Resources for Jewish Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse
One out of every 3-5 girls and One out of every 5-7 boys are sexually abused before their 18th birthday. To this date there has been no research to dispute that there is any difference between the secular world and the various Jewish Communities.
The typical child sex offender molests an average
of 117 children, most of who do not report the offence.
Source: National Institute of Mental Health,
1988.
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The Awareness Center is a non-profit, certified 501 (c) (3) organization. Our goals include reaching out to Jewish survivors of sexual violence, parents of sexually abused children, family members of alleged and convicted sex offenders, rabbis, cantors and other community leaders. We also serve as a clearinghouse of information, and offer advocacy for those in need and educational seminars.
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Please Note: Our Home Page has more resources
(2007)
Articles
First Person
Shouldering the Burden of Incest
by Anonymous
The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles - 01/28/2005
http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=13576
When you go to the synagogue, you just might be sitting next to someone who sexually abused his daughter. You might be shaking his hand, admiring his charming demeanor, thinking how lucky his family is to have him. I should know. People sit next to my father all the time. Not only that, but they make sure to tell me about it.
Take a recent scenario at my local congregation: Two seconds after I walked through the door, a friendly acquaintance informed me that my father had visited there just a few weeks back. Good thing I didn't go that day, I thought to myself. She continued to describe to me how vibrant he had looked, "as always," and how lovely it had been to see him. The woman's intention, of course, was to compliment me by showering praise on my father. Instead, she left me clutching tightly inside myself and forgetting to breathe.
"That's nice," I replied. "I haven't seen him in 14 years."
The woman stammered around a bit, apologized, and concluded with, "But I'm sure you'll be glad to know he's doing well."
Well, actually, that depends on the day.
About 15 minutes later, another woman informed me (just in case I hadn't heard yet) that my father had visited the congregation a few weeks earlier. She knows these things, she continued, because she is a close friend of his second ex-wife.
"I don't want to talk about it," I interrupted her.
"Oh, well I'm not talking about it, I was just saying that he visited here, and I'm good friends with..."
"I don't want to talk about it," I repeated, putting my hand up in a stop motion.
"Well, I was just saying that I'm friends with them..."
"I don't want to talk about it," I said a third time, adding a "no" head shake for emphasis.
She stopped, then could not think of anything else to say.
"How's your son doing? Is he here?" I offered, hoping to move the conversation in a more pleasant direction.
"Yes he is," she replied, "and in fact, I'm taking these cookies over to him."
She bid me Shabbat Shalom and left. The woman could not get away from me fast enough.
Considering how common incest is, not to mention the preponderance of other forms of domestic violence — I do not cease to be amazed by people's insensitivity regarding my father. Short of answering, "My father sexually abused me, and discussing him is retraumatizing me," I have tried every possible approach in getting people to shut up. Not only have they not respected my clear boundaries, but they have gone so far as to make assumptions about what must have happened with my father. A favored scenario has been that he and I had a squabble, and I am too stubborn to forgive him.
One man, who had this notion in his head, repeatedly brought me fliers announcing my father's latest presentations. He and another man made statements like, "We have to figure out a way to get you and your father back together."
Even after I hinted, "You really have no clue what goes on behind closed doors," one of them persisted in his self-appointed mission to save my family.
These interactions have left me profoundly shaken up — physically, as well as emotionally — and have eaten up days and days of my time, dedicated to recovering from each incident. They have caused me to avoid Mizrahi and Sephardi communities; to leave a community organization I cofounded; and to stop attending synagogue services. Given my resulting isolation from Jewish community life, I even stopped observing Shabbat and the holidays; they became too lonely and depressing.
For philosophical, moral and emotional reasons, I refuse to plaster a big fake smile on my face and let people ramble on glowingly about a man who made my childhood miserable. Every time someone starts in on it with me, I feel an overwhelming urge to scream out the truth.
I have no interest in publicly shaming my father. I have silenced my own voice for two-thirds of my life, in fact, in an effort to protect him. In addition, it feels risky to "come out" about my experience. I do not want people pathologizing or pitying me.
