Thoughts of a film director and producer about our dialogue groups

During the Blue Angel Association dialogue groups, a little side space is sometimes reserved for neutral observers (professionals, students, etc), to show people how effective our work is and how real the needs it answers are, and also to start interesting them in Mrs Bennari’s methods. Here we publish the thoughts one of these observers wished to share with us.

Good evening Latifa,

I wanted to thank you yet again for inviting me to this dialogue group. I greatly regret that I wasn’t able to stay till the very end: I had no idea of the length of the exchanges and I really had to go to an appointment.

But what I saw made me understand why so many inmates had talked to me about your work with so much passion: nothing I witnessed there was anything like what I observed in prisons, psychiatric centers, or medical clinics.

Your very direct approach – without preambles, no false modesty, calling a spade a spade, intervening whenever necessary even when that meant interrupting, simply because you instinctively felt the moment was right to focus down, specify, guide – at first found me rather bewildered. But I had to accept the evidence that every time, through experience of course and, once again, instinct, you were always right on point.

You gave me the impression, I must say, of watching a funambulist during a storm, but such was your mastery that I never feared you would fall: soon, I was just looking to see how you would inevitably come out on top, to what point you would tenaciously get, as I understood that you always had a clear picture in your mind, and that you always knew where you were treading. What is even more impressive, is that the “regulars” of your groups seem to have taken exemple from you over time, and dare to follow your steps, and intervene in the discussion too without fear, at the right time and with goodwill – and they too just as instinctively. Maybe just thanks to their “experience”, but also, I think, to your kind influence.

The other thing that was to me unexpected (and welcome!) was the atmosphere, amazingly peaceful, relaxed but not at all jaded, that welcomed healthy laughs here and there, because it knew they can, when necessary, calm things down and soothe them; without ever, because that would be indecent, downplaying the importance and scope of the stakes.

To those like me who have had an interest in these matters for a long time, the strange simplicity, the strange evidence of these exchanges still leaves us necessarily stupefied and wanting to discover more.

All my gratitude, then, for welcoming me like you did.

See you soon,

Gérard X

Director, Producer

A father of three addicted to child pornography

You can read here an e-mail received by Mrs Bennari from the USA. Once again, we see how the lack of structures for support and counseling abandons people who struggle with pedophile desires (in real life or online) to themselves, alone with their pain and their secret. Many won’t be able to resist becoming sex offenders (in real life or virtually) alone.

I’m happy to discover your website and your work.

I’m from Europe originally, I married with an american woman and I now live in X, USA. I feel involved in the use of child pornography. Despite all the repressive measures in place here and the risk of being caught by the police, I can’t stop even though I tried many times. I don’t have any problems or desires with children in real life, even when I’m alone with them. I see a lot of myself in some testimonies of abstinent pedophiles. And yet I have three children I love and I’m just a good father for them and nothing more. I love and desire my wife, but that doesn’t stop me from diving again in this digital hell, knowing all too well that the children behind the scenes aren’t actors but real victims.

I discovered adult pornography when I was 12, in magazines hidden in my big brother’s bedroom. I watched them rarely at first, but little by little it became like a drug, and after a while, watching and looking for new stuff, I discovered child pornography at 18, and I felt like I was 12 again with my brother’s magazines, with the same arousal and excitement.

When I met my wife, I thougth this need would disappear but I was wrong. I tried to be reasonable and stay clear of websites with children, but I felt stronger urges in that direction. I started sweating heavily during the night, to the point that my wife worried about my health. She was miles away from imagining that I was in real need for a specific help and that if an association like yours had existed already I wouldn’t have gotten to this point of addiction.

Reading your website and all the news articles telling about your work, I found new hope. I’m ready to get help and, if necessary, I will come to France to participate in your dialogue groups. I read that the Blue Angel in the USA isn’t operational yet, do you know when it will open? I think America should develop your work as it perfectly matches the needs of thousands of pedophiles who are abstinent but use child pornography.

I don’t understand why these sites exist, why they are so easily accessible and why the producers and publishers aren’t prosecuted.

Thank you and bravo for what you do, and most of all please continue and transmit this wonderful and admirable work. I also saw that you published a book and I wait for its american release with impatience.

