Michael Carnes has written Call Me a Survivor about his experience with sexual assault and its aftermath.
“You don’t have to live your life as a victim of sexual assault,” Michael Carnes said.
“You can’t undo it. You have to move forward. The hardest part is making the change.”
Carnes, a Milford High graduate, knows that first-hand.
One March afternoon in 1976, when Carnes was 9 and living in Newman Grove, a teenager assaulted him. The nightmares that followed haunted him for years.
When the news of the Jerry Sandusky scandal involving the sexual abuse of children by the former Penn State defensive coordinator broke last year, it rocked the school and the nation and got the sports community talking about the topic of sexual abuse.
It also inspired Carnes, now 46, to open up about the life he has led as a victim of sexual assault, how he has been able to live through the experience and turn the idea of being a victim into that of being a survivor and how he has overcome the negative impact the experience has had on his life.
Carnes has recently written and published Call Me A Survivor, an autobiographical account of his life, the horror of being sexually assaulted behind a swimming pool in Newman Grove and the aftermath. Copies of the book will be available at Chapters Books and Gifts in Seward.
He also talks about how he overcame the nightmares, negative self-esteem and thoughts of suicide to build a positive mindset around his experience, encouraging others to not allow those who have attacked them to continue to hold power over their lives.
“It’s there and always will be,” he said. “It’s what you do with it.”
Call Me a Survivor was not easy to write, he said. He had to interview his parents, Millard and Judy, about a subject that was difficult for them to talk about. They told what they could remember.
“They were some things they hadn’t thought about in a long time,” Carnes said.
He and his parents have always been able to talk about things, he said. His biggest concern was how to ask the questions and wondering how they would respond.
“I was more nervous about asking my family about it,” he said. “They were both wonderful.”
His younger sister Jennifer was only 6 when the assault happened, so she didn’t really remember anything about what happened.
“She called the day after she read the book, and all she could do was cry,” Carnes said.
The Carnes family moved to Milford in 1978. While in Milford, Carnes parlayed his love of sports into keeping stats for the football team. After graduation, Carnes studied journalism at Southeast Community College in Fairbury until the campus closed.
After earning his degree, Carnes worked for The Milford Times, covering summer and fall sports and writing a column called “From the Bleachers.” Ever since, with the exception of a two-year hiatus, Carnes has written for newspapers. He currently lives in Wayne and is the managing editor of The Wayne Herald.
He has won more than 30 Nebraska Press Association Awards, was named National Sportswriter of the Year by Wrestling USA magazine and was named to the Nebraska Scholastic Wrestling Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame. But despite the successes and awards, Carnes didn’t feel successful.
“I have all the accolades, awards, etc., and yet I couldn’t attach them to my self-worth,” he said. “I have a wonderful family, friends, all this positive stuff—how could I possibly not?”
The low self-esteem was a direct result of the sexual assault, Carnes said. About five or six years ago, he said, he contemplated suicide, not for the first time.
“I felt I had failed at everything,” he said.
He walked to the river near his home and considered throwing himself in. But then he thought about his daughter Kylie and what his suicide would do to her. He walked back home crying.
“Once I realized what I was thinking, I knew I had to change,” he said. “You can’t allow that to continue to be replayed to the point you feel you’re not worth anything.”
He decided to change his mindset.
“That was one of the best things that ever happened to me,” he said. “There is a way out of the darkness. The first thing is to take that step.”
In Call Me a Survivor, Carnes wrote: “The hardest thing in the world that a human being can do is change. Believe me—when you have lived three-fourths of your life with anger, rage and bitterness as I have, it’s the hardest thing in the world to make the kind of quantum shift in your mind that allows you to look at a dramatic moment in your life in a positive manner.”
When the Sandusky scandal came to light, Carnes watched the coverage and listened to the discussions.
“All the talk seemed to center about how this was going to affect the legacy of Joe Paterno, the Penn State football program and college athletics in general, but not one question was raised about how this was going to affect those who fell victim to the sick, twisted mind of Jerry Sandusky,” Carnes said. “The story really made me take a look at what happened to me and how I was able to deal with my experience, and I want to help people who have been victims to understand that they can rise above it and look at themselves in a completely different, and much more positive, light.”
So his first outlet was a column about his experience. A sports radio talk show in Omaha followed, and an Omaha TV station interviewed him, as well.
“I had never talked about it outside my family,” Carnes said.
Because of the timing of the Sandusky story, Carnes’s focus soon switched to covering winter sports—basketball and wrestling. This past spring, he started thinking about it again.
“I fell into a funk about it,” he said. “I couldn’t figure out what I needed to do.”
During the summer, Carnes headed to Denver to visit his best friend Kevin Dill. As fate would have it, he said, in the middle of the heat wave, Dill’s air conditioner was broken.
“I woke up in the middle of the night, and a voice said, ‘Write the book,’” he said. “I realized what that meant. I wrote the first three chapters that night.”
The book chronicles the assault and the different ways Carnes tried to cope with the aftermath. He talks frankly about his struggles with low self-esteem, alcoholism, drugs, depression and suicide.
Carnes also writes about other confrontations with his attacker, including a court hearing. Before that hearing, he wrote a letter to the judge detailing his assault. He believes that his letter led the judge to give his attacker the maximum sentence for an unrelated incident.
He also talks about forgiveness and admits “the last thing I could possibly think about was forgiving my attacker.” However, as he has learned to let go of the bitterness that built up from the attack, he learned he needed to forgive, and the book includes a draft of a letter of forgiveness.
He finished the majority of Call Me a Survivor about a month ago, and then added more that he finished around Halloween. The electronic version of the book went up on amazon.com Nov. 4. The print version is also available.
“It was great therapy for me, to be able to put it on paper and get everything out there,” Carnes said.
Reliving the assault and its aftermath while he wrote was difficult, he said, but he’s come through to the other side.
“I’m not a victim any more,” he said. “I go through challenges day to day. I don’t look at the negative standpoint. There’s no reason to be negative any more.”