And yet, I am tired of holding this burden, and I know there are many like me out there. So I offer my story in an effort to wake up the Jewish community, to let people know that the abuse is happening all around us, that we are not immune to violence. Our friends, colleagues, teachers and rabbis are among both the perpetrators and survivors. Abuse does not happen to "them."
When we recognize this reality — when we speak and listen in ways that allow for the possibility that people are survivors or current victims, and when we hold perpetrators accountable for their actions, yet approach them with compassion, we will all shoulder the burden of violence together. As such, our community will take one giant step toward healing.
The writer is an author and journalist who lives in Israel and the Bay Area. The Journalist requested we withhold her byline for legal purposes.
By Larry Derfner
The Jerusalem Post - July 21, 2000, Friday
SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 16
'Not long ago we had a boy, seven years old, whose father was committing incest against him, and he climbed to the roof of his school and tried to jump. We asked him why, and he said, 'So my body will break into pieces and I won't have to suffer anymore.'"
Dr. Hanita Zimrin has too many such shocking stories to tell. "I've seen cases of incest with an infant, (and) it's not unusual at all to get victims of three or four years old," notes the director of ELI - The Israel Association for Child Protection.
Even when it was never admitted or discussed, incest
existed in Israel. In the last couple of years, though, the problem has become
much more acute. It's happening more often, and the victims are getting younger
and younger.
Kids being kids, they are beginning to imitate their elders. "A family came in this week - the parents are professionals, well-educated, financially well-off. The mother accidentally saw her son and daughter, one is 12, the other is 10, naked together and playing. She said it wasn't just childhood curiosity," says Zimrin.
Consequently, ELI, which until now has treated only child victims of abuse, is opening a new division at its Tel Aviv therapy clinic for child perpetrators of child abuse.
Incest is also becoming crueler. Fathers are sharing their daughters - over 90% of incest victims are girls, notes Zimrin - with their friends.
"A four-year-old girl told her nursery-school teacher, 'Abba lost me at cards.' The teacher asked her what she meant, and the girl explained that her father had 'given' her to a man to cover his card-playing losses," Zimrin says.
Between 1995 and 1998, the number of incest victims treated at ELI ran to 300-odd a year. Last year, though, the figure leaped to 811, and in the first six months of this year, 546 incest victims have already come in. "I used to say the number of victims was going up because people were reporting it more, but now I have to say that the actual incidence of incest is on the increase as well," she maintains. Based on past research of child abuse, Zimrin's "intelligent guess" is that the true number of incest victims is about 10 times the number reported. Over half of ELI's cases involve incest.
'We're seeing second- and third-generation incest," notes Barbara Reicher, head of child therapy at ELI. "A victim of incest will often choose a husband who she thinks, unconsciously, will do to her daughter what was done to her." This choice is motivated by an ambivalence towards the incestuous father, she says: "The father she hates is also the father she loves, the father she needs." All too frequently, a woman will complain to police that her husband is committing incest, then drop the complaint shortly afterward. Facing up to incest means admitting one's abject failure as a mother and a wife, which few women are prepared to do, relates Zimrin. Allowing incest to continue is a way of punishing oneself, and victimized women feel they deserve their plight, she adds.
A couple of weeks ago, Reicher notes, ELI was approached by a family in which the father, who is now in jail, had committed incest with his 17-year-old son, while another son had committed incest with one of his sisters. There are eight children in the family.
"I'll bet my life we haven't gotten to the end of it," says Zimrin.
She's convinced there are more incestuous combinations in the family to uncover, that this sexual practice is a family style. "What are the chances of getting two separate, discrete instances of incest within one family?" she asks.
At the same time that the problem of incest has been growing more acute, there is also encouraging news. In the last couple of years, the courts have begun handing out harsher sentences for incest. "Defendants have been getting 20 years in prison, 19 years, 15 years," says Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, director of the National Council for the Protection of the Child. These sentences are usually for incest that has been going on for years. In the past, Kadman notes, such aggravated, habitual incest might have been punished by six months in prison, maybe a year. That, however, is no longer the case.
