The Survivor Activist newsletter
Survivor Connections page index
Survivor Connections home page
Links to Page Topics
Preparation |
Getting Support |
Get Therapy |
Learn Your Legal Rights |
Locate Your Perp or Witnesses |
Find Other Survivors |
Uncover the Evidence |
Warn the Community |
Report the Crime |
Less Personal Activism
Preparation -
1.) Get through the day. Don’t hurt yourself.
2.) Get yourself in a safe social situation away from the perpetrator. Distance
yourself from him or her.
3.) Overcome shame. Taking action is very difficult for most survivors of
sexual abuse. We have to overcome both our own inner shame and that imposed
on us by some elements of society. The inner shame, we can eliminate through
therapy and carefully thought out activism. The shame imposed by society can
be changed only by our activism, for only when we show other people how common
sexual abuse has become, will they realize that we are just ordinary people,
as they are. Rather than catering to the lowest common denominator in some
people of minimal intelligence and deficient compassion by hiding in our fear,
we can voice the truth and hope for the best response to our activism from
those, who by their understanding, will show themselves worthy of our respect
for their opinions.
The following prescriptions for activism do not have a rigid timetable. Some
people will report the crime immediately after its commission. Others, like
me, will take many years to overcome the internal shame, before finding the
strength to help protect others by exposing our perpetrators. Whether we find
the courage the same day, or 80 years later, whether the perpetrator is a
family member or a priest, whether the criminal is alive or dead, whether
a suit is in process or the statute of limitations for prosecution has long
passed, we can still take action to expose the crime and thereby warn others
to teach them prevention and care.
What -
Find a support system Back
to Page Topics
This can be a spouse, relative, friend, survivor organization, peer support
group, or therapist.
How -
The first step is disclosure to a person whom you feel can be trusted.
If you are reading this, you are well on your way in this part of the journey.
The supporters you find can provide emotional support during your recovery
and your activism. (Personally, I was fortunate enough to have the greatest
support from my wife and family. I couldn’t find an organization such
as Survivor Connections.)
What -
Get therapy Back to
Page Topics
Get help from a qualified therapist who is experienced with and understanding
about survivors and our concerns. Besides being competent they must be compatible
with your personality.
What -
Learn your legal rights Back
to Page Topics
Choosing the right attorney is important. For an adult survivor of childhood
sexual assault, this is often complicated by the fact that sometimes it is
difficult to find an attorney even willing to take your case. This limits
the pool of people from which you can select. Try to find someone who is caring,
yet also experienced. At the same time, though, keep in mind that your attorney
cannot substitute for your therapist. Your support system during the legal
process cannot simply be your attorney, but should be one or all of the following:
a victim advocate, a local support group, your therapist, your family, and
friends.
The most important factor in selecting an attorney is to make sure that the
attorney focuses in directions that reflects your goals. If your goal is to
expose the perpetrator so that the public will be warned and thus children
may be protected from future sexual assaults, then it makes no sense at all
to have your attorney be negotiating a settlement that includes having you
sign a Release (settlement contract) with a gag provision that silences you
in exchange for compensation.
If you find an attorney who is experienced, caring, and does not allow the
use of gag provisions in Releases, please send us their name, address, telephone
number, and fax number for us to add to our survivor resources list.
What -
Locate your perpetrator and/or witnesses Back
to Page Topics
(If you know exactly where your perp now lives, skip ahead to the next section.)
1.) Hire a private investigator, OR
2.) Do the research yourself. (More personally satisfying, much cheaper,
and, may turn up information that only you can personally follow up on.)
How -
1.) Before hiring an investigator put together as much information as
possible, from memory or personal research. It will be far less expensive,
the more the investigator has to work with. Names, dates, places, ages, social
security numbers, employers, relatives, associates, nicknames, hobbies - and
anything else you can provide may prove useful.
Interview the investigator to judge their experience and knowledge, determine
how much they charge, and ask what information they will need before they
begin. If you can develop a social security number, many investigators can
easily do the job for less than a hundred dollars. If you have an exact address
where the person lived within the past five to ten years, the job may also
be relatively uncomplicated. The more you can do yourself the less you will
have to pay some one else to do.
