I will not say again
I sat on his lap.
No.
He had me on his lap.
You were not raped; he raped you.
Memory moves as it can,
freedom is yours
to place the verb.
and yes, the oppressor's language
sometimes sounds beautiful,
always dies hard.
Let us move on.
— Margaret Randall
The journey that began on January 22nd, 2012 started as personal outcry. The diary I wrote on that day was an impulsive act of defiance against a culture of denial and ignorance about the reality of Child Sexual Abuse. It was also an act of public testimony to a private trauma. I never envisioned it would become anything more than that. Ultimately it did-not because of me, but because of the hundreds of people who responded and said “it happened to me too”. Or their mothers, their sisters, their brothers and their friends. The testimony of survivors, as well as those from the grave. Ghosts of the past emerged. Keep talking, they said. Don’t stop.
So over the past months, that's what I've been doing. Not just me, but several other people who have become involved. We have been working, day and night, on creating something from the ashes of tragedy-working on it long before we even knew what it would look like, continuing to work without the benefit of knowing what it will become-yet knowing somehow that it is absolutely necessary. That it is worth the sleepless nights, the triggers, the setbacks-it's necessary. It's not a choice-it's a calling. It's an obligation.
You may have seen examples of some of the work we have been doing-In the diary
Introducing TREE Climbers, I spoke about the journey we have taken so far, and what our vision was. I talked about my lost friend "Rosa", a girl who was abused in ways that defy the imagination, but still held her head high. Who still could smile and see the capacity for good, and wrote poems so beautiful that they made me cry even though she was considered illiterate and borderline mentally retarded.
I also said I was going to be rolling out a 5 part series on the history of child sexual abuse as a political issue. At the time, I had all but finished this series-and my plan was to put out one installment every few days. To build interest, momentum, and ultimately transform TREE Climbers into what we have envisioned- not just a support group, not simply a non-profit, but the beginning of a social movement to end the sexual abuse and exploitation of children.
But I only published
Part 1-and then I stopped. And I haven't been able to bring myself to post the rest of it. People keep asking me why, so I'll do my best to explain.
I'm afraid.
It's that simple, really. I've poured my heart and soul into this series for months. And more importantly, I'm not telling my own story here-I'm telling the story of others. People who have all been forgotten by history. And I'm afraid that I'm not going to do them justice. And more than anything I'm afraid that people won't care. Because I'm talking about events long past, involving something that you cannot even see.
And as history has shown us-being forced to see what has been kept hidden is often the only true catalyst for social change.
For the civil rights movement, it was the murder of Emmitt Till. Emmitt Till was not the first boy to be given a death sentence for the crime of looking at a white woman. Nearly 3,500 African Americans were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968. Many of these victims, like Emmitt Till, were children. When Emmitt Till was kidnapped, tortured, shot in the head at point blank range and then thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a cotton fan tied around his neck, he could have easily become another sad statistic. But his mother, Mamie Till Bradley, refused to let her son’s death go unnoticed. And more importantly, she refused to hide the truth about what was done to him. She held a public memorial service, and took the unprecedented step of showing his body in an open casket, in the same condition she found him. When asked why, her answer was simple: “I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby."
For the Vietnam Anti-War movement, it was the Mei Lei massacre. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Vietnam civilians, many of them children, had been slaughtered before the horrors of Mei Lei came to light. Returning veterans, in an act that was also unprecedented, joined the anti-war movement. They turned in the medals they were awareded for bravery and valor and gave public testimony of the atrocities of war, including their own war crimes. Despite the attempts of the Johnson and Nixon administrations to downplay the casualties and the human toll, with the advent of photojournalism the cruel and devastating reality of warfare was, for the first time in history, undeniable. And never was it more evident than when the photographs from Mei Lei were finally
published.
These are horrible images. Many decades later, they are still difficult to look at. But they served a purpose-they forced the public to confront atrocity, and the anger and outrage these images inspired became the catalyst for both the peace movement and the civil rights movement to reach their tipping point. By forcing the public to confront that which has been hidden, images serve as living testimonies for those who cannot speak for themselves.
But what do you do when the atrocity is one that you cannot see?
The sexual abuse of children is devastating and prevalent. But it is also very well hidden. The crime itself almost always takes place in isolation. There are often few, if any, physical signs of abuse.
And unlike Emmitt Till, or the Mei Lei massacre, there are no images. The only photo documentation of child sexual abuse is child pornography, and to show it publicly would be a grotesque form of re-victimization. And even professionals who have to view child pornography as part of the investigative process often report being disturbed by seeing children giggling and smiling as they are being abused. Sexual offenders turn abuse into a game, and go to great lengths to get their victims to see it the same way. They point to the involuntary physical responses to stimulation as proof that their victims are enjoying the experience, and then use this as a way to keep them silent. This is especially effective with male victims, who are often afraid of being seen as gay.
As Judith Herman writes in “Trauma & Recovery”:
“Participation in forbidden sexual activity […] confirms the abused child’s sense of badness. Any gratification that the child is able to glean from the exploitative situation becomes proof in her mind that she instigated and bears full responsibility for the abuse. If she ever experienced sexual pleasure, enjoyed the abuser’s special attention, bargained for favors, or used the sexual relationship to gain privileges, these sins are adduced as evidence of her innate wickedness. The child entrapped in this kind of horror develops the belief that she is somehow responsible for the crimes of her abusers. Simply by virtue of her existence on earth, she believes that she has driven the most powerful people in her world to do terrible things. Surely, then, her nature must be thoroughly evil. The language of the self becomes a language of abomination. Survivors routinely describe themselves as outside the com-pact of ordinary human relations, as supernatural creatures or nonhuman life forms. They think of themselves as witches, vampires, whores, dogs, rats, or snakes. Some use the imagery of excrement or filth to describe their inner sense of self. In the words of an incest survivor: “I am filled with black slime. If I open my mouth it will pour out. I think of myself as the sewer silt that a snake would breed upon” […}The profound sense of inner badness becomes the core around which the abused child’s identity is formed, and it persists into adult life"
And this is the gravest injury that many abused children are left with. Physical wounds heal over time. That sense of “inner badness”, the feelings of being “contaminated” and “different” remain persistent and pernicious. Depression, feelings of worthlessness, self-injury, and despair can continue into adulthood. Ultimately, they can become lethal.
Below the fold is my attempt to help you see those hidden injuries-and maybe help those of you who still don't get it to finally understand what we are fighting against.