“For over five years I have been in contact with moMENtum, and since November 2018 I’ve been attending their fortnightly group meetings in Exeter. This community of men has been incredibly important in my journey of recovery and healing. However, it took me a number of years before I felt able to join the group, because I was convinced that my experience of abuse and its effects was nowhere near as devastating as others. And I’ve struggled with this fact for such a long time, feeling that I do not even deserve to call my experience ‘abuse’, that I don’t deserve to belong to moMENtum, that I am unworthy of receiving support, that I am a fraud. All of these feelings, present for so many years, as well as feelings that it was all my fault, that it wasn’t that bad, that I should just move on, get over it, stop blaming others for my own failures etc etc, all of this has kept me feeling low, afraid, and almost permanently isolated.

Sorry, you don’t need or want to hear my life story. But what I really want to emphasise is how my moMENtum brothers have gently and lovingly drawn me out of this isolation and have brought me into a life-giving, trusting, compassionate, accepting, understanding, loving and safe community. All of us is welcome here: the frightened inner child(ren), the confused and anxious adolescent within us, the angry adult, the parts of us we know, the parts of us we are terrified of, the parts of us we are ashamed of, the parts of us desperate to be loved, we are all welcome and safe in the moMENtum family. This is a family where we can feel connected, where we can talk, listen, laugh, and cry; it is a family where we can all belong.

The trauma of childhood sexual abuse is so devastating because it causes you to hate yourself, to run away and cut yourself off from those who are longing to help you. A group such as moMENtum is absolutely vital because these men, these wounded, wonderful survivors, offer safety, community, and compassion. For so long in my life I have found hope to be a frightening thing, because hope has frequently fallen apart, collapsed and died. Since becoming part of the moMENtum family I can finally dare to hope, to hope that the darkness will end, to hope that life will begin, to hope that at last I belong.“

“My sense of direction was always bad. When I was younger a running joke in my family was that I couldn't find my way out of a paper bag. I became used to being the butt of jokes like these; they were true, after all.

One example of my appalling sense of direction still amazes me. In my early twenties I drove from my home in Bath to visit my sister in Kent. It was a fairly straightforward journey: M4, M25, M20, turn off before you hit the English Channel. But somehow I got lost. Instead of exiting the M4 onto the M25, I kept going... and going... and going. Before I knew it I was in central London, driving around Oxford Circus in the Saturday afternoon rush hour, too lost to know where I should be going, too terrified to come off the roundabout and commit to even more wrong turns.

Sexual abuse, particularly as a child, leaves you hopelessly adrift in life, going round and round in circles of shame, anger and self-disgust. Childhood – at least a happy, healthy one – is like a complicated map you learn how to read. As you become more proficient, you are able to navigate a path through all kinds of traumatic experiences and still maintain a vision of who you are and where you want to be. But take away the map and those traumas turn toxic. You feel lost, abandoned, driven by inexplicable instincts to repeat the same mistakes, circling your own inadequacies and misfortunes like a tourist on some hellish bus tour of your own psyche.

One of the worst crimes of childhood sexual abuse is that it leaves you feeling as though you don’t belong: in your life, in your mind, in your own body. The trauma of that abuse (and, let's be brutally honest about it, the terror, shame and crippling isolation) takes you out of yourself in the worst possible way. If you are lucky you may stumble across a good friend, someone you can confide in, someone who listens and understands. But more often there is just that empty space inside, a black hole whose mass is so vast it sucks more and more of you into the vacuum of its darkness. I know this space, could walk every inch of its terrain blindfolded - and yet, it took me forty-three years to realise I was not alone there.

I found Momentum through a wonderful piece of synchronicity: a recommendation from a close friend who, unknown to me, had just taken over the running of a North Devon-based service for survivors of sexual abuse. One of the eminently positive things about Momentum is that it models so many of the qualities that were missing from my own childhood and which stayed missing for most of my adult life: trust, acceptance, honesty, compassion and non-judgemental support. Its peer-led support group also offers male survivors of sexual abuse the invitation to belong.

All good homes offer love, support and safety. They make us feel we belong somewhere, even when our world is full of the things that can challenge, harm and derail us. Belonging is at the heart of what it means to feel safe; not only a feeling that comes from being part of a close-knit group or family, but also a deeper sense of belonging to yourself. This is our point of reference from which we launch ourselves into the world, a pin in the map of who we are and what we stand for. Without its gravitational pull we can feel as though we are spinning off in endless circles, unable to find a path through or back or forwards.

Having worked for years in mental health and therapeutic contexts, I have come to see healing as a journey. This is not a simple case of A to B. The path may be circuitous and wild, overgrown in places and liable to lead us along all kinds of false tracks and dead- ends. There may be moments of real despair when we lose hope of ever finding our way. But despair too is part of this journey – and joy, and grief, and the aching losses of the child who did not, and could not, belong.

