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Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart, and save your relationship. My name is Drew Bola, and I'm here to show you how. Let's go. Today we're talking about healing from sex trafficking in honor of Male Survivor Awareness Day, October 25th. We're going to hear from Mike Chapman, who is a certified husband material coach, he's a brain spotting practitioner, he's an advocate for male survivors, and he's a professional Santa. Mike led the art therapy workshop at our recent husband material retreat. He's a good friend and he has an amazing story. I believe we need to hear his story and his perspective because when we think about sex trafficking, most of us have in mind teenage girls or young women in forced prostitution, which is very real. And there's another face of sex trafficking. Mike shares some startling statistics because the average age of men and boys who are trafficked into sexual exploitation is younger on average, mostly under 18, and about 13% of survivors were trafficked when they were zero to eight years old. And that is Mike's story. I want to give you a trigger warning. This episode contains some graphic descriptions of the childhood sexual abuse and sex trafficking that Mike experienced. So please continue listening with caution. The presentation you're about to hear is called Family Controlled Sex Trafficking of Young Boys, One Survivor's Healing Journey. And when Mike originally shared this with me, I thought it was so good that I asked him if it would be okay to share it with all of you. I hope you'll be as inspired as I am by Mike, by the miracle of what God has done in his life and what God can do in your life too.

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My name is Mike Chapman. I am a recovery life coach, brain spotting provider, podcast host, lived experienced expert, consultant, and researcher. My own father sexually abused me from the time I was an infant until age five. He then trafficked me for sex with other men until age eight. This was in the 1970s in the state of Oregon where I grew up. I now know this has happened to white middle class boys like me all over the U.S. and in the UK, Australia, and other countries for decades. And it's still happening today. When it is being led by a family member, this is often called familial sex trafficking. But I prefer the more descriptive term, family controlled sex trafficking. The family member is controlling sexual access to their own relative in exchange for something of value. How does this happen? For me, it turns out my mother never wanted children. She had had a bad experience with her own mother and did not want to be responsible for other children. My father insisted, so they had three children, two girls and a boy. I was the youngest. Unknown to my mother, he was a pedophile. Basically, the only reason I was conceived was to service his needs. Once we got old enough where he lost interest, he left us. My parents separated, then divorced when I was eight. I had no father figure and a lot of mess. My mother was now a single mother with three kids she originally never wanted. I tried to be the good kid, making things easier on my mom. Inside, I was a mess, but I didn't understand why. Locking out the abuse, I didn't understand why I had a hard time making friends, a hard time trusting, especially guys. As I got older, my mom remarried, a guy who also didn't want children. More rejection. As I became a teenager, I had all kinds of conflicting feelings inside. As my teen hormones emerged, feelings were clouded by the repressed memories of the hundreds of sex acts I had endured as a child. I wanted relationships with girls, but was haunted by thoughts of physical contact with men. I had a lot of confusion. I wanted intimacy, but was afraid of it as well. Boy-girl relationships scared me. When they became too physical, I would retreat, never wanting things to progress too far. My family never went to church ever. My grandparents were very religious from a legalistic church. They sometimes brought us kids to Sunday school when we were little. They talked about God the Father, and that concept was foreign to me, but I believed in God. As I entered high school, I got involved in a church youth group, and I felt love and belonging. I wanted more. The pastor would give altar calls. I would listen, but I wasn't ready. I just didn't understand. The summer before my senior year, I attended their summer youth retreat. The speaker talked about the pain and suffering Jesus went through on the cross. He did that for each of us, even for me. Subconsciously, I could really relate to the pain and suffering. That touched my heart, and I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior and was soon baptized. When I was a young man in college, age 20, but looked like 16, I was a late bloomer. A Methodist minister at the church I was attending took an interest in me. I was flattered. I loved to get attention from a man I very much admired. Apparently, he was actually a pedophile and liked teenage boys. He came to my college apartment for a social visit. I lived alone at the time. Things led to him touching me in places he shouldn't. Something deep inside of me knew I had to stop him. I got him to stop and he left. I eventually was able to confront him two years later through his church leadership, but he basically got a wrist slap, he was mere retirement age, and a mild warning to his local church that he needed to stay away from teens and children. As I got older, those confused feelings got worse, but Father God was there guiding me through it, revealing bit by bit the causes so I could receive healing. After college, I moved away from my home state of Oregon to the Washington, D.C. area. I got married and had two wonderful children and moved to eastern North Carolina. God used my children too. Every time I would discipline