<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16414" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><A
href="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_pf.asp?ID=185927">http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_pf.asp?ID=185927</A></DIV>
<DIV><A
href="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/ourkids/">http://www.spokesmanreview.com/ourkids/</A></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Call to Action: <A
href="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/ourkids/pledge/pledge.asp">http://www.spokesmanreview.com/ourkids/pledge/pledge.asp</A></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=800 border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD align=left><A href="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/"><IMG height=20
src="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/images/small-logo.gif" width=200
border=0></A></TD>
<TD align=right><FONT face="tahoma, sans-serif" size=2>Sunday,
April 22, 2007</FONT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><BR><!--include virtual="/inc/story_guts_print.asp"-->
<H2>One survivor's story </H2>
<H4 class=deck>After years of abuse as a child, Bob Ricks has moved on to become
a graduate student and foster parent. Closure is another matter. </H4>
<P>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=210 align=right border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD class=storyinset align=right>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=200 border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD><IMG
src="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/stories/2007/apr/22/22_abuse_main_04-22-2007_78ACEQ0.jpg"
width=198 border=1><BR>
<P class=caption>Bob Ricks, a 24-year-old graduate student, survived
years of sexual abuse in his childhood from a family member. He says
he's learned to move past the abuse by becoming a social worker and
a foster parent.<!-- 22_abuse_main_04-22-2007_78ACEQ0.jpg--> (Colin
Mulvany The Spokesman-Review <!-- --><!-- 22_abuse_main_04-22-2007_78ACEQ0.jpg -->)
</P></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><BR>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=200 border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD
style="BORDER-RIGHT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid; PADDING-RIGHT: 8px; BORDER-TOP: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 8px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 8px; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid; PADDING-TOP: 8px; BORDER-BOTTOM: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid">
<H5>Related stories</H5>
<P class=teaser><A
href="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news/newstrack.asp?newstrack=Our%20kids&contentdesk=City">Our
kids</A></P></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></P>
<P class=byline><SPAN class=name><A
href="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news/bylines.asp?bylinename=Benjamin%20Shors%20%E2%80%83">Benjamin
Shors  </A></SPAN><BR>Staff writer<BR>April 22, 2007</P><!---------Code for Big Ads-------------------><!---------End Code for Big Ads------------------->
<P><SPAN class=italic>Dear Tom</SPAN>, the letter begins. <SPAN class=italic>¶
You beat me. Gave me a black eye at four. Threw cold water on me and had me
stand outside. You never called me by name. From birth on, my name was little
faggot or bastard. You groomed me for sexual abuse and led me to think it was my
fault. I still remember the long days sitting in school, wondering what was
going to happen to me when I got home. ¶ Would you break a coat hanger over my
face? ¶ Would you pull my pants down and have me stand in the corner? ¶ Or would
you push me down the stairs and jump on me in a violent frenzy? </SPAN></P>
<P></P>
<P><SPAN class=italic></SPAN>Bob Ricks won't call him Dad. That would be too
painful. Too strange. Father, yes. Thomas M. Ricks, yes. But Dad? No.</P>
<P>"It began so young," Bob Ricks, 24, said, with a sigh. "As long as I can
remember. I hated it, but I didn't know it wasn't normal. I thought that was the
way the world worked."</P>
<P>Only in recent years, driven in part by the priest abuse scandal in the
Catholic Church, has the public begun to realize how many adult men have been
affected by sexual abuse. According to one of the largest national surveys on
the topic, one in six men experiences sexual abuse by age 18.</P>
<P>For men, the perceived American male ideal – as stoic, invulnerable providers
– contributes to the problem, researchers say. Men are less likely to disclose
sexual abuse and often struggle to express their emotions.</P>
<P>Bob Ricks and a growing body of researchers argue that speaking publicly
about sexual abuse can help ease the humiliation and shame many children and
adults struggle to confront. As a policy, The Spokesman-Review generally does
not name victims of sex crimes. But at the request of Bob Ricks and his
siblings, the newspaper made an exception. </P>
<P>"People need to be educated," said Ricks, now a graduate student in social
work at Eastern Washington University and licensed foster parent. "Children need
to know they can survive it. It's been hidden too long. I'm not going to be
ashamed anymore." Bob Ricks was not the only victim. In 1981, Thomas Ricks
admitted that he raped his 7-year-old daughter. Two other daughters alleged that
he had sexually abused them for more than a year, according to Chelan County
juvenile court documents.</P>
<P>
<TABLE align=left>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Ricks pleaded guilty to two counts of statutory
rape, and a judge committed him to the now-defunct sexual psychopath program at
Eastern State Hospital. The family settled in Spokane.</P>
<P>After his release in 1983, Ricks returned to his job: social worker. He and
his wife, Linda, retained custody of their children. He bounced from jobs at one
agency to the next, always a step ahead of background checks, according to three
of his children. A judge dismissed the case in 1990, and Tom Ricks was not
required to register as a sex offender."How do these kinds of people get away
with these things?" said Beverly Sanders, a retired social worker and Tom Ricks'
half-sister. "It's absolutely mind-boggling what this man has gotten away with
during his life."</P>
<P>The abuse, the Ricks children said, lasted for years. As adults, they are
able to function day-to-day, but the memories of abuse have never left them.</P>
<P>"I don't think any of us are past this," said Tom Ricks' stepdaughter,
Heather Bajramovic, a mother of two children. "There has been no closure. He
walks around with his chest up like he's a great father. It's pretty amazing how
long this has gone on, and how many years it has taken to deal with it."</P>
<P>In an interview this month, Tom Ricks admitted sexually abusing his
daughters, but denied molesting his son. He said he completed an extensive
rehabilitation program in the 1980s that cured him.</P>
<P>"It was a real heavy duty one," said Ricks, 60, who lives in east Spokane.
