Foreward
Robert (Bob) Shilling is a Hero. He is certainly one of mine. Among the definitions of the word “hero,” qualities include having distinguished courage or ability and being admired for noble qualities or the achievement of brave deeds. This certainly describes Detective Robert Shilling.
We all know and experience people from different vantage points and perspectives. My vantage point of Bob is that of a colleague and friend. Bob and I met in 1998, at an international conference on the assessment, treatment, and management of individuals who had committed sexually abusive behaviors. He was a Seattle Police Department Detective attending the conference to present his unique approach to community notification for high-risk offenders being released to the community. I was a forensic psychologist presenting on a plenary panel for an audience of over 1000 attendees, discussing how professionals dealing with individuals who have committed sexually abusive behaviors may be impacted by this work and strategies for wellness. I was looking to inject humor into my talk and refine my presentation deck on what, at the time, was this relatively new presentation application, PowerPoint.
Bob, a seasoned presenter who was always ahead of the curve, heard my idea of wanting to insert photographs of a young, handsome man and the transition to an image of an old, wizened man to humorously illustrate the toll working with forensic clients can have on mental health and criminal justice professionals. He graciously offered a lesson on the spot about inserting images into the PowerPoint presentation and making the transition work seamlessly to successfully deliver the joke. It worked beautifully and we became fast friends as well as developing a collegial relationship.
We have maintained a close connection and warm friendship over the years, bonded by our shared passion for our work, a love of wonderful food, especially ridiculously large and beautifully prepared cuts of beef (never meeting a porterhouse steak we did not love); our low threshold of tolerance for things not being done with integrity and one’s best effort and thoughtfulness; and our enjoyment of fun. The latter often included finding ways to prank one another during presentations we were doing at trainings or conferences when we knew the other would be in the audience.
I know Bob to be an intelligent, thoughtful, and warm man, a bit of a teddy bear. However, it would be a mistake to be fooled by his often gentle demeanor. Bob is remarkably strong in character, fiercely loyal, and has no reservations about standing up to, calling out, and trying to fix who or what he sees as wrong. He will protect people and causes he believes in with all his might, even when standing up to do the right thing means taking the hard road and opening himself up to professional and personal risks.
In this book, you will come to learn all about these characteristics of Bob, the lessons and values he has learned in life, many the hard way, and the lessons he strives to pass on to others in his interactions with people and in the pages to follow. Bob offers us examples of a life lived with foundations of honesty, loyalty, trustworthiness, integrity, determination, resiliency, work ethic, compassion, fairness, justice, and hope. No one is perfect and Bob acknowledges having had to fight his own demons and struggling in various ways in his life. However, a life well lived is about knowing your shortcomings and vulnerabilities, working hard to stay on track, and letting your moral compass bring you back to the fundamental values of what is needed to live a good life.
Bob takes us through the story of his life, from the wonderful and painful experiences of his growing up years in Los Angeles, his desire and dream to be a Major League Baseball player and love of the game, his pathway into law enforcement and the important work he has done in the Seattle Police Department and as a Union leader, and in his move to France to take on the critical job of Head of Crimes Against Children for INTERPOL.
Bob inspires us with a story of overcoming obstacles. Be they family dysfunction, physical challenges that change your life course, difficult and trying work environments, or people telling you no and getting in the way of doing the right thing. He inspires us with a story of transforming his frightening and traumatic experiences of sexual abuse into a vocation and passion for preventing sexual abuse, dedicating his career to protecting children and the prevention of child sexual abuse, first in his home community of Seattle and ending his career doing this on a global level, helping to save and protect children around the world. He became acutely aware of the desperate plight of vulnerable children around the world, particularly in developing countries, who were facing horrifying experiences of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, many in countries that had limited capacity to respond to this growing and vital need.
