Deviants: The First Episode

In the inaugural episode of 'Deviants,' hosts Zurc and Danny delve into their personal experiences and the societal complexities surrounding child sexual abuse prevention. Zurc, a survivor of sex trafficking and Danny, who faced his own struggles with de-stigmatizing atypical sexual interests, emphasize the critical need for primary prevention — preventing abuse before legal intervention is necessary. They discuss the lack of resources and support for boys and marginalized groups, the failure of punitive systems, and the importance of open, honest conversations. The episode underlines the necessity for better parental and community support systems and highlights the potential of online communities as unconventional yet vital lifelines for youth and adults navigating these difficult experiences.

Transcript

Zurc: Howdy folks. Welcome to the very first episode of Deviants, A show where we talk about something most people try to avoid, how to stop sexual abuse before law enforcement involvement, and the stories of people that have been hurt by our inability to do that.

My name is Zurc. I'm a survivor of sex trafficking, and I was assigned male at birth. I grew up on the west coast amid the tech boom of the early two thousands. My family had really fast internet and a PC in our garage that was connected to the internet.

I was trafficked by my grandfather from the time I was five to the time I was seven, and then as a pre-adolescent around the age of 11, I used information from my early exposure to child sex trafficking. And child sexual abuse material to explore what happened to me on the internet and why I had the thoughts and feelings that accompanied that trauma.

And in the early days of the internet, there were no [00:01:00] safeguards on platforms like Google. I Ended up looped into online sex trafficking as a young child, but it didn't ruin me. It didn't make me a bad person. I have lived through things that no kid should have to endure, but even more painful than what happened to me was how impossible it was for me to get help. And I'm joined by Danny. 

Danny: I don't do howdy because I'm not from East Texas, but, uh, I dunno why Ayukduk isn't more, widely spread. I'm Danny, I'm known in certain spheres of the internet as red rodent. And when I was a kid, we were, um, rather later adopters of the internet we got it around about 1999 and that was still in the dial up days, so it was a bit more limited. I

was trying to come to the terms of the fact that I thought I might be gay, my exposure to sexual content online [00:02:00] was stuff that I sought out partly through curiosity and partly because, I wanted to see nice pictures of boys my age and, it did change me.

I also, along the line, saw stuff that I shouldn't have seen that no child should ever see, I guess it also changed the way I saw people, how I related to people, and, um, shaped the early days of how I saw myself. It was a few years later that, I came to accept that. My main attraction was for boys.

I had a lot of girl friends who weren't girlfriends, apart from one of them, and I started becoming increasingly aware, particularly as I was brought up by parents who were politically avowed feminists, But it also seemed to me that if you were a boy or if you were someone, assigned male at birth, I'd say someone born with a penis as I [00:03:00] was. then you can yourself be marginalized.

I'm not minimizing the marginalization of women and girls, but sometimes it seems that marginalization of boys is difficult for them, because it's not recognized

Zurc: I validate that. I'm a eunuch right. I'm happier this way. I feel more comfortable in my own body this way. And part of the reason that I did that was this marginalization you're talking about, I couldn't get help. It's uncomfortable for me to be in my own body without being a eunuch. I don't think that's ideal, right? Like people should be able to get help without that needing to be necessary. 

Danny: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I've never identified as anything other than a man or a boy, but, if anyone asks me what does it feel like to be a man? I couldn't give them an answer. it's not that I am gender dysphoric It's not that I'm unhappy with my gender identity.

I think it's, I don't really have one. You [00:04:00] know, if I, if I woke up tomorrow to find that I'd been transformed overnight into a female body, it would obviously be a shock and take some adapting to, but I don't think it would particularly traumatize me. I don't know, of course. 

Zurc: It, is a little bit traumatic. When I started the medication to become a eunuch, it was a little bit traumatic. Emotionally , Your entire brain rewires itself. It's a pretty intense experience. I would say, but it was in a good way, like I was able to recognize things that I couldn't recognize about myself before in the past because of trauma I had experienced as a child.

We're here for something called prevention and it's not about reacting after somebody's been hurt. The reason why we want to talk about our experience is that myself and Danny, are really passionate about something called primary prevention, which is stopping abuse and harm before law [00:05:00] enforcement gets involved and before children are hurt.

