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Preface

Mission Statements

The mission of Choosing Healthy Sexual Boundaries: The Support Group is to promote healthy sexual behavior among men, encourage responsible relationships, and to improve community safety through choice and maintenance of strong, well defined boundaries.

The mission of Choosing Healthy Sexual Boundaries: The Handbook is to share the cumulative experience and wisdom of this group with a wide audience of men and women who are committed to community safety.

Intended Audience

When we started our support group, Choosing Healthy Sexual Boundaries, we had general ideas about our intended audience. First, we felt the need for a peer facilitated, volunteer group that men convicted of sex offenses could choose to attend voluntarily, following a treatment – aftercare regimen. That is, a mechanism that would enable and strengthen maintenance of newly acquired skills and strategies learned in treatment. It would also provide a safe, comfortable and confidential venue to discuss matters of sexuality in a nonjudgmental and supportive manner. This group, we thought, would be composed of men with child sexual abuse, indecent exposure, child pornography, and molestation convictions. Many would have received court ordered treatment through private providers, not-for-profit clinics, and some from prison programs completed while incarcerated or while engaged in civil commitment. Most would be motivated to maintain and strengthen boundaries that would preclude return to jail, prison or other forms of confinement.

Our second target included men whose sexual choices were beginning to generate negative consequences, but who had not yet crossed the criminal justice boundary. Or more likely, men who had not yet been caught and arrested for illegal boundary transgressions. In education, this would be called Early Intervention. “Early,” here, would mean “before going to jail.” These were men cheating on wives or partners, using prostitutes, frequenting strip clubs, watching excessive pornography —including child-pornography— and engaging in unhealthy fantasy involving children and underage teens.

The goals for this audience focused on establishing or redefining individual boundaries in ways that would allow for satisfaction of sexual needs in an appropriate, healthy and harm-free manner.

A third group emerged over a period of two to three years. These were men referred by private practitioners, treatment programs, and by probation officers. They were men with potential to benefit from participating in a support group concomitant with ongoing professional treatment.

And from our time spent working with the men in this, and similar groups, comes this handbook. So who might gain from reading it? Any man who is who is concerned about his sexual behavior, choices and boundaries, who is feeling pressure from those around him to make behavioral changes, or who is experiencing negative consequences for sexual choices that are increasing in frequency and severity might benefit. Likewise, any man completing, or who has completed, voluntary or court-ordered treatment as a convicted offender and who needs help maintaining sharply drawn boundaries and remaining vigilant might give the book a try. It won’t hurt; it sure may help. Good luck!

About the Authors

Thomas Jones (Tommy) was a public school teacher for 26 years. He was addicted to alcohol for much of that time. In the fall of 2001, he was in jail… a guest of the county, you might say... serving a four-month sentence in a correctional facility. It could have been worse; it could have been longer and it could have been prison. Bad choices and poor, dysfunctional and missing boundaries cost him his freedom, friends, money, trust, respect... his teaching profession.

The reasons for his incarceration are not as important as the changes within him that those consequences generated. Those changes included his decision to quit using alcohol, to choose and maintain good, healthy boundaries, and his determination to help keep his community a safer place to live.

Tommy is currently a husband, parent, friend, community volunteer and college graduate; he is also a Vietnam Veteran. In April 2013, he and Bob Schauerhamer were recipients of the Distinguished Service Award presented by MNATSA (Minnesota Association for the Treatment of Sex Abusers.)

He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two very special cats. This is his first book.

Bobby Schauerhamer was born and raised in Minnesota, only living in other states while engaged in college studies. He graduated from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, earning a B.A. with magna cum laude honors and a major in psychology in 1973. He then attended and graduated from Western Michigan University with honors earning an M.A. in experimental psychology in 1976. During the past decade he has attended several classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis where he finds valuable solace, balance in his life and the opportunity for creative expression.

He had the opportunity to work in research throughout his college education starting with surgical research at the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate. Four professional publications resulted from that research with his first article as primary author, which was published in The American Journal of Surgery in 1972 (1972, Schauerhamer, R., et al).

Mr. Schauerhamer was licensed as a psychologist in the State of Minnesota in 1979 and surrendered that license in 2001. He pursued a second career in the print and manufacturing industry following a brief period of recovery. He is now certified to operate several large format digital presses and has a forklift license.

Bobby has been a member and participant at the Twin Cities Men’s Center (tcmc.org) in Minneapolis for over three decades. He and Tommy Jones created and began to facilitate the Choosing Healthy Sexual Boundaries support group at the TCMC in April of 2004. The Choosing Healthy Sexual Boundaries group has been meeting weekly since that time and developed sufficient interest to generate a second group, which began meeting in St. Paul in 2010. Scores of men have participated in these groups over the years. At the time of this writing there are six trained facilitators servicing these groups.

Bobby was recognized for his community service with the Ron Hering Award, granted on January 15, 2011 by the Minnesota ManKind Project. He and Tommy also received a Distinguished Service Award granted by the MNATSA in 2013 in recognition of their contributions to keeping our community safe.

What this Handbook is and is not

We are not therapists. And this is not a therapy-based handbook, just as our support groups are not therapy groups. Suggestions you find within these pages will include seeking the help of a therapist, counselor or other mental-health care professional. And while we believe that most of us need some form of professional assistance when we undertake substantive behavioral change, it will not come from this book. We will not tell you what to, how to, or when to do anything. Nor will we insist that you need to, have to, should, ought or must do anything specific in order change and improve. And neither is this a workbook. It does not include exercises, charts or graphs, assignments, data spreadsheets, list compilations, journaling requirements or personal inventories. Of course, these techniques can all be helpful and productive when used correctly and consistently. Pursue them if you find them helpful or think they could be so. A man, new to our group and after his first visit, once asked, “...well, aren’t you going to tell me what to do?” “Afraid not...” was our answer. Just as we do not prescribe behavior in our groups, neither does this book.

What this handbook will do, however, is provide suggestions, choices and options for establishing healthier boundaries, and support you in your journey to achieve them. Many of these suggestions are actually tools and strategies that men have successfully incorporated into their lives. We have seen them work; they have worked for us. Is the list of tools exhaustive? Nope. Lots of room exists for each of us to add new stuff. Will you use all of them? We doubt it. You may try them all, but some will fit better than others. Some will supply you with stronger support and more lasting success. Use this handbook as a sourcebook of ideas... but do not use it as a substitute for professional care, or as your only source of guidance.