When I first came to the group I felt like the outsider who desperately wants to fit in, so much so that he rejects the thing he yearns for. The voice in me that protects, guards the castle, runs away rather than risks further abandonment, that voice would say “You don't need to go this week”, “You're not up to it”, “Give yourself a break”. But I went, and gradually the outsider is learning to come in from the cold, learning that the belonging that was taken from him as a child was not irrevocably lost but simply waiting to be invited back in. ”

“The healing honesty of these ZOOM conversations at moMENtum is extraordinary. Men’s problems are heard. The inner wrestling is witnessed - the rage, the grief, the myriad issues of self-confidence and domestic relationships, sometimes critical sometimes mundane. Solutions are not easily found. But Truth is spoken. Trust is felt. Terror (sometimes years of it) recedes. Men’s lives are changed, and from this magically supportive place of resting and launching, men find they can envisage a future where they can truly gather momentum.”

Poem by one of the men written at moMENtum workshop about self and healing

“Who am I” I ask gently

I am the man who saw the pyramids light up at night
I am the man that swam through the engine room of a sunken ship, 25 metres down
I am the man who sat in an Apollo command module
I am the man who for a moment flew a glider circling with a bird of prey
I am the man who no longer feels he must dismiss the child in him ,to be a man
I am me, I am no one else anymore
I no longer pray for your approval whilst shrinking from praise to feel any self or worth at all.
I can be with who I am
I am braver than I knew
I am a happier child now
I am a man who misses his mum dad and sister
I am afraid and learning to be strong
I am a man who through the space we have created together has learnt to be safe In vulnerability
To let curiosity and exploration ease the fear
I think I have found how to trust
I am a man with images of his childhood abuse and violence playing in his head that no longer triggers and overwhelms me, threaten to destroy me over and over.
I am a man that can express his thoughts now, that before we’re silenced and hidden in shame. I acknowledge there is a me now, remembering to say “I” rather than “you” most of the time
I am a man that is amazed that the photos in the photo album are of what is gone
That time has passed not frozen .
I feel their loss and love the memories.
I am a man that sees and feels hate and pain but seeks love and healing. I am a man that misses his drinking but is doing ok and loves to cook
I am still a child at times, living in a separate world ,with different rules
That never should have been , but I can return now and safely travel in time. The seed of shame no longer grows within me
And dirty is a word a passing feeling not a constant sense of me.
I am a man that is embracing his fears and living here and now
I am still a little boy who was beaten I am a man
I am a survivor not a victim

I am what you want me to be at times I have roles to play but above all now I am me.
I am loved and love
I belong, I am not alone

You were there when I longed to give up
I have brothers in our healing

I am the man I longed to be, at peace with who I am.

I am one of your brothers wherever you are, and we are there for you
In your pain and grief, anger, loss and joy too
In all you feel and avoid feeling, as you search for who you are too.

It is there within you, but you cannot find it alone
Past the old protective walls, trauma built ,so you would survive
That now keep you out of yourself. That no longer protect you but divide you. The walls are too strong
But in time as trust together grows and you can call off the guards We can walk together with you through the gates, never locked But embodied with your fears and distress
To reunite with yourself and end this internal war.
You and I have waited so so... long,
Be patient a little longer you are almost there, and you are not alone.

“I couldn’t talk about my childhood sexual abuse but I couldn’t bear keeping it to myself anymore, but it was so frightening to tell anyone. When I tried before it ended badly. I was threatened as a child and told never to tell, and that’s very hard to break.

I saw a councillor at Age Concern and near the end of our sessions I told her about the abuse, she put me in contact with moMENtum a support group for male survivors. It helped to listen to other survivors but I could not talk about it. After a few sessions I wrote it down what happened and asked John to read it out to the group. That really helped to be believed and understood and it was ok . I managed to say the odd thing to John and Russel from the group.

I wasn’t ready to talk in a group yet but there it was, all stuck inside me, so moMENtum helped me get some one-to-one counselling with a really good and caring counsellor

I found it frightening at first because of what I needed to talk about and I found it very hard to talk. I felt very ashamed and dirty and had to take showers through the day to try and take it away.

In time I was able to join in with the group at moMENtum and they were able to help me get further support and supported me when I kept being turned down by services. I have been on their residential workshop as well and went on a male survivor group therapy programme in creative therapies that moMENtum have links with.

There support is still there when I need it and life is getting better.”

“I first met John Slater as a result of us both being participants in The Truth Project. He introduced me to MoMENtum and until then I had no idea such a group existed. The group in Exeter had organised a long weekend retreat in Exeter, and thanks to a bursary being available I was able to attend.

