Sexual abuse

Leave Room for Hope

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog entry or published a podcast. The reason for this, simply put, is that I decided to direct my focus inward for a while. At first I just needed a rest. Covering heavy subjects on the podcast, I found myself affected by the injustice and pain I was witnessing. At the same time I was confronted with a tide of pushback and negativity toward my social media posts, the inevitable result of growing a following online. I did my best to be gracious yet firm as I responded to (or blocked) commenters, but the snark and anger got to me some days. Of course it did. At some point, I took a step back and reassessed the places I was putting my energy. My conclusion? I needed more time just to think and be. I made this decision back in the spring and honestly, the break from creating content has been good for me. 

Before I began writing and speaking publicly about the effects of sexual trauma, I wrote about other aspects of life including parenting, gun violence, and the effects of the massacre in my town of Sandy Hook, Connecticut. This was my greatest opportunity yet to express my views on issues I cared about. It was a liberating experience, especially because I had felt the pain of having my voice stifled throughout my growing-up years. As I expanded my writing into the subject of child sexual abuse and revictimization and wrote about the abuse I went through as a child, I found an online community of people who encouraged my work and enlightened me with their insights and honesty. It has been a real gift. 

The online presence opened the door for me to start my podcast, Truth and Consequences and speak with exceptional survivors and experts, lately with the help of my close friend and colleague, Kathryn Robb. My coaching practice filled up as listeners reached out and requested to work with me. Counseling trauma survivors and family members keeps me busy these days. It’s an enriching learning environment and fulfills my desire to help people.

With all these outlets I’m using to make a difference, I noticed last year that my urgency to be heard had started to fade. I got tired of the hustle that comes with creating online content. I wanted to get away from counting likes and followers and tap into my creative side again. I missed making the podcast but I felt less enthusiastic and frankly, I was a bit daunted by the hours of work involved. Eventually, I realized it was time to start experimenting with new ideas. 

Now I’m ready to get back in there and mix things up.

There’s a funny thing that happens in my coaching practice. Throughout a given week, I’ll notice that a specific concept or theme pops up across my work with various clients. Sometimes the same theme shows up when I talk with friends and family members too. Occasionally I even encounter it in my own therapy. Call it synchronicity or the frequency illusion, the reason behind it is not important to me. I find meaning in the reminder that, as isolating as it can feel to grapple with the aftermath of trauma (and life in general), the issues we struggle with are shared between us. Many of them are universal. 

I came up with the idea of noting these familiar challenges, then exploring and sharing them through the blog. It’s a way to remind us we are all in this together. 

So here we go. The theme for this week is leaving room for hope. 

Hope, which seems increasingly tough to hold onto these days. From political calamities to climate change and the choking cost of living, it’s natural to feel helpless some days, hopeless too. For sexual abuse and assault survivors, the symptoms and long-term effects of trauma are burdens to carry and continuously work on; anxiety, physical pain, and trust issues to name a few. We are all too aware that the deck is stacked against us when we fight the system or simply stick up for ourselves. Those who choose to hold offenders accountable, even if we get some semblance of justice in the legal arena, will get beat up in the process. There’s no guarantee we’ll be glad we took action or will even be okay afterward. 

And yet we need to leave room for hope. This is the wording I use with clients and loved ones who are struggling to feel hopeful. Just leave room. 

I won’t offer false optimism or tell you to “look on the bright side.” The fear is real and it’s always valid. But I hope you will hold space, at least some of the time. Because truly, there is always reason to hope. Our democracy has been under serious threat before. Technology has the potential to mitigate the effects of global warming. The international community of survivors is increasingly vocal, organized, and gaining power. We have created powerful ways to find and support each other online and in IRL. Numerous survivors have achieved justice and/or restitution through the legal system. Meanwhile, public awareness of red flags and offender tactics is growing. Some of the worst perpetrators like Weinstein and Nassar have discovered they can’t outrun the truth forever. 

We must actively address these threats, both for ourselves and for the world. But just as crucially, we need to leave room to hope that things will get better and our efforts will matter. 

