The Second Wound Blog - The Second Wound

7 Ways Friends & Family Revictimize Sexual Abuse Survivors

April 11, 2023 miranda.pacchiana Uncategorized

[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.

Stop Asking Sexual Crime Victims to Explain Their Behaviors: and Start Asking Perpetrators Instead

March 3, 2023 miranda.pacchiana Article

Rowena Chiu gets asked the question by journalists regularly. “Why did you agree to meet with Harvey Weinstein in his hotel room?” The answer, to anyone who knows the context, is obvious. Rowena was a 24-year-old assistant and her boss was one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood. She was on assignment with him at the Venice Film Festival and hotel room meetings were part of her job. Weinstein was notoriously hard to please and likely to fire employees on a whim in order to underscore his power. And yet, the question from journalists indicates that it is somehow Rowena’s responsibility to explain why she was not consenting to sex when she complied with a commonplace request from her older, married boss. The irony was not lost on Rowena when the press asked her the question even while interviewing her in —you guessed it—a hotel room.

Questions like these, which are posed to sexual assault and abuse survivors as a matter of routine, are not only victim-blaming and insulting, they are not excusable anymore. Not just because they overlook prominent elements of the story as in Rowena’s case, but also because journalists should know better.

Rowena told us about reporters who voiced their intention to conduct ‘survivor-centric’ interviews that did not, in fact, feel survivor-centric to her. In fairness, she says “I think that journalists sometimes, in an effort to, I suppose, relate to the listener or relate to the reader and put themselves in their shoes, will ask you to…justify what you were doing.”

The problem is, journalists (and law enforcement, the courts, and the general public) have had ample opportunity to better understand how sexual victimization works. This includes common, well-studied responses to trauma. And yet, it’s still standard for survivors to be treated as suspects themselves in press interviews, in courtrooms, and by people in their private lives. A victim’s credibility is not assumed, far from it. This, even though the incidence of false reporting of sexual crimes is extremely low, a basic fact that all journalists should know.

“Why were you out so late? Why didn’t you fight, run, or scream? Why didn’t you report right away? Why are you smearing the name of such a beloved man? Why did you email him, have lunch with him, work with him, act politely toward him, Why? Why? Why?”

Because we have a right to socialize at night. Because when humans are attacked, our brains and bodies respond reflexively and we switch into survival mode, manifesting in responses from dissociation to self-protective acquiescence and more. Because we know that victims of sexual crimes, especially women, are almost always doubted, retraumatized, or revictimized in some way. Because it’s common to minimize and deny our own sexual violation, at least at first. Because we don’t want our livelihood or social support network taken away from us too, often at a time when we need it most.

This is all highly accessible, well-understood, and thoroughly researched information. And yet, with some notable exceptions (Rich McHugh, Nicki Weisensee Egan, Megan Twohey, Ronan Farrow, Jodi Kantor, and others), journalists regularly pose victim-blaming questions to sexual assault and abuse survivors. They put the burden of proof on the victim which is not only unfair but also deeply hurtful and traumatizing. This also discourages survivors from coming forward, which can have disastrous consequences for both the individual and society as a whole. It takes a huge amount of courage for survivors to come forward publicly, in a court of law, or to anyone at all. Partly because these retraumatizing responses are completely predictable.

They shouldn’t be. So let’s talk about turning the tables. Survivors have every right to point out the ignorance of these questions when confronted with them if they choose. A survivor might respond in any of the following ways, for example. “Why are you questioning the natural and normal responses of someone who has been violated and traumatized? Based on all the information that’s available, why don’t you know more about this issue? Do you understand dissociation? Do you know how grooming works? Why would you doubt a survivor’s credibility when the incidence of false accusations is so low? Are you unaware that serial offenders frequently appear to the public as sensitive, generous, lovable people? Have you done your homework?”

And while we’re at it, let’s see the press start regularly grilling reported perpetrators, putting them in the hot seat for a change. “How do you explain your aggressive behavior? Why did you follow her home that night? What made it okay to violate the rules of your workplace? What gave you the right to touch him? Aren’t you aware that an intoxicated person cannot consent? Why did you get them in your room under false pretenses? Why did you violate their trust? Why did you commit rape? Why don’t you seem to care that you hurt her?”

It’s telling that we rarely see this type of questioning.

Rowena Chiu summed it up well during our recent podcast interview when she described the victim-blaming questions she regularly receives, “Clearly the aggressor has no agency whatsoever. That’s barely mentioned. It’s kind of staggering, how the imbalance is so much on the survivor.”