2.) Public records and personal contact are the primary ways to develop information.
Every bit of remembered or discovered “trivia” can be important.
I started out with just my perpetrator’s last name - Porter. There are
tens of thousands of Porters in the United States, hundreds of James Porters,
and likely a few dozen James R. Porters - but there are very few - and likely
only one - James R. Porter with the date of birth of January 2, 1935.
Start by building on whatever bits of information you already have. If the
person was last known to you to be living in Maryville Junction, Ohio in 1958
then begin there. A great wealth of information is available to anyone through
public records. If you don’t already know, call the town government and
ask where records for voter registration, motor vehicle licenses, property
taxes, deaths, births, and marriages are kept. They may be at the town hall,
the county level, or at a state government agency. Ask for the information
one piece at a time to avoid having the town clerk hang up on you in annoyance.
Once you know where voter registration records are kept, call that location
and ask if they have a record on file for the person as of the date when you
know they were residing there. Provide the name and address. You are looking
for the person’s date of birth. If they refuse to look at the records
for you ask how you can request such a search in writing. The best thing to
do is to go in person to the town halls of many small communities but travel
costs might make this impossible.
When you have the person’s name and date of birth you can often obtain
their current address through motor vehicle driver licensing. Although states
have licensing outposts scattered about, there will be one repository of all
records kept in the capital city. Call telephone directory assistance to get
the number. Call the driver licensing agency to learn the procedure to request
driving license information. Many states only require the person’s name
and date of birth. The cost is anywhere from $2 to $20. If the last-known-address
that you have of the person is recent you may not even need a date of birth.
The Registry of Motor Vehicles records may hunt for a change of address for
you. Ask for the most recent driver license information available and be sure
to say that you want even inactive or expired licenses provided. That way,
if the person has moved out of state, at least you might obtain a more recent
address - and perhaps even a social security number which very often appears
on the record.
Property tax records contain the person’s address. If someone owns real
estate in Massachusetts but lives in Oregon, the owners will receive the tax
bill at their Oregon address. If the person has an unlisted phone number and
you know the town but not the address where they live, the property tax assessment
records on their owned property will provide the exact location where they
live.
Directories of licensing bodies, associations, and memberships are good resources
to check. Every Roman Catholic priest in the United States, for example, is
listed alphabetically by name in the yearly publication called The Official
Catholic Directory. Current assignments and addresses are cross-referenced
to name. Major public libraries carry the present year’s directory in
the reference department while the older years are usually available from
the archives.
Personal contact is the second primary way to locate people. Ask where the
person is or was last known to be from his relatives, friends, employers,
or other associates. Follow each path that develops - going back and forth
from public records to personal interviews.
What -
Search for other survivors of your perp Back
to Page Topics
1.) Through reciprocation from others after your personal, confidential disclosure
to them.
2.) By publicly reaching out after your personal disclosure.
How -
By far, most of the initial group of thirty other survivors of Father
James R. Porter that I met, I found through personal contact. My best explanation
for why people opened up to me is that it was because I first disclosed that
I had been sexually abused by Porter to them. Secondly, I respected their
right to privacy and confidentiality. Another factor is that I purposely refrained
from confrontation: I never asked if he had done something to them but waited
for the other person to be ready to disclose. Because of my respect for confidentiality
the oddity occurred that there were many survivors of Porter who knew each
other as children but who did not wish other survivors to know, that they,
too, had been his victim. Thus, the right to privacy fostered isolation, but
it was absolutely necessary and just.
Eventually, in the personals of two newspapers, I ran an ad that read, “Remember
Father Porter? Write to Frank Fitzpatrick at ...” I got a few positive
responses over a period of about six months. This option was fairly expensive.
I made two public speeches in 1990 and 1991 hoping to expose the crime and
bring other people forward. Word began to get around about what I was doing.
The seeds for activism were being planted. Then going public on WBZ TV in
Boston with eight other Porter survivors in May of 1992 caused the big explosion
of Porter survivors coming forward. People felt empowered by what we had done.
