories, afraid to even mention them. I had them locked up and I had some hazy notions of terrible things that would happen if I ever said them. But eventually life just got intolerable and I started saying some of them. And I felt weak and overwhelmed when I said them but I was in  a safe environment so it was OK to crumple up in a ball for a little while; it was OK to whimper and sob. It is almost funny now, saying “whimper” and “sob” but that’s what it sounded like, just like a stupid little kid bawling. And it still happens. I’ll be talking and something will come up and all of a sudden I’m that stupid little kid bawling again, and I want to be strong, or stop bawling before someone starts laughing at me, but it’s a safe place and nobody’s there but my protector so I just bawl and then I learn another new thing, another layer, another vulnerability, another thing I’d pretended I didn’t feel or that hadn’t really happened.

If you trust this friend of yours then go ahead and tell him. I don’t think he’ll refuse to be your friend. But you may want to structure it somehow. Or you may want to go to a group like Sex Addicts Anonymous, not because you’re a sex addict, but because these 12-step groups have a structured approach to telling your story. You do an inventory and you share it with someone and it’s completely private. And you share your whole story. You don’t leave anything out. You go at it in a kind of thorough, almost mechanical way, just listing all the things. I haven’t actually participated in this group but I have a friend who has described the process to me. It might work for you.

But I say definitely share it either with your friend or in a structured 12-step setting. Once you do, you will feel better. You may find the world looks a little differently to you.

Whether you’re gay or straight is not an issue for me. The issue for me is that you’re walking around with this awful pain and fear and this awful memory and you don’t have to do that. You can choose to take a courageous step and just tell it and experience what it’s like to tell it instead of always keeping it hidden. You can get some relief.

You will probably feel some things; perhaps for a few moments it might feel like you are back there having it happen again, but that will pass.

On the positive side, you might also experience the emergence of another part of you, the strong part that could reach back into time and protect that poor kid; you might feel in your body the strong part of you that would have fought this off if you could, or would fight it off today. You might also connect with who you were before this happened, and you might find that part of yourself is still there with you, the part of you that you love, that innocent kid.

It might be scary how strong the feelings are. And you might for a few moments, as I said, feel like you’re literally re-experiencing it. But that will only be memory. You will be safe. Just make sure you find a private place where you can talk with your friend and won’t be interrupted for an hour or so, where you can experience whatever you have to experience, and be accepted.

I say do it. Don’t hold it in. Just do it with someone you trust. And then, having said it, you can begin living your life with this event in mind, knowing how it has affected you, and how similar events have affected other young men. It may lead you in many different ways. You may want to make a private peace with it and move on, or you may find it gives you a purpose in life, that you want to work to help others, to give strength to others, to ensure that this doesn’t happen to them. You might find your best way to be useful in the world is to be a role model, and walk with your head held high, and do some good in the world, and redeem this experience, and help to ensure that other people have a place to go to tell their stories. That’s up to you.

The important thing is, you don’t have to live with this. You did nothing wrong. This is something that was done to you. You are innocent. You don’t have to keep it a secret.

Tell somebody.

How much longer can I have, with these feelings rocking inside me?  I can hardly look people in the eye and I rarely make I contact with people. My life is spinning out of control and there’s nothing I can do about it. I overdose regularly and soon I shall start taking magic mushrooms. I’m addicted to any tablet that comes my way and from there I shall move on to drugs.

Usually I take paracetamols [aka acetaminophen, Tylenol, Panadol, Thomapyrin, etc.--ed.] as a way of coping. Also I take aspirin to cope but a lot more than the recommended dose.

I’ve been holding on for quite some time but I can’t  now.

I need to eat household products just to balance myself out so why don’t my feelings stop?   

Can’t Hold On  

Dear Can’t Hold On,

You’ve got to hold on. You have to.

I am writing to you and to all others who feel that things are out of control and that the only ways to cope are to ingest substances, self-mutilate, or strike out at others.

You have to hold on.

What you feel now will change. You will come out of this. Meanwhile it is important not to do anything that will cause your death.  Overdose with paracetamol, or acetaminophen, is, “by far, the most common cause of acute liver failure in both the United States and the United Kingdom.”

Death by such an overdose would be a slow and painful affair. It would be messy and ugly. It would not be pretty and glamorous.

If you have already taken too many paracetamols, go to the emergency room of your nearest hospital now.

Otherwise, since it sounds like you are in the U.K., contact the Samaritans, either through their website or by phone.

Ask for help. Talk it through. Find solutions. Stay alive.

What you are going through will pass. You have to hang on through this. You have to tough it out. I know you have gotten a raw deal. I know you have been abused. It is painful and nobody knows how much pain it caused except you. It is an existential pain. It is not simple. But you have to survive through this because it will get better.

You may want to do many things so that you can be whole. You may have a sex change, or you may want to find your own practice that allows you to integrate pain and power into your life. That is OK. Those are routes you can take that will not destroy your body. Those may be routes to wholeness for you.

But do not destroy your body. Then there is no hope.

If you have ever had any dreams of doing anything, keep those dreams in your mind. Think of those dreams. Remember those dreams. Remember the things you have wanted to do. Remember the times when you have felt good. Visualize times you have been happy. Just sit and be there.  You can be happy again like you were before all this happened to you. That person you were before you were damaged is still there. You can contact that person you were, that young and innocent child. That young and innocent child you once were is ready to come back.

You are scared and uncomfortable. That is OK. You can be scared and uncomfortable and tough it out. Please understand: What your head is telling you is wrong. Your head was damaged by the abuse. Do not believe what your head is telling you. You cannot solve this on your own. But if you survive and get help, you can be fine.

So get somewhere safe where you can stay while this passes. That means stay away from websites that encourage you to overdose and mutilate yourself. You are too fragile for those things. You need to be around strong people who know what you have been through and can help you.

Sit in a waiting room until help comes. Tough it out. It will pass.

It gets better. You don’t have to die.

A friend of mine called just yesterday to say a friend of his died from alcohol and drugs. His friend didn’t really mean to die. He was just doing things to numb the pain. But that’s what happens. Then you lose your chance to do whatever it is that’s going to make you happy.

So this is a time to be careful and conserve your life. Whatever emotional pain you are feeling, it may seem intolerable but it is not. You can bear it. It will pass. You can survive. We are animals, all of us. We will do anything to survive. We can survive this and much more.

So find some place where you can be safe. Find someone you can trust, a doctor or teacher or therapist.

There is hope. What you feel now will change.

You can get through this. You will see. Trust me. You will see.