or show love to my children, Father God would remind me that is how I am with you. I started seeking therapeutic support groups for what happened in college and the unwanted same-sex attractions I had experienced since puberty. Through the support groups and reading different testimonies of those with similar issues, I realized I was the victim of sexual abuse as a young child. Age three, memories I had blocked out. This is a picture of me at age three. Additional support groups and church-related counseling helped me fill in the blanks. I also got confirmation that my own father had similarly sexually abused several extended family members when they were children. This filled in the blanks. He was the person who abused me. Therapy has uncovered more of exactly what happened. My father would get mom drunk so she would pass out and not know what was going on. He would then proceed to molest me. This happened multiple times, multiple nights, dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. I was not his only victim, as I mentioned. He did the same thing to those extended family members when they were little. He may have done it to my two older sisters, I do not know. One of my sisters passed away, and my surviving sister has almost no memories from childhood whatsoever. Since this uncovering, I've attended survivor support groups and professional therapy. I have come a long way in my road to healing, including being over seven years free from pornography addiction. I have been married to a great woman for 35 years this month, and my two children are in their late 20s, early 30s, graduated from college, and are starting their careers. They all know my story and are all very supportive. I tried to bring up the abuse to my mother, but she seemed pretty clueless. She knew about the abuse by my father towards his extended family members, but said she could never quite wrap her head around it. I decided to not push the issue. Also, both she and my father were heavy drinkers at the time. I assumed she absolutely had no idea what was happening. She then passed away 10 years ago before I could bring up the subject again. I originally started what I called heavy recovery in 2019 after watching HBO's Leaving Neverland documentary and the Oprah special that followed. Yes, it triggered many things inside me, and I could feel God telling me it was time to work through more of my issues again. Through the documentary, I learned about an online support group, male survivor.org, for male sex abuse survivors, full of men, including many Christians, who were similarly abused. This helped me realize I was not alone. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control, for females, one in four will be sexually abused or assaulted by the age of 18 in the U.S. I assume the figures for males were much less like one in a thousand or one in a hundred. It is actually one in six males will be sexually abused or assaulted by the age of eighteen in the U.S. I was certainly not alone. Meeting all of these men online who had similar experiences helped me realize I was not crazy from all the varied symptoms I had as a result of the abuse. Many of these men had similar symptoms. Around this same time, I was also invited to a celebrate recovery meeting in a nearby town. CR is an international faith-based 12-step group. Also, around this same time, I started attending therapy with a Christian therapist, working on the childhood traumas I experienced. God was using all three places in tandem to help my healing process. The online support group informed me that I most likely suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, like most of them. After reading up on the symptoms, I felt like it was describing my entire personality. This was a bit unnerving because if all that defined me was a set of symptoms, if I found healing, what would be left? My Christian therapist helped me find a therapist trained in PTSD. We hoped to find a Christian PTSD therapist. Apparently, there are none in my area. We settled on a non-Christian PTSD therapist, and I had concerns about a non-Christian therapist, and I spoke to my pastor about it, and he prayed for me and offered me this scripture, Isaiah 52, 12. You will not leave in a hurry, running for your lives, for the Lord will go ahead of you. Yes, the God of Israel will protect you from behind. This helped encourage me that God would be with me, guiding me through the therapy process, even with secular therapy. So I started going to the PTSD therapist. I shared my story. I received a formal diagnosis of PTSD with dissociative symptoms. He's like a PTSD endoscopic surgeon, knowing exactly where to guide his tools to reach the parts that need to be addressed without leaving my guts spilled all out. And I'm able to go back to work within an hour after my sessions and function pretty well the rest of the day. Again, like my pastor advised me, I let God guide me throughout these therapeutic practices. A lot of it seemed like weird mumbo jumbo stuff, but it worked. Instead of the traditional eye movement, desensitization, reprocessing, or EMDR, that's quite common. He felt more appropriate therapies for my case would be a combination of comprehensive resource model, which was developed from brain spotting therapy, kuna, which is based on traditional Hawaiian spiritual healing practices, and several other therapies. My therapist encouraged me to let those abused parts of me tell their story. Since the child at that age is pre-verbal, you can encourage them to tell their story in ways other than speaking, including just giving them a keyboard. He told me that he has had patients grab their cell phones in his office and start frantically texting, telling their story. I did that at home. I reached out to the three-year-old me. I gave him my computer keyboard and encouraged him to share. This poem simply poured out without any editing. And no, I'm not