I found an interesting article that was posted this past April about Ronnie’s prison…

http://www.amarillo.com/stories/041308/new_10088328.shtml

National prison survey: Clements second in sexual assaults


By Dan Packard
dan.packard@amarillo.com
Publication Date: 04/13/08

A national survey of prison inmates showed the William P. Clements Jr. Unit near Amarillo to have the second-highest rate of sexual victimization.

According to the survey conducted on behalf of the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, 13.9 percent of Clements inmates reported being sexually victimized.

Only the Estelle Unit outside Huntsville ranked higher with 15.7 percent rate.

Five Texas prisons rank in the survey's top 10. The other three are Allred near Wichita Falls, 9.9 percent; Mountain View outside Gatesville, 9.5 percent; and Coffield near Tennessee Colony, 9.3 percent. All are men's prisons, except Mountain View.

The national average was 4.5 percent.

Only 234 cases of alleged sexual assaults were reported to the Office of the Inspector General in all Texas prisons in 2007, a figure which makes Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, skeptical of the survey's accuracy.

"Sex abuse within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is not a common occurrence based on the number of allegations reported to TDCJ or the Office of the Inspector General, which is not consistent with the results obtained through the anonymous survey," she said. "The confidential nature of the survey precludes further investigation, so it is difficult to make definitive statements regarding the findings."

The survey polled 23,398 inmates from April through August 2007 at 146 adult state and federal confinement facilities. Of those, 1,109 prisoners reported one or more incidents of sexual victimization.

About 2.1 percent of all inmates reported a sexual incident with another inmate, and 2.9 percent reported an incident with a prison staff member.

Officials at Clements, a medium-security facility housing about 3,600 prisoners, could not be reached for comment.

Lyons said many allegations of sexual victimization do not include the basic legal elements of sexual assault and could include legitimate security precautions such as strip searches.

"Texas prison officials have a zero tolerance policy against sexual encounters of any kind within the system," she said. "The TDCJ, in conjunction with several independent entities such as the Office of the Inspector General and the Special Prosecution Unit, has an extensive program aimed at preventing, investigating and prosecuting sexual assault and other acts of violence.

"This program is in operation at all TDCJ correctional facilities, including the five units specifically mentioned in this study.”

"As often as you wish, you can send protest letters to our office to be included in the offender's file. You can describe how the crime affected you and continues to impact you and your family. Any new information, pictures, pertinent newspaper articles, etc., may be included, all of which will be placed int the offender's file for the Parole Board's consideration during the parole review process. This is a permanent file; anything submitted will remain in the file permanently and cannot be returned."

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice-Victim Services Division provides:
-Assistance to victims with requests for interviews or meetings with Parole Board members durring the review process;

-Prison tours for victims, concerned citizens, and criminal justice professionals

-Victim Impact Panels that afford victims the opportunity to participate on a panel that facilitates their healing by speaking about their experience to criminal justice staff and offenders.

These are just a few things that this information packet they sent has listed.

I'm not used to being taken seriously about what I experienced- at least not by anybody that had any position of authority when it came to Ronnie... or me.

It's been a long time since I've wondered what would have happened if I told a teacher. I'm finding myself wondering that right now. I can't think of a single teacher I could have tried to tell.

The important thing is that he's gonna sit there and rot for the next three years. Calladus and I shared a laugh over that. He's gotta be really pissed off in that cell of his.

I want to post about a significant challenge that I have encountered in abuse recovery. This is an excessively controversial subject in Survivor circles, and I do not doubt that someone will read this and disagree with me bitterly at some point in time.

So allow me to take a moment and say: I'm not like my brother, Calladus, who has posting rules about comments on his blog. I don't have any rules because this is my journal and I don't really intend to be fair. Lets face it, I post a bunch of personal stuff here, and I let everybody read it. So it is not a place that I'll accept a dressing down over an emotional subject- no matter how civil the dressing down may attempt to be. If you're a stranger or an unkind person and you post something overly confrontational, I'll just delete it. Feel free to ask for my email address and we can have a one-off debate or conversation, though.

Anyhoo...

The subject is about remembering trauma.

In my experience, I've come across about a dozen "group" forums that I have actively participated in, that were moderated by counselors, psychologists, or abuse survivors. These include no more than four web sites, two county-run group forums, a few groups that were created and moderated by survivors only, and a few groups that were created by violence prevention non-profits & women’s support centers.

Well over half of these, including all four of the web sites and one of the county-run groups spent a tremendous amount of time discussing how to recover memories of abuse that were "blocked out". This is also true of a book called "The Courage to Heal."