Kadman's organization helps incest victims report the crime by easing their way through the justice system, from their first visit to the police station to their testimony in court - if they have the courage to testify. He mentions one case that concluded this year: "A girl, whose parents had been killed in a traffic accident when she was about 12, went to live with her uncle, who practiced incest with her until she was 16, when she ran away. A year later, she told her sister who called us. We made two appointments to go with the girl to the police, and twice she canceled, but the third time she showed up. This year the case was concluded - the girl's uncle got 15 years in prison."
The ELI clinic in Tel Aviv does everything in its power to look cheerful. The walls are painted purple, pink, and green; there are cartoon figures of Peter Pan and fuzzy forest creatures. The children who live there for up to a year - having all been removed from their homes - sing, dance, bang on drums, even commandeer the public-address system to razz the counselors.
Downstairs is the room where young victims come to be interviewed. The chairs are soft, there are dolls and games all over the place. Locked inside a cabinet are anatomical boy and girl dolls. Mounted high in the corners are video cameras - to record sessions for use as legal evidence.
'The Social Services Department learned of a five- year-old girl who was a victim of incest, and they wanted me to testify because they had no hard evidence," Zimrin says, recalling a case that came into the clinic a year ago, and which is still in court. "The girl came into the room holding herself very stiffly. Her father, who was in the waiting room, had obviously prepared her very well. Before I even asked her any questions, she said, 'Abba didn't do anything to me.'
"I took out the anatomical dolls and asked her to show me what her father does with her," Zimrin continues. "She placed the male doll on top of the female doll in a position of intercourse. I asked her how she feels when Abba does this, and she said, 'My back feels cold.' She couldn't make up something like that, she had to know it from experience. Her father was doing it to her on the floor. Then she said, 'I can't breathe,' and she placed the male doll's penis in the female doll's mouth."
The rate of incest in Israel is more or less equal to that in other "developed" countries, says Kadman, noting that it's hard to gauge how bad the problem is in Third World countries because incest statistics don't tell the true story.
That's about the way it was in Israel in the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies and even, to a lesser degree, in the Eighties, he says. "The thinking was that incest didn't exist here, it wasn't something that Jews did. Israel was in total denial. In the last 10 years we've passed that stage, thankfully, and there's a great deal of awareness of the problem, and a much, much greater willingness to confront it."
In fact, this new-found moral courage to face up to the problem of incest is what Zimrin cites as the single "typically Israeli" feature of the phenomenon. "When I tell child-abuse professionals in the US and Europe that we get incest perpetrators themselves calling the hot line for help, they're amazed," she says.
Asked if there are any Israeli demographic groups in which incest tends to occur more than among others, both Zimrin and Kadman say no.
It has nothing to do with socioeconomic standing - "Just because you're poor doesn't mean you sleep with your daughter," says Zimrin. "Incest grows out of an extreme, aggravated personality disturbance," adds Kadman - it's an individual, not a group, thing.
If incest is associated with the poor and backward more than with the wealthy and sophisticated, this is because the rich can hide it better than can the poor, Kadman notes. "Adults (such as a teacher) are less likely to believe that the child of a 'good' family is a victim of incest. And the other sources who are likely to hear complaints of incest - social workers and police - don't hang around wealthy neighborhoods, they're mainly in poor neighborhoods," he explains.
"If a young girl in Herzliya Pituah is bleeding (vaginally) as a result of incest, her family will take her to a private doctor and it will go no further. If it's a girl in south Tel Aviv, she'll go to the emergency room of a major hospital, and it will get reported," adds Zimrin.
Yet at the same time, both Zimrin and Kadman imply that that there is an indirect link between incest and socioeconomic distress.
"Incest is not caused by social problems - for it to happen, the primary cause of incest must be present," says Zimrin. The primary cause, she continues, is "an inability to empathize with one's child, to see the child as a person in her - or his - own right, as someone who can feel pain. Instead the incestuous parent sees the child merely as an instrument to satisfy his own needs. And just like with rape, sexual gratification is not the important thing with incest; sex is only a symbol of the exertion of power. But," she continues, "if the primary cause is present in the family, and in addition, if the family suffers from poverty, drugs, alcohol, and such, then these social problems may contribute to bringing the incestuous tendency to the surface."