G

Hopes and Recent History of an ex-Teacher Arrested for Child Pornography

We publish here an e-mail received by Mrs Bennari the day after a dialogue group from one of the participants, a teacher fired after being arrested for downloading child pornography. He tells here about his latest doings and thoughts, and shares his hopes and intentions for after his trial.

 

Hello Latifa,

I hope you’re well and that your throat is better.
Thank you again for welcoming me yesterday.
As always, I was very touched by the various stories and testimonies.
Me, (I don’t know if that showed) I wasn’t feeling all that well.
Most of all I wanted to contain my emotion.

Sorry to write you like this, especially because of what’s to follow (yet another lenghty mail from me!), but I needed to.

I wanted to look back on certain points, mostly on questions you asked me.

When you asked me if I thought about going back to teaching, I said that something had been broken. I couldn’t say anything more as I knew it would be painful for me.
I chose that job because I loved it. I loved to work with and for the children.
I always tried to do it with professionalism, being considerate of my pupils.
Furthermore, work ethic is an important value to me (part of my parents’ upbringing).

When I learned that my situation was made public in my workplace, I felt I was being stabbed in the back. I felt abandoned by the great institution of teaching.
Of course what I did was a serious matter, and going back to what was the context at the time, I understand that the media coverage of other cases certainly weighed on my superiors’ decision. After all, they didn’t really know me and nothing could guarantee that I hadn’t done more than what I was accused of. They played it safe, and rightly so. I can’t blame them.

Even though the meetings at my workplace went well, even though today I understand that was a wrong to make a right, that “backstab” still makes it so I don’t feel “worthy” of being a teacher anymore. I feel like there will always be suspicion hanging over me and around me.

As I told you yesterday, even though I found some children, especially boys, cute (at my workplace or in the streets), I didn’t have any desire to do anything to them.

I don’t remember if I wrote this to you already, but some years ago (I was already in this deviancy) I gave private tuitions at people’s homes, and there was this young teenager : I gave him lessons in his room, like it usually happened with most of my private pupils.

One day, this young teenager found it hard to concentrate, he was restless and laughed at the drop of a hat. At one point, he was standing up facing me, in overalls, and I noticed he had an erection. That was very embarassing for me (I’m quite modest, actually very much so), and I pretended not to notice. I asked him to sit down and concentrate on his homework, which he eventually did.

I’d say that was the most dangerous situation I was ever in. It could have made me slip up, but I didn’t. I didn’t because the idea didn’t even came to my mind and it would have been impossible for me anyway.
With my pupils at the pool it was the same, I would have never done anything to them.
That the police, that the law would ask me that question, even though I understand why they would need to, still feel like I don’t have anyone’s trust, or not anymore.

The recent case of a school principal who used to film children at the pool made me think to myself: “I hope nobody thought I could ever do something like that!”. Because the very idea would never come to my mind, and frankly I would feel like I’d be violating the children’s intimacy.

Every year, I had taken the habit of tackling the sensitive subject of dangerous situations involving children. It wasn’t very detailed work, but I tried to raise my pupils’ awareness regarding these risks (on the Internet, the streets, etc), without upsetting them too much.
The only subject I didn’t dare approach was that of the dangers in the family midst.
What reassured me was that they were for the most part already well informed.

Today, I’m not beyond reproach anymore.
What hurt me the most was the meeting with my pupils. I don’t blame anyone for doing it, I understand why. There were rumors, concerns. But frankly, I ask myself: “how will those children remember me?”
Some parents and colleagues who contacted me again said they had good memories of me.
Let me point out: I never tried to be the most popular teacher, the coolest, the most loved. But over the years I could see (luckily) that for the most part I was appreciated, like many of my colleagues.

Yes, it’s hard for me to accept that this career is over. Yes, it’s hard, like you rightly pointed out yesterday, that no distinction is made between people who are potential predators and others who aren’t.
I myself have sometimes looked in the mirror and just spat on it, spouting insults.
And yet I love children in a noble way; and yet it is on top of this deviancy.

We talked about it yesterday at the end of the meeting, about the Internet “mighty tool”, as long as you know how to use it.
It is still so easy to find legal sites with sexually oriented content. And it’s true that youths are more easily exposed to this.
Also comments, especially during searches, with words that to me are very coarse, violent.

More and more today (and I know you’re all to aware of this) youths have mobile phones, smartphones. And through those they often happen upon difficult situations.
I don’t know how I would have lived my teenage years if I had access to this technology, but perhaps not serenely.
Internet giants (like Google, Facebook, etc) should be even more vigilant. And of course politicians should too.

