Out of Fire
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Category Archives: abuse survivors
The no-bark collar
For years I labored under the illusion that child sexual abuse was rare and that the victims could find help, even if their parents were indifferent or the abusers.
Wrong and wrong.
More than half of all children are victims of sexual assault before they reach the age of 18.
Most if not all of us have known and/or been groomed by a sexual predator.
And yet…
The pressure to not talk about the known sexual predators among us is so strong that I frequently write posts and then refrain from publishing them.
I am an old woman and a mouthy one at that, but I have been told explicitly to shut up and shunned implicitly for speaking out against child sexual abuse.
The pressuring is convincing and effacing.
Imagine what it would do to a child.
The Children’s Crusade
Are they insane?!
That was my first and unwavering reaction to the very quiet news that tens of thousands of minors are being transported and dumped illegally on our southern border.
And the administration’s response is simply to let them stay?
There are several profound issues here–
Parental consent and supervision
Apparent lack of any interest in arresting the criminals capitalizing on and exploiting these minors
The disturbing implications of labeling a potentially felonious 16 or 17 year old “a child” and giving him a free pass to stay or…
The open and volatile question–are young children being trafficked across our borders with the tacit endorsement of the current?
Each of these minors are at risk for exploitation by their coyotes.
Good people do not smuggle children for profit.
And last of all–this is a huge issue. Why would it ever be less newsworthy than bad movies and celebrity rumors?
What is wrong with us that this does not matter?
Koystya Thyssen
This news story has an eery quality to it.
Because for several years now I have asked myself, what happens to children with attachment disorder when they grow up?
Nope. Kidnapping is not the answer. But the articles about the Thyssen family raise questions about what was not done.
If Koystya was known to sexual assault children or anyone, then by 22 he should have faced legal charges.
Did the family report him?
I cannot tell whether they did. But I know I did report my adopted RAD children when they committed felony crimes and was astonished to find the system did not want to prosecute and when pressed, took great pains to clear their records.
Did Koystya have a record? Had he been prosecuted in any way?
The crime here may be bigger than theft, bigger even than illegal captivity.
Koystya is a young man. What can be done for him? And what will happen if we do nothing at all?
Simple Rules
The day I found out my adopted son was a pedophile was a rough day.
It remains with me with the grim clarity of a plane crash.
As I moved past simple shock and devastation I sought advice from Jesus.
How do I do this?
His advice was simple–the truth will set you free.
We all have the right to tell the truth, and yet there is such an extreme pressure from other humans to hide it.
We are afraid to acknowledge our monsters. As though they will befriend us if we just pretend they are not real?
There is a dark side to adoption. Not only are we adopting parents sometimes a rum bunch, we also are trusted with children who have been profoundly changed by their own biographies.
And the result can be quite difficult to parse.
“Normal” people may not get it.
But Jesus has never been normal, so he does.
The injunction to let the truth set us free can be terrifying and lonely.
But truth is the seminal condition of heaven.
And what is heaven if not the cure? The safe haven? A place where hiding things will be impossible and unnecessary forever.
An old story for a new friend
I sat on the beat up couch and told my mil the story that had just unfolded with heartbreaking force–years of sexual abuse perpetrated by our adopted son Charles. Stopped as soon as it was uncovered but not soon enough to obviate years of damage and pain.
She looked stunned (of course) and managed something about God blessing our family.
At the time I thought, does she see what I cannot?
God has blessed me. God has blessed my family. But she did not know what she was talking about. She was a woman on the mainland of “normal” and I was drifting in the dinghy of “messed up life.”
Attachment disorder will do that to ya. It will put you out to sea with issues so devastating that Richard Parker starts to look like a tabby cat.
Love, if you hear adults, professionals, “experts,” tell you things that do not make sense, learn from my lonely voice.
Your children all have an equal right to live in peace, safety, and love. If one of those children threatens the safety of the others…
Yell loud at anyone who will listen. And don’t stop until you get the help you need.
You have a right to live free from the constant threat of harm.
And so do your wee ones.
When things break
Who can describe the sound?
The alarm of breaking china
Signals something–an ambulance
Or police car?
What if they did not come on time?
And the victim
Was trapped with
Both the criminal and the injury for years?