What -
Uncover the evidence Back
to Page Topics
1.) Contact your perp and tape record his or her admissions. Check local laws
for the legality of this for it varies widely.
2.) Retrieve your medical and psychiatric records that relate to when you
were sexually abused.
3.) Look for previous lawsuits or criminal convictions.
4.) Do your own legal research at public law libraries with the assistance
of the librarians. Check your findings with an attorney.
How -
1.) Legalities aside for the moment, tape recording your perpetrator
can be valuable in several ways. In a court of law (criminal or civil) admissions
made by him might be admissible as evidence. A tape is useful to listen to
later so you can dispassionately analysis the perp’s comments. It can
be brought with you to therapy to get feedback from your counselor. The recordings
I made of my phone calls to ex-priest Porter were used on many television
programs and quoted in news articles with great effect as proof to the public
of his crimes.
The approach you make to your perpetrator is of paramount importance. It must
be done prior to any litigation or criminal prosecution so that the perp is
not already in a defensive posture. No one is likely to make admissions when
a court case is underway. When talking to your raper make the positive assumption
that he or she and you both know what happened and that there is no question
about it. Do not beg for validation or you will provoke a denial. Include
something like, “I want to talk to you about what you did to me when
I was ten. I want to make sure that you are not a danger to anyone else and
find out if you ever got treatment for your problem. When you fondled my crotch
those nights it wasn’t just something that lasted while it happened.
It’s been bothering me for years and I want to talk about it and know
what made you do this to me.” Use your name and the perp’s name
during the conversation to get the identifications on tape. Prepare all the
points you want to cover ahead of time. If you are making contact by phone
you should have a list of things you want to say in front of you.
The legality of taping your perpetrator without his or her knowledge varies
from place to place. In Minnesota, New York, and Rhode Island, the last
that I knew, it was perfectly legal as long as the person doing the taping
was part of the conversation. In Massachusetts, however, unless both people
are advised that the conversation is being recorded, to do so is a felony.
Check with legal experts from the jurisdictions’s law enforcement departments
for whether taping is lawful or not.
2.) To get copies of your own medical and psychiatric records to use as evidence
requires sending a written request to the practitioner or facility. Specify
dates of treatment or at least the general time frame. The authorization letter
should be signed by you and dated. Give your date of birth and social security
number in the letter since records are often identified by these. State that
you want any and all records. There may be a fee charged by the facility for
retrieval and photocopying. Some places will only send records to another
therapist or doctor, so see if you can get cooperation from your present counselor
if this becomes necessary.
3.) Checking for civil suits or criminal charges against your perpetrator
involves research at the court houses. This can be done by mail or in person.
Indices of cases are kept by name of plaintiff and defendant. Because different
people can have the same name you might have to go through the files in person
to determine if the case was against the same person. There are District courts
and Superior courts hearing usually each different cases. The more serious
offenses are primarily heard in Superior courts.
4.) There are some lawyers and prosecutors who do not want to be bothered
with older crimes. If you are being brushed off with potentially inaccurate
excuses that the statute of limitations has passed, do your own legal research.
The results can then be presented to convince the legal people.
Any decent law library will have everything you need. These are usually open
to the public. Call any attorney or court house for the location of the nearest
public law library. In the USA, the General Laws of the particular state contain
most of the pertinent information. Look in the index of topics to try to find
what volume contains criminal law. Key phrases to look under include: “sexual
assault,” “molestation,” “rape,” “statute of
limitations,” “crimes against nature”, etc.. Start by checking
what the current laws say and then work your way back by checking the references
to when the laws were enacted to check the status of the law at the time when
the offenses occurred. Information about the statute of limitations and the
correct jurisdiction (place for prosecution and reporting) may be found under
the headings for the specific crimes or under their own headings. Once you
find them photocopy the related pages to document your information to present
to the prosecuting authorities.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Often the librarians of the library
will be helpful if you ask politely and are patient enough to wait for them
to be available. It is a slow process to do all this. Legal research requires
persistence and time, and has a learning curve.
If you can find an expert criminal prosecutor who has specialized in handling
sexual assault cases whose judgment you are sure you can trust, then perhaps
you can avoid this burden. Unfortunately, I found myself that I disagreed
with the district attorney’s office’s evaluation of the Porter case.