You also asked me if I thought I would eventually have tried to stop by myself if I hadn’t been arrested.
For some time already (perhaps because of the news about the school principal?) I had started to admit that if I didn’t stop with child pornography I would be arrested some day. That didn’t stop me, yet again, from casting all that aside, putting a veil upon my eyes, and go back to the Internet…

Around a week before my arrest, I had (finally) decided to stop going on the Internet. I confess that at the start it was more to “lay low” for a while (I’m sorry to have to say this). But still, I told myself that maybe this time I would be able to get away from it all.
Alas, I was still far from being able to suppress all the images, the videos, but I thought that with time I maybe could get rid of them. It’s easy to say this now that I’ve been arrested and put on trial, but: yes, I regret not having forced myself more to try and stop by myself; yes, I regret not taking charge of my situation and talking to someone, and not contacting your association sooner.

What’s done is done, and like S told me yesterday, maybe I needed this arrest to be finally able to react.

Yesterday you rightly asked me what I wanted to do now, and how I was filling “the void”.
As I told you, merely contacting the association, meeting with you, participating to the dialogue groups, this all helped me a lot and I feel “useful”.
Helping others and most of all indirectly protecting children and teens, that is very important to me. Sure, it won’t erase what I’ve done, but it does allow me to give back some meaning to my life.

I want to continue on this path which to this day is the only one I found that looks commendable to me in regard to what I’ve done.

I keep dear this beautiful image of the couple from O that came to the meeting yesterday. I was very touched since, deep down, I would love to be in a couple, or at least to share a sentimental life with someone.
And most of all, I’d love to be a father. Many of you told me it’s not to late, that it would even be a further and stronger moral barrier.
I admit that today, as I told yesterday, I don’t feel ready to have a girlfriend/boyfriend yet. And what you told me is also what gives me pause right now: “It’s better to wait for the trial to end first”

I don’t know if I told you this already (I wrote so much!!!), but before the arrest I sometimes had this idea of going away, leaving everything behind, letting my family and friends have some news about me for a little while, with time they would eventually stop thinking about me and get used to my absence anyway. (I started thinking about this after falling in love with a young thirty years old man who didn’t reciprocate my feelings)

I didn’t realize (or I didn’t want to) that to people close to me (starting with my family) I was important, that they loved me. I know it’s strange to write this, but deep down I always felt I didn’t deserve the attention and love of others, even though I felt I needed it. Oddly (?), I’m very personable and sociable and today even more so, even though I’m very apprehensive about meeting people.

There are people around me who still trust me.
I owe myself to be up to that.

What’s certain, is that I don’t want people close to me to suffer, I don’t want to be a burden to them and society anymore.

That’s it, I will leave it here now, but I want to thank you for inviting me to a dialogue group again yesterday. Thank you also for giving me an opportunity to tell my story, and for presenting it briefly as a testimony that could be “very helpful” to stop before it’s too late, before waking up one morning with the cops at your door…

If my story (without being a specific reference) can help even just one user of child pornography to react and stop following this hopeless path, then it will be a plus for me.

Good sunday to you, good luck,
and see you soon, I hope!

You really are a wonderful woman! Thank you a lot for everything!

Sincerely,

S/P

P.S. I’m starting to be less paranoid, so I (finally!) could speak about my job. Sure, it wasn’t hard to guess what kind of work I did, but still it’s new territory for me, and it’s mostly thanks to you, so once more: thank you!!!

Six months after the first contact with the Blue Angel Association

We publish here T’s new testimony, written six months after making contact with the Blue Angel Association for the first time. You can easily see how being listened to and supported positively impacted him. The needs T and thousands of others like him express are clear and our experience, like this testimony clearly shows, tells it’s possible to give an answer.

 

Six months after meeting with Latifa and the Blue Angel Association

I had already written on June 19th 2015, soon after meeting Latifa and starting to come off an addiction to child pornography. I had ended my story on a positive note and I was totally right as today my life has meaning again!! So I can say I’m happy with my current life. So I would like to write again to give hope to people who are addicted to child pornography and tell them that it’s possible to pull through and live a much healthier and happier life, with joy and serenity.