known for writing poetry. And again, trigger warning, this poem is both graphic and descriptive of the abuse I experienced, but I have avoided vulgar language. Me at age three. Heavy weight on me. Hard to breathe. Why is he doing this? I don't understand. I'm so scared. I don't want this. Betrayed. I thought he loved me. Why is he doing this to me? Why is he causing so much pain? I don't understand it. The stuff I drank makes me feel weird. Like I don't really understand what is happening. But I still remember. I can still feel everything. Why does he keep doing this? Night after night, like the boogeyman. But he is real. So much pressure on my head. Rhythmic up and down against the mattress. Sometimes I hit my head on the headboard. It hurts. I like to leave toys on the floor. Maybe this will stop him. Give me some warning. He gets mad. Swears it doesn't stop him. I'm powerless. I'm so alone. If I had a little brother, I wouldn't be alone. Maybe then it would stop. Maybe. I am so weak. He is so big. I can't fight back. I have to give in. I hope it ends soon. Maybe he won't come back next time. Maybe. I can't breathe. I have to try to breathe through my nose. So hard. I try to catch breath when I can. He is done. I cough up hard, slimy, rose. The smell, the taste. He wipes me down, removes the evidence. I cry myself back to sleep. Exhausted. But I can finally breathe. Around this same time, after sharing some half-memories for my childhood with the online support group, we were able to deduce that I was also trafficked by my father to other men. This is the memory I shared of when I was eight years old. I always thought it was a weird event, and it was as if something was telling me that this was important and to always remember it. My father woke me up in the middle of the night. We're going camping. Help me drag your mattress into the back of a station wagon. Half asleep, I complied. Camping trip, I thought. Dad never mentioned a camping trip. We never go camping. We dragged the mattress into the back of the station wagon, along with pillows, sheets, and blankets. We would drive what would normally be a four-hour drive to the south from our home in Portland. However, this was 1973. There was an energy crisis and a gas shortage. Lines were horrendously long and supplies were limited and sometimes rationed. That four-hour drive definitely would require at least one fill-up for a gas guzzling station wagon. Whatever sedative I was given completely wore off, and I was wide awake, fully aware that our so-called camping trip was sidelined by gas lines. I think my father did not plan for this and had no backup plan for a second sedative. We eventually arrived at our destination, Crescent Lake Campground. I had never heard of it. Lots of campgrounds around the Greater Portland metro area, but this was on the other side of the state. It seemed there were more dads than sons, more men than boys. It seems that two other boys had the same issue. They awoke too early. One was about my age, a little shorter, with deep set eyes. Looking back, I believe it was the look of an abuse survivor, something that was familiar to me. The other boy was about a year older. He seemed angry underneath, like he knew what was going on, but was sworn not to tell. I don't remember their names. We were told that we three had to stick together and to stay away from the main lodge. There was a very large boulder several yards away from the lodge. Don't come past this boulder. You three go play around the lake, but don't get wet. We will bring you your lunch. So we played as boys do, exploring the woods around the lake. And that was it. That was camping with my dad. I now realize that the dads were continuing their orgy with all the boys that were still sedated. We three were a liability, too awake to remember faces and events that, if we told anyone, could destroy what they had built. We've been able to deduce that because of the unsuccessful nature of the event and the fact that I was aging out from the age preferences of this group. This was probably the final trafficking event I was ever brought to. My father then divorced my mother soon after. I have now come to understand what happens at these sexual exploitation events, often called boy swap events. Men who are invited can either come alone for a fee or bring a sedated boy with them for a reduced fee. It is then a free-for-all where they can do what they wish to as many boys as they wish. Most of us boys were not 100% sedated, but sedated to the point of a zombie-like state where we could respond to commands but no longer had any sense of self or free will. This would allow the men to not only manipulate us into performing sex acts with them, but also to performing sex acts on each other. These abusive acts were also then documented by still photography and film, producing what we now call CSAM, child sexual abuse materials, more commonly referred to as child pornography. These materials would be even more profitable than the fees paid to attend the events, making these events quite profitable for the organizers. Many of these events were organized by groups such as NAMLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, a political, civil rights, and educational organization that advocates and promotes adult sexual behavior with male children. And the Renee Beyond Society, whose infamous model was sex before eight or it is too late. Such groups and events often have ties to organized crime, as they are behind most all types of pornography being produced in this country. Decades before the internet, child pornography magazines could be easily found at adult bookstores across the country. Classified ads in the back of these magazines would advertise NAMBLA and similar meetings, which would then share locations of these voicewap events. Thus, the cycle of fresh images and film to satisfy the lusts of their consumers could continue. Through