If you asked my therapist what I need from her the most she would likely tell you, “To feel heard.” She is aware that I need her to sit with me in my pain before she offers comfort or solutions. We discovered this together the hard way when, several times, she offered me reasons to hope before I felt ready to hear them. I balked. I explained to her that my feelings needed time and space. She gets it now and she consistently makes an effort to sit with me in my feelings. Perhaps I’m unusual in the extent that I want my therapist to meet me in the darkness before she leads me out. Or maybe I’m just more vocal about it, I don’t know.

What I do know is that we can’t skip past the fear, the grief, the anger, and the sadness. When we feel confident that our feelings are being honored, we’re more able to speak up for ourselves and hold space for optimism and hope. Understanding this fact about myself, I try to keep in mind that others need the same. I don’t always get it right but I will keep on listening, learning, and trying. That’s all we can ask of ourselves, right? That and a little room for hope. 

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7 Ways Friends & Family Revictimize Sexual Abuse Survivors

[A version of this article was published in PsychCentral in 2017. It has been edited, expanded, and reposted to the Second Wound Blog.]

Twenty-five years ago when I first disclosed that I had been sexually abused as a child, I could not have known it would mark the beginning of a long, confusing struggle that would leave me feeling dismissed, rejected, and punished for choosing to face my abuse and the ways it has impacted me.

The responses didn’t start this way. Initially, loved ones acknowledged my experiences and expressed sorrow for my pain. But as I continued to heal and explore the abuse further, some in my inner circle began to push back in ways that felt profoundly wounding. And it only got worse as time went on.

Disclosure of sexual abuse can be the beginning of a whole second set of problems for survivors when important people in our lives respond in ways that add new pain to old wounds. Healing from past abuse is made more difficult when one is emotionally injured again in the present, repeatedly, and with no guarantee that things will improve. Adding to this pain, invalidating responses often mirror aspects of the abuse itself, leading survivors to feel overpowered, silenced, blamed, and shamed. And they may carry this pain alone, unaware that their experience is tragically common.

Here are seven ways that friends, family members, and others revictimize survivors:

1. Denying or minimizing the abuse

Many survivors never receive an acknowledgment that they were abused. The very people they turn to for support may accuse them of lying, exaggerating, looking for attention, and having false memories. This negation of a survivor’s reality only adds insult to emotional injury as it reaffirms past experiences of being unheard, unprotected, and overpowered.

One might assume, therefore that recognition of the abuse would go a long way toward helping survivors move forward with important people in their lives. That is one potential outcome. However, acknowledgment does not necessarily mean that people in the survivor’s life understand, or are willing to recognize the impact of sexual abuse. Even when survivors are believed, they are often pressured not to bring up the abuse and criticized when they do. All too often, they are actively discouraged from holding perpetrators and enablers accountable for the pain they caused. 

2. Blaming and shaming the victim

Placing blame on the survivor, whether overt or subtle, is a disturbingly common response. People ask victims ignorant questions such as why they did not speak up sooner or why they didn’t fight back. Some outright accuse survivors of participating in their abuse. (This is a black-and-white issue in the case of minors who cannot legally consent to sexual activities.) 

Victim-blaming shifts the focus onto the survivor’s behavior instead of where it belongs, on the perpetrators and their crimes. Embedded in societal attitudes, victim-blaming can be used as a way to keep survivors quiet. Because sexual abuse victims tend to carry deeply embedded shame and self-blame, they are more easily wounded by these responses.

Instead of blame and shame, survivors need assurance that no one deserves to be abused. It takes courage to disclose abuse to friends and family. Survivors should be reminded that they are courageous for facing their traumatic experiences and choosing to actively heal from abuse.

3. Telling survivors to “move on” and “stop focusing on the past”

These messages are destructive and backward. Survivors need to be supported as they explore their trauma, examine its effects, and work through the emotional impact. Only by dealing with the abuse does the past begin to lose some of its power, allowing survivors to move forward. Pressuring them to “let it go” and “think positive” is another way that people in their lives try to avoid the harsh realities of abuse at the cost of a survivor’s emotional needs.