"There's been nothing since then. If there had been, my wife would have left me.
This is just a deal that Bob's trying to do. I don't even know what his problem
is."</P>
<P>Bob Ricks said his father is using an old ploy: Blame the victim. He said one
reason it took so many years to confront the abuse was because he feared no one
would believe him – despite his father's history.</P><SPAN
class=subhead>Research on coping</SPAN><BR>
<P>In the language of psychologists, Bob Ricks is a resilient male survivor.</P>
<P>Those who successfully address abuse, according to a Boston University study
published last year, demonstrate three main coping strategies: they identify
meaning through actions, such as helping others; they construct a psychological
framework to better understand the abuser and to clarify their own role in
abuse; or they rely on spirituality.</P>
<P>"People, by and large, when terrible things happen to them, need to have in
their mind a way of understanding why it happened," said Frances K. Grossman, a
Boston University psychology professor who has studied resilience among abuse
survivors. "I do think there is some innate resilience, but a key piece is
access to therapy."</P>
<P>Lack of income, poor social support and race can be barriers to accessing
effective treatment, Grossman found.</P>
<P>The more access to counselors who understand trauma therapy, the better the
outcome, multiple studies have found. Victims who wait to disclose the abuse or
blame themselves showed more severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder,
according to a 2007 study from the University of Illinois at Chicago.</P>
<P>Those victimized by a family member appear to be particularly at-risk for
PTSD symptoms, which can last a lifetime.</P>
<P>For both male and female survivors, tiny moments can trigger an explosion of
anxiety. For Kathleen Meader, a 38-year-old creative writing student at Eastern
Washington University, the smell of smoke reminds her of camping trips with her
father, who sexually assaulted her. A waft of smoke can leave her shaking.</P>
<P>"I'm transported back 20 or 30 years," said Meader, who has used counseling
and a guide dog to help control her fears. "That's when the adult collides with
the child. The real world fades out and the old one fades in."A 45-year-old
Spokane salesman, who asked not to be identified because he worries how others
would react, recalls seeing his attacker on Easter Sunday nearly a decade ago.
He had always told himself that he would aggressively confront the small,
slender man with glasses who abused him in his South Hill neighborhood. But in
that moment, a wave of anxiety flooded him.</P>
<P>"I turned around and saw him, and it literally put me to my knees," the man
said. "It just brought back this wash of memories from my childhood instantly.
It was extremely shocking. It had me shook up for weeks."</P>
<P>He said he felt responsible for the sexual abuse, even though he was a young
boy at the time. Reading about the abuse of others can induce severe anxiety, he
said.</P>
<P>"It destroys you, and it stays in a man's mind for his entire life," he said.
"You don't want to open that black box of memories, but it constantly creeps
out."</P>
<P>The Spokane salesman was particularly troubled that his alleged attacker,
James Clarke, 51, was never prosecuted. Clarke, a former counselor at Morning
Star Boys' Ranch, has been named in a civil lawsuit by another alleged victim.
