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!!!

Responses and Dialogue after a Meeting

Following a support and dialogue group, a participant shares his thoughts. He was a child pornography user and a virtual predator who never sought direct contact with minors:

Dear Latifa

I wanted to say I’m sorry for the grim and harsh tones I had while telling my story during the meeting. I hope I didn’t have a negative impact on the others, victims and pedophiles both. Their stories had really shaken me. I felt dirty in comparison to the hopeless and condemned love of B the scriptwriter. Guilty before M who was exploited as a child to produce photos that I could have watched myself. Cowardly while listening to the two youths who are confronting early their addiction to child pornography. Responsible for showing to S and his mother the aberrations that can happen when you lock yourself up alone with your secrets. I felt the need to throw up my story like the horrific mess I perceive it to be. I put into it the anger and despair I thought I saw in the young woman who sat next to you and who had to leave early.

I’m becoming aware of all I still have to do to reconcile the two “me”s in myself and to speak of them as a whole. I’ve essentially only described the destructive process I had created and that lead me to become a “cyber rapist” of sorts. I still disgust myself to such a degree that I can’t express it, as it looks too much like self-pity. Despite the kind looks around me, I still have trouble accepting the good in me and letting it grow.

I have to learn to talk about my “day me”, like A does, the me who is the loving father of my two kids. Who has been my mother’s rock for so many years. And also to talk of the beautiful humanity of my wife who, despite the lies and horrors I committed, still tries to build with me and the kids a bright future for all of us.

Participating to the support and dialogue group is very beneficial to me. Listening to me and telling me all of your stories help me mesure my responsibility, question myself, share my emotions. And especially you, Latifa, your smile, your open arms and the love you irradiate really pull me toward a future filled with light.

I hope I didn’t damage the group or the individuals, and I’m very sorry I expressed myself so coldly. Since you gave me a hand up, I have the responsibility during the meetings to do the same for others and pull them up. I hope I didn’t crush anyone with the violence of my words, that’s not what I wanted.

I write all this to you here even though we will talk on the phone tomorrow because I don’t know in how weak a mental state I will be then.

Thank you a billion times for all you bring to us all.

R

Response and support from a participant to the same meeting, a pedophile ex-offender suffering from an inadequate reinsertion after his prison term:

Yours is a poignant testimony, R, and I can tell you that you are a great guy ! It may seem out of place coming from someone who was condemned for breaking the law, but you don’t deserve this suffering. Why do you say that you need to learn how to share? You expressed yourself with great honesty during the group with Latifa and the others, and never in any hurtful way. There are mistakes we may make sometimes in our lives. But a man (and a woman, just to not have all the Feminists on me, even though…) without faults does not exist. A friend of mine, a priest, told me one day while I was in prison: « A man is greater than his actions ». 

First of all you have to become aware of the fact that you have a family who believes in you. A wife and kids. There aren’t two Rs, just one, and even though right now you have to face your errors, this cannot in any way keep you from going on SERENELY with your life. I didn’t feel any violence in your words. I talked about difficult topics myself, but I surely wasn’t there to hurt anyone or to lie to myself.

The groups Latifa organises don’t aim at self-flagellation. They are meetings that might seem to some “self-righteous” people an insult to the politically correct, just like obscurantism has always brought people to burn the witches and heretics of their century… N H wrote to me, while I was in prison: « The justice system cannot afford to understand people, because if it did it would not be able to judge them ». In quoting this thought from Robert Badinter, he wanted to tell me that life is not as simple as we might hope. Circumstances, prejudice, social or religious conventions bring us to believe right what is wrong and viceversa. I was condemned for one of the worst accusations there is, I know where the truth lies. Still, I have to bear that unfair sentence (as it didn’t just condemn me for what I actually did, but also for things I didn’t do) all my life.

Every day I believe I can see the sun coming up again, but the darkness falls again just a few hours later. I’m cold, I tremble and cry. My mistakes brought me in a land without any discernment nor JUSTICE. And there is nothing I can do about it. I know that every time I try to voice the truth, out of the mouths of all the people that believe their judgement was correct will come the word “denial”, like the blade of a modern inquisition.

I still try to go on living, especially, just as you say it yourself, R, thanks to Latifa, to her work, her courage, her determination, her convictions coming from her own suffering she managed to pull through. And as for you, your life isn’t at a close at all. Thanks to your family and your determination, it can work its way to happiness. Paul Boese said that forgiveness doesn’t erase the past, it broadens the future. So yours is now before you, wide open.

By the way, my best wishes to everyone I met during the group. All suffering, sometimes for reasons completely at the other end of the spectrum, but all managing to turn this unexpected meeting in a moment of exemplary humanism.

Thank you, dear Latifa.

B

Support from one of the victims participating to the group (male).

Dear R,

I didn’t feel any violence or horror in your sharing, I was just proud that we’re part of the same humanity, and thinking that if everyone had the same courage you have in bringing your inner monster out in the open, it would be destroyed since this monstruous part each of us has inside blossoms in the shadows, its natural habitat. So thank you for your beautiful and great courage. Thank you for your capacity to observe your two “me”s at a distance like an enthomologist. That distance shows you are already pulling free of them. You are traversing a valley of solitude, but we are all here, behind the scenes, to support you and help you when you feel you need it.

Victims (or at least victims who pulled or are pulling through) don’t need to hear “censored” speeches that keep them in their suposed frailty. They definitely don’t want to be “handled with care”. It is just the truth, as harsh and grim as it may be, that interests them. The truth, not to mend a prejudice, but for justice. Because I believe everything must be districated to avoid adding evil to evil as Camus said. I believe our true nature lies in solidarity, that we are at once the bricks and the mortar. And that victims who pulled through, just as much as offenders who pulled through, can be the best masons in the world.

Fare well, R, my brother in tears.

M