Filmmaker Statement

When I was ten years old I was repeatedly raped. The path of healing from sex abuse is a long one. If you're lucky you find allies and support groups along the way. I wrote 2 of the 5 prompts about my own experience, the other three were collected from other male survivors who are friends and support group members. The readers were met through my time at a masters program in Berlin Germany, who generously came in to read and respond to prompts about sex abuse. The media I see about rape culture is rarely nuanced and often sugar coated or used as 'trauma porn.' Men (like myself) often feel as though they don’t have the right to share their stories because sex abuse is generally seen by men and women as an exclusively female experience. Women often feel like they cannot share with men for fear they will be seen as 'damaged goods' or that men could not understand. This is NOT a 'gotcha' film. The goal is to broaden the conversation of sex abuse as well as make it more accessible.