Duane Hicks
Riverside Community Counselling Services will be part of a province-wide network of services and support for male survivors of sexual abuse.
The province announced last week it will establish a comprehensive network of 45 agencies across Ontario to co-ordinate the delivery of specialized services for male victims, adding the agencies “will work together to provide training, public education, and other professional development services to ensure victims receive the supports they need.”
Jon Thompson, a counsellor at Riverside Community Counselling Services, said the new focus on male survivors of sexual abuse provides greater recognition that men are living with this difficulty—and can seek services here in our community and across the province.
“The funding may be new, but the issue has long been recognized as with a lot of our male clients,” Thompson noted.
“The other exciting thing is the knowledge base will be enhanced at the provider end, the front-line direct service end, so that counsellors are more equipped and ready to deal with this issue as it emerges,” he added.
Thompson said Riverside Community Counselling Services hasn’t been promised any money from the province, but staff will receive training while awareness of best practices will be enhanced.
“There’s a body of knowledge of how to work with men as they recover from sexual abuse and victimization [but] not all of us are fully knowledgeable about that,” he admitted, noting the training will ensure Riverside continues to be “a welcoming, accessible place for men to come for help with their problems.”
Thompson said there will be more information available to give to men to assist them, as well as a range of connections with other agencies in Northern Ontario to share their knowledge base.
“A man emerging anywhere in the north will be able to access service somehow, and have it somewhat standardized in the sense that it’s going to look the same, or similar at least, in Timmins as it will in Fort Frances, or even a more isolated place,” he explained.
“In some of those communities, obviously we’ll be using other methods than face-to-face counselling, and group and individual and couple counselling,” he noted.
“The project will allow outreach using other media—everything from e-counselling to web-based things to phone to peer support.
“Some men, for example, may not be, for a lot of reasons, ready to come forward, and one of the things that we’re already aware of that is a best practice is groups of men who are recovering together as peers,” Thompson continued.
“But they, too, need support in developing their group,” he stressed.
Survivors also will have access to a new 24-hour, toll-free phone number that will provide crisis and referral services, according to the province.
These new services are expected to be available by early summer.
“The enhancements will build over time we hope, and gradually, hopefully very smoothly, fit as yet another expertise that we’re adding to the mix of things, for example here at Riverside, that we do already,” said Thompson.
“If you’re here, we’ll be able to comfortably work with you if, indeed, sexual abuse and victimization is part of your problem or issue. You’re at the right place,” he added.
“If we need to, we can connect with others to see what can be done.”
Speaking generally about the past treatment of male survivors of sexual abuse in Ontario, Thompson said it has ranged from “terribly and not at all” to “not so bad, because you had a worker that was engaged and tried to do the best they could under the circumstances.”
He noted the issue of male survivors of sexual abuse has come to light in recent years mainly due to two reasons.
One was the Cornwall public inquiry, which examined in detail how public institutions like the police, the Catholic diocese, and Children’s Aid Society in Cornwall, Ont. dealt with widespread allegations of sexual against priests, probation officers, lawyers, and other men in positions of power and trust in the community.
The second is the number of prominent figures, including NHL players, who have come forward to describe their experiences and engage the public.
“The courage that those guys have had to bring this issue forward has allowed a lot of other men to recognize, ‘This is really part of my difficulty,’” said Thompson.
“That’s kind of out there in the community. There’s a growing awareness of that now, and acceptance that that’s a problem that we have to deal with like a number of others in our society.
“For years, these men, though, having been victimized have gone on and developed . . . addiction issues, mental health issues, family violence issues,” Thompson noted.
“Some of them perpetrate violence themselves.
“There’s all kinds of serious addiction problems, and symptoms and/or actual mental illnesses—depression, anxiety, panic attacks, post-traumatic disorder,” he warned.
Thompson said agencies like Riverside Community Counselling Services have long been in the business of dealing with these issues.
And while they have been successful in helping men with them, in some cases workers didn’t have the knowledge to help deal with sexual abuse or the male client kept their sexual abuse a secret through their treatment and it impacted their recovery.
For example, a client could be treated for substance abuse, but if the root cause of that substance abuse is sexual abuse, until that root cause is dealt with, the substance abuse will resurface.
“Some of the ways we cope with our underlying problems is by adding another problem,” Thompson reasoned. “If you’ve been traumatized by one of these events, one of the ways you may cope with that is drinking too much or using some other drug too much to silence the pain, to silence the voices, as has been described by people like Theo Fleury, for example.
“If they’ve developed a drinking problem, that’s what brought them in, but the underlying issue is still there,” he stressed.
“We spend lots of time getting people to reduce and stop their drug and alcohol use, and stop them perpetrating violence on others and their partners,” Thompson continued.
“That will work for a year or two, maybe even a few years, but then sure enough, a range of things can start to happen again.
“It’s kind of like everything else—if you don’t get to some of the core levels of this stuff in your soul and in your being, it’s going to be an ongoing thing,” he warned. “It’s not so much that one thing clearly causes another, but it’s a package we’ve learned to look for.
“We don’t just see individual problems coming in the door,” Thompson said. “Our clients realize that more now, and our treatment personnel in the system and our direct service support workers at all levels recognize that more.”