In Kadman's view, there is one social condition that often appears in cases of incest: isolation from other people. Consequently, the problem may be found more often among broken families where, for example, the mother has taken her children and moved in with a boyfriend, and is cut off from her extended family. (Sex between a mother's live-in mate and a child in the house is, from a psychological viewpoint, considered incest.) It may crop up with greater frequency among immigrants who've left their extended families behind and who find themselves adrift in Israel.
Zimrin adopts a broad definition of incest - it isn't limited to intercourse, it isn't even limited to sexual contact. She uses the term "psychological incest" to include flirtation between parent and child, or the inclusion of the child in the parents' sex play.
Incest, she says, takes place when there is an "erotic atmosphere in the relationship" between members of the family (including adult authority figures such as an uncle or mother's boyfriend). Under this definition, she's found that some poor immigrants from the former Soviet Union, even without intending to, have crossed into the realm of incest.
"A number of Russian immigrants purchase pornographic films - not only for sexual pleasure, but also as a gesture of freedom, of trying all the things they couldn't do in the Soviet Union. When they live crowded in a tiny apartment, the TV and video are in the living room, and the children don't have rooms of their own, so they end up watching the films with the parents," Zimrin says.
Two other demographic groups in Israel are set apart not because they have a higher-than-normal incidence of incest, but because their communities are so conservative and closed that incest victims are more terrified than normal to divulge what's happened to them. Their families and communities typically unite around the incestuous father, who is the unchallenged master of the house. Once the victim reports incest, she is treated as the guilty party.
These are the haredi and Israeli Arab communities, says Kadman.
"A few years ago we had a case of a haredi father in Bnei Brak who committed incest with his two daughters for years," he recalls. "Their aunt - the mother's sister - came to visit from the US, and the two girls told her what was going on. The aunt told her sister that if she didn't tell the police, she, the aunt, would, so the mother went and told." After this some of the local rabbis ordered that the girls and the mother be ostracized. Posters condemning them as slanderers went up on the walls near the home, and the two girls were kicked out of school.
The couple got divorced and the mother moved with the girls to another city, he continues.
"The father was found innocent in court - the judge agreed with the defense that the girls had 'consented' to have sex with him," Kadman says. "But then five judges in the High Court of Justice heard the appeal, and (Justice Mishael) Cheshin wrote a scathing opinion, saying the concept of consent in a situation like this is absurd, because the girls did not have the means of refusing the father's desires." Because the girls did not testify, the prosecution's case wasn't as strong as it could have been, so the father served only a few months in jail.
"But after he got out of jail he remarried, and committed incest with the daughter of this second wife," notes Kadman. "We were told about this, and we filed a complaint with the police, and soon afterward the father fled the country. He's living abroad now."
Arab society is similar to haredi society in this sense, he says - patriarchal, conservative, closed. "There is huge pressure not to talk, so as to avoid stigmatizing the family, which can hurt the other children's chances for a shidduch (marriage prospect) - although the pressure is not so extreme as it is in the haredi world. But in both haredi and Arab society, the reaction is to blame the victim," Kadman notes.
Both he and Zimrin see the rise in incest in the country as part of a general coarsening of society, a weakening of the human connection between Israelis. "Once upon a time, everybody knew what their neighbors were doing; it was hard to be truly cut off from the social environment," Kadman says. The relative transparency of private life in Israel made it that much harder for incest to occur. Today, so many troubled families - families in which incest is a latent or present menace - are out there on their own, he points out.
"I saw the phenomenon of incest here 30 years ago, when 'it didn't exist,'" adds Zimrin. But today people can buy child pornography in stores, or download it from the Internet, she notes. The media publicize it, but usually in a sensationalistic way that encourages "copycat" incest, Zimrin maintains.
There is hope, though. As best as ELI can judge from its follow-ups, more than half of the incest perpetrators treated at the clinic change their behavior permanently, says Zimrin.
It's a paradoxical situation for the therapist, she adds. "You hate the perpetrator for the atrocity he's committed, but you must see him as a person who is in pain and distress; you must see him as someone who was once victimized himself; you must bring him to the point that he is once again that crying child, before you can cure him," she says.