therapy, I received confirmation of the trafficking. We were also able to deduce that it began around age five and continued until that final event when I was eight. This also explains the memory gap I have had of my first grade year in school. This is me at age six during the time of this trafficking abuse. This is the face of trafficking. This was me in the first grade. I was pretty much a zombie. You can see the vacant, pain-filled look in my eyes. I have virtually no memories of this time. When I look at my first grade class group photo, I recognize my classmates from kindergarten the previous year, but I do not recognize the teacher at all. Not her face, not her name. It was if I was never there. I now know this is part of the dissociation. When faced with severe trauma, the mind experiences a break and isolates the main identity to protect it, to allow it to continue to live and breathe, blocking out the trauma. When the trauma becomes so severe and repeated, the isolation is frozen in place. This explains why I literally checked out that entire year. This past year, I was able to attend an art therapy retreat with other traffic survivors. The different tools and media were all ready to go at our tables, and before they could even begin with directions, many of us simply started creating. I started with the canvas and started painting my memories. It was like that little wounded boy inside of me took over and shared what he needed to share. This is the end result, entitled Fearslash Void. This encapsulated what I experienced during the downtime during such events. In this painting, there is a campfire in the woods, four dark, shadowy figures are behind the flames. On the lower left is a small gray figure in a fetal position. This is me. My hands and feet are bound. I'm on the dirt next to the fire. I'm blindfolded, but this is what I remember from sense memory. Smells, sounds, tastes, touch. And if you notice, there's an empty space on the right side of the fire. After studying the picture, I realize there's a second boy that is present, also bound and silent, which is why I didn't notice his presence by the way. In this next poem, I asked that first grade self to share from his heart about his experience. This poem is the result of being trafficked in first grade. Such confusion, darkness, dizziness, sometimes outside near a fire, too hot, sometimes in a building on a cement cold floor, tied up. I can't move. I want to leave, but I can't. I want to wake up from this nightmare. I can't. Feeling nauseous, like I had the flu. I'm scared and alone. But not alone. Lots of men. Men who do things, new things, things that are bad, that are wrong, messy, slimy, dirty, evil. Hands are tied. I can't wipe off the filth. They go all night. Will this ever end? Half awake, half asleep, like a zombie, but I feel everything. When they are done, they clean me off. I can still smell the bleach. The shower nozzle is too strong. The water hurts. The bleach soap hurts worse. I can feel it on all my cuts and scrapes. It burns. They put our clothes back on so we can go home. Good as new. Lies. We just went camping. Cuts and scrapes are part of the fun. More lies. We are going again in a couple of weeks. He had a really good time. He wants to go back again. It is good for him. Why do you always get to go camping? Why doesn't he take us girls too? Huh? What camping trip? We must protect the boy. We have to hide this secret. It will break him. He would die. We will lock up this secret. Then he can breathe, and we will all survive. Why can't I remember first grade? I remember kindergarten. My teacher was really nice. I can zip and tie. I remember second grade. We had a pancake meal together. That was my last week before moving. I can't remember first grade. Oh well, it must not be important. After unlocking these truths, the floodgates opened from my repressed memories. This is when the trauma flashbacks began. My brain began to process every traumatic sexual encounter I had experienced at these voicewap events. Every position, every sensation. I could not stop the flashbacks once they began. My only choice was to ride the wave until they were over. Sometimes one, sometimes up to a dozen per night. It was as if I was there re-experiencing the trauma. It was horrifying. But I realized now my mind had to do a memory dump in order to fully heal. After several months, they stopped and had not returned. I processed enough where the flashbacks were no longer necessary. Another main symptom I had from the trauma was hypervigilance, commonly found with complex PTSD. Hypervigilance is defined as a condition in which the nervous system is inaccurately and rapidly filtering sensory information, and the individual is in an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity. This appears to be linked to a dysregulated nervous system, which can often be caused by traumatic events or complex PTSD. In hypervigilance, there is a perpetual scanning of the environment to search for sights, sounds, people, behaviors, smells, or anything else that is reminiscent of activity, threat, or trauma. The individual is placed on high alert in order to be certain danger is not near. Hypervigilance can lead to a variety of obsessive behavior patterns as well as producing difficulties with social interaction and relationships. So basically, hypervigilance would cause my brain to be on constant high alert, constantly scanning my environment to figure out how to keep me safe, where are the exits, what time is it? When will I be allowed to leave? Who is present? Who's missing? Who is in power? How can I get on their good side? How can I get them to like me? Which is another trauma response called fawning. All of this constantly churning in the back of my head, trying to keep me safe, trying to keep me alive. This is why many survivors with these trauma responses, including myself, get misdiagnosed with traditional