In this book and within these forums, I always felt like the "unusual exception". We are told: Some Survivors always remembered what happened to them, but many adults have completely forgotten the experience, then twenty, thirty, or forty years later something happens and they suddenly start to remember. Those are not my words, that's the exact wording from several of my Survivor group hand-outs.

However, I remember everything.

I remember it happening before I understood what it was, and before I had a name for it. I remember those horrible events no matter how much they were denied or ignored by my offender or my non-protective parent. I remember it no matter how much shame I felt, no matter how it affected my self-worth, or esteem. I remembered it no matter how much I feared being blamed. I remembered it no matter what consequences I feared if I spoke about what happened. I remembered even though I was isolated in my experiences, & no group of trusted people went through these experiences with me.

But these are all cited as reasons why children forget.

I believe that I am not the "unusual exception" after all. I have come to believe that most Survivors of sexual abuse are exactly like me in this respect. I believe that most Survivors of sexual abuse do not find themselves incapable of remembering their trauma- unless they were too young at the time of their abuse, or have suffered brain injury & damage.
In fact, I believe that most Survivors are also like me in that their problem with traumatic memories is precisely the opposite of what these forums attempt to teach. What really happens is that we remember too much.
The problem that I always had with my memories of trauma was their intrusive and unbidden reenactments in my mind. Even when I tried not to think about it, memories of the abuse would involuntarily monopolize my thoughts with graphic and disturbing images of my past.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to skip over chapters on trauma amnesia, or "sit out" in group therapies while the group immersed in exercises for "recovered memory therapy" and "hypnosis". All the while, nobody spoke of how to deal with remembering everything only too well.

And I'll tell you something else. I think it's a bunch of bullshit.

The authors of the book The Courage to Heal are not psychotherapists, doctors, or neuroscientists of any kind, and they do not cite any scientific study. However, their book makes an attempt to do a noble thing: They attempt to fill a void where there *should* be researched and helpful facilitation to the psychological health of the abuse survivor. Also, I must point out that the Courage to Heal has many comforting and healing exercises. For instance, their writing exercise titled "Giving Up the Fantasy" in the Courage to Heal Workbook is a very powerful tool! 

So, I do not necessarily want to bag on The Courage to Heal authors, but the bias that they and others have regarding memories began to flood therapy sessions in the late 80's, and the misconceptions regarding memory are still observed today.

I am not any sort of expert on the human brain or its ability to recall. But I do believe in scientific study, which this book does not cite. There is another book called Remembering Trauma, by Richard J. McNally that could be much more comforting to an abuse Survivor.

Notice that I use the words "could be."

Here's the deal. Remembering Trauma has some very awesome stuff in it. Nearly half the book is filled with foot-notes and lists of the scientific studies that were cited in the writing of the book itself. Good to know. It's awesomely researched.

The problem is that Remembering Trauma is as dry as a sack of sawdust and reads like a tome of stereo receiver instructions. But this information shouldn't be like that!! People like me could really use this stuff!!

The average abuse survivor is going to fall asleep before they remember the definitions for hypermnesia, amygdala, and hyperthymesic syndrome. But there are a lot of Survivors like me out there that would derive a great deal of comfort from this book's conclusion that events that trigger overwhelming terror or trauma are normally not forgotten. That the notion that the mind protects itself by repressing or dissociating memories is psychiatric folklore that is not corroborated by any study or verifiable support.
The fact that you remember does not mean that your brain did not protect you. What a notion to ponder in a bullshit therapy session!! Can you imagine being in an emotional group session and considering that while other Survivors were spared having to remember their traumas through their adolescence or early adulthood- you were betrayed by your own brain!!

A Holocaust Survivor can recount their experience with amazing accuracy even well into their autumn years. Child survivors of disasters and war can do the same. Is it not odd, that repressed memories are only associated in therapy circles when relating to childhood sexual abuse? Survivors of abuse and other traumas suffer similar consequences in the form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We have therapies that work well for people with PTSD. Why are these therapies not more common in books and groups that facilitate abuse recovery?

I've often wondered about an experience that I have forgotten. I know from stories told by my mother and brother that my mother once held my abuser at gunpoint. She put down the gun when she saw me in the room. She said my eyes were very wide.

Why did I forget this? The only answer that I can think of is that there is a very real chance that I was not traumatized by this event. My mother and my offender were always in arguments, and he was never held to any consequences for his actions. It is very likely that I never expected her to fire the gun. My mother describes my eyes as wide, however I believe that it is likely that she assigned much more emotion to this event than I did.