It was a life-changing weekend, meeting with others, each with their own unique and harrowing stories to tell. MoMENtum had bene able to bring in an expert facilitator from the USA, Mike Lew ( author of Victims no Longer ). As a result, I was able to take the next step in my own recovery from institutional childhood sexual abuse.

The unique factor of this weekend was that for me it marked the starting point of on

going interaction with other men which continues to this day via Zoom.

My personal experience goes beyond statistical outcomes, figures and graphs. My part of being part of what we call "The Trust Brothers" meetings has been helping me regain confidence in who I am, helped me to listen to the stories that others share, and collectively, be part of a healing journey that is at once joyous, painful, heart-wrenching but ultimately, a brilliant spark of light in a world so full of blame, shame, concealment and unforgiveness. In a single phrase, MoMENtum has and still is helping me become more human; showing me through a self-reflecting mirror through my own brothers' pain, that being male really is about throwing off shame, and becoming a more understanding, compassionate person.

If this sounds very much as if it's a navel gazing group, nothing could be further from the truth. Group members share sometimes quite astonishing stories not only of past experience, but of how they have been able to help and support OTHER survivors of male sexual abuse. In becoming more in touch with one's inner self, one is able to offer support to others who perhaps have not yet approached a point in lives where - often through a totally false sense of shame - they feel able or ready to talk openly, yet welcome the support of an individual.

One outcome I would like to share from the weekend retreat. We were all challenged to do something - display a skill or poem or whatever - that we've always wanted to do but didn't have the courage to do. I had never played the harmonica is any group or public setting, so that evening I put on a backing track and played my harmonica as wildly as I could. It broke my fear of playing in public, and some months later, was invited to play harmonica in church worship group. That led to playing guitar and singing as well, and last year (2021) I went busking for the very first time in my life, first as a group and then in Wales solo.

The strength of MoMENtum is that it is about survivors helping survivors and together and learning how to emerge as overcomers. Childhood sexual abuse, like all trauma, leaves scars. Scars can be beautiful. We try to erase them, but perhaps it's best to learn to see the beauty in them. False hope and platitudes seeks to erase them; to pretend that they are not there; to minimise them. That's not the way. Let us learn to honour them in one another; to be a field hospital for the wounded, to love with compassion and understanding and practical support too. MoMENtum fulfils all these functions.

I think we all are aware when we meet on a week by week basis, of the tragedy that we cannot do more; that we cannot at this moment extend our reach. For every male who has been a victim childhood abuse, there are tens of thousands - most likely more - who are still hiding in the shadows, coping as best they can often in lonely isolation. While MoMENtum is not the answer to all of human woes, it is playing a significant part in addressing a specific yet diverse human need that has been brushed under the carpet for far too long. MoMENtum supports strategies that include weekend workshops, a diverse array of creative media and poetry initiatives, confidential counselling via a hotline, and also networking on an international level with other groups and individuals.

I hope this brief testimony will help the reader understand the work of MoMENtum and how it is making a difference in the real world situation. If you are a male survivor of childhood sexual abuse, or know someone who is looking for help, please do contact MoMENtum Support line in total and complete confidentiality.”

“Momentum provided spaces and experiences which were so accepting and encouraging for me to face the presenting fears and lack of connection I had. It really helped to be with other survivors and see and feel other men’s not only painful but also so encouraging journeys of recovery. It made me feel for the first time that I have friends who understood, previously, denied me because of the abuse as a child which spoiled any chance of forming any real connections with others because of the secrets and denial in my family, of the generational abuse covered up with more secrets and emotional abuse.

Making the experiences of normal reactions to abnormal and cruel behaviour by adults ok to feel, as painful as they are. To grieve, heal and find a place of welcome and understanding has helped me find peace inside me.”

“Like others in the group this was a difficult step to take attending moMENtum but worth it. My haunting memories of the past were revealed but so gently and safely. Previous to this I failed to find the right person/organization who would listen, understand my fears. These for me are finally addressed after so many years .Funding needs to continue so moMENtum can operate I have not found anywhere else for support with this.”

“The deceit of being abused (in whatever form) for ''survivors'' will stay with them for ever. The secret to not ''self-destruct'' seems to me the most important thing on the road to ''recovery''

Negative feelings can easily dominate our thoughts and deeds -- leading to depression, and suicidal tendencies. Organisations such as Samaritans can be of much help. Momentum however allows understanding from others sharing similar (and worst ) childhood experiences -- instead of ''hiding'' from the terrible truth -- realising and accepting it. Long may Momentum continue.

For many people in life -- a trouble shared is a trouble halved -- but that person we share secrets with must be very understanding. “