Community Corner

Abused as a Child, a Man Finds His Voice and Calling

A South Jersey man conquers years of sexual abuse with a newfound activism to help male survivors of sexual assault.

Growing up at the Jersey Shore, Rhett Hackett heard all about stranger danger and the perils that befall kids who trust suspicious strangers. No one told him that the real predator could lurk next door.

That’s where the man lived who Hackett says sexually assaulted him for five years throughout his teens. Thanks to the perpetrator’s friendly relationship with the family and a classic technique of grooming Hackett to stay silent about the abuse, Hackett never disclosed the mounting assaults to his parents or anyone else.

But now as an adult, he refuses to stay silent.

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Outdated perceptions of sexual assault consider the crime a women’s issue. And while it’s true that women and girls are the predominant victims, men and boys are by no means immune. An estimated one in six boys experiences sexual abuse before age 16, and one in 33 men are victims of rape or attempted rape in their lifetime.

Male sexual assault survivors face many of the same issues as females—guilt, shame, post-traumatic stress disorder, higher propensity for depression and addiction—but these effects are sometimes compounded by societal attitudes about men and rape. That men should be tougher, that a victim who experienced arousal meant he enjoyed the abuse or, perhaps most devastating, that victims will turn into predators.

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Hackett is on a crusade to speak out about his abuse, not only to finally experience the freedom of disclosure after decades of silence, but to remind other survivors of the simple message: You’re not alone.

A predator strikes

Hackett’s abuser was a neighbor who lived part-time at the shore. The family trusted the man, so there was no reason 12-year-old Hackett shouldn’t spend time with him.

“Then, one day, he crossed that line. It takes you by surprise. The one thing I always say is that there really are no words that can describe how you feel,” Hackett, a Sicklerville resident, says. “There is an instant sense of complicity that you were an accomplice to this, and that’s what they sell you on in regards to allowing it to continue.”

And it did, for years, unchecked.

“In one of the circumstances, his girlfriend had walked in on him abusing me and she said nothing. She had to have figured out what was going on,” Hackett recalls. “I was sweating bullets because he had always said that we would get into trouble if anyone had found out. At the same time, he would always say what was going on was perfectly normal.”

But that incident did flip a switch for Hackett: If what they were doing was so normal, why would anyone get into trouble?

“I almost felt a double betrayal there. It opened up my eyes. Shortly after, he made his typical move by reaching toward the crotch area, and I blocked his hand and said, ‘You can’t do this anymore.’ Surprisingly, he was receptive to it,” Hackett says. “And it ended.”

Assault aftershocks live on

While the assaults physically ended, in a way they continued for years. Hackett didn’t tell a soul what had happened. He first disclosed to the woman who would become his wife, but opted not to tell his family. Internally, confusion swirled.

“No matter how many times I asked why, I always fell back on me—that’s why. I must have done something to lead him to believe this was something I wanted. It’s not something I ever forgot; it was always there.”

Lurking just below the surface, the sheer weight of his secrets began chipping away at the façade of overachievement Hackett had established.

The thoughts escalated to near obsession. Hackett would call the man’s house, posing as a telemarketer, to keep tabs on him.

With his marriage on shaky ground, with the weight of the secrecy threatening to consume him, Hackett made a move.

It was 2005, and Hackett had “hit a wall,” as he describes it. He spent hours staring at the mental health number on his insurance card before mustering up the courage to call. Soon he was in therapy with a Haddonfield practitioner, disclosing everything that had happened.

But recovery isn’t always easy or linear. It took a year of therapy before Hackett decided to finally tell his parents and file charges against the neighbor. He picked a date. He posed as a telemarketer one last time to confirm the abuser was still at the same address.

He learned the man had died just days before.

“So that was pretty much the end of that,” Hackett said. “You have waited from age 12 until 33. You’ve gone that whole entire time, building up to get to the point of confronting him, and he goes away. It’s just awful.”

Eventually he did press ahead with telling his parents. This is what many media representations of sexual assault show as a watershed moment where a victim suddenly heals, finally unburdened of the secret. But real life usually doesn’t work that way.

“I knew that it was part of the process telling them. I didn’t know how lousy I was going to feel afterward. I thought this was supposed to help. In retrospect, I realize it did, it just didn’t feel like it in the moment,” Hackett remembers.

‘Somebody gets it’

Something was still missing. The healing he had been waiting for simply wasn’t materializing.

“I couldn’t get someone to understand. No matter how schooled my therapist was, he wasn’t a victim,” Hackett says. “I heard about a group called Male Survivor, which offered weekend retreats. Group therapy, are you kidding me?”

But with his marriage on the brink of divorce and nothing else working, Hackett gave it a go with a weekend retreat.

“It was literally what saved my life and turned my life around. There were 21 other men in the same circumstances, speaking the words that had been spinning in my head for 30 years,” he says. “I had my moment of ‘somebody gets it.’ I came back from that weekend a completely different person. It was phenomenal. I knew at that point I needed to tell my story.”

Hackett had already begun writing down his experiences in a loose book format, but he decided to go big. Really big. Oprah big.

He was one of 200 men featured on a special 2010 Oprah Winfrey Show that underscored the prevalence and long-term effects of male sexual abuse. The show highlighted Hackett’s story.

“It was truly one of the best things I’ve ever done,” he says. It was also the breakthrough he finally needed.

People began approaching Hackett—sometimes friends, sometimes strangers—with support and, heart achingly, occasionally with tales of hiding their own sexual abuse. Far from feeling alone anymore, Hackett found a group of likeminded survivors who just got it.

Through therapy, his work with Male Survivor and the newfound support system, he also found the tools to sort out what happened to him.

“Once you realize that the burden of shame only lays with the person that would shame you to begin with, no matter what happened to you or what you did to correct yourself, there is no shame in it,” Hackett says.

There’s also no stopping him from talking about it. Hackett has transformed into an activist who continues to be vocal about his abuse, through Male Survivor, Justice for All Revolution, testimony before government bodies and his own website. The freeform book he started as a coping mechanism is coming together and could be published in the future.

And, perhaps most importantly, Hackett talks about his experiences with his family, including his children. The message is simple.

“It doesn’t matter who you are, the color of your skin, where you grew up—sexual abuse can happen,” he says. “But if it did, you can recover from it. You just need to start talking.”

This article is part of Patch’s series during National Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Next week, read about how the Internet is helping create communities of survivors. For more on the series, including where to find help, visit our Out of the Shadows: National Sexual Assault Awareness Month page.


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