Our guest today is Jay Sefton, a psychotherapist, writer, and recovering alcoholic. Jay was abused by a Catholic priest at a time parishioners believed the Church was beyond reproach. We discuss how that distorted view perpetuated the abuse, creating a haven for his abuser.

Jay advocates for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, working pro-bono to help navigate compensation funds set up by the Catholic Church.

Jay is the author of several essays, including Two Sides of the Same Cross (Licking River Review) and I’ll Have a White Zinfandel (Storyscape Journal), and has written several featured editorials in newspapers documenting his experience of being abused as a child by a priest in the Philadelphia suburb of Havertown, Pennsylvania.

Today we interview psychotherapist Jason Hanson, who has counseled victims of domestic abuse for the past eight years and is the author of Domestic Abuse: Men Suffer Too. We discuss the horror of this abuse and its indiscriminate reach across both victims’ and perpetrators’ gender and sexual identities.

The 2011 study by Emily Douglas, Ph.D. a professor and chair at the Department of Social Work and Child Advocacy at Montclair State University, found that 49.9% of men who sought help from Domestic Violence Agencies, 63.9% of men who sought help from Domestic Victim Hotlines, and 42.9% of men who sought help from online resources were told they only help women.

Findings from The Bureau of Justice Statistics note that men are just as likely to be the victim of violent crime as women.

In this bonus episode, I’m interviewed by Eric Jennings, who was my first guest on SILENCED BY STIGMA. We discuss my history of abuse, the fallout, and what led me to create this project.