GRAND RAPIDS, MI - The teenage boy, tall for his age and wearing a tie, settled into the witness stand in a downtown courtroom for days straight earlier this winter. Each time, he carefully looked away from the 35-year-old high school tutor who was accused of sexually assaulting him when he was just 15.

Though clearly embarrassed, the boy was courteous - even unflappable - answering lawyers' questions about rough sex and skimpy lingerie photos, explicit evidence dredged from the more than 1,000 texts and emails sent between the teen and his Catholic Central tutor.

In some ways, the trial was similar to dozens of other sex assault cases that have been prosecuted in Kent County Circuit Court.

What made the Abigail Simon case stand out was not only the teen-tutor relationship, or that the victim was a boy, but how people reacted to it.

It was online wildfire. Social media was abuzz with locker-room banter about the boy. Some said the relationship should have been the teen's biggest fantasy. Others suggested it wasn't a real crime. The teen wanted it, they insisted.

"He's a boy. Why would you open up this can of worms?" people asked the teen's mother, who brought the allegations to the school and police.

Simon in January was sentenced to eight to 25 years in prison for three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Sixteen is the age of sexual consent and Michigan law prohibits school employees from engaging in sexual activity with students under age 18.

Now that the trial is behind them, the teen's mother says if the case had involved a female victim, it would have elicited a different response from the community.

"Absolutely there's a double standard because she was a little, petite female and they think he convinced her and he manipulated her," said the boy's mother, who is not being identified by MLive and The Grand Rapids Press. "I think society does have a problem with (male victims), and I think it's because they have this vision of males having raging hormones."

The lack of public outrage in sex assault cases involving teenage boy victims is troubling for Randy Flood, director of the Men's Resource Center of West Michigan's Grand Rapids office. Teens are too often regarded as privileged to have been "sexually mentored" by a seasoned, older woman, he said.

"I think that it is dismissive of the vulnerability of boys and it causes them problems in their adult lives," Flood said. "They can't talk about what happened to them when they were 13, 14 years old because society tells them that they weren't victims because it's glamorized."

Society also has a tough time viewing males as true victims of domestic violence, and there's a misconception that men are always the perpetrators, Flood said. While the majority of domestic violence victims are females, Michigan statistics show more than one-fourth of victims are males.

"There's a lot of people who are afraid to talk about male victimization for fear that we're going to digress or devolve back into the era where we weren't taking violence against women seriously," he said, "and so people are afraid to have this discussion."

Sex crimes

Statewide, males made up about 4 percent of rape victims over a five-year span from 2009-2013, according to Michigan Incident Crime Reporting data collected by Michigan State Police.

Counselors may never have an accurate understanding of how many males are victims of sex crimes because of the myth that "it only happens to girls," said Carla Blinkhorn, CEO of YWCA West Central Michigan. She believes such abuse is underreported in part because the majority of outreach is targeted toward encouraging female victims to come forward, resulting in undertones that it's a gender-specific crime.

"There's a real way that we minimize that experience for boys and young men. And when you minimize it, people don't come forward," Blinkhorn said. "A lot of those conversations, I think, historically have been more focused on girls than they have been on boys."

The YWCA has long provided services for boys and men who are victims of child sexual abuse, sexual assault and domestic violence. Blinkhorn said she has noticed a shift in more male victims of sex abuse coming forward in recent years. Thirty years ago, the YWCA saw virtually no boy clients.

During the 2013-2014 fiscal year, 29 percent of the YWCA's clients were males. They received services such as therapy for child sexual abuse and sexual assault, domestic violence counseling, court-referred counseling for abusive men, supervised parenting and sex assault exams.

High-profile criminal cases, such as the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, have given male victims more permission to come forward compared to decades ago, when sexual abuse against children was not widely recognized. Addressing adult survivors has helped take the crime out of the shadows, Blinkhorn said.

"What we do see is people identifying boys (as victims) more," Blinkhorn said. "I think a whole lot of that is because of the in-school programs."