The therapy, which typically takes a year, is for the entire incestuous family, but especially for the perpetrator and the victim. "We have begun making the perpetrator literally go down on his knees and beg the victim for forgiveness - so he accepts his guilt, and so the victim knows that she is not to blame for this," Zimrin adds.
Can victims of incest ever become whole human beings again, capable of living decent, even happy, lives?
"I'm optimistic," says Reicher. "Incest can never be forgotten. But, to use computer terms, it can treated as a file that is stored in the memory, but which is not an active file." Zimrin chooses a different metaphor. "Incest is a wound that can be turned into a scar," she says. "It'll always be there, but it won't have to hurt all the time."
Ruti Shalev doesn't remember when her father began sexually molesting her. It was just something that he always did, from the time she was very young until his death in a traffic accident when she was 13.
When she was about 10 years old, the abuse became more psychological than sexual, Shalev, now 27, recalled in an interview earlier this week. Though her father would still touch her, he switched to other methods of control, such as not letting her go outside to play in the yard.
During those years, Shalev did not turn to anyone for help. Neither her mother nor her older brother were aware of what was happening. There were, however, some warning signs. For example, at school she was considered a problem child, and at the age of eight was sent for counseling. The school-appointed psychologist recommended that Shalev's physical contact with her father be monitored. But this was never carried out.
In fact, she only learned of this recommendation at the age of 24, when she confronted the psychologist who had treated her as a child.
"IDON'T remember when it started, but I always knew that it wasn't right. I didn't do anything. I was afraid to open my mouth - afraid I would pull out the rug from under my feet if I tried to stop it," she said. Although her father was a policeman, she does not believe that this influenced her decision to keep silent.
Instead of speaking out, she tried to forget what her father was doing to her, blocking out incidents in the process. She did not reveal the ordeal until seven years after his death because "I couldn't come to terms with the fact that the man whom I loved and who was my father was also crazy and abusive."
One day, after undergoing two very stressful incidents, her "defenses just broke down." Shalev began to address her past. One of the ways she did this was through writing because "it helped me bring my feelings to the surface." What she wrote became a book called Belly, recently published by Carmel.
Shalev also lectures to counselors and social work students. She asks them to look at the people they work with as equals - rather than judging them - and to try to put themselves in their clients' shoes.
She believes "good treatment" can break the vicious cycle in which incest victims "repeat history" by selecting potential child molesters as mates.
"My story is a sad one with a happy ending," she writes in her book, "...I suddenly know something that I've waited many long years to discover: I am in love. I fell in love with myself. And today I can hug and kiss...."-
Hotline telephone numbers: The Israel Association for Child Protection - ELI: 1-800-223966; The National Council for the Protection of the Child: 02-5639191 or 02-5639118.
Jewish Survivors
Organizations
Practioners/Treatment
Facilities
Arts In Therapy - Provides an online community for Creative Arts Therapists (CAT) and those who are interested in the Healing Arts. Has listing of Art Therapists, Music Therapists, Dance Therapists, Movement Therapists Internationally.
Rating Your Psychotherapist - This artilce gives some helpful hint in finding a psychotherapist (i.e. art therapist, clinical social worker, dance therapist, music therapist, clinical psychologist, psychiatrist).
Woman's Treatment Center - Offers a unique body-mind approach to women's health, combining the expertise of a Urogynecologic Physical Therapist/Sex Therapist with a Psychotherapist/Sex Therapist. Located in New York. E-mail: Ross Lynn Tabisel & Ditza Katz
Intensive Programs for Adult
Survivors
Anacapa by the Sea - The RESOLUTIONS INTENSIVE integrates psychodrama, imagery, self-reflection, journaling, physical activity, psycho-education, and movement therapy in a safe environment of sharing and connecting with others to help you find a sense of balance and empowerment in your daily live.schedules or CONTACT US for further information and reservations.
Carolyn J. Braddock, MA, PC - Denver, CO and California, Training and consultations The Braddock body process in Denver and California. P.O. Box 260123, Lakewood, CO 80266-0123 Phone: (303) 985-7310 Fax: (303) 989-9813
The Top Ten Skills of
Survivors
© (1995) Aubrieta V. Hope
10. The ability to figure things out quickly. As children, we were given few clues of approaching danger. We had to learn how to recognize the warning signs, assess a situation accurately, and react quickly.
