Topic : 09/07 Dark Family Secrets

The topic of child sexual abuse MUST be addressed by those in a positon to pull back the curtain of shame and secrecy on this topic...too often victims and survivors of insest are met with "the wall of silence".

The long-term effects of insest and child sexual abuse are hideous!!!!!!!!  Survivors are re-victimized when the abuse is denied, minimized, rationalized, or intellectuallized.

While I was waiting to see my doctor one day I flipped through a Canadian Geographic magazine in her waiting room.  I read an article about scientists for wildlife preservation doing studies on animals in the Canadian arctic…animals such as wolves, polar bears, caribou etc.  In the article it talked about how the elders of the arctic peoples are upset by the experiments being done on the animals…experiments like putting radio collars on wolves to track their movement and behavior.  The elders say it changes the animals.  One particular comment made by Norma Kassi, a Yukon Environmentalist, jumped out at me.  She said...

"Once an animal has been touched by a human, they act differently.  Their psychology is changed.  It takes the wildness out of them.

I consider this to be a profound statement, in that if being touched by a human can permanently alter the psychology of a wild animal…it lends proof to the theory that a child who has been sexually molested by an adult is changed forever, psychologically and physiologically.  Naturally, these things are just not supposed to happen…humans violating wild animals for scientific study and adults violating children for personal sexual gratification.

If people can be disturbed by the fact that the well being of a few wild animals is being sacrificed for the good of the survival of the species…why aren’t people outraged by the fact that 1 in 4 of our most precious resource…our children, is being sacrificed for the sake of secrecy and shame?

As being touched by a human destroys an animal’s wildness… being violated by an adult destroys the innocence of a child’s.

Unfortunately, some violated humans unlike wild animals…aren’t only changed; they go on to be violators!!!

Maybe we should tell the animals to just, “Get over it”, as many victims and survivors of child sexual abuse are told to do.

The survivor of Child sexual abuse is not the only victim, or the only one affected by the act, or more commonly “acts”.  The future children and spouses of survivors are also affected in ways they are not prepared for because often the long-term effects are not consciously linked with the abuse in the survivors own mind.   The parents of the survivor are victims as the guilt a parent experiences over having not been able to protect their child is also long term and devastating to them, as they watch their child grow and suffer the long-term effects of child sexual abuse.  Often the parent is also suffering these same long-term effects themselves, as the pattern of abuse is repeated through generations of a family because time and time again, it is swept under the carpet and never addressed.  People are ashamed that it is happening in their family…they feel it is a reflection on them and their character.  So when it is discovered that a child is being or has been sexually molested by another family member…it is covered up.  Do not speak…is the mantra of the family diseased by CSA.  “Think of the family name”…”Don’t bring shame to the family”.  I say it’s only an illusion of family…because families don’t sacrifice their own for the sake of “appearance”.

If you visit [http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/issues9.html#lon] you will read...

“There is now an established body of knowledge clearly linking a history of child sexual abuse with higher rates in adult life of depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, substance abuse disorders, eating disorders and post-traumatic stress disorders”

In my opinion, this is the short list of the conditions and symptoms that are linked to a history of Child Sexual Abuse.

In Marilyn VanDerbur’s book, Miss America by Day, she recalls confronting her father after years of repressing the memories of the sexual abuse inflicted upon her by him, between the ages of 5 and 10.  He said something to her that I also find profound.  He said, “If I had known what it would do to you, I never would have done it.”  If that statement is true…then what sexual abuse does to a child is something that needs to be said…often and loudly.  There are people out there that need to hear this.  Child sexual abuse is cruel and violent and vicious.  Child sexual abuse destroys lives. 

If you were sexually abused and you are having thoughts or urges to sexually abuse a child….STOP…call a mental health professional and make an appointment.  You do not have the right to inflict on another child what was inflicted on you. 

If your child has been sexually abused…SPEAK…to your doctor.  Your child will need therapy to effectively deal with what was done to them.

If you have been abused, no matter how long ago, and are suffering long-term effects... TALK...to a therapist, councilor or support group.

People who have the courage to SPEAK break chains.

The difference between the adult who suffers the long-term effects of child sexual abuse and the paraplegic who was put in a wheelchair for life by a drunk driver is the paraplegic’s injuries are obvious.  The damage to his spinal cord can be seen on an x-ray.  There is no technology that can show you the damage to a child’s spirit.  Would you say to a paraplegic, “Get over it!”? …Would you say, “Get up and walk you whiner!”?  Even if his spinal cord had not been completely severed it would take intensive physiotherapy to be able to walk again.  What would happen if his wounds were ignored or he was told, “It’s all in your head”?