Some people might balk at this and think, how could we not let law enforcement intervene when children are being hurt sexually? It's an uncomfortable reality, but for many youths who get wrapped up into this nightmare, like I was, we experience a, deep sense of fear and terror of authorities because we have lost so many people to suicide once law enforcement get involved. Often young people like us don't understand our own sexuality . We do not have the words to safely describe what's happening to us . When we try to describe what's happening to us , we use language and words that other people don't understand and it scares people. We end up getting mislabeled or treated like we are the perpetrators of the harm that hurt us.

That's part of the marginalization of being a boy or a man. You are not allowed to be the survivor of this. You're the perpetrator of it. And that conclusion gets [00:06:00] drawn before you even get a chance to, explain what's going on.

Danny: One of the, most underestimated things connected to that, I think is the number of boys who are themselves victims of sexual abuse. There's a perception that sexual abuse is, a violent offense committed by men against women and girls, and the boys get excluded from that. But, there are a lot of male survivors of child sexual abuse. I mean, what boy wants to be labeled as the boy who got raped. 

Zurc: I don't actually know any other male people that were trafficked. And when I've done a little bit of work to find them, it's really sad because most of them are dead.

Once the intervention happened from law enforcement, there wasn't any follow up to make sure they were okay. They were treated like they were perpetrating the [00:07:00] harm. Trafficking is really, really complex. One thing that stands out to me from my childhood, is that a lot of the men that I interacted with, needed help.

They would even be willing to admit to me that they needed help, but they couldn't get it. 'cause they were terrified too and much of their terror. Resonated with me 'cause I couldn't get help. And so this system that we have, where we're trying to protect kids, is actually in many ways facilitating the harm that it claims to be trying to prevent and trying to stop. And it's really sad. 

Danny: That's what this podcast is all about. And, that's where primary prevention comes in, doesn't it? I mean if you look at a social work practice. what they are meant to do is be proactive, to actually work along the lines of intervening before the abuse happens.

But that's not how it works, because the [00:08:00] services are so underfunded all they can do because they have not, got the time to do anything else is respond to crises the whole time. that's why primary prevention isn't happening on an official level, I think, and that's what we're trying to address, I guess in, in this podcast. You know, to have, have conversations open, honest, candid about, how these systems fail young people and boys in particular, and oppressed groups in particular, such as kids who are gender dysphoric.

Whether that's trans or unsure or just trying to find their own way. gay, young people, queer boys, and we haven't mentioned it yet, but also people with disabilities. Young people with disabilities, whether that's physical disabilities or neurodivergence learning disabilities who are not only significantly more likely to be victims, but also [00:09:00] to be to appear to be perpetrators.

Zurc: Yeah, and there's something that we talked about recently that I thought really stood out to me and. Has to do with parents and how parents are involved because, my dad was sexually abused by his father. So when he found out that something was going on in my life that resembled that, his response was to become very angry, when I hear you talk about your family, I think it's really interesting because for me, what that made me do is it made me dig in deeper, right? It made me hide things more and escalate the already problematic behaviors that I was engaging in. But you had a different path. So I'm curious, what did your parents do? 

Danny: I came out to them when I was 13 when I started noticing at that point the boys in my peer group that I'd found attractive for years were starting at that age to develop sort of secondary sex characteristics as they had puberty.

And I found them less attractive. And I was still [00:10:00] attracted to, kids of 10, 11, 12, who were. Only marginally, pubescent. we're talking sort of the turn of the millennium. There was so much paranoia. even more than now about pedophiles.

Yeah. Monsters and. it's only now I realize this is a very common experience for kids in that position. I'm thinking, am I one of them? my mother was, a teacher, school teacher. My father was a social worker. Who worked with adult and adolescent sex offenders, so I knew they were genned up on these matters.

So I felt confident in discussing the issues with them, 

Zurc: You felt more comfortable talking to your parents because they knew what it was when somebody had an arousal pattern that was different than other people. Or an [00:11:00] attraction that was marginalized or hated even, and you felt comfortable telling them and talking to them. Whereas my parents , They didn't know that. The only thing they knew was sexual harm, rape, and abuse.

The language and attitudes that my parents and siblings encountered from professionals, friends, family, and even our community. When we sought help navigating the long-term consequences of my dad's sexual victimization, reinforced an imposed narrative and internal dialogue that said, I'm not gonna learn about this.