9. Persuasiveness. It takes more than physical agility to dodge abuse. We had to use our wits as well--sometimes that meant thinking fast and coming up with a clever excuse or argument. years of communicating with illogical or angry adults can really build your vocabulary!
8. Flexibility. To survive trauma and abuse, we had to be able to adapt to all kinds of difficult situations. Our childhoods didn't come with a clear-cut job description. Abusive adults act in unpredictable ways--we had to "roll with the punches".
7. Compassion. Not all victimized children grow up to be compassionate adults--some become abusers themselves. But those who break the cycle have a great capacity for empathy. We can relate to people who are in in need, because we've been there.
6. The ability to learn without being taught. Childhood trauma and abuse can interfere with a little person's ability to concentrate in school. And, abusive adults often sabotage the learning process by terrorizing, shaming or neglecting a child. Despite all these obstacles, somehow we managed to learn anyway.
5. Acute observation skills. As kids, many of us had to "have eyes in the back of our head". We learned how to watch without seeming to observe. No wonder so many of us identified with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys!
4. Creativity. When a child's environment is harsh, the rule of the jungle prevails: "only the fittest survive." Conditions like that require imagination.
3. Perceptiveness. Kids who live in a dangerous environment have to rely on "gut instinct". No one bothered to explain trouble to us. To protect ourselves, we developed the ability to read body language and listen to what's not being said.
2. Endurance. When life is frightening and painful, childhood is a long time. It can take 18 years to get out--most convicted felons have shorter sentences! Abused children develop an amazing capacity to withstand and outlast the unbearable.
1. Resourcefulness. (Enough said).
Early Sex in Teens May Be Cry for
Help
By Michael Smith, MD
Oct. 9, 2001 -- New research shows that young girls who experience psychological trauma during childhood, such as verbal, physical, or sexual abuse, are more likely to turn to sex at an earlier age -- and more risky sex at that.
Participating in risky sexual behavior at an early age can cause more harm in girls than boys, according to CDC researcher Susan D. Hillis and colleagues, who published their study in the September/October issue of Family Planning Perspectives.
Apart from the psychological effects that having sex at an early age can have, girls are more likely than boys to get a serious sexually transmitted disease, not to mention the fact that the girl is often left as the sole caretaker if she has a baby.
Hillis and fellow researchers asked over 5,000 adult women about trauma they suffered during childhood: sexual, physical or emotional abuse, having a mother who was beaten, or having a family member in the home who abused drugs or alcohol or engaged in criminal activity. The researchers then determined past sexual behavior during adolescence in these same women.
For each category that the women reported being exposed to in childhood, they were about twice as likely to have had intercourse by the age of 15 and to consider themselves at high risk of getting AIDS. In addition, they were two to three times more likely to have had at least 30 sexual partners.
Although this study was not designed to decipher why women who are traumatized during childhood are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior in adolescence and adulthood, the researchers do offer up one possibility:
"Having grown up in families unable to provide needed protection, such women may be unprepared to protect themselves and may underestimate the risks they take in their attempts to achieve intimacy," they write.
Is Women's Higher Depression Risk Due to
Abuse?
By Michael Smith, MD
Sept. 14, 2001 -- Women are twice as likely to suffer from depression than men, but until now, doctors have been unable to explain why.
In a new study, however, researchers found that women are more likely to be victims of violence during childhood and suggest that this likely accounts, at least in part, for more women having to seek treatment for depression.
Depression is a leading cause of illness in the U.S. Between 10%-25% of women will experience symptoms severe enough to warrant medical attention at some point in their lives, according to the researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Researchers led by Lauren A. Wise, MSc, studied more than 700 women aged 36 to 45, 300 of whom had depression. Her group found that those who reported having been a victim of violence in the past were more than twice as likely to have depression. Further, women who had been victims of both physical and sexual abuse were more than three times as likely to suffer depression.
The study is published in the Sept. 15 issue of the medical journal The Lancet.