In that case, my perpetrator had moved out of state and so the statute of
limitations for criminal prosecution was literally suspended for the period
when he was not publicly a resident of Massachusetts. After Porter was criminally
charged, research by the prosecutors found that similar provisions exist in
34 other states.
If your personal research is unfavorable do not give up. Do not assume that
your information is complete. Still seek competent legal advice because they
may come up with facets of the case that you were unaware existed.
Criminal law is entirely separate from civil law (pertaining to seeking money
compensation from the perp). The laws will be in different areas of the law
books but still under General Laws. There may or may not be special laws relating
to just sexual assault cases. Perhaps sexual assault cases will come under
the heading of bodily injury lawsuits or negligence statutes regarding the
statute of limitations. Again, do not give up if your work is unfruitful,
but seek good legal advice.
Once you are armed with legal information (again, make sure you photocopy
the pertinent pages from the law books) you will be prepared to counter any
arguments given to you by prosecutors or police who do not wish to even hear
about opening a case on a crime that happened many years ago.
What -
Warn the community Back
to Page Topics
1.) Phone the spouse of the perp if he or she is unaware of the perp’s
criminal past, to warn of danger to their children or neighborhood children.
Identify yourself by name, and as one of the perp’s former victims.
2.) Write, phone, or talk in person to neighbors and associates where the
perp now lives to alert them. Again, identify yourself by name, and as one
of his or her former victims.
How -
Quietly - person to person, or publicly - marching in the street with signs.
The public needs to know the truth so that they can make an informed decision
about trusting that person again. An anonymous accusation will carry much
less weight (if any at all) compared to one backed by your personal character
and credibility. If was very hard for me to call Mrs. Verlyne Porter to warn
her of the sexual crimes against children in her husband’s past, but
I finally decided it was necessary for her to have this information so she
could judge the potential for harm that he might offer to their own children
or others.
Two years ago a man moved back into our neighborhood. He had just finished
serving 10 years at the Adult Correctional Institution in Rhode Island for
sexually assaulting several young boys. I was new to the street and so had
not known of Preston Kidd until a neighbor disclosed his history and pointed
him out. My neighbor was concerned because I have two children. Quietly, I
told the other people on the street to keep their children away from Kidd,
and told them why. In December of 1995 Preston Kidd was again arrested for
sexual assault on a boy. The police also reportedly found child pornography
videos in his home. Preston Kidd lived three houses away from me. The abused
boy lives in the next city to us. I felt absolutely horrible when I heard
this had happened again. Two years ago I was still in group therapy and had
been criticized by several fellow group members for the warning that I gave
to my neighbors. I was accused of persecuting someone who had already paid
for his crimes. Now I only wish I had been more public with my warnings. This
serial pedophile is incorrigible. His repeated crimes prove the value and
need for community notification laws. If there had been a public announcement
when he was released back to the community perhaps he could not have gained
the trust of the family of his present victim. Rhode Island and most other
states have reporting laws that mandate that the released sex offender inform
the police wherever they live, but there are very few locales where the community
is informed of the predators whereabouts. In New Jersey the community notification
statute is known as Megan’s Law after a girl who was murdered by a recently
released criminal.
What -
Report the crime Back
to Page Topics
To all of the following -
1.) the local police where the abuse occurred and the local police where
the perp now lives;
2.) the state or provincial police;
3.) the attorney general, district attorney or other criminal prosecuting
authority;
4.) the perp’s family;
5.) your family;
6.) the institutional leaders and administrators at all levels of the church,
the youth organization, the school, the orphanage, the certifying board, or
the association;
7.) the Department of Social Services/Family Services where the perp now lives;
8.) Survivor Connections.
How -
1, 2, 3.) Give a formal written statement to criminal prosecutors and
police to ensure they have a record of your allegations. Insist that they
keep it on file even if the statute of limitations is gone. Be sure and keep
a photocopy for yourself. If police want to tape record your statement be
certain to arrange it so you can make your own tape of the proceedings at
the same time.