attention deficit disorder. Yes, hypervigilance can cause a lack of attention to the task at hand, but this is due to a large chunk of the brain trying to keep the trauma survivor alive and safe, even when no threat exists. While continuing my healing journey around the same time, the 12-step leader taught on surrendering the pain from our hearts. I went ahead and received a surrender chip for this, even though I had no idea what that looked like or how to do it. That next week, I met with my PTSD therapist and we did just that. Severed the unhealthy ties to the abuser, my father, which allowed me to surrender the pain I had been holding on to. I envisioned dozens of fiber strands coming out of my chest, continuing to connect me to him. I then envisioned a large pair of garden shears where I could sever all those ties so I was no longer bound to him nor the severe multiple traumas he caused. Afterwards, I felt extreme calm more than I ever had felt my entire life. I realized that my own hypervigilance had been healed. I had suffered from hypervigilance since childhood, and now it was gone. Similarly, between CR, my therapist, and my support group, I have been able to deal with issues of food addiction, body shame, and fear of getting healthy. I have also learned to overcome the feelings of guilt and shame, feeling I was dirty and unlovable, unworthy of love because of the abuse. Later that same year, my story got updated with my PTSD therapy. We uncovered even earlier trauma by my father. Seems it actually started when I was an infant, only a few months old. This was me around that time. In fall of 2020, I started attending an online recovery program for Christian men dealing with pornography addiction called husband material. Even though I had already been free from porn for over two years by that time, it was like I was a dry drunk, where I still had a lot of the behaviors on the inside and still needed deeper healing. HM has challenged me to go deeper, looking at the reasons why I have so many issues with my own sexuality and digging down to get at those roots, many caused by the abuse, so that God's healing light can shine through. For the past four years, I have been in leadership there, helping other men on their healing journeys as a recovery life coach. Unwanted same-sex attraction is still an issue, but less now. I have always had a fear and distrust of men as a result of my abuse. My healing journey has helped with that a lot. I have learned about the concept of imprinted arousal patterns. Dr. Douglas Carpenter, in his book Secret Shame, a survivor's guide to understanding male sexual abuse and male sexual development, summarizes this concept. When a person is introduced to sexual information or experience, the information is written on the pages of the mind. Our body responds to the sexual information coupled with sexually pleasurable sensations and associated emotional reactions, causing the memory and recognition of the events to be even more strongly stamped into the brain. The template leads to the development of preferences and functions as a roadmap to what the individual finds to be erotic. The formation of these mental templates happens so automatically on covert and overt levels that an individual does not even realize what is occurring. The process naturally transpires. This explains why, since puberty, I not only had a fascination with male sexual intimacy, but also with bondage. Once I became addicted to online pornography, that informed my decisions there as well, searching for BDSM scenes that mirrored or rewrote those trafficking abuses, even though I was still repressing the memories of being trafficked. As I continued to heal in therapy, I was given the following affirmation that I made into a sign that hangs in my office to remind me of this truth. How I now know that God sees me and how I need to see myself. It is a picture of a lion, and it says, I am beautiful, I am strong, I am worthy. With this newfound healing, I have taken on several new roles. As I previously mentioned, I serve in leadership with husband material ministries. I also provide recovery life coaching to male survivors of sexual exploitation with Polar Live Consulting. I host my own podcast on male sexual exploitation called Healing for Male Survivors with Mike Chapman, where I often interview male survivors of sexual abuse and sex trafficking, holding space for those men to tell their stories and share their healing journey, inspiring other men to find their own paths towards healing. I have also become a part-time professional Santa Claus portrayal artist for malls, retail, corporate, family, in-person visits, and video visits. This feeds the needs of my inner child and allows me to spread joy to children and families, giving me joy in return. With all the support I have found, I know I do not need to feel shame or guilt because of what happened to me and can continue to grow into the strong, beautiful, and supportive man I was destined to be. I am now finding different ways of sharing with others my story through my podcast and elsewhere, letting other male sexual exploitation survivors know that help and healing are available. You are not alone, and the abuse was not your fault. Male trafficking survivors need your help. Do not forget about us. Thank you for letting me share.

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Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to connect with Mike or check out his podcast, go down to the links in the description and consider joining us in person at the upcoming Husband Material retreat in Clayton, Georgia in April. This will be a powerful time with embodied healing experiences and art therapy, which is especially powerful for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Go to husbandmaterial.com slash retreat for more information. And always remember you are God's beloved son, and you, he is well pleased.