Bob’s story is also a story of acceptance and forgiveness. We are taken on a journey from the naivety and purity of Bob’s youth to the pain of the physical invasion, emotional betrayal, and psychological assault associated with his victimization and the confusion of family who loved him and whom he adored, either being unable to protect him or unaware of his suffering. In navigating these experiences, Bob solidifies a foundation of personal strength and resilience. The latter allows him to firmly establish his life ethos to be a man of integrity, honesty, principles, and a passion to find ways to protect others who have been made vulnerable.
We learn how Bob came to terms with the harm he endured while also coming to understand those who were not able to protect him and even his abuser. This personal work resulted in a holistic perspective of understanding sexual exploitation and sexual abuse and recognizing what is needed to address and prevent this. For Bob, this includes the strongest level of advocacy and support for those who have experienced harm resulting from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse while also recognizing that abusers are also damaged people.
Remarkably, Bob intrinsically came to understand that as horrific as the perpetration of sexual abuse is, there was no upside to painting the perpetrators as monsters and reviling them. He understood offending was most typically a marker of the abusers’ own inadequacies, pain, and damage from their life history. While firm in the notion of offenders needing to take accountability for their actions and experience consequences, he has recognized a more sophisticated approach must be taken to keep children and communities safe, including treatment for offenders and public policies for sexual abuse prevention that are grounded in the empirical literature on risk management and risk reduction versus political posturing and pandering. Through these approaches, efforts can be made to support offenders in building the capacity to no longer cause harm and give back to instead of taking from their communities.
The Disney resorts have long been a special place of respite and restoration for Bob. An escape from the ugliness he has endured in his personal life and faced in his professional life. Bob has realized in his life the words of the late Walt Disney, who related, “If you visualize it, if you dream it, there is some way to do it.” I am eager for you to read and learn about how Bob did it, transformed the hopelessness and despair of his youth and the impact of his abuse to becoming the best of men and making a global difference in his distinguished career by caring about, supporting, and protecting others. At the end of his story, you will recognize Bob as “a good and decent man, who saw a wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it.” 1
And now you know why Bob is a hero and why he is one of my heroes. Perhaps you will feel the same way, too.
Lawrence Ellerby, Ph.D., C. Psych.Clinical Director, Forensic Psychological Services
Past President, Association for the Treatment and Prevention of Sexual Abuse
Past Chair, Sex Offender Management Group, INTERPOL’s Specialists Group on Crimes Against Children
Detective Robert Shilling Admirer
1 Ted Kennedy, Eulogy for Robert Kennedy (1968)
CHAPTER EXAMPLE
BOOK PREFACE
“Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful, it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living, heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.” L.R. Knost
I have worked with victims and survivors of childhood sexual abuse for over 42 years, and they come from both genders and all races. They can be infants, toddlers, adolescents, young, middle-aged, or elderly adults. They can be students, employed, or unemployed. They can be from poor, middle-class, or wealthy families. They come from all socio-economic backgrounds and every country in the world.
Working with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, the comments I would hear most often are:
1) “I feel like I have a hole in my heart.”
2) “I feel an incredible emptiness deep inside me.”
3) “I feel lost.”
4) “I feel like a ship without a rudder.”
5) “I feel alone.”
6) “I feel ashamed.”
7) “I blame myself for trusting this person.”
8) “I feel like broken goods.”
9) “I must have done something to cause this.”
I could relate to these feelings because I had all the same feelings at some point in my journey. I was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of my maternal grandfather, beginning at the age of 12. It was both physically and emotionally painful and changed my life forever. I have heard survivors say that “my childhood was stolen from me,” and I have felt the same. We suddenly go from a child with childhood problems to a child with adult problems. It is difficult to understand, and you feel alone, ashamed, and confused. Your fun, carefree life, with many lofty aspirations, suddenly changes to a life where you feel betrayed, empty, and broken. You don’t know who you can trust and no longer trust yourself.
Such is life. It’s not easy, but no one ever told me it would be. My journey has been long, and the road has been rough. It hasn’t gone the way I envisioned as a young boy or man. There have been many twists and turns, including acts of divine intervention. On this journey, I have discovered a lot about myself. I have also found that for me, forgiveness was the first step to healing. Forgiving my grandfather and, more importantly, forgiving myself.
