A Child's Story:Sexual Abuse

by Leroy Jones, M.A., LMHC click here to send mail

(poetry name Ryan Welwood)

Your Story

For those of us abused as children, the simple process of telling our stories can be enormously difficult, particularly in the early, emergency stage of recovery, when we are fighting a lifetime of silence. The forces of self-doubt, fear, disorientation, confusion, and shame, can keep us in the role of victim by pressuring us to deny we were ever victimized. The cultural norm of men being portrayed as dominant, powerful, often abusive but never abused, is no help at all to a man trying to heal from an abusive childhood. The role of women, as long suffering and protective of reputation and family at any cost, certainly is no easier. Family and friends, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes deliberately, may aid and abet the conspiracy of the superman and martyr woman stereotype. Yet the act of disclosure, of telling a safe person or persons the truth of our abuse, is the stepping stone which marks the beginning of recovery. Without that first step, our healing journey cannot begin. It is in that first step that the wonderful, awful power of truth is released. At that moment we have stopped running from ourselves. We have started the process of reclaiming the lives once stolen from us by our perpetrators.

It sounds like such a simple thing. Yet the phrase, "...simple, but not easy..." definitely applies here. Recalling and telling one's past should be a natural and easy thing, commonplace among friends, loved ones, and colleagues. It is one of the ways we know each other, build a sense of rootedness and connection. When children are trapped within secrets and lies, and are never shown a way out, they grow into adults without rootedness, without connection, without trust or a sense of their own reality. They may find ways to numb themselves against the reality of their past and the emptiness of their present. Examples are using addiction, promiscuity, hyper-sexuality, frigidity, co-dependence, eating disorders, excessive devotion to work, obsessions, compulsions, self injury, or even suicide. Its hard for many people to grasp what drives people into such extreme behaviors. In many instances, such behaviors are childhood survival techniques exaggerated to dangerous extremes.

In an abusive family, only the reality of the perpetrator(s) counts. An assertively expressed sense of self can be a fatal liability. Many children are explicitly threatened with death, if they don’t keep silent. Even without such threats, they depend upon adults for their continued existence. Knowing and speaking truth becomes enormously dangerous. Survival depends on quickly assessing and adapting to the dominant abuser's reality at any given time. In this context, it becomes apparent why truth-telling is complicated and difficult for a survivor striving to become a victor in their own life. Often, it seems like more pain and terror than it is worth. It can be difficult to remember why one started towards the truth in the first place. Yet there are compelling reasons to stick to the awkward, painful, liberating task of telling and re-telling one's truth.

One note here for any survivor, the first priority is staying alive long enough to recover. If the process of working through a trauma history drives a person deeper into addictions, risk taking, or other self-destructive behaviors, the priority has to be on recovery from the self-destruct mode of coping. This usually means finding the right human beings to reach out to, and ending the isolation which self-destruction thrives in. Once well connected with the resources to strengthen a commitment to life, the healing person can identify safe places, and people whom it is safe to talk about their history with. Both the process of putting away self-destruction and of sharing history, are immensely eye-opening. As an addict, attending recovery support groups, I was amazed at how many people shared my problem. I met people in recovery I never would have suspected of having a substance abuse problem. The same thing happened in recovery from childhood trauma. I found a brotherhood and sisterhood I never knew existed. The process of recovery was hard, but it was worth it.

My own therapist put it this way, ." The more you tell your story, the less it tells you." It was another way of saying, if I wanted to break the stranglehold my history had on my life, I needed to talk about the abuse, see the reaction of other people to it, to learn that my history was something that happened to me, not who I was. This was a hard thing to remember in the early stages, when even starting to talk about the molestation could cause physical symptoms of trembling, choking, gasping, rectal spasms, genital spasms, all with an overwhelming terror and involuntary excitement which I felt disgraced by. It was hard to accept that I must re-experience and transcend the sights, touches, tastes, pains, and emotions of being violated over and over again, by male and female, when I was between the ages of five and seven. Yet by this time, the flashbacks were coming whether I shared my story or not. The sight of a bathtub, the scent of mildewed cement, my own thoughts working against themselves, attempting to deny what had happened the most unlikely things could leave me curled up under the blankets, making sure every inch of my skin was covered, protected. Fortunately, this didn't happen at work, or when I was parenting my children. Sometimes it circled my consciousness like a vulture, as I was driving alone in my car, but never struck full force when I was behind the wheel.