But as I stated before, I am not any sort of expert on the human brain or its ability to recall. So I'm willing to accept the notion that we may not yet have all the answers about remembering trauma. Perhaps there are ways that trauma can be forgotten by some. But these occurances would seem to be anomalies and are certainly unresearched. Therefore, it is unlikely that there are any proven effective therapies for these anomalies. Recovered memory therapy would seem to be a very reckless form of counseling.

I would hope that group therapists and facilities might take a moment to remember why they started writing and facilitating in the first place. I would hope that they could consider a time before they heard about massive repression, and before the first time they denied such a thing as False Memory Syndrome. There was a time when these facilities wanted to help bring peace to survivors of abuse.

Truly, it is peace that we could all use. 

I want to take a moment to write about a really exciting subject..... SERIOUSLY EXCITING!!!

Are you PUMPED?!?! Are you all a-quiver ?!?!

I want to write about high fructose corn syrup.

No, not kidding.

Wait!! Where are you going?!?!?!

Look- the reason I want to write about this is because I kind of had a.... sort of breakthrough....at least to me- about something over the course of the past month.

I've been eating less.

Now I love food- and I love a LOT of food, but I sit at a desk all day, and there is no movement from that desk. And when I eat a lot without moving a lot it does bad things to my knees and my blood pressure and my arteries, energy level, circulation, and mobility. This isn't good. I like being active and I don't like pain in my joints or numbness in my fingers. I have stairs in my house and I can't have my knees giving me trouble.

Anyway. I have come to believe that I am very susceptible to bad reactions to high fructose corn syrup. (HFCS) There are studies that have said that HFCS does not stimulate insulin secretion or stimulate leptin. Leptin is a hormone in your body that tells your brain that you are satisfied after you've eaten. These studies are proposing that since HFCS does not trip your internal chemistry to feel satisfied, that a person could easily eat more to compensate.

HFCS is everywhere. I've looked  on a million different food items and drinks, and I can't seem to get away from it. Even worse- it's in salad dressing. That's a total rip off. If I'm eating a salad, it's because I want to eat something that is good for me. Putting a chemical in my salad dressing that is going to undermine my body's chemistry is a bunch of shit.

So I cut out HFCS from my diet in the beginning of July. All of it. Period. And I added breads made with 100% whole grains for breakfast every morning, because whole grains take a long time to break down in the digestive system and make me feel satisfied longer.

In the first week my stomach shrunk.

Now I've also added a lot of fruits and veggies to my diet as well, and I consider starch a treat. And I've cut out hydrogenated oils too, if I know they are there. The only absolute forbidden stuff is still fur, feathers and soda.

But really- I'm not eating in some totally denied state. I just eat less than I used to, without feeling unsatisfied and hungry. I still like going to the sushi bar, but now I have eight pieces of sushi instead of twenty. I still go to the Hawthorne Fish House, and to my favorite Thai places, but I can't finish my dinner (and Rebecca's dinner) any more. I still love Mediterranean food and Blue Moose, but now I'm happy with a small cup of lentil soup, or a World Peas salad and a half of an Easy Being Green sandwich with mustard on Dave's Killer Bread.

Rebecca never had this problem. She would eat, and stop when she was full, and usually leave a quarter or a half of her plate behind. So when she has HFCS it does not seem to defeat her body's chemistry as easily as it does for me.

So right now I'm just seeing how long I can avoid this junk. In doing this, I've rediscovered my addiction to a basic Mediterranean diet.

Also- I've started researching (of course!) why the hell HFCS is in everything.

The more I read about it, the more I think that the American Corn Refiners Association is the equivalent of the "new big tobacco".

So I bought a movie today called King Corn and I'm kind of interested to see what it is going to be about. However, I already have a bad feeling about what direction it is going in. For one reason, you can buy a Coke anywhere in the world and it will be made with sugar, EXCEPT in the United States!! (During Passover, Coke becomes available with sugar, but only in 2 liter bottles.)

Worse than this, HFCS is in most American soft drinks, and these sodas have been linked in scientific studies to diabetes.

And diabetes is in my family medical history. I will post about my late Aunt Barbara and her illness at some point, when I can do so with sympathy and respect for my Uncle John. But right now, I’m getting a bit outraged. This is so typical of the corporatocracy that is emerging in the US.

So I’ve 86’ed HFCS, and I feel better. Of course, the Corn Refiner's Association and the American Beverage Association that have conducted their own "research". But how do I know that they didn't stack their laboratories with people like Rebecca that may not be as susceptible to HFCS and the havoc it can play on metabolism and body chemistry? Hell, for that matter, they could have done anything to their testing to get it to pass.  

Finally... as if I needed another reason to not drink a Coke... I also happened to find Coke’s political contributions...