Poet tells of boyhood beatings, sex abuse

Press, 8 May 1982, Page 9

Poet tells of boyhood beatings, sex abuse

NZPA-Reuter Arlington, Virginia The poet. Rod McKuen, said yesterday that he had been sexually abused by an aunt and an uncle when he was aged seven, and called for public involvement to save an estimated one million American children from similar treatment. “The only means of prevention I can think. of is everybody who cares about anyone- must get involved. Sexually abused children are a defenceless, afraid, misunderstood segment of society that has no voice of its own,” he said. McKuen told the national conference on sexual victimisation of children that he had never publicly recounted his experiences before. He also revealed that he had been physically abused by his stepfather, and that he never told his mother or stepfather about his relatives’ sexual abuse of him.

McKuen said that he finally solved the problem by blackmail, telling his aunt and uncle: “If you ever bother me again, Tm going to tell my mother. I’ll tell everyone in this town. I never had any problem with those people again.” McKuen. aged 49, told the story of his troubled childhood in a matter-of-fact voice, interspersed with humorous comments. He said that beatings by his stepfather led him to run away from home repeatedly. “I started running away from home when I was nine years old. I had had both arms broken and my ribs were caved in several times." His stepfather’s drinking problem was at the root of the trouble. “I could always tell whether I was going to be beaten up by the heavy footfall on the stairs. If my stepfather had been drinking,

I would be beaten up. If not, he would, go to bed.

“The hews media and the public don’t focus sufficient attention on. the incest and the sexual abuse of children,” McKuen said. “It’s happening next door, in the next room. It’s just that nobody talks about it.” Statistics ’ cited by various experts in the field — as many as 400,000 sexually abused children in the United States ranging from infants to adolescents — were probably far too low, he asserted. “There is every reason to believe that more than one million children will be sexually abused at home or driven from the security which we call family life.” He noted that child abuse increased in times of economic uncertainty because family members tended to take out their frustrations on one another.