Staggering is right. Victims deserve the benefit of the doubt far more than reported offenders. That is a fact backed by research. Facts and research are a journalist’s wheelhouse, so there are no excuses. It’s time for the press, and society as a whole, to stop perpetuating this harmful and ignorant approach toward survivors and start making offenders and victim-blaming journalists answer for their behaviors instead.

Paris Hilton holding a sign about The 'Troubled Teen' Industry

A Troubled History

January 13, 2023 miranda.pacchiana Article

Raising a teenager is hard. Being a teen is even harder. Many, if not most, kids at some point in their teenage years will struggle emotionally, act out unpleasantly, and experiment with risk-taking. Most of these behaviors are developmentally normal, part of the transition into independence and adulthood. Others are indications that the teen is struggling with deeper challenges and they need extra support. But parents often discover they are the last person their teenager wants to confide in or listen to for guidance or advice.

Into this unsettling mix comes the ‘Troubled Teen’ industry offering hope and help to desperate, scared, and frustrated parents. Alarmingly, this vast network of residential facilities does NOT help families in need. Despite what they tell parents with their sophisticated sales pitches, they are not therapeutic. They’re not even safe. Using behavior modification and abusive practices, they break children down until they have no choice but to comply. They traumatize kids under the guise of saving them.

These programs need to be stopped and the public needs to know the truth. You can help by getting the facts, warning your friends, and speaking up. Please read the words of guest bloggers Chelsea Maldonado and Amanda Simmons who are experts on the ‘Troubled Teen’ industry. I am immensely grateful to Chelsea and Amanda for sharing their story with me and Kathryn Robb on the Truth and Consequences podcast. They are survivors in every sense of the word. -Miranda

A Troubled History

Chelsea Maldonado & Amanda Simmons

The Troubled Teen Industry (“TTI”) is a catch-all term loosely applied to privately-owned residential facilities for youth located throughout the United States and abroad. These programs have operated for over 50 years and include a broad range of institutions including therapeutic boarding schools, wilderness therapy programs, faith-based academies and residential treatment centers.

Because facilities within the Troubled Teen Industry do not operate as traditional schools, detention centers, group homes, or psychiatric hospitals, they are regulated through a patchwork of State laws and have few, if any, data-sharing obligations. While this makes the full scope of the industry difficult to quantify, the American Bar Association estimates that the TTI is a multi-billion dollar industry with the capacity to serve hundreds of thousands of youth annually.

The first TTI programs began operating in the 1960s, pulling many of their founding members and methods from the controversial anti-drug cult Synanon. These early programs purported to cure addiction and modify behaviors by housing children in highly restrictive environments and subjecting them to various forms of large-group awareness training, attack therapy, and experimental psychology.

By the early 1970s, the tactics used within Troubled Teen Programs began to garner the attention of the Federal Government. Testimony given to the Senate in 1974 described the methods used at one TTI program, The Seed, as extremely coercive and “similar to the highly refined brainwashing techniques employed by the North Koreans.” Though concerned by the potential harm these tactics could cause when applied to vulnerable children, the government did nothing to stop their proliferation.

Many of Amanda’s experiences at John Dewey Academy in the 1990s mirror those used at The Seed. Like The Seed, John Dewey Academy was an early offshoot of Synanon and widely regarded as a thought leader. While attending John Dewey Academy, Amanda was subjected to highly confrontational attack groups that felt like psychological torture and spent weeks in isolation, both methods reported on extensively in the 1974 testimony given on The Seed.

In 1979, the Senate received detailed testimony on Provo Canyon School, a Troubled Teen Industry institution still in operation today. Investigators reported that Provo Canyon School was using militaristic orientation methods that would “scare any adult” and criticized its use of hired services to involuntarily transport youth to the facility in the middle of the night. Again, the government took no action to curb these practices. Decades later, entrepreneur and activist Paris Hilton testified that she was traumatized by Provo Canyon School’s use of involuntary transport and brutal treatment.

Just as John Dewey Academy modeled itself after Synanon and The Seed, other programs began to model themselves after Provo Canyon School. Tranquility Bay, the facility Chelsea attended in the early 2000s, was operated by former Provo Canyon School employees and utilized many of the same behavior modification tactics. While attending Tranquility Bay, Chelsea experienced attack therapy and large group awareness training. She witnessed the use of brutal restraints and isolation. The same tactics discussed in the 1970s were still occurring in the 2000s.