1: The contact with the Blue Angel Association and Latifa Bennari

So I can say that Latifa saved my life since without her I would have never been able to pull through. I think I’d still be hooked to those videos, photos and other child porn mangas. I say “saved my life” because I had piled on so much frustration, such an awful self-image, so much isolation and deep distress that I think I would have ended up killing myself, or perhaps even trying to enact what I saw on those images and videos I found and that I felt were so unhealthy and terrible but with which I “fed” my mind for hours each day.
So I contacted Latifa via e-mail and she answered a few hours later…

Her answer changed my life. I had felt totally isolated, thinking nobody could understand me. Thanks to her, I understood the only way out for me was coming off completely from those videos and images which were the main cause of my unhappiness. We exchanged some more e-mails, then had some phone calls which were a huge help.

I’ve also read Latifa’s last book and I could identify with some of the stories in there, and it also allowed me to understand how I had ended up like that, understand that I wasn’t a monster and that more importantly I had the possibility to pull through by myself.

I’ve also participated to a dialogue group organized by Latifa that allowed me to meet other people with my same profile and most of all to listen to the pain of ex-victims of sexual abuse during childhood. Seeing them in front of me, listening to their testimony about the pain they endured as children and the impact it had during their lives up to today was like an electroshock and it really opened my eyes.

Meeting with the Blue Angel was essential to my new life. I will never have enough words to thank Latifa and all the people I met with the Blue Angel.

2: Personal Development

Latifa had given me the keys to come off my addiction. Then I started looking for solutions, while I was weaning, to stand the impact and try and lead a fuller life, to replace the time I used to spend on my pc looking at child porn with something beneficial. I don’t like reading much, but I used to listen to podcasts and thanks to that I began listening to podcasts about personal development.

Afterwards I also read some books that helped me get more self-confident, less bashful and meet new people to get out of my loneliness.

Thanks to those podcasts and books about personal development I was able to work on myself in depth and understand some of my behaviors that blocked me in my everyday life, rooted also in my childhood. I could observe that my mental lockdown in that addiction was for a big part because of my huge bashfulness, since I preferred staying confined in a digital world raher than going out and trying to meet girls my age.

Personal development helped me get better a lot, it allowed me to better myself in many areas of life and I keep being interested in it everyday.

3: Meditation

Meditation was very important to me too. I started practicing it in full conscience a little more than 3 months ago. The first month I didn’t feel much of an effect but with a regular practice of 10 to 20 minutes a day, I felt my anxiety, all my negative thoughts, the useless fears diminish. I got more serene, I could spot the moments when I would have been more vulnerable to a relapse. It also allowed me to understand a bit about the workings and the frailties of my mind.

To this day I practice every morning a guided meditation of about 20 minutes. I want to point out that I’m an atheist and therefore the meditations I practice are non-religious.

4: The psychologist

Since these six months I’ve been in therapy with a psychologist, and I bit the bullet and told her about my history of addiction to child pornography. I think she finds it difficult to put herself in my shoes because she doesn’t have the tools to understand. However she was still able to help me in other areas of life, which means I’m much better today. I couldn’t see her as much as I would have wanted since that would have cost too much money and she had a very full agenda anyway.

5: Final assessment since my encounter with Latifa Bennari and the Blue Angel Association

Today I’m happy to be alive. I keep fighting everyday, my life isn’t perfect, but I appreciate it how it is. I want to point out that during my weaning I relapsed three times, 3 evenings when I watched child pornography again, but I got back on track the day after. I hated myself a lot after the first time but the others, I took them as experiences and tried to understand why I had relapsed. Now I think that young and little girls have taken back their right place in my head: that of children and not that of objects of desire. Of course I still find them pretty and I love their spontaneity, but I see them differently than before meeting Latifa.

The way forward has been difficult for me, but compared to the agony that was my life before the 1st mail to Latifa, it’s like nothing. I’m just at the start, but thanks to the work I did on myself and most of all to the Blue Angel Association, I have no doubts anymore about the fact that I will forever stay an ABSTINENT pedophile. I hope I will soon find the future mother of my children, there’s still the rest of my life to live, and the pitfalls of life to be vigilant of!!

I hope my story will give some hope back to people who, like me, were at rock bottom. And I hope that there will be more people like at the Blue Angel Association, with a heart huge enough to be able to pierce our armor and give us back the joy of living and of being able to pull through.

T