When you hear the sound
You think staccato things
Broken? Injury? Oh…broken injury
A redundancy of pain
In the face of a beautiful child
China round and smooth
Now lies in pieces
I can clean up pieces.
But I don’t
You and your sister do
Because I am trapped in a room
In a day
In a nightmare
Where a little girl believes
It is her fault
All her fault
When it is not
At all.
Matthew 25
First, you should know: I believe in a literal hell.
Not so much because the Bible alludes to it as because the world displays its existence in broken children, enslaved humans. Sudanese women getting whipped while men stand by and laugh.
There are pictures of hell within easy reach. To not believe in it is hubris.
And then there is the time I have spent there myself.
In the fall of 1996 I sat across the table from two small faces and watched them munch down the first of thousands of peanut butter sandwiches at our table.
We did this because of some rather poetic injunctions in the Bible about helping “orphans.” None more poetic than Jesus in Matthew 25.
He says “the righteous” will take in strangers and feed them peanut butter sandwiches. He says they will share of their safety, abundance, and nourishment with people who are the riskiest and least able to pay back such snacks and beverages.
He says they will give themselves. The cost is implicit in the risk.
But at the time it was just a couple of sandwiches. The humiliation, rejection, exposure, assault, and duplicity would take years to fully unravel.
The emotional cost remains steep.
And the words of Jesus still echo in my head–the least of these…you did unto me..
And if the least of these punch you in the stomach? Take your trust and abuse it?
The sorrow is a badly drawn tattoo along the sternum. And hell comes in the vertigo of watching those you cherish hurt.
Back to the table…
I must return to the table and find someone else hungry and thirsty and lowly like me.
It is a gift to know I am the least of these.
And your attention to my grief, a cup of clear water.
Thank you.
Beneath the mango tree…
We need pictures.
Pictures of the people we have lost.
And smells as well.
In May the mango trees would be in full leaf, but not fruit, months from the vinegary rot of dropped fruit- a condition you might never smell if the people who lived close to the tree were poor and hungry.
I used to live near mango trees. Despite what might get picked or eaten, dozens of mangos would fall to rot on the ground.
So to hang children on a mango tree. What does that mean? To hang them by their own clothes after they have been raped and brutalized?
To do all of this with family. To do it deliberately.
To lie in wait for girls to go to a field to relieve themselves.
To believe you will not face justice.
To almost not.
We need to see the tree. We need to see the broken girls. We need to face how close they are to our own.
Years ago I had a normal conversation with Charles after he talked to a pretty girl his age at a playground. I asked him about the girls he liked. He gave me a blurry answer except for this–
not Asian.
The not Asian has haunted me since I discovered that he abused children. He groomed us all. He was so very careful. Did he tell me that to deceive me? Did he tell me everything to deceive me?
We need a picture. A picture of grief. A picture of murdered children.
And another picture as well–
A picture into the mind of hate. The excuses, lusts, and prejudice that could effectively strip men of the last shreds of decency. The last vestiges of the soul.
The Hole in my Chest
Four years it’s been since I knew I had an invisible arrow lodged in my ribcage–what comes of adopting “damaged” children.
We are all damaged somehow. Who can repair us?
I knew the answer–arrow or no. I knew the power of my salvific God.
But the arrow remained.
Sometimes it would hurt me less. Sometimes more–the ache rising with the deep regret of the past or knowledge of our frailty.
And then I began to wakeboard.
I learned that having this thing I could throw myself at would keep down the ache of the wound. I had let my children down. I had lived with a costly illusion for years.
Who else would he harmed before he was done? And who can fix such a broken soul?
The arrow remained
Lodged in my chest.
Last week I fell wrong off a kicker. I confronted the fear that had kept my mind off the arrow, and landed in a fast tumble.
Panicked, my son said, but I knew it was just speed and my characteristic lack of control.
No one tells you how much it hurts to hit water fast.
I think it is a cartilage injury to my left chest cavity. It makes some things harder.
But the arrow in my chest
Joined by a real wound now
Seems less intractable
Less lonely
With each small, survivable ache
I remember
The spear lodged in His chest
Eternal wound/God of resurrection.
Carrying Light 