Historical male survivors series
Courts, police, doctors, researchers, and newspapers often had language for the case before they had language for the boy. Each part follows what that meant in practice.
What national surveys have counted
The estimates below come from current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention material. The CDC warns that delayed disclosure and cases that are never reported probably leave the measured totals below the actual number of survivors.
At least 1 in 20
CDC identifies this as a minimum national estimate for boys living in the United States.
The estimate covers sexual abuse occurring before a child reaches eighteen years old.
Open the CDC child sexual abuse pageAbout 90%
CDC reports that the person is commonly known and trusted by the child or family.
This figure concerns child sexual abuse across children rather than boys alone.
Open the CDC child sexual abuse pageMore than 1 in 6
The latest national CDC survey includes rape, being made to penetrate, coercion, and unwanted sexual contact.
The estimate comes from national survey data collected during 2023 and 2024.
Open the CDC sexual violence pageAbout 4 in 10
This estimate concerns male survivors who reported being made to penetrate another person.
CDC measures being made to penetrate separately from rape within its national sexual-violence survey.
Open the CDC sexual violence pageThese figures describe different forms of victimization and should never be combined into one total.
Featured
The first clip contains a sentence that helps explain why this series exists. It begins talking about unidentified victims and defaults immediately to women.
“Every single woman is going to be pissed off by this victim blind item because the court doesn’t want to inadvertently out anyone...”
The series
Part I begins with what happened when a male victim entered systems built around other assumptions. Part II goes further back. Part III follows the 1970s as institutions started changing the language without changing at the same speed. Part IV follows the 1980s through an exploited boy the record called a hustler. Part V enters the 1990s through the police call Sheldon Kennedy finally made.
Konerak Sinthasomphone’s case opens a larger history of how male victims could be misread through law, policing, sexuality, and assumptions about consent.
Read Part I →Before 1970, an abused boy could become a victim, witness, accomplice, psychiatric subject, or statistic depending on who was writing the record.
Read Part II →In the 1970s, the language around sexual abuse, runaways, homosexuality, and male victims began to change while boys were still moving through systems that understood them in very different ways.
Read Part III →David was seventeen when he told a Senate subcommittee how childhood abuse had been followed by running away, survival sex, arrests, and repeated confinement.
Read Part IV →Kennedy had already reached the NHL when concern for younger players moved him to tell Calgary police what his former junior coach had done.
Read Part V →Jason Britt spoke because boys were still inside. This updated investigation follows Agape Boarding School, the men who survived it, and what the federal court record now says about the case his mother carried forward.
Read the report →The point of Part II: boys were already reporting abuse and appearing in official records. The language surrounding them often changed what later readers could see.
Notes from the files
These are shorter source notes, separate from the numbered historical series.
Share your story
If you survived sexual abuse, exploitation, trafficking, institutional abuse, or another form of sexual violence and want to talk about what happened, you can contact me here. You can ask about an interview, a future feature, or simply make contact before deciding what you want to share.
The long-term goal is to build What About the Boys? into a nonprofit that can support male survivors in more ways than publication alone. That organization does not exist yet, but listening to survivors is where the work begins.
Share your story or request an interview →Resources for male survivors
What About the Boys? is a reporting project, not a hotline or counseling service. I added a separate page with male-specific peer support, sexual-assault hotlines, child-abuse support, therapist directories, and crisis help.
Open survivor resources →Male survivors did not suddenly appear when institutions developed better language for them. Earlier records show boys reporting abuse, appearing in courtrooms, being examined by doctors, and being counted in institutional data. This series follows those records at the level of the people inside them.
Support the work
This reporting costs money to produce, including records, research tools, document retrieval, and maintaining the project. If you want to help me continue doing it, you can support the work through Buy Me a Coffee. There is never any obligation to donate.
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