Now a resident of Seattle, Clarke has not responded to interview requests.</P>
<P>"I've never really been able to confront what happened and move on," the
sales manager said. "I'd rather see him off the damn streets and put away. But
I've come to the realization that it wasn't my fault."</P>
<P>That recognition, researchers say, is crucial to recovery. Counseling and
support systems help. But questions remain in a rapidly evolving field of
study.</P>
<P>With such a plethora of variables in the life of a child, researchers
acknowledge there is no singular reason why survivors like Bob Ricks succeed and
others fail.</P>
<P>"It's a question that haunts me," said Iris St. John, retired chair of the
counseling psychology program at Gonzaga University, who has known Bob Ricks
since he was a teenager. "With any family, what is it that makes some children
suffer and then, as adults, want to lessen the suffering of other beings? It
runs contrary to everything I was taught as a psychologist. What I was taught as
a psychologist would make Bob Ricks a monster. Instead, Bob Ricks is a saintly
soul. And I don't know why."</P><SPAN class=subhead>'Just survive'</SPAN><BR>
<P><SPAN class=italic>You always told me to "just shut up." I found being quiet
as a child only allowed me to be the perfect little victim for you … I'm no
longer the little boy forced to hide in your basement … I'm Bob Ricks and I know
</SPAN><SPAN class=italic>where I'm going in life. I'm a survivor. </SPAN></P>
<P></P>
<P><SPAN class=bold>Bob Ricks' unsent letter </SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=bold>to his father, Thomas Ricks </SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=bold></SPAN></P>
<P>As a boy, Bob Ricks learned to run fast.</P>
<P>The basement closet had a hole in its wall. When trouble strolled through in
steel-toe boots, the boy fled through the hole, then up the stairs, trailed by
his father's heavy footsteps. </P>
<P>There was no place safe in the little house, so Bob Ricks ran out into the
night: three blocks through their north Spokane neighborhood, across the train
trestle, onto the Centennial Trail, and then to the welcoming lights of the
library at Gonzaga University – his sanctuary.</P>
<P>No one questioned why a 12-year-old was sleeping in the library because no
one ever saw him.</P>
<P>"I got really good at slipping under the radar," he said.</P>
<P>In the aisles of books, safely out of sight, he would push two chairs
together and curl up to sleep. When he couldn't sleep – hypervigilant, flinching
at every sound – he turned to the rows of books.</P>
<P>"I read the Bible straight through," he said. "Book of James: 'Consider it
pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the
testing of your faith develops perseverance.' The only thing I struggled with
was the 'honor your mother and father' part."</P>
<P>He never knew how much his mother, Linda, knew about the abuse. The siblings
say the mother drank frequently.</P>
<P>"I think she knew," Ricks said. "She would have these moments of clarity.
She'd say, 'Did he touch you?' And then she'd say, 'Your father is not a
faggot.' "</P>
<P>Ricks sought his parents' approval, even through the abuse, even as he lay in
bed at night, listening to his father creep from room to room.</P>
<P>"He was a heavy guy, and the house was old and rickety," Bob Ricks said. "It
still makes my stomach turn."</P>
<P>Bob grew up in a hurry. In elementary school, he learned to forge his
mother's signature on teacher's notes. He did laundry and made dinner for his
family. But his efforts often seemed only to anger his father, Bob Ricks
said.</P>
<P>When he cleaned out the fridge as his mother asked, his father returned to
find rotting food in the garbage. Then he forced his son to eat it.</P>
<P>Even worse than the physical and sexual abuse was the daily psychological
battering. Ricks and his siblings remember being constantly on edge, unaware
when their father would strike out in anger. </P>
<P>In an interview earlier this year, the Ricks children blanched as they
recalled Tom Ricks forcing his children to watch as he pulled out the claws of
the family dog with a pair of pliers.</P>
<P>Bob worried for his siblings. One sister suffered a broken jaw and arm, he
said. Another had a subdural hematoma. For weeks, Bob wore an eye patch after
his father gave him a black eye, he said.</P>
<P>"I didn't know who to talk to or how to go about reporting it," said his
sister, Duana Nolan, 34. "All family contact was cut off. We weren't allowed to
call our grandma, or our Aunt Ellen. We couldn't even have friends come
over."</P>
<P>Ruth Palmer, the children's 84-year-old grandmother, said Tom and Linda Ricks
took out a restraining order on her after she complained to state social workers
about the children's care.</P>
<P>"The agency badmouthed me something terrible," Palmer said. "Thirty years
ago, I was an angry young woman. Now, I'm an angry old woman."</P>
<P>Palmer said she felt powerless for decades, fearing as early as the 1970s
that the children were in danger.</P>
<P>In 1975, two foster parents took in Heather, then 16 months old, after a
physician found six fractured ribs. Her physical appearance was heart-wrenching,
the foster parents wrote in a letter to a Spokane judge and police sergeant at
the time.</P>
<P>"She reminded us of a baby in captivity in a Nazi Prison Camp," the foster
parents wrote. "Heather had very dark circles under both eyes; her limbs were
like rope in form, she had extreme malnutrition, so bad that her skin hung on
her body …"</P>
<P>The foster parents said Heather seemed afraid of Tom and Linda Ricks. She
cried and pulled away from them. When the foster parents tried to convince a
state social worker that the child should remain with them, the social worker
wouldn't listen, they said.</P>
<P>"Tom kept saying, 'Look at this kid's eyes. She looks like she's freaked
out,'" the foster parents wrote. "Then he would laugh at her. He told me not to
unpack Heather's suitcase because she would be going home in a few days."</P>
<P>Tom Ricks was right. Even after his conviction in 1981, the children remained
in the home.</P>
<P>Bob Ricks said he cannot determine why state social workers did not remove
the siblings because – in accordance with Washington policy – the children's
foster records were shredded by state staff six years after they left temporary
foster care.</P><SPAN class=subhead>'I could have gotten out'</SPAN><BR>
<P><SPAN class=italic>Despite the emotional, physical and sexual abuse, I
survived. As a child, I made the honor roll several times. I took the horrors I
lived through and now I'm using them to help others. Because of you, I know what
it feels like to be an alone, hurting child. I have been able to help hundreds
of children who were abused. </SPAN></P>
<P></P>
<P><SPAN class=bold>Bob Ricks' unsent letter </SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=bold>to his father, Thomas Ricks </SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=bold></SPAN></P>
<P>Years were lost in a haze of fear and anxiety. As a teenager, Bob Ricks began
cutting his arms with a razor blade for the thrill. He drank and smoked
marijuana. He ran away from home and moved in with his sister Heather and her
husband, Elvis.</P>
<P>At age 16, Bob Ricks attended a Christian summer camp. He made friends.