This book is not one I contemplated writing. My first book was going to be for parents on protecting their children. A second book would be written for law enforcement on managing high-risk persons who have offended sexually. Several close friends, colleagues, and family members encouraged me to write this book first because they believe my story can help inspire people. I genuinely hope it does. It is not a “how to” or one-size-fits-all book. What worked for me may not work for everyone. People are different, and their responses to trauma are different. It is an honest and sometimes painful description of my life’s journey before and after severe childhood sexual abuse. I hope that it shows victims and survivors that sexual abuse does not define who we are. We got knocked down by the unexpected, and we are doing our best to stand up and continue our journey a little tougher and wiser.
We are not broken human beings whose lives have been turned into rubble. We don’t have to be “Academy Award ” performers who are always afraid that we are not good enough or that someone “may find out.” We are still capable of accomplishing great things. Our abuse is a moment in time. Granted, it’s a very horrible moment in time where it felt like our entire world crashed and burned around us, but it doesn’t have to debilitate us. Our abuse doesn’t define who we are or who we will be in the future.
When you have never been sexually assaulted, you don’t even think about it. When you HAVE been sexually assaulted, you never STOP thinking about it. I can assure you that there is not a single day that goes by where I don’t remember that 12-year-old boy raped for four years by his grandfather. It was the lowest period of my life. I contemplated suicide because I couldn’t take it anymore. In 1990, at the age of 39 years old, I decided that I was tired of remembering my life as a “victim” of childhood sexual abuse. I decided to be a “survivor” instead. I discovered that we could write a different ending to our story: one that is not dictated by the past, one where there is hope, and we can fulfill our destiny, whatever that may be. Each period in this book was a building block to fulfilling that destiny. You could not have convinced me of that at the time.
At the going away ceremony on my final day as head of Crimes against Children for INTERPOL, the team leader, Adele, gave one of the speeches to the crowd gathered to say goodbye. She said, “What I learned with you is that hope is the key to everything. If you quit hoping, you quit fighting, and if you quit fighting, you lose. And Bob, you might have lost sometimes, but I never saw you quitting fighting, ever. Fighting for what was right and fighting like a beast for the victims and for us. I have never seen anyone in my life as brave as you are.”
During my law enforcement career, especially when teaching other police officers, I have not been bashful talking about my abuse and its impact on me. I have also been very open at public meetings as well. I have found that people have responded positively to the honesty and vulnerability. People have told me it fosters credibility in my talks about abuse and abusers.
I remember a law enforcement training I did in Vermont with a brilliant colleague, Bob McGrath. During the break, and after I had discussed my abuse, a young officer approached me and asked how I could talk about my abuse so openly. I explained that I believed it helped people understand abuse and its ramifications and found it cathartic. The young officer looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “I need to be in the place where you are.” He told me that he previously sat in his patrol car with his weapon out, contemplating taking his life. He said he had been sexually abused and never told anyone about it.
We talked for a while, and I encouraged him to seek professional help. I exchanged personal phone numbers with him, saying he could call me at any time of the day or night. I described an incident where professional help saved my career and four other officers after a horrendous homicide in Seattle where an entire family was murdered. I explained that it was the police department psychologist who helped us keep everything in perspective when we wanted to act all macho and pretend like we weren’t affected.
The young officer thanked me for listening and my honesty; he told me he would seek professional help. I followed up with him and determined he was in professional counseling.
My story touched this officer, and I have many examples where others were touched and sought professional help. It is my sincere hope that my journey can help many more people. Whether you identify as a victim or a survivor and have not sought professional help, I strongly encourage you to do so. There are many qualified professionals who can assist you. There is NO SHAME in seeking professional help. None! At the end of this book, I will have an entire chapter on national and international resources you can use.