Domestic violence

Victims of domestic violence also face gender-specific challenges to seeking help, Flood said. Struggles for men are commonly rooted in the traditional definition of masculinity that tells them real men are tough and in control. Coming forward as a victim can be a mark of shame, so males may often suffer in silence, Flood said.

"The man code tells them to suck it up and to tough it out," Flood said. "I'm not saying it's difficult for men and it's easy for women. Women have their own barriers and feelings of shame."

In 2014, the Kent County Prosecutor's Office handled domestic violence cases involving 1,362 victims. Of those, 22 percent were males. Statewide, males accounted for between 27 and 29 percent of domestic violence victims from 2009-2013, according to Michigan Incident Crime Reporting data.

When males seek counseling at the Men's Resource Center, they aren't usually comfortable with naming victimization as their presenting problem. They will at first express struggles with depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. Domestic violence issues may surface later after many counseling sessions.

"There's something about victimization that causes a man to feel weak and unmanly and experience shame," Flood said. "There's a lot of aspects in our social fabric that tell men they're supposed to be superior. For male victims of domestic violence, they may question their own manhood."

Some victims, such as those who choose not to fight back, fear they won't be believed because men are generally physically stronger than women. The physical aspect makes it hard for people to view men as victims.

But there are broader components to domestic violence, such as emotional abuse, social and financial control.

"What we know about domestic abuse, it's just a misuse of power and control. It would be dismissive of women to say they're not capable of wielding power and control," Flood said.

And so there's no room for preconceived notions about domestic violence when police address complaints, said Kent County Sheriff's Lt. Ron Gates, who oversees the department's Family Services Unit. It's not always apparent which person is the aggressor. That's when witness statements, 911 calls, physical injuries and other evidence of a fight or attack help investigators piece the story together.

"You have to go into everything with an open mind," Gates said. "How can you say, 'Hey, the male's always the stronger one, the aggressor?' That's not the case."

Male victims of domestic violence are more often hesitant to follow through with pressing charges than females, Gates said, solely referring to personal experience over his nearly 25-year career in law enforcement.

"There aren't as many male victims and when there are, I think most of them say, 'You know, we'll handle it ourselves,'" Gates said.

Embracing male victims

Being willing to broach the sensitive topic of male victimization can be a first step toward better embracing boys and men who are victims, Blinkhorn said. That requires not only acknowledging that male victimization occurs but also recognizing that perpetrators don't fit a profile.

"I think people still want to have this idea about what a molester looks like and what they behave like," she said. "Over and over and over again you just have people saying, 'Not that person.' There's still this sort of strange idea of what a perpetrator looks like, and they look like everybody."

RESOURCES FOR VICTIMS

The Men's Resource Center offers a range of support groups and therapy for abuse, trauma and victimization, as well as other forms of counseling. The center may be reached in Grand Rapids at 616-456-1178 and Holland at 616-355-3000. http://menscenter.org

The YWCA provides therapy, support groups and other services for victims of violence and abuse. To reach a 24-hour confidential crisis line, victims of sex assault may call 616-776-7273, and victims of domestic violence may call 616-451-2744. http://www.ywcawcmi.org



Flood said a change can start with the messages males receive at an early age. Masculinity needs to be revised to reflect that vulnerability and insecurity are part of the human process.

"Then maybe they will feel that society's safe for them to talk about their wounds and talk about their victimization and their struggles without being ashamed or feeling as if they're unmanly or weak," Flood said.

There's hope when considering the strides in how society has addressed PTSD among war veterans, Flood said. Understanding that condition allowed for greater knowledge of emotional trauma, and that knowledge could be translated to incidents of sex abuse and domestic violence.

"We used to not even consider a man being traumatized by war if he came back with all four of his limbs intact," Flood said. "We can learn about that and extrapolate from that. ... We can do that with war, so why can't we do that in other forms of trauma?"

Angie Jackson covers public safety and breaking news for MLive/The Grand Rapids Press. Email her at ajackso3@mlive.com, and follow her on Twitter.