I'm not gonna figure this out. If you do this, it's your fault and you deserve to be treated like a monster. There is no way to prevent it and compassion for him. That's a character flaw. Indeed, my grandfather had many moral failures, but it was not a success for the system that my family had to engage with in the aftermath of the harm that he committed.

When people told [00:12:00] us that my grandfather was evil and the harm done was unavoidable. It discouraged, curiosity. It discouraged learning about it, and when it came to me needing a parent, a family member, someone to support me, I felt like I was the problem, that I was doomed to be like my grandfather. I didn't have anyone, and I needed someone I desperately needed someone to go to for help that wouldn't treat me like a monster.

When I had these feelings like, oh, I'm gonna become like my grandfather, or, oh, I'm a pedophile . It was terrifying. I was stuck and it made me just go and ask random people on the internet. And speaking of that, there's something about me and you I think that people should know. That we have in common. Like we, I think we knew each other when we were kids on forums that were created for who had sexual attractions to children. 

Danny: We only worked that out recently, a [00:13:00] few days ago.

Zurc: There is a natural tendency to blame the internet pedophiles and jump to this conclusion that they must have been the group that trafficked me as a child, and they made some mistakes.

But, the majority of them were actually really helpful. They were these people that I could go to and talk about what I was going through, and their response was not anger. It wasn't to tell me that I was a bad person. It was to tell me that I was a good person and that I should stay alive and that I shouldn't do drugs. That's one thing that really stands out. They really were like, don't do drugs. And that was a good thing.

Danny: Another reason that I felt comfortable going to my parents, which you. And many other people don't share, is that I was confident that they'd love me, whatever, that their love for me was unconditional. I thought maybe they'd be shocked, maybe their world would be rocked and which didn't happen. but I never, I never crossed my mind that they had stopped loving me, [00:14:00] respecting me, supporting me. But that in itself was a problem because it meant that their reassurances were sort of like these. reassurances from someone loves you unconditionally and cherishes you. And so when they say, no, it's okay. you are not a monster. There's nothing wrong with you. You are not going to end up a child molester. I thought, they would say that, wouldn't they? Because they're my parents and they love me, and that's why, I ended up, I originally I'm the first one I found was Boychat ended up posting on there, because I needed a second opinion. 

Zurc: So we needed both!

Danny: Yeah !

Zurc: It's totally valid. You need a community. You need a group of people that are all giving you the same message that you have value and that you're not gonna be a bad person. And for us, it's just like we were on these forums and a lot of them, the majority of the [00:15:00] people on these forums were really quite encouraging and they saved my life, right? Like I would've killed myself if I couldn't have gone to these people and said, look, this is what I'm going through.

I'm scared and I'm sad and I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Like I would've killed myself and I didn't. Okay, I'm still alive and I survived. Primary prevention gives me something to hang onto that says that's okay.

Danny: Well, yeah, if I'd have gone as sort of second opinion, in mainstream society, it would've negated what my parents told me. That's how, Boychat gave me the confidence to recognize where I'm coming from, who and what I am. And, guidance on how to deal with it 

Zurc: Well, boychat, wasn't really the one for me. I think it kind of pushed me further down because of the the collection of, websites and forums and things like this that you could, you could visit. It ended up kind [00:16:00] of being just the wild west of the internet.

Danny: There were things like, boy moment, but for me, I didn't know of anything else.

Zurc: Yeah. And in that time, these forums, like Boy Moment and Boychat and boy Lover forums dot net, the majority of the members were good people that were trying to seek help. They were interested in primary prevention before it was a thing, but there were also members that were exploitative. Because there wasn't any kind of formality to it, any kind of academic scaffolding around the forum. It created, a dangerous environment, but not so dangerous that we should throw the baby out with the bath water when we destroy this on the internet like law enforcement and stuff.

There were elements of it that were actually extremely valuable, particularly the way in which the forums validated the youth who were experiencing an atypical sexual development, maybe one that was marginalized or hated. And we'll talk about it more in our podcast. But, [00:17:00] for now, we'll leave it at that. Before we go any further, I think we should take a quick moment just for a content warning.

