269: Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse: Shame, Masculinity, Disclosure & Healing in Therapy with Doriel Jacov
June 5, 2026
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5 min readMale Survivors of Sexual Abuse: Shame, Masculinity, and Healing
Around one in six males experience childhood sexual abuse before age 18, yet disclosure rates remain dramatically lower than for female survivors. Doriel Jacov, a therapist in New York who leads a male survivor group and transitioned from corporate law to clinical work, explains that the barriers to disclosure are rooted in a double layer of shame: the shame common to all sexual abuse survivors gets compounded by internalized masculine norms around strength, invulnerability, and agency. When a boy is abused, he often feels he has "failed as a man," and that failure becomes something he fears others will see if he speaks about it.
Why Disclosure Is So Difficult
The barriers to disclosure are both internal and interpersonal. Internally, survivors fear what acknowledging the abuse will mean about them—that they are worthless or damaged. Interpersonally, they fear that others will humiliate them, invalidate their experience, or perceive them as potential abusers. This latter fear connects to a persistent myth: that male survivors are likely to go on to perpetrate abuse themselves. Jacov notes that while a small percentage of perpetrators were abused, only about one to four percent of survivors go on to perpetrate—a crucial distinction that often gets conflated.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:13) **Introduction & Episode Frame** - Host David Puder introduces guest Doriel Jacov, a therapist in private practice in New York who leads a male survivor group and formerly practiced corporate law.
- 2 (02:08) **Why Disclosure Is So Hard for Men** - Two barriers: an internal fear of what disclosure means about oneself (failure as a man) and an interpersonal fear of how others will react (humiliation, invalidation).
- 3 (05:27) **Power, Coercion & the Myth of Age Difference** - Abuse is defined by coercion, manipulation, and power imbalance, not just a large age gap.
- 4 (07:53) **The Myth That Male Survivors Become Abusers** - Doriel directly debunks this harmful myth, citing studies that show only 1-4% of survivors go on to perpetrate.
- 5 (11:16) **Identity Fracture & The Role of Empathy** - The abuse creates an "identity fracture" where a boy feels he cannot take on a coherent masculine identity.
- 6 (15:16) **Grooming Parents & Protecting Children** - The conversation shifts to practical prevention, noting that most abuse happens within the child's social network (family, family friends, spiritual leaders).
- 7 (20:44) **Countering Grooming Messages & Building Safety** - Host David shares how he tells his kids he is "bigger and scarier" than any threat, directly countering the perpetrator's message of power.
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Show Notes
Doriel Jacov joins Dr. Puder to explore the often-overlooked struggles of male survivors of sexual abuse. With one in six males experiencing childhood sexual abuse before age 18, Jacov unpacks the profound impact of shame, masculinity norms, disclosure barriers, and identity fractures that make healing uniquely challenging for men. The conversation covers grooming, power imbalances, coercion, the myth that survivors become abusers, arousal and body betrayal, sexual identity confusion, trauma reenactment, and the complex transference dynamics that arise in therapy, including erotic transference and projective identification.
By listening to this episode, you can earn 1.25 Psychiatry CME Credits.
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