Got pregnant at 15 with my father's baby, was given an abortion by my mother.  Was abused from infancy until I finally left and then was raped twice.  Needless to say, my siblings and I were a mess.  My siblings haven't recovered so well.  They chose a life of crime and drugs, last time I saw them was at my Mother's funeral in 1976.  I was pulled out of high school at 16 to work in a factory.  I chose to look for a path that wouldn't lead me down the same road so many like us take.  I have SUCCESSFULLY overcome this, although I've struggled all my life, I now earn over $100K a year and have done much work during my life regarding this issue,  locally.  I reconciled with my 75 yr old father 3 years ago.  I had to make a decision to stop waiting for him to admit what he did, he simply was not going to do that.  I survived cancer and when one faces death there seems to be a lot of baggage that comes to the surface that we can choose to take with us, or let go of it.  I chose to let go of the anger because it was weighing me down.    

There seem to always be issues that crop up in my life, still,  that I either don't know how to deal with or run from, but I think that's to be expected.  Once I realize that I need to face that particular issue and deal with it head on, I usually come out the victor.   I'm now 53 and although my weight is and has always been the last thing that keeps me a victim, I struggle daily to over come that.  It occured to me recently that there have been very few times in my life that I have not been scared.  I don't even know how to check the message board here, but I hope in some small way I've helped one person to realize that it's ultimately up to us.  What we choose to do with the cards we're dealt with at birth is OUR CHOICE once we become adults!  Congratulations to all you survivors out there!  

I pray that you will find the strength to look at your dreams without fear. 

I too experience fear everyday...it is part of my daily life...I don't meet a lot of people who understand the issues around incest and sexual abuse so I do a lot of research...it validates me... 

here are a couple of things I found that have comforted me...I hope it validates a comforts you even if it is in a small way for a small moment... 

from a book called “Secret Survivors-Uncovering incest and it’s aftereffects in women” by E. Sue Blume…she is the creator of the The Abuse Survivors' Aftereffects Checklist which I have copied and pasted below 

The Abuse Survivors' Aftereffects Checklist

Do you find many characteristics of yourself on this list? If so, you could be a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Survivors, particularly incest survivors, may experience suppressed memory in reference to their abuse. Memories of the actual trauma may be hidden by the mind as a means of protecting the individual from the pain associated with the event. As a result, many abuse survivors experience a host of trauma-related symptoms which seem to have no recognizable source.

* Fear of being alone in the dark, of sleeping alone; nightmares, night terror (especially of pursuit, threat, entrapment).

* Swallowing and gagging sensitivity; repugnance to water on one's face when bathing or swimming (suffocation feelings).

* Alienation from the body - not at home in own body; failure to heed body signals or take care of one's body; poor body image; manipulating body size to avoid sexual attention.

* Gastrointestinal problems; gynecological disorders (including spontaneous vaginal infections); headaches; arthritis or joint pain.

* Wearing a lot of clothing, even in summer; baggy clothes; failure to remove clothing even when appropriate to do so (while swimming, bathing, sleeping); extreme requirement for privacy when using bathroom.

* Eating disorders, drug or alcohol abuse (or total abstinence); other addictions; compulsive behaviors.

* Self-destructiveness; skin carving, self-abuse.

* Phobias.

* Need to be invisible, perfect, or perfectly bad.

* Suicidal thoughts, attempts, obsession (including "passive suicide").

* Depression (sometimes paralyzing); seemingly baseless crying.

* Anger issues; inability to recognize, own or express anger, fear of actual or imagined rate; constant anger, intense hostility toward entire gender or ethnic group of the perpetrator.

* Splitting (depersonalization); going into shock, shutdown in crisis; a stressful situation always in a crisis; psychic numbing; physical pain or numbness associated with a particular memory, emotion (e.g., anger), or situation (e.g., sex).

* Rigid control of one's thought process; humorlessness or extreme solemnity.

* Childhood hiding, hanging on, cowering in corners (security-seeking behaviors); adult nervousness over being watched or surprised; feeling watched; startle response.

* Trust issue; inability to trust (trust is not safe); total trust; trusting indiscriminately.

* High risk taking ("daring the fates"); inability to take risks.
Boundary issues; control, power, territoriality issues; fear of losing control; obsessive/compulsive behaviors (attempts to control things that don't matter, just to control something).

* Guilt, shame; low self-esteem, feeling worthless; high appreciation of small favors by others.

* Pattern of being a victim (victimizing oneself after being victimized by others), especially sexually; no sense of own-power or right to set limits or say no; pattern of relationships with much older persons (onset in adolescence).

* Feeling demand to "produce and be loved"; instinctively knowing and doing what the other person needs or wants; relationships mean big tradeoffs (love was taken, not given).

* Abandonment issues.

* Blocking out some period of early years (especially 1-12), or a specific person or place.

* Feeling of carrying an awful secret; urge to tell, fear of its being revealed; certainty that no one will listen; being generally seductive; feeling "marked" (the "scarlet letter").