Okay. As you can see in this podcast, we're going to discuss childhood trauma, sexual abuse, suicide, and , systemic injustice. If at any point you need to just like pause and take a breath. And come back later. Please honor what your body and mind need. Let yourself take a breath, take a beat. We also want to provide some resources, in the US if you have concerns about suicide, you can call or text 9, 8, 8. That's the suicide crisis lifeline.

If you have concerns about your own sexual behavior or the thoughts you have around children, there's stop it now. You can Google stop it now and they have a chat you can join to talk to people. 

Danny: Well, we've got, a service very similar to the, uh, American 9 8 8 which is called the Samaritans. Uh, most people have heard of it. think of it as, a service that's just for people who are on the verge of suicide. In [00:18:00] fact, it's more than that. it's, anyone who feels desperate, confused and needs to reach out and has nowhere else to turn to, there's no age restriction on it.

It can be used by kids, pensioners and anyone in between. their telephone number in the uk, nationally is 1 1 6. 1, 2, 3. Or you can go to their website, which is samaritans.org. they've recently started a pilot where you can have an online chat, a text chat if you find that easier than talking out loud.

It is a completely anonymous, safe and confidential service. you don't have to worry about things like mandatory reporting if you admit that you are having inappropriate feelings. 

Zurc: I think we have just one more service that we're gonna throw out there is Lifeline. If you go to Boychat.org and look at the top right hand corner of your screen, there's a little link that says Lifeline.

And it's [00:19:00] closed right now, as we record this. But it opens and if you go there, you can talk to people anonymously. Okay. My experiences there have all been really good if you need help, and you're inner dialogue is telling you I can't talk to somebody if there's any way to connect it to me. I just need to talk to somebody.

Danny: I go there just for a casual chat sometimes, and that's perfectly all right as well if you're just curious about what's going on. In fact, if you click on the Lifeline Link, even when it's closed, you can find the schedule for the week when it's going to be open. Yeah, I have great respect for the people who run it. Don't always agree with them on everything. Which leads me onto to my caveat about it, which is by all means, go and find it on Boychats But if you're new to this game, but boy, Chatt is a no holds barred I think Zurc described it earlier as the Wild West.

There are some really intense and sometimes angry discussions that go on [00:20:00] there. I'd counsel people to give that a miss. If they're looking, if they're new to this and they're just looking for Lifeline, just go straight to the link at the top that says Lifeline. 

Zurc: Lifeline is open to just anybody, so you don't have to go through a lot of onboarding but if you're more committed to trying to learn more about this there's resources for younger people like the MAP support club. There's also VirPed . We didn't choose that name by the way. Danny and I. If I could choose the name of that forum, it would've been something cool, like the German version of it. There is a forum where lots of people go and it's just a lot of us have experienced sexual trauma before in the past.

There's also people who haven't. If you look up this kind of thing on Google, the environment is much more about preventing sexual abuse now than it was in the past.

Danny: Yeah, certainly. And the difference between Boychat and VirPed Boychat allows open discussion with all opinions being expressed, including some by people who think [00:21:00] that it is okay to have Sexual relationships. between children and adults. and think that that can even be a positive thing.

It's not an opinion that I share, but that is a view that it expressed there. On VirPed on the other hand, there is a very clear, prerequisite for joining the forum. You believe that all sexual contact between children and adults is wrong. That is their position.

That is their position. It's not actually my position. I think it's extremely risky and it's not something I'll do, and it's not something I'll condone. Now I think there are philosophical, questions there, if you go to VirPed the basic premise there is that they are what they would call non-contact.

So they're completely opposed to any sexual or intimate contact between, adults and minors. I think that's fair to say. 

Zurc: I think some people might be like all cringey about the fact that Boychat [00:22:00] has people that are, not vehemently opposed to sexual interactions between adults and children. But I wanna point out, when I was a kid, okay, when I was as young as 11 years old and I was being trafficked if somebody had come to me and said, that's just horrible and wrong, I wouldn't have engaged in conversation with them. I wouldn't have wanted to, I would've been terrified. And so as uncomfortable and cringey and gross and just overwhelming as the concept may be that some people have that perspective. By allowing the conversation around that to happen, it creates an environment that feels safer. For somebody like myself. I'm not saying I agree with them. I do not. I think it's harmful and wrong. But I'm an adult and I can say that, and I know that in myself, but that perspective didn't just appear out of nowhere.

