Columnist Sandra Thompson: Boy unloading burden of sexual abuse

Sandra Thompson

Sunday, Oct. 17, 1999 | 10:24 a.m.

At 11, "Andy" likes the wacky world of wrestling and all its hyped-up characters. He has played baseball and likes doing normal kid stuff.

But what he says happened to him last year is far from normal. He kept it a secret until he felt like he was going to "explode." Then, just before his 11th birthday, he broke his silence. He told his parents he had been sexually molested by his baseball coach over a six- or seven-month period.

The close-knit family was stunned. The parents are very attentive to their children; they dote on them. How could this have happened?

Andy's impish grin fades. His once-playful tone turns serious.

"I couldn't sleep at night. It ate me up inside," he says of keeping the incidents secret.

He was apprehensive about saying anything because he was afraid the coach would come after him or try to kidnap him. He also thought his parents might "ground me for the rest of my life."

The coach was a man Andy and his parents trusted. The coach took him places and sometimes picked him up for practices. He bought Andy gifts.

"I was one of those parents who thought it wouldn't happen because I was always around," Andy's mother says.

The coach was arrested. Other boys came forward with similar allegations. A trial is scheduled for January. In a nationally televised interview, the coach said it would come out at the trial that the kids weren't perfect. He implied they made him assault them.

Andy says he "kinda thought it was my fault in the beginning because I didn't tell anyone." But through counseling, he's learning that it wasn't his fault.

Andy says when the coach first touched him, he tried to say no "but the word wouldn't come out of my mouth."

The sexual incidents, Andy says, sometimes involved other boys on the team. They'd take place in the coach's truck, a desert area, at the coach's girlfriend's apartment or a site near Andy's home.

The visions tear up Andy's parents. They don't want any other child or parent to go through this. So they agreed to be interviewed for a recent Sports Illustrated article on children who have been molested by coaches. They appeared on Oprah Winfrey's show and on an HBO special, "Real Sports."

This was their only local interview.

"It helps him to talk about it," Andy's mother says.

She urges all parents to look for warning signs. Is a coach or other adult spending an inordinate amount of time with your child?

"If it seems too good to be true, it probably is," says Lt. Tom Monahan, who's in charge of Metro's sexual abuse and assault section.

The stereotypical child molester is an old man in a dirty raincoat who hangs out in parks, Monahan says. But that's atypical. Child molesters usually choose occupations and activities that involve children.

Monahan cites behavior traits that are consistent with child molesters: they spend an inordinate amount of time around children; they may have poor relations with peers; and the process is not typically a violent attack, but one of seduction.

The seduction process involves showering the child with attention, being able to communicate with them and listening to them. In many cases, the child molester endears himself to the parents to gain access to the child. He sometimes is seen as a stable role model for a child from a single-parent family.

We have always taught our children to beware of strangers; don't get in a car with them. Yet most child molesters aren't strangers, Monahan says, they are people we trust.

When he appeared on Oprah's show, Andy wore a Goldberg the wrestler T-shirt. A while later, Goldberg called Andy and told him he was proud of him for speaking up about being molested. He invited Andy and his family to this week's Halloween Havoc show in Las Vegas.

The smile is back on Andy's face.