What's both shocking and of great concern is that the researchers found that among all the women questioned, half said they either feared being abused or had actually been abused during childhood or adolescence. And, disturbingly, among these women, 95% had actually been victims of physical abuse.
The researchers say that their study highlights the importance of doctors asking women about past abuse. However, don't leave this completely up to your doctor. Take the first step, if necessary, and let your doctor know that you have been a victim of abuse -- sexual, physical, or emotional.
Letting your doctor know about this now may help either to identify early depression or possibly even prevent it in the future.
by Douglas Larsen
http://incestabuse.about.com/cs/safetyplans1/a/Whistleblower_p.htm
You Are Not Alone
In an abusive family, the family member who seeks help is often denounced by the rest of the family. They resent the fact that a family member went public with their secret, or "blew the whistle" on the problem. Thus the Whistleblower feels abandoned or ostracized. If this has happened to you, realize that you are not alone, and you did the right thing.
Preserving The Big Secret
If you are in an abusive family, it sometimes seems like you are living in a Faulkner novel. Your life is filled with tension and stress. And your family has a deep, dark secret that it will guard and keep at any cost.
Sometimes, just realizing this fact is a revelation to people who are being abused. The fact that abuse exists, whether it be physical, sexual, or emotional, is a Big Secret that dominates your family. Protecting this secret takes priority over everything else. If you are confused and bewildered by actions your family has taken, look at it from the point of view of the secret. Preserving the secret, and acting like everything is normal, is the most important thing to your family. If you realize this, then things your family has done probably make more sense.
In an abusive family, preserving the Big Secret is more important than family happiness, the health of a family member, financial success, religious faith, or almost anything else you can think of. Some of the most horrible or bizarre things that have happened in your family -- the things that confuse you the most -- can be explained by this fact.
In some families, this rule is spoken and understood by everyone. More often, however, it is never spoken. The Big Secret is so secret that family members don't even speak of it to each other. Preserving the secret is something you are just expected to know and participate in. The fact that you have received no information or training on it is considered irrelevant.
Obviously, this family dynamic makes no sense. The sub-rules to maintaining the Big Secret are so arbitrary and strange that many people who are immersed in that situation feel like they are going crazy.
Rest assured, you're not crazy. The abuse is crazy. Keeping the secret is crazy. Making sense of the whole situation is impossible.
Going For Help
If you need to know how to find help, look under "Related Resources" at the top and to the right of this column. My "Where To Find Help" article will tell you how to call your local Women's Crisis Center or Child Abuse Prevention Crisis Center, whichever one is most appropriate to your case. If you are an adult survivor of child abuse, still call the Child Abuse Center. This call could be one of the best calls you ever make.
Realize that Mandated Reporting laws differ from state to state. Generally speaking, if you tell the crisis center that a child is in danger, and if you give them details such as names and addresses, then the crisis center may be required by law to report that to authorities. If a child is involved, the thing to do is to ask about Mandated Reporter laws as soon as you call. The experts at the crisis center will explain the laws in your state, and help you remember what information to provide and what information to withhold so that you can stay in control. Then they can give you advice and offer resources while maintaining your anonymity.
If the people involved are over 18, then Mandated Reporter laws probably don't apply, even if someone was victimized as a child. If the victim/survivor is now an adult, and can report the incidents if s/he wants to, then it becomes a non-issue. (NOTE: Make sure you confirm this with the expert you call, to make sure that this is true in your state.) In this case, where only adults are involved, the crisis center makes your privacy their highest priority.
Family Reaction
OK, so you've gone for help, and the family secret is out. Depending on the case, the abuser may be arrested, or child protection workers are involved, or something similar. The expert at the crisis center can tell you what will happen with your specific case. Family reactions can be hard to predict, but I will share some case studies. I don't want these to scare you -- I hope they prepare you, and maybe help you understand why some family members react the way they do.
