Male survivors sometimes become pushovers, compliant men who will do anything to please those in authority. It probably comes from fear and longing for approval, which probably stems from the enormous power those who molested us had over us as children. We were property. We did what we were told, without question. If we let them use us, they seemed to "love" us more and pay more attention to us, so when we got older, it became a way of life: Compliance means love, acceptance, maybe gifts, and it means we won't get hurt physically for saying no.

A friend was a little shocked when I told him how, when I was picked up hitchhiking at 14, driven to a remote place and cornered into sex by a man twice my age, I actually removed my own clothes so he could rape me. Why? Because I knew he was going to do it anyway, so I did it because (1) If I didn't, he might kill me, and (2) I wanted to have some control over this nightmare he was inflicting on me. In his mind, I'm sure, I was a "willing, consensual boy"but truth was, I was saving my life and preserving what little sense of control and dignity I had left in such a twisted situation.

So compliance rarely means for us that we're just nice guys. It means we're afraid, and if we just do whatever you ask, maybe you'll back off, leave us alone, not hurt us.

But it backfires for a lot of us, and the rage over being used becomes bigtime rebellion against all authority. So a lot of us push the envelope of danger, run through jobs like sox, and get angry when anyone tells us what to do.

In my own life, I could see it in the way I changed as a child. I was obedient, polite, and my room was always neat and orderly. (None of that is bad!) Then, coinciding with being abused, I started smoking, drinking, smarting off to teachers, vandalizing, and my neat orderly room became a total wreck.

"Whatever happened to that neat little boy I used to know?", my father once asked me when I was in my 20's. "He died a long time ago, Pop", I replied, though I knew he couldn't understand. I had collapsed inside, because the safe world where you obey adults and trust your neighbors and you'll be loved and rewarded ended up in sodomy and pornographic abuse and the death of believing in adults as safe and caring and kind.

At 11 I told my scoutmaster to take my uniform and shove it youknowwhere after he demanded I change into it for the trip home from a campout. He thought I was just a rebel. He didn't know how degrading being told to take off my clothes by anyone was for me.

I don't advocate rebellion, unless it's against abuse, or manipulation, or injustice done to innocent kids. But those of us who survived molestation need to see that behind the rebellion is often a rage because we lost control of our body to a molester, and that rage and rebellion is a way of warding off danger and intrusion. It's a cover for the devastating loss of faith in authority figures. We need to begin to peel back the onion and get to the core hurt and betrayal, get the rage out safely, cry out the betrayal and learn new ways of recognizing misplaced anger and begin building a safe world where you can learn to trust authority again.

There are a lot of pastors and church leaders out there that need to hear this. Responding well to spiritual authority may be the hardest of all for us, because we may be mad at God for what happened to us. Please don't glibly write off kids who are "in rebellion". Yeah, some rebel because they're just selfish and out of relationship with God. But a lot of us are just scared. Why should we trust your authority? Didn't we once trust, and weren't we shattered by the ones claiming they were the authority, the adult, so we just needed to obey their wishes to rape us?

If you want us to respond to true authority, we must first respond to your love, your patient kindness, your desire to know us and see beyond the anger into the hurt and let us know we can trust you. Then maybe we can let go of the rebellion and learn to know the love of a God who knows our hurt and whose Son suffered it all. Be our window, not our judge.