Mr. Jordan Riak 2/20/05
PTAVE

Sir,

First of all, just a special thanks for all the info on no spank.net, especially the essays by Tom Johnson and Jonathan Donahue. I only regret that all these items were not readily available years ago when I sought professional help to deal with this spanking preoccupation. Knowing that so many others struggle to cope with this problem would have been comforting and helpful. Instead each and every mental health professional left me feeling that I was the very first person they had ever treated with this predilection.

As with so many of your previous contributors, the following account is offered for your use in part or whole as you see fit. I hope it helps others as I have been helped.

My story

I don't remember my first spanking. I was 2 years old. Even when I had 5 of my own children, my father still relished telling the story of that first corporal punishment. It was for lying about getting into some paint he had stepped away from momentarily. He claimed I never lied again. Actually I made quite sure I never got caught again. After that I can only remember about 5 spankings (there may have been others) never particularly prolonged but always after having all clothing from the waist down removed. During this undressing my father always seemed to be enjoying the process, never expressing any reluctance or regret.

Being spanked was dreaded; only dying seemed a worse event. But oddly by age 7 or 8 I realized there was some strange pleasure for me in the awareness of someone else being spanked. I was spanked for trivial matters, but escaped getting spanked for more serious ones. I had my bathing suit pulled down and was spanked in our back yard, and I was convinced that every one of the neighbors was privy to this incredible humiliation. Spankings were unpredictable and generally a function of my father's mood. To limit the number of spankings I had to be very good all time and lucky.

At 8 I started playing a game with a male cousin where we took turns giving each other playful spankings. I was incredibly thrilled and looked forward eagerly to our time together. At age 10 I talked another playmate into mutually baring our butts. At age 11 a teacher spanked me and 4 other boys with a yardstick in front of the entire mixed gender class. Pants on, but she pulled no punches with that stick. The worse part was the next 3 weeks wondering whether word of my punishment would trickle back home where a follow-up bare butt spanking would have definitely ensued. During our younger years my parents made a special effort to employ a particular baby sitter for the sole reason that she would take a hairbrush to our backsides if we misbehaved in any way. She never pulled down our pajama bottoms.

By age 12 I was looking for any way to be the spanker and not the spankee. I convinced one young boy that he had to submit to a bare butt spanking to join our "club". I was constantly whacking younger neighbor kids on their tushes, occasionally pulling down their pants and underwear if we could not be observed. I volunteered to baby sit for free (nothing is ever free). I could always manage the kids into a little trouble and the next thing they knew they were over my knee with their pj's coming down. No kid is ever going to report that the baby sitter needed to spank him and if one did I would merely point out that my own parents insisted on a spanking baby sitter.

By age 14 and high school I knew how to avoid being spanked at home as a punishment. I was either extremely good or devious. But that didn't stop my father. On mornings when he didn't have to be off to work early he would invite me and my younger brother (not my older brother) into his bedroom after my mother had left to make breakfast. It started with normal roughhousing but somewhere along the way he would get one of us into a position of disadvantage and start to pull down our pj's. He would let you resist and fight to hold onto your pants but eventually with two on one you would lose and you would end up with a bare butt and some playful but also painful whacks from both my father and brother. In each event there would always be a reversal of fortune and now the other brother would become the victim and the second usually got the worst of it since the original victim now wanted some revenge. Much screaming accompanied this "play" but my mother never intervened.

One would think this would only have to happen once before any normal kid would avoid the situation. But by now my appetite for forcible disrobing and spanking knew few bounds. I was willing to risk my own pained behind to have another go at my brother. This scenario went on for at least a year and only ceased when I refused to let my father get my pants down. I remember very clearly how furious he was at his failure to break my grip on my pants. For him and me, the spankings were over. My younger brother continued to get bare butt spankings with a yardstick "for cause". My brother and I negotiated mock battles where the goal was for one to denude the other. Since he was 3 years my junior he always ended up without his pants and a friendly smack to his bare butt as a sign of my victory.

At high school we had religious brothers. 2 of them were infamous for administering paddlings but students were never undressed. Another seemed to get great pleasure from telling us how he kept order at his previous assignment at an orphanage with bare butt spankings. I was too good a student and athlete to be paddled but by now I was very turned on by the idea of others getting their backsides heated. I had non-stop fantasies about spanking fellow students. Every nocturnal dream I ever had as an adolescent featured a spanking scenario. Even though I got equal pleasure from the spanking of either gender, the opportunity was most often with boys and so at this very crucial part of sexual development I surmised that I was homosexual. I lived with that excruciatingly painful teen concept for 10 years until a combination of professional consultation, cultural exposure and meeting my future wife revealed to me that the problem was my history of spanking and not a gay issue.

Conclusions

I have 5 children and I could not spank them and risk the pain of my own childhood. My father until his death pressured me to spank my kids insisting they needed pain and humiliation to turn out well. I never found myself in a situation with my kids where any behavior demanded physical beating. They did get into trouble but there was always some strategy that either my wife of I could devise to modify the behavior. All 5 have degrees. 2 have post graduate degrees and all are working in their professions. They have their own problems in life and they seem very able to deal with them or find help as necessary. My 2 grandchildren are managed beautifully with "time out."

Obviously my father had a problem. His own father didn't care enough about him to provide any discipline. He was sent away to a private religious school at age 6 where he recounts that he was abused by the older students and most likely by the religious staff also. Much of his motivation in abusing two of his sons was inadvertently revealed to me as a result of dementia following a stroke. Not even we can guarantee our deepest motivations will not be revealed at some later time. In our 50's my younger brother and I discussed our common history. Both of us suffered the same fate with regard to the spanking fixation. My father claimed he never laid a hand on our older brother. Who knows why? However, he reports that he suffers no consequence from his childhood discipline. I hasten to point out that for me the fixation was firmly in place by age 10 and seems strictly a result of early (for cause) spankings not the later "games."

One of the most tragic results of the spankings by my father was the development of my relationship with God. He was also "our father". My brain interpreted that he too was vengeful for wrongdoing. He was capricious with punishment much like my own father. No matter how hard you tried to be good, a small error in judgment, a moment of weakness, just pure bad timing and not only your butt would burn, but all of you. Forever. I was in my 30's before I discovered my just, but also loving, merciful god who is mine today. In the interim I did not attempt suicide but many have said my life style was suicidal. I pursued a very high risk profession.

I am thankful for the professional counseling I have received. However, I was never referred to any parallel case studies. Two professionals who offered guidance seemed more intent on my relating every conceivable, specific detail of my abuse incident than providing any treatment strategy.

I question the accuracy of statistical projections of how widespread this syndrome might be. There is so much humor in our culture surrounding the sexual connotation of spanking (e.g. the movie: "Sideways"). Would comic writers be devoting so much attention to 10%, 20% or 30% of the population while everyone else is in the dark?

As your article about an episode of "Boston Public" suggests, contemporary media is catching on. See: "Joe the King," "Fanny and Alexander," "Exit to Eden," "The General: Irish Mob Boss," "The Boys of St. Vincent," et al.

Still, just this week a clergyman remarked about how lucky he was that he received "good" spankings when he was a youth. How long will it take, how much more psychic suffering must be endured before those 2 words are forever severed?

I am 63, and I am successful and wealthy by any measure. I mildly abused alcohol for a short time but have never done drugs. My compulsion lives on but is very much under control thanks in large part to professional help like yourself and the advance of years.

Thanks for this opportunity.

Dan Dwayne