Dwyane Wade

What makes anyone tolerate abuse? Usually prior years of abuse. If you live in an abusive family, then you don't know, haven't been taught as a child, to leave. The message is really the opposite, that abuse is normal and a person should stay, that it is deserved.

I once talked to a woman who told me that her spouse beat her to a pulp, dropped her with their son off at an emergency room, and left them. She walked home, carrying the child, didn't admit herself to the hospital. She didn't want to get the man who beat her into trouble. She must have had nowhere to go. But that's another story. These days, there is always somewhere to go, and the beginning is, the ER.

The more experience with it, pain, the more you get used to it. But Siohvaughn Wade (the professional basketball player's wife) if her story is true, isn't waiting until the damage is irreparable to her self-esteem, her life. She knows that it's co-dependent to stay, that it's not good to get used to it.

It really is illegal for people to beat on one another in this country. Maybe you can get away with slapping your kid on the bottom, but he'll call 911. So why even bother with that?

Did Dwyane Wade behave like an animal? Innocent until proven guilty. He's going through a nasty divorce and anything goes in these. The story in the Chicago Sun Times:

Siohvaughn Wade filed a lawsuit Tuesday accusing Dwyane Wade of abuse, including picking her up and throwing her to the ground while she was pregnant.

In a February 2010 outburst, Dwyane Wade allegedly called their crying 8-year-old son a "m-----------'' and said "Didn't I tell you men don't f------ cry, man the f--- up," according to the lawsuit.

Attached to the lawsuit is a March application for a restraining order, sparked --she claims in the documents -- by a recent fight between the Wades that triggered a panic attack.

Abuse makes us anxious. We get panic attacks when we're afraid. And her kids, if any of this is true, are going to be more susceptible to panic attacks and post-traumatic stress, too.

Bad PR, true or not, for the Miami Heat. We can only hope she made it up, but most people don't, is the truth. Intimate partner violence is another way to discharge bad feelings. In the wrong place at the wrong time, at home.

It's like kicking the dog, domestic abuse, after a hard day at work. Anger management is easy for those who were forced to control it as children, but so many of us never learned it. And if you grow up with violence, either at home or on the streets, you learn it's okay to whack one another. Okay to behave like an animal.

I think it's even harder for athletes than the rest of us, because competition is aggression. It's hard to turn it off. But you guys are our heroes, you're examples to our kids. You have to be especially good role models.

A devout Christian, Mr. Wade chose the number 3 for his jersey to represent the trinity. And he has two sons, Zaire Blessing Dwyane, and Zion Malachi Airamis, so he knows he has to be a role model. And he gives plenty of charity.

Tell us it's not so, Dwyane. And if it is, find a way to tell your boys you were wrong, and they should never behave this way.

Linda Freedman, PhD

University of Virginia: Alcohol and Lacrosse:

Let's not be surprised that 8 out of 41 players on the roster of the University of Virginia lacrosse team have a history of trouble with the law-- and it's all about alcohol.

If you've ever treated athletes, you know that they work hard, or they should, and they play hard, which they shouldn't. And if you're talking young athletes, the play can be really reckless. We wise up as we age, most of us.

But athletes, like everyone else, cure their social anxiety and their awkwardness with America's favorite drug. They say they're partying, but it's more than that. To give an athlete the benefit of the doubt, we might suggest that competition raises anxiety, and anxiety raises the number of Saluts, Cheers, and L'chaims!

And drinking, let's face it, is culturally sanctioned, for the most part, and the legal age a very hard law to enforce.

George Huguely is among the players at U-Va who had previous alcohol-related offenses while enrolled in school. He's accused of murdering Yeardley Love, who broke up with him a couple of weeks ago. Huguely is reported to have been pulled off of Ms. Love in an altercation at a party only two months ago.

He allegedly shook her, banged her head against a wall repeatedly until she died on May 3, 2010.

None of the other guys on the team did anything to compare to it. Their arrests are not as exciting:

underage alcohol possession,
fake ID's
and DUI's

If you drink enough, you don't know what you're capable of, really.

Could we diagnose Mr. Huguely based upon the things we hear in the news? He couldn't handle rejection. He had a previous episode with a police officer, so violent he had to be subdued by taser. He swore, spat out vulgarities and racial epithets at the officer.