You Are Not Alone
In one case, a woman was beaten by her husband for forty years. Finally, she decided she'd had enough, and went to a women's center. The women's center helped her in many ways, including providing her with emotional support. She needed this support because her three children, now adults, refused to speak to her. Even though they knew perfectly well that their father was the abuser, even though they knew she was telling the truth, they had been raised to consider the Big Secret more important than anything else. Also, because they had grown up in an abusive household, they had sustained considerable emotional damage and their father held them in a tight emotional grip. One of the children was married, and was beating his own wife. Over time, the other two children reconciled with their mother, and received therapy for their emotional wounds. The mother and those two children are now happy and free of violence.
In another case, a sexually abused child grew up, and as an adult, pressed charges against her father for abusing her and the other children. To her surprise, the other children denied the charges, and her mother was especially vehement in her denial. Again, everyone had been raised to believe that maintaining the Big Secret was the most important thing. The mother, who knew that the charges were true, was faced with the question of, "How could you stand by and let these things happen to your children?" She had stood by. She had allowed it to happen. The only way she could deal with her guilt, the only way to avoid the label of "Horrible Mother," was to deny that it had ever happened.
Exposing the Big Secret, revealing the horrible things that happened, upsets the status quo and shines a spotlight on the family. The abuser, naturally, will deny the charges. For the rest of the family, it often feels easier and safer to say that the Whistleblower is lying. The alternative is to face up to the horrible emotional wounds that they have worked to cover up for decades. Men who were abused as boys, have an especially heavy burden of shame and guilt, and feel that if they admit they were abused, they have somehow forfeited their manhood. Obviously, this is not true, but remains as one of the more common unwritten family rules behind the Big Secret.
In most cases, the Whistleblower gets support and confirmation from at least one other family member. This is often a younger member who is still being abused, and is grateful for being saved.
Surviving As A Whistleblower
It takes an enormous amount of courage to try to end the abuse and get justice. After all, you were raised to keep the Big Secret too. Members of your family now accuse you of "ruining the family," or "lying to get attention." Because these charges come from family members, they are especially hurtful. So let's start with some basics.
Nobody -- nobody-- has the right to abuse you or anyone else.
Nobody -- nobody -- deserves to be abused in any way.
You have an absolute right to stop the abuse that is happening to you or anyone else. You have an absolute right to pursue healing and justice for the abuse that has happened.
The abuse is wrong. The abuser is wrong. People who protect the abuser are wrong. Nothing else. Nobody else.
You did not destroy the family by blowing the whistle. The abuser destroyed the family, every time he committed an act of abuse.
It is important to remember these basic points, because they will help you deal with the reaction from your family. Be sure to work closely with the experts from the crisis center, because one of their jobs is to help you deal with this sort of thing.
Sometimes the abuser will say he "feels betrayed" by the Whistleblower. Sometimes, resorting to Kindergarten logic, he will call the Whistleblower a "squealer." These are all attempts to muddy the issue, to hurt you, and to distract attention away from your charges and his actions.
You Are Not Alone
Hold on to your conviction that you deserve to live a life without violence, without abuse, and without pain. If someone is, or has, abused you, you have the right to pursue justice and healing.
Your local crisis center probably offers support groups you can join for free, where you can receive support and ratification of your feelings and actions. You can learn what others have done, and how they deal with similar circumstances. You can work with the experts to withstand the emotional attack of your family members, and keep focused on your drive to heal. If you ask them to, the crisis center can give you lists of qualified therapists, and give advice and solutions if money is a problem.
Abuse permeates our society, destroying thousands or millions of lives. Abuse, in any form, is simply bad. Working to stop it is a very good thing -- good for you, good for other victims, good for potential future victims, good for society. Never forget that Abuse is the evil. Taking action against it is good -- no matter what the abuser or his allies say.
By standing up for yourself, for blowing the whistle on abuse, you have taken a step of great courage and goodness. While it can be painful to be attacked as a Whistleblower, you can use this to your advantage. People who condemn you for your actions are abusers, or enablers of abusers. Do whatever you can to get them out of your life, or reduce their role in your life. People who congratulate you for your actions are people you probably ought to spend more time with.
You have a right to live free of violence, pain, fear and guilt. You have a right to live with peace in your soul, and to have some joy in life. This is possible, no matter how horribly you have been injured.
Congratulations on your courage, and best of luck as you start down the road toward emotional healing.
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Late Update: 01/27//2008