The Monterey Rape Crisis Center Men's Group for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Rape
PSA (Public Service Announcement) and Documentary Projects
Update: September 1, 2007
We at the Monterey Rape Crisis Center are thrilled with the very successful weekend mini-retreat/documentary filming session we had on Saturday. Eleven out of ten men, men who have either been in our groups or are currently in our groups for men who have been sexually abused as children and/or raped as adults, who committed themselves to attend the project made it. One could not make it as he was refused entry onto the plane he was to fly on to the session. We held our thoughts, and an empty chair, for him. He was with us in spirit! We have now filmed hours of actual group therapy sessions, hours of several men telling their stories on an individual bases, hours of partners of these men who share what it’s been like to be involved with these men and hours of some of the few world’s leading experts in treating these men. We also have hours of filming TV stories on the men’s group. We successfully launched our PSA on local TV stations back in December of 2006. We have now given away over 1000 copies of this PSA on DVD and have invited others to watch this on our website at www.mtryrapecrisis.org. Copies of the PSA specifically designed to be easily edited for use by others to advertise their own Men’s Groups for male survivors may be obtained for FREE by contacting us. We successfully produced a half hour TV interview on our projects which aired on KSBW TV on Easter Sunday this year. Unfortunately, we do not yet have a link to follow so you can watch that show. However, we do have it on tape and DVD for those who want to see it per request. We have now had two TV News stories done on our projects by KION/KCBA reporter Joel Moreno. We thank him tremendously for his dedication to our projects.
You can see them by following these links……We
are having some technical difficulties with these so
please check back some time soon if one or more does not
work for you.
KCBA
KION
Joel Moreno also recently covered the release of a high profile pedophile and included us in the story. You can see this
at
KION
- Pedophile Story
If you don’t already know, our projects started when I co-presented a workshop at an AASECT (www.aasect.org) conference on Male Sexual Victimization. As part of my portion of the presentation I showed a film made by some of the men in the Monterey Rape Crisis Center's Men's Group for Male Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse. This film was specifically designed for sexologists and psychotherapist in an effort to educate about the issue and the healing from same that is possible in groups of this kind. This stemmed from the anger the men had when a local “expert”, the ED at a Women’s Crisis Center, made a claim in a local newspaper that “boys who are molested as children become molesters.” This is a dangerous myth that the men in the group want the public to understand as false. The film was also driven by the fact that I shared with the group that I present on the subject because, still, most therapists and sexologists still lack knowledge and understanding on this topic and few run groups for such men. After the conference we decided to move this film forward and make three such films. The first was to be a one minute public service announcement. That project is completed and what we call our PSA project as mentioned above. The second a three minute piece to be sent to such places as the Oprah Show. We have since dropped this one as we have went full force into our third project instead. The third is the documentary we are currently working on. If you’d like more information about our Men’s Groups, and other related issues on sexual abuse in general, visit my website and our Center’s website. There are articles and blurbs to read and links to follow. We still have some more filming to do to complete this portion of our documentary. We are sending our film crew out to film a few more experts and a few more survivors. Then we go into editing. Our projects are made by actual men in who have used our services with the help of the award winning MAC and AVA Motion Pictures company. The men have written the script and music for the PSA, are writing music for the documentary and have bravely bared their souls to be seen in these projects. We, at the Monterey Rape Crisis Center, work on a shoe-string budget and could only do these projects by the very generous donation by a foundation that wishes to remain anonymous. We cannot, being a non-profit, make money from these projects and really don’t want to. These are gifts of healing we are offering free of charge to our world in an effort to help heal those who have been sexually abused and, perhaps, make a dent in reducing new incidences of sexual abuse of children. We still welcome donations to our projects to help us reach the goal of having our documentary seen in movie theatres all across the U.S. by the end of 2008. Please let us know if you would like to help our projects in any way or have questions for us. Here’s to the healing of those who have been sexually abused and the full elimination of this problem some day!