4. Shutting down their voices

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I had a recurring dream in which I tried to make a phone call but couldn’t get a dial tone, connect the call, or croak out audible words. These dreams diminished once I began to consistently speak up for myself and felt heard by people in my life who supported my healing.

Sadly, those closest to survivors frequently reject or ignore their reports of abuse and dismiss their needs. Survivors are accused of treating the family or group badly when they continue to address abuse, express their hurt and anger, or assert boundaries in ways they never could as children. They are treated like troublemakers for disclosing sexual abuse while perpetrators are left alone and even embraced. These attitudes are unhealthy and wrong-headed. They leave survivors feeling understandably confused, hurt, angry, and alone.

5. Ostracizing & smearing survivors

Survivors may find themselves with a diminished role in their family or support system as a consequence of speaking up. They are disrespected and treated like lesser members of the group. They get left out of special events and social gatherings, even while abusers are included. 

Smear campaigns are a common way to discredit survivors by spreading false information about them. People in their lives may claim they are mentally ill, lying, exaggerating their experiences, or all of the above. Assertions like these protect the image of the group and the perpetrator at the expense of the victim. They serve to punish survivors for speaking the uncomfortable truth and effectively reduce their chances of being believed and supported.

These tactics are extremely hurtful and only add to a survivor’s lasting pain and trauma.

6. Refusing to “take sides”

Some people claim they don’t want to take sides between survivor and perpetrator. But staying neutral when one person has inflicted damage on another is choosing to be passive in the face of wrongdoing. Survivors need and deserve to be supported as they work to heal from abuse, hold abusers accountable, and try to protect themselves and others from further harm. People in their lives should be reminded that abusers committed wrongful acts against survivors, and therefore ‘neutrality’ is not an appropriate stance. 

In the words of Nobel Peace Price winner Elie Wiesel, “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.” 

7. Pressuring survivors to make up with the perpetrator

Far too often, survivors are expected to be friendly to the person who abused them. They are encouraged to act as if abuse is merely water under the bridge or a ‘mistake’ that needs to be forgiven. 

No one should ask a survivor to even be in the presence of a perpetrator, especially for the sake of brushing child sexual abuse under the rug. Pressuring survivors this way is a repeat of the abuse of power exerted upon them when they were violated. It is destructive and inexcusable and it ignores the dangers that abusers may pose to others. 

Reasons why

There are many reasons why individuals, families, and other institutions respond to sexual abuse survivors in harmful ways. Behind all of them lies a desire (conscious or not) to maintain denial about sexual abuse. Common reasons include concern about the family or organization looking bad, awe or fear of the perpetrator, unwillingness to give up rewards and/or status they get from the perpetrator, and the threat of being ostracized from the group if they stand with the survivor. Guilt for not recognizing the abuse at the time, or for failing to stop it, also contributes to denial. Some individuals have a history of being victimized themselves and they are not able, or willing to address it. Finally, some individuals who lash out at survivors are perpetrators themselves.

The desire to maintain power structures within families, groups, and society as a whole is another significant motivator that cannot be understated. 

Final Thoughts

Most people choose to look the other way in the face of child sexual abuse rather than listen to survivors and hold abusers accountable. As Dr. Judith Herman states in her groundbreaking book Trauma and Recovery, “It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.”

We have a collective moral obligation to address the social justice problem that is sexual violence. We do this by listening to survivors without bias, recognizing their very real trauma, and taking steps to hold offenders accountable and prevent them from causing further harm. If more people and organizations took this approach, we would see a significant reduction in the rates of sexual crimes. Just as important, this type of support by the community could serve as a corrective emotional experience for individual survivors who have been isolated and shamed by the experience of sexual abuse and assault.  

Takeaways 

Faced with a backlash for speaking up about sexual crimes, survivors may be tempted to give in to pressure so they can put an end to these repercussions and avoid the risk of being rejected completely. And yet, they will continue to be affected by these unhealthy dynamics whether they fight against them or not. The way I see it, the pain of backlash from family and friends is rarely as high a cost as the sacrifice of a survivor’s truth.