* Feeling crazy; feeling different; feeling oneself to be unreal and everyone else to be real, or vice versa; creating fantasy worlds, relationships, or identities (especially for women: imagining or wishing self to be male, i.e., not a victim).

* Denial: no awareness at all; repression of memories; pretending; minimizing ("it wasn't that bad"); having dreams or memories ("maybe it's my imagination"); strong, deep, "inappropriate" negative reactions to a person, place or event; "sensory flashes" (a light, a place, a physical feeling) without a sense of their meaning; remembering the surroundings but not the event.

* Sexual issues: sex feel "dirty", aversion to being touched, especially in gynecological exam; strong aversion to (or need for) particular sex acts; feeling betrayed by one's body; trouble integrating sexuality and emotionality; confusion or overlapping of affection, sex, dominance, aggression, and violence; having to pursue power in the sexual arena which is actually sexual acting out (self-abuse and manipulation, especially among women; abuse of others, especially among men); compulsively "seductive' or compulsively asexual; must be sexual aggressor or cannot be; impersonal, "promiscuous" sex with strangers concurrent with inability to have sex in intimate relationship (conflict between sex and caring); prostitute, stripper, "sex symbol", porn actress; sexual acting out to meet anger or revenge needs; "sexaholism"; avoidance; shutdown, crying after orgasm; all pursuit feels like violation; sexualizing of meaningful relationships; erotic response to abuse or anger, sexual fantasies of dominance or rape (Note: Homosexuality is not an aftereffect).

* Pattern of ambivalent or intensely conflictive relationships (intimacy is a problem; also focus shifted from incest issues).

* Avoidance of mirrors (connected with invisibility, shame/self-esteem issues, distrust of perceived body image).

* Desire to change one's name (to disassociate from the perpetrator or to take control through self-labeling).

* Limited tolerance for happiness; active withdrawal from happiness, reluctance to trust happiness "ice=thin").

* Aversion to making noise (including during sex, crying, laughing, or other body functions); verbal hypervigilance (careful monitoring of one's words); quite-voiced, especially when needing to be heard.

* Stealing (adults); stealing and starting fires (children).

* Multiple personality.

and having said that... 

            Of course we’re afraid of what we don’t know, and most of us don’t know a lot about who we are, our place in the world.  So when we begin to think about what we might uniquely bring to the world, we often find ourselves facing discomfort, like the discomfort I felt listening to Kathryn’s [a babies] cries.

Imagine what would happen if our society treated our babies like it suggests we treat our inner calls and questions.  Imagine if, when we heard babies cry, we judged ourselves to be bad parents.  Imagine if we just gave up, left the baby in the house and drove away.  Imagine if we drugged our babies to keep them from crying; or imagine that those who did listen to their babies were seen as abnormal.  Good parents don’t have crying babies.

But babies do cry.  Their cries are not value judgments.  Their cries are a signal that something needs to be attended to with intention.

Only as we learn to refrain from judging our not knowing can we hear our own questions.  As we shift the meaning of our discomfort from something being wrong to something becoming real, new possibilities appear.

Hi I'm Shorty I'm 33 and married. I was molested by my Uncle as a little girl. It started one day when I was very sick and I could not go too school. Anyway my uncle would run around with nothing but his underware. Well one afternoon I wanted too take a nap and he said good idea and he got behind me and still with his underware started too rub himself on my back side. Then as time moved on his kiss would become longer and he became posseive of me and held me too tight and I became uncomfortable. I tryed too keep away from him but he some how finds me. He also drank a lot also and At the age when a young lady starts too dovelop and her breast are coming in and as we all know they are very tender and sore and anything makes them hurt. Well in my uncles drunken state he would grab my breast till I yelled and he thought that was funny. Yes I did try and tell my family but they did not want too hear it or belive it. My uncle was the person in my family who did no wrong. They would say he is your uncle he loves you he would never hurt you. Then I decided that no matter what I say he was right and I am wrong. I am so glad Dr. Phil is doing this show. I am hoping that more people and young girls or boys will not be ashamed or feared too tell someone they trust. I know its not easy but I hope they go tell someone or a family of a good friend. Well thats all I have too say. Take care and hang in there and be safe. Shorty,............ 

I literally got goosebumps watching the show...hearing the VOICE of the survivors of incest....I could feel the miracle happening...Dr. Phil you have done an incredible thing today...you have given a gift to millions of people...victims everywhere held their heads a little higher today...God was speaking through all the people on that show today!!!!!  Let the healing begin!!!!  We can make a difference by giving a VOICE to incest and sexual abuse victims who have been silenced by shame that doesn't belong to them...I feel so hopeful...this is something that can be changed...we are not powerless...we are POWERFUL!!!!!!!!!!!! 

site suggestions... http://www.darknesstolight.org/ 

http://www.stopcsa.org/pins.cfm