Okay. I had to learn it and it would've been really hard for me to learn it in an environment where I couldn't be open about my uncertainty around it, when I was a [00:23:00] child.

So, before we, close out and everything, I just wanna take a moment of silence and I want to take a moment of silence just to honor those we've lost, because I think both myself and you, Danny, have lost a lot of people to suicide.

And when we were kids, it was just normal to log into the forum and find that another person had killed themself. It's hurt youth in both the UK and the us and it's not something people talk about, I wanna have a moment of silence to honor these people that were criminalized when they needed help, and those survivors that never found safety and advocates who died, speaking truth to power, and who knew that the punitive responses and mass incarceration and hatred would never end sexual violence. Take a moment.

All right. Thanks for joining us if you keep listening to [00:24:00] our podcast, I think, you'll hear stories, research, interviews, and tools to be part of the solution moving forward. But I think most importantly you'll hear the lived experience of a survivor and from somebody who went through it and was supported by their family and had the resources they needed, to stay safe. 

We're hoping This can be a podcast where survivors can be seen and their experience is validated, particularly boys who struggle with disabilities or LGBTQ youth, where we can all stop pretending that criminalizing kids is the same thing as protecting them because it isn't. 

Danny: Well, the sad fact is that, the war on child sexual abuse has been going on for decades. In fact since it was recognized in the, late fifties or early sixties, that it actually happens, and before that, people refused to accept even that physical abuse happened. so it's about time I think that we started doing something about it because what we've been doing to date hasn't [00:25:00] worked. And primary prevention. As I see it as well. I think we both see it. is the only way we can work ending what has been going on for all of these years. 

Zurc: Yeah, and I mean, I see things like MSC, where young people connect with each other in a therapeutic environment that's supported by organizations like, stop it now. To me, I see the future, I see what I needed when I was a kid desperately needed. And it's hard to see people malign that. Or you know, attack it as though it's something that's bad. It's sad. And I know that things can get better.

I know that things can get different. I have hope, but, uh, we have to be able to tell our stories, right? The past is what we have to be able to learn from. And right now it's like, I think maybe you experience it sometimes when you're talking about it, even now I feel some fear inside of my chest. Like what is it gonna happen when this hits the [00:26:00] internet? Is somebody just gonna freak out and ban us from existence? it's scary and that's not good. 

Danny: That's happened over and over with people with the best intentions in the world who are trying to prevent abuse happening. and because it's just too much. People complain about it, and because it's too much. Then the people who are hosting whatever it is, whether it's a forum, whether it's a podcast, just think, oh, no, no, no, this is too contentious. we'll get rid of it and pull the plug on it. I hope that people listening to this are here because, they care about what we're talking about, and of course they're welcome. They're welcome to contact the podcast itself. 

Zurc: Yep. 

Danny: Please do. Whether or not you agree with what we're saying, it's only through a broadcast like this that we can start getting together and actually affecting the change that hasn't happened in. [00:27:00] well nearly A century now, nearly a century of recognizing that these issues exist 

Zurc: I mean, we're talking, I'm a fourth generation survivor of child sex trafficking and child sexual abuse. And when we say a century, we mean a century. Maybe a little bit more, that might be a conservative estimate. And uh, it's got to stop. And in order for it to stop, we have to have compassion for people. Kids have to be able to come to their parents like you did and feel comfortable and safe sharing with them what's going on in their head. 

Danny: there's been child sexual abuse for as long as there have been children and adults. I mean, now we can do more than just recognizing that the problem exists , we can share our experiences and show how the way that we have been trying to tackle it through a punitive approach that labels people, shames people, stigmatizes people, hasn't worked and is never going to work, and we need a new direction.

Zurc: Join us in this [00:28:00] adventure and talk to us, engage with us. Be somebody that cares about your community, that wants to see your community do better moving forward. 

Danny: Also, if there is anyone out there who knows someone who's suffering in this way, then we're hoping that this will help you to do something about it. We're also hoping that that other people will join in directly with the podcast, whether they're. Victims, survivors, professionals who share or maybe Parents. Anyone who has an investment in the topic we're talking about. Thanks y'all. Thanks Ducks for listening.

Zurc: Yeah. Thanks y'all.

See y'all next time.