Gradually, he began to rebuild his life.</P>
<P>He became an honor student. He finished high school. He secured a federal
grant and enrolled at Gonzaga. He decided to become a social worker, like his
father.</P>
<P>"I wanted to understand how the system worked," he said. "I wanted to
understand how this happened, and I wanted to understand myself."</P>
<P>The college courses rekindled old fears. Tom Ricks began to haunt Bob's
dreams. Lectures keyed memories that made him sweat. Between classes, he ran
stairs to stanch his anxiety.</P>
<P>He labored through painful counseling sessions. One therapist became so
overwhelmed by his stories of abuse that she transferred him to another
psychologist.</P>
<P>At home, he tore up pictures of his father. He began to speak of him in the
past tense, as if Tom Ricks were already gone.</P>
<P>Tom Ricks continued to deny his son's allegations.</P>
<P>"I'm 60 years old now," he told a reporter. "There's nothing. There's nothing
in the police records. This is ridiculous. It destroys somebody's life."</P>
<P>He said he may sue his son for making the allegations public.</P>
<P>In ways both small and large, Bob Ricks said, he continues to pay for the
abuse. When he worked at an emergency shelter for foster children, he was
assigned to read the children's files. The accounts of abuse triggered more
stress – heart palpitations, sweating, anxiety. </P>
<P>Eventually, he left the shelter.</P>
<P>He became a teacher's aide at his old school, Stevens Elementary. He talked
with veteran staffers about his work with children and his attempts to become a
foster parent.</P>
<P>"They said, 'Oh, you'd be great at that because of what you went through.' "
Ricks recalled. "I said, 'Wait. You knew we were being abused the whole time?'
It frustrated me. I thought: I could have gotten out."</P>
<P>Today, at 24 years old, Bob Ricks is an advocate. He pesters legislators and
state officials with letters calling for increased funding for foster care. He
can be almost manic in his pursuit, he said, a vestige of his attention deficit
disorder, a relatively common diagnosis for adult survivors of child abuse.</P>
<P>As a foster parent to an 11-year-old boy, he presents an unorthodox image. A
thin beard covers his angular face. He wears a black skateboarding T-shirt. He
speaks in bursts. Dating can be difficult because some college girls find it
strange that Bob Ricks is a foster parent. Others think it's great, he said.</P>
<P>"I'm not your average, middle-class foster parent," he said. "But I have this
terrible experience that I can turn into something good. I don't view myself as
a victim anymore. I think I am an asset to the social work field. I know what
it's like to be a kid and feel powerless. I see other professionals who don't
understand what that's like."</P>
<P>Beverly Sanders, Bob's aunt, has urged her nephew to leave Spokane, to
distance himself from the past.</P>
<P>"It seems like it never has stopped," she said. "Every corner Little Bob
turns, Tom's there waiting for him. Little Bob's had to fight tooth and nail all
his life. I worry sometimes that he'll give up. But last time he called me, he
said, 'My dad will never win.' "</P>
<P>To Bob Ricks, leaving would feel too much like running away. He would feel
too much like that child: scared and powerless. If he leaves the city, he said,
it will be on his own terms.</P>
<P>"Why should I have to keep running from my life?" he said. "Why should I have
to leave? I haven't done anything wrong. It's the same reason I didn't change my
last name. It's my identity. This is my home. This is who I
am."</P></DIV></BODY></HTML>