The correct locale to report a crime is either the place where it occurred,
or in the case of a minor, the place from which the victim was taken. Do not
be deterred by questions in your mind or by others (including the police,
district attorney, or attorney general) about the statute of limitations being
past. That is a legal question that cannot be honestly and accurately answered
until a full, detailed report of all events has been given by you. If they
try to tell you that the “statute is gone” without giving you a
full hearing then you are being brushed off, because there are too many special
circumstances that can change this for a quick decision to be made by them.
Always be polite but at the same time firm, persistent, and resolute about
your decision to report the abuse. Going to the reporting location (the DA’s
office or a police station) with your supportive therapist or a survivor advocate
from a rape crisis center is a good idea if you are not sure whether you can
handle it - and even if you are - just to make sure that nothing slides by
you. Some of the special circumstances which can change whether the statute
of limitations is gone include the age of the victim, the type of sexual act,
whether the offense occurred in multiple states, and whether the perpetrator
ever took up residence out of state or lived in one state and committed some
of the offenses in another.
As stated above, in most states in the USA the laws provide that the correct
jurisdiction for a case to be reported and tried can be either of two places
- where the crime took place, or where the victim was taken from. This is
to include those situations where, for example, a child is taken from his
home to an uncertain place (like I was!). Otherwise, a perpetrator would be
able to get away with anything simply by confusing the victim about where
they were when the crime was committed.
4, 5, 7.) Tell the story of your abuse to the perp’s family, your family,
and any organizations associated with the perp by phone, by mail, or in person.
Give credibility to your assertions by identifying yourself, and by being
clear about what occurred.
6.) Describe to an organization what you expect them to do: remove the perp
from his or her position, not to transfer them to a new position, actively
search for other survivors of the perp, and help you to expose the perp’s
crimes to the unsuspecting public.
8.) Write or call Survivor Connections at 52 Lyndon Rd., Cranston, RI 02905-1121
USA. Phone in USA: (401) 941-2548. Give SC the perp’s full name and as
much other identifying information as possible. SC keeps a confidential privately-held
database of reported sexual assault perpetrators. Anonymous submissions are
not accepted because the data is maintained for the sole purpose of permitting
survivors of the same person to contact each other - but only if both survivors
agree to it.
When -
Whether the report is on the same day as the abuse or 80 years later;
whether the perpetrator is dead or alive, active or retired, in the same or
a different occupation or marital status. Whether the statute of limitations
is gone or not.
Why -
1, 2, 3.) Reporting in writing to the police and prosecutors serves two
purposes: criminal charges on your case may be filed, or at least prosecutors
will have a record of another allegation if other victims some day come forward.
In the second instance you may be able to testify at the perp’s trial
for another victim, or else provide corroboration and support for their credibility.
Although only one can prosecute the other could possibly testify as what I
call a “lack of character” witness against the perp. Some judges
will allow testimony of this type into evidence.
Report to all of the criminal authorities individually because in that
way you lessen the chance that they can brush you off or later deny that you
made the report in the first place. Many police are compassionate and understanding
but others are not well trained on how to handle survivors or their reports.
It is never too late to report the sexual abuse. I made my report to the North
Attleboro, Massachusetts Police Department and Bristol County District Attorney’s
office 28 years after I had been sexually assaulted as a boy. I wanted them
to have a record of an official complaint being made to them, whether or not
they ever decided to prosecute. Although they turned me down personally, eventually
my efforts did lead to Porter’s jail term.
4, 5.) Reporting to the perp’s family hopefully will serve to put them
on their guard so that family members and friends might not be put at risk.
But even if they don’t believe you at first, at least the seed of knowledge
has been planted and their eyes may be opened at a later date.
6.) Warning the organization of which the perp is a member is necessary so
that they cannot avoid taking responsibility for the future. Forcing off the
blinders will ensure they take action, but only if the survivor follows through
by also notifying the criminal prosecuting authorities and warning the public.
What -
Less personal but still important forms of activism
Back to Page Topics
1.) Be an activist for legal reform & social change
2.) Volunteer for a rape crisis center, or survivor organization
3.) Be a court room advocate and survivor support person in court
4.) Educate in school systems after being properly trained