Like many survivors, I was somehow able to compartmentalize my functioning, so that I was able to pass for "normal" in most situations, holding myself together until there was some privacy. With the help of my therapist, and later, members of my men's group, I was able to think of these experiences as the forgotten child part of myself telling me the true story I had buried in my mind for so long, keeping the secrets until I was strong enough to bear them, and share them. I could even ask myself questions, and my body would answer. ("She got you in the bathtub, too?" Spasm. "He was watching from the shadows in the cellar, he joined in later?" Foul taste. Choking.) In a strange way, it was as though I was a sort of hunter, seeking out the secrets which had been draining my vitality:

I was in the position of many survivors molested repeatedly in early childhood, of not remembering my own story for decades. The amnesia saved my sanity, as a child, but was shutting me out of a complete life as an adult. I had to learn my own story from myself, a few pieces at a time, and share it with trusted others, the same way. Writing and sketching in my journal was very helpful in the process. The morning that the visual flashes and physical spasms started, I started the journal at fever pitch. Previously, I had never been consistent with it, but now it was my lifeline. I wrote and drew as never before. I drew the human form with an accuracy I had never possessed, horrifyingly graphic depictions of incestuous acts. My words had power, rhythm, authenticity. It was as though my vision and poetic voice had been blindfolded and gagged all those years, and were now released to show and tell the truth.

Ironically, I was by profession an Expressive (creative arts) Therapist, belatedly realizing that my creative power had been bogged down for decades, it's energy sapped by denial of my past. To be able to draw the human body, I had to be able to look unblinkingly at my first experiences with male and female nakedness. To finally use the power of my voice, I needed to remember"...hot claws, around my throat, warning..." me to keep quiet.

It was the horror of those memories that kept them hidden safely out of sight for so long. Thirty-three years after the worst of the abuse stopped, and three years after I had stopped drinking and drugging, I had finally arrived at a point in my life when I could find safe places to remember, accept, and share my past. Until that process started, I was unaware many of my life choices were being made by the frightened, abused child that lived inside of me, the part of my self I had walled off from consciousness.

Before, by reaching out to Spirit, and to other people, I had found resources which were helping me to win the fight against addiction, on a daily basis. Now, I was becoming even more aware of the fight for my life, which I had not even acknowledged was in jeopardy. In childhood, I had learned the importance of avoiding getting too close to the wrong people. I had not learned very much about the importance of trusting the right people,

If there is any reason for speaking the truth of one's story, it is this: living in falsehood, though an absolutely necessary survival skill for children living with abusive caretakers, is horribly damaging spiritually. Treated shamefully by adults who refuse to feel the shamefulness of their behavior, such children take on shame which is not rightfully theirs. Instead of being able to know the beauty of their own souls, they believe the lie told to them, that they are bad, damaged, inherently defective, deserving of punishment. The adults charged with showing them the reflection of divine love, are cracked and warped mirrors. Faced with such mirrors, basing their beliefs about the Divine Being on their experience of damaged parents or other caretakers, children can form damaged images of themselves, and their Higher Power. This is the ultimate abuse, the abuse of spirit. It robs us of full intimacy, authenticity of self, unreserved giving and accepting of love.

When we speak truth, and live truth, and love truth too much to give it up, this is what we discover: We are worthy of love. No matter what happened to us, there is holiness in us, holiness which survives all things. The ability to give and receive love is our birthright. For our sakes, and the sakes of those children yet suffering, we must use that love to conquer the tyranny of child abuse. The world needs us, and the truth we bear. Truth can be a sword, and love a shield. Its time we picked them up.

poetry excerpts are from author's collection A VICTOR'S PSALM

Copyright © Leroy Jones, M.A., LMHC 1997 All Rights Reserved, contact author at Ryewelwood@aol.com (poetry name Ryan Welwood)

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This page was updated January 8, 1998