In 2007, the Government Accountability Office released a damning report entitled “Concerns Regarding Abuse and Death in Certain Programs for Troubled Youth,” which investigated thousands of claims of abuse and death in private residential facilities for youth. The report appropriately concluded that in many of the cases where youth had died, ineffective management played a significant role. The GAO released similar reports in 2008 and 2009. Despite these reports, the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Treatment Centers for Teens Act, legislation first introduced by Congressman George Miller and later championed by Representative Adam Schiff, failed to pass multiple times.

Chelsea and Amanda’s experiences in the Troubled Teen Industry are far from unique. Strip searches and sexual abuse are a regular occurrence, with some survivors, including Paris Hilton, reporting additional violations like forced pap smears and gynecological exams.

As we embark on another Senate investigation into the Troubled Teen Industry, we must ensure that we finally take action. We can start by adopting the practices recommended by the GAO in their 2022 report and continue by supporting the soon-to-be introduced Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act.

The government knows — and has known — about the abuse occurring in Troubled Teen Industry facilities. It is now time for action. Children continue to die and experience horrific abuse in TTI programs. Doing nothing is no longer an option.

The Sixth Sense Effect

November 4, 2022 miranda.pacchiana Article

I call it the “sixth sense effect”. Once you wake up to the realization that a relationship has been abusive, you replay the scenes of your life with that person (or people) through the lens of this newfound information and a growing understanding of what you lived through. It’s a splash of cold water in the face, for better and worse. Again and again, you go back through your memory and you see what now seems obvious–but was once desperately confusing and emotionally torturous for you.

The Brave Women Behind The Keepers

June 30, 2022 miranda.pacchiana Article

It took me five years to get up the nerve to watch The Keepers.

I knew enough about the critically acclaimed 2017 docuseries, and the web of crimes it revealed, to understand how sad and rage-inducing I would find the events it follows. What I did NOT know was that by putting off watching this beautifully made and important story, I was missing out.

A Hero in Plain Sight

June 8, 2022 miranda.pacchiana Article

Kirsten wants you to know that her daughter, Annie, is a hero. That’s the real story, the one that doesn’t get told enough. Kirsten knows how kind and moral her daughter really is, contrary to the smear campaign against her. She remembers how courageously Annie took action to stand up for her mother and herself, even when it meant risking her own safety. Kirsten is here to set the record straight. And I’m telling their story for all the misunderstood and overlooked heroes among us.

Stephen Mills CHOSEN A Memoir of Stolen Boyhood

Making Change from Inside

April 25, 2022 miranda.pacchiana Article

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.

Donna Palomba: Victimized and Vindicated

March 18, 2022 miranda.pacchiana Article

Sometimes heroes turn out to be good people leading quiet lives who decide to face injustice for the benefit of us all. Dateline recently told the story of one such hero in a special 2-hour episode. My friend, Donna Palomba is a respected advocate who has worked to protect the public from sexual assault perpetrators since she was attacked in a 1993 home invasion by a man who turned out to be a dangerous repeat offender. He was also her husband’s formerly trusted friend. When the Waterbury police accused Donna of fabricating her assault, she fought to clear her name and change department protocols to prevent other survivors from being revictimized the same way.

Flashbacks, Fragments & Facing Trauma

February 18, 2022 miranda.pacchiana Uncategorized

“I think something bad happened to me.”

These were Chandra Moyer’s words to her husband after she was suddenly hit with frightening flashbacks at the age of 37. In the interview we recorded for my podcast, Chandra gives us an almost cinematic description of the way flashbacks transport a person back in time. They threw her into a frozen state, inundated by sights, sounds, smells, and overwhelming emotions that had been locked inside her memory for decades.

Scapegoats are the Strong Ones

January 8, 2022 miranda.pacchiana Family, Self Help

Being stuck in the role of the scapegoat is a lonely experience. Your place in the group never really feels secure. You live with a constant sense of being blamed and shamed–even if you can’t point out exactly how, or why it happens. You have probably been told that your feelings are wrong so many times you‘re not sure which end is up or whether you can trust your own instincts. But still, in your gut you know things are not right.

That’s why you chose to speak up in the first place: to bring issues out in the open and hopefully address them together. Sadly, it’s also why you’ve been cast as the scapegoat by those who are hell-bent on denying difficult truths and maintaining the current power structure. As the scapegoat, you are subject to ostracism, victim-blaming, scolding, and shaming. And for some, a campaign of lies and half-truths weaken their perceived credibility both in and outside of the group. It is a painful way to live.