When I first began police work, my field training officer gave me some excellent advice that has stayed with me to this day. He said, “Every officer’s style is different. Take the good things you see and incorporate them into your own style. Remember the bad things you see so you don’t make that mistake. If you do that, you’ll be a great police officer, kid.” You’ll read things in my journey that are both good and not-so-good. Learn from my mistakes. Take the things that worked well and consider incorporating them into your life.
You will see recurring themes in my journey, such as truthfulness, resilience, persistence, fortitude, principles, and vulnerability. Be yourself. Live YOUR truth. Live your life to YOUR expectations. Sometimes, people around you may not understand your journey. That’s OK. It’s not their journey. It’s yours. Remember, everyone is different, but you know yourself best. Be honest and kind to yourself. Trust yourself. Believe in yourself, and you can and will accomplish great things.
“Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely and who rely on you.”
US Senator and war hero― John McCain
Copyright Notice
Copyright Notice
Disclaimer: This book is about the life story, events, and experiences of the author. It is also intended as a criticism and commentary about local, national, and international systems and institutions that are involved with sexual crimes and the protection of children from sexual predators. This book is based on the workplace experiences and observations of the author and includes the opinions of the author. The events, places, and conversations in this book are a good faith and truthful recollection of the author that have been recreated from memory and/or supplemented. It is acknowledged that some people may have memories of certain events that differ. The author’s opinions may not be universally applicable to all people in all circumstances. When necessary, the names and identifying characteristics of individuals and places have been changed to protect their privacy. The author makes no representations or warranties, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability, or availability with respect to the information contained in this book for any purpose. The author of this book disclaims liability for any loss or damage suffered by any person or company as a result of the content in this book.
©2024 by Robert A. Shilling
All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable law.
About R A Shilling
Retired Detective Robert Shilling is a 36-year veteran of the Seattle Police Department. He spent ten years in patrol, five of which were walking foot beats in disadvantaged areas of the city. He spent twenty-six years in the Detective Bureau, assigned to the Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit. He spent eighteen years as the Lead Detective in the Sex and Kidnapping Offender Detail. Detective Shilling is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
In 2013, Detective Shilling was recruited and seconded to INTERPOL Headquarters in Lyon, France, for three years as the Head of Crimes against Children. He was responsible for the International Child Sexual Exploitation Database (ICSE) containing child abuse images submitted by INTERPOL member countries. Detective Shilling's team and network of investigators were responsible for identifying and rescuing the victims shown in the images and videos.
Detective Shilling served for seven years as a voting member of the Washington State End of Sentence Review Committee. He served as an Advisory Board Member of the Twin Rivers Sex Offender Treatment Program and the Washington State Special Commitment Center. He served for five years as a Board Member of the Association for the Treatment and Prevention of Sexual Abuse (ATSA) and he is an ATSA Fellow.
Detective Shilling received the 2014 International Council of Jurists Award presented in London by the President of the International Court of Justice and the former Prime Minister of Jordan. The award was for his lifetime achievements in protecting the rights of children. He was the first law enforcement officer in the world to receive this award.
In 2015, Detective Shilling was honored at Facebook Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, with the "Wired Cop" Award for his lifetime achievements in protecting children online.
In October 2017, he received the "Distinguished Contribution Award" from the Association for the Treatment and Prevention of Sexual Abuse for his "notable contributions to the field of sexual abuse."
In 2023, Detective Shilling received the first ever Crimes Against Children “Champion Award” at the National Crimes Against Children Conference in Dallas, Texas, for his lifetime achievements in protecting children.
The work that Detective Shilling has done and the positive impacts he has had reflects an extraordinary lifetime of leadership and advocacy for children, including significant resource development, legislative advocacy, fostering and sharing pertinent research, and creating higher standards of practice and program implementation on children’s behalf. Over the years, he has provided an amazing 100 keynotes/plenary talks and more than 75 training courses worldwide on child sexual abuse and the management of persons who are at high risk to re-offend sexually.