To be sure we'll hear words like borderline pop up in future news stories. And Borderline Personality Disorder. Narcissistic Personality Disorder, too.

The Washington Post tells us that two players of the eight were found not guilty, while six were convicted or pleaded guilty of these lesser alcohol-related crimes.

So there's some history here of disrespect for drinking laws among athletes, nothing unusual for college students in general. Now that a college athlete who abuses alcohol has implicated himself in a murder, social scientists everywhere are scratching their beards (chins) thinking of every possible variable associated with such a crime.

I'd just go with alcohol, keep it simple.

But there are those jealous, violent tendencies we're hearing about, and you can't just dismiss them. After the incident with the police officer, Huguely

received a 60-day suspended sentence, six months' supervised probation and a fine, according to court records. He was ordered to complete 50 hours of community service and 20 hours of substance abuse education, which he finished in July, the records show.

He needed therapy, too. Had he known more about handling rejection, abandonment, he might not have lost control. Had he been flagged for "instability", challenged about his "flare ups", had he been forced into therapy, and sure, anger management, Yeardley Love would be alive today.

Monday morning quarterback.

If you learn anger management but don't cut out the alcohol, and you have an anger management problem, mysteriously, no matter how good the anger management course, you still won't get a grip. And if you only go after the alcohol, if that's all you treat, if you're an angry alcoholic you'll be an angry dry drunk, with no personality change.

The police want to know whether officials knew about the team's "hard party" reputation, or Huguely's earlier arrest for a drunken, violent confrontation with a female police officer. University President John T. Casteen III knew nothing about the encounter, and tells us that officials at the school will now check students against public records each semester.

We're also told that Athletic Director Craig Littlepage affirms that when the school is made aware that an athlete has had trouble with police, that matters are handled according to "long-standing policies."

Perhaps reexamine those.

Many schools have programs now, usually that first week of school, during orientation, to educate kids, disseminate policies. They show cool movies about alcohol overdoses and rape. They're pretty good, too. I've seen them. They should be mandatory.

Words like expulsion need to be batted around, but there are softer words, too, we can talk about. But probation and community service don't cut it. Alcohol treatment and therapy, now you're getting somewhere-- with anger management.

Make it a package deal.

It's good that student records will be cross-checked with public records from now on. What they're going to do with the matches, we'll have to wait and see.

Linda Freedman, PhD

’John Schools’ Try to Change Attitudes About Paid Sex

The CNN headline reads,

Johns Schools try to Change Attitudes
about Paid Sex.

Thank you, thank you, Stephanie Chen for bringing this program to national attention. It's so important, establishing programs to change objectification of women, the slavery, in some sense of the word, of both women and men. Men are clearly the slaves to their attitudes.

This blog, as an initiative of Relationship-Wise and Whys, will be dedicated to safety issues in personal relationships, schools, institutions and organizations, .

I lost my innocence about this topic when hired to develop a rape treatment center, to do the research to establish a need for the center in Chicago for campus rape victims. Desensitizing wasn't hard for me, and won't be hard for you, either. We do have to start young, stop thinking that anything is too "adult" for kids anymore. We can't protect anyone unless we talk about it.

Check out the CNN page about prostitution for more on the re-education of sex attitudes.

Essentially we look at women as people, men, too, not objects of pleasure.

Pleasure in people isn't a bad idea. Professionals just feel it should be within the context of a loving, safe relationship, one that is consensual.

Informed consent, just so you should know, implies that a person is of legal age, and is not under the influence. If you have a sexual relationship and you are not a legal adult, the person you have agreed to have sex with (or not) is at risk of violating a law in your state.

And if you have one of these relationships, and you're high or even just a little tipsy, and you say Yes tonight, but regret it in the morning, then you might be considered a rape victim at any age, even if the "perpetrator" was high, too. For all intents and purposes. We'll be talking about what this means on this blog.

To be raped, molested, violated-- not good for a person. And it's not good, even to pay for sex, not for the purchaser, and not for the person behind the cash register. It does nothing for a guy's self-esteem, buying sex.

Linda Freedman