I know firsthand how painful this “second wound” can be. Had I been better prepared for what lay ahead after my disclosure I might have been spared years of sadness, frustration, and struggle against unchanging group dynamics. Fortunately, I have learned never to compromise what I know to be true or what I deserve. And that is to be heard, believed, and respected, not only for what I’ve been through but also for the person I have worked so hard to become. 

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Making Change from Inside

My advanced copy of CHOSEN: A Memoir of Stolen Boyhood arrived on my front stoop on a recent Friday afternoon. By Sunday morning I had read all 318 pages. I’d also filled the back of the book with tightly-packed, handwritten notes in an effort to capture the thoughts and emotions that bubbled up as I read Stephen Mills’ poignant account of surviving sexual abuse as a young teenager.

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It’s Never Too Late

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

-Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

I love Mary’s question at the end of this poem. It comforts me and haunts me, reminding me both to slow down and speed up. To drink in the beauty and wonder of the fields and sky, while also striving to reach my goals. This is my everyday dilemma, the push and pull of being alive, aware, and driven.

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Dylan Farrow Waited a Long Time to Be Heard

[Originally published as a Huffington Post blog piece in April 2014.]

When the newest issue of New York Magazine arrived in my mailbox last week, it didn’t take long for me to flip to the back page and peruse the “Approval Matrix,” their weekly ranking of timely facts and intriguing news tidbits. I usually find it a fun read, but not this time. In the quadrant, which assigned this high-profile story the status of “despicable,” was a photograph of Woody Allen holding a young Dylan Farrow and the words: “The crosscurrents of accusations from the Farrow-Allen households.”

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A Perfect Shame

Perfectionism is a familiar affliction for survivors. 

So many of us strive to achieve top grades and performance reviews, to dress just right for every occasion, and master the social skills that help us appear naturally confident. All the while, we’re scared to death of letting the mask slip to reveal our secret: the shame we carry as a byproduct of sexual abuse or assault. 

At its root, perfectionism is often an unconscious attempt to cover up shame. 

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A Safe Way for Survivors to Stop Repeat Offenders

What if we lived in a world where victims of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment felt free to speak up? What if they were treated kindly, and almost always believed? What if perpetrators of these crimes were aggressively investigated and prosecuted on a consistent basis, their sentences reflecting the damage they inflict on survivors? What if we treated sexual violence survivors like victims of other crimes–especially those involving theft of money? 

The answer is easy. We would live in a world with fewer sexual crimes. And for those who still chose to perpetrate sexual violence, they would be caught far more quickly and easily.

Because victims would feel free to name offenders. 

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Dear Second Wound, I am a survivor of sexual abuse. Why wasn’t I believed?

Dear Survivors,

You 100% deserve to be believed.

Though it’s nearly impossible to gather accurate statistics on false reporting of sexual abuse, we do know that it’s rare. If we look at sexual assault reports made to law enforcement, research tells us that false reports make up about only 2 to 6 percent of cases. It’s probably safe to assume the number is at least this low in sexual abuse cases.

Let’s be realistic. Survivors have very little reason to lie. As one survivor pointed out, “A small child couldn’t make that stuff up”. So then…why are so many survivors doubted, questioned, and outright disbelieved? Even when we ARE believed, why is our trauma so often minimized, brushed under the rug as if it doesn’t matter to anyone but us?

There are many reasons that explain the heartbreak of disbelief and minimization. I’ve done my best to explain them here.

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Reasons Family Members Side with Sexual Abusers

[Originally published on PsychCentral on November 24, 2018.]

Living with the emotional effects of sexual abuse is painful enough. Unfortunately, many survivors open up about their abuse only to find that their family members’ reactions toward them are just as painful — if not more so — than the original trauma. It may shock some people to learn that family members often choose to side with sexual abuse perpetrators and against their victims, especially if the abuse was committed within the family.

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