Category Archives: abuse victim

The Picture

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The poster shows familiar faces–Oprah, Ashley Judd, Tori Amos. There are people in it I did not know were sexual abuse survivors. I was a struck by the stories I did not know as the dozens of people who were survivors who weren’t on the poster.

Each made a choice to tell their story. Each has helped me to tell ours.

Victims become survivors when someone shows them they are not alone. What happened to them has happened to others.

We need to speak out.

To heal
To save others
To break the power of silence

Equality! And the wrong sides of history

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Let’s say, just hypothetically, that you arranged a legal transaction with a person who turned out to be immoral, abusive, felonious. Now suppose after years of attempting to do your best to hang on to the relationship you are forced into the difficult decision of protecting yourself–from abuse.

Now consider two potential wrinkles to this scenario:

You are a child and your “legal partner” is an adult.

Or….

You are a parent and your “legal partner” is a dangerous minor.

In the first scenario children are at the mercy of a legal system that does not want to intervene on their behalf. Why? Money, Oh, and maybe discomfort. But there is a third option–older people get significantly reduced sentences or no punishment at all for serious or deadly crimes against children because children do not have equal protection under the law.

They do not have equivalent civil rights.

And parents of mentally ill or abusive teens? Just try finding legal protection from abuse. It would make sense to simply call the police when a crime occurs, but parents are on their own if their abuser is their own child.

The law should be the arena of protection for a civilized society, but the murders of Thomas More and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were legal. We are not only as good as the laws we enact; we are only as just as the ones we choose to enforce.

Immoral laws, immoral judges, and myopic citizens make for a country where a baby can be shot in the face on the street and a distracted nation thinks it is a brave new world for futzing over the sexual practices of adults.

Oh, yeah…Brave New World.. Thank you, Mr. Huxley, for giving us all a prophetic heads up on how all this will end.

Hypothetical Family

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In the fall of 2009 our family as we knew it imploded in a fierce burst of awful. This was after years of maintenance strange and two years of ascending chaos as our adopted daughter burst forth into mental decline. Epic mental decline. Followed by the revelation that her biological brother was a pedophile. Then things got worse…

Actually, not worse. Safer and blindingly honest. Grandparents punished the victims and rewarded the perps. Uncles were cowards. Aunts were um, not helpful.

The nuclear families that my husband and I had been born into were destructive forces. I think that the stigma of being in a relationship with the victims of sexual abuse was too much for them to handle. They blamed the victims. It was like an acid bath. They said terrible things.

I drew a wall around us. There were months of fasting and debilitating heath problems. There was our children’s grief. There was the cost to our marriage. It was enough.

We skipped a wedding. We cut off our phone. We changed. Our family became orphaned not just from these near familial relations but also from a church we had served for years.

Our older children remember. Our young ones do not. They do not know their aunts or uncles, their grandmothers or grandfather. My son knows that my father died the year he was born. He knows that we live on a small island of ourselves. He sees these relationships played out on the children’s shows he watches. Dora has a cousin named Diego. Word Girl has a cool grandfather. Every so often one of us will refer to the missing uncle or grandmother he does not know. His eyes will light up as though we are discussing Christmas–I have a grandfather?!. He will ask incredulously.

Yes, I say.

Then his face grows serious. Oh, but he is not safe for us, right?

Right, I say, he is not safe.

The loneliness and loss in his face is the reminder: the ghost of hypothetical family.

Maldives Rape 2

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Upset?

First step–google “contact Maldives”

Email a few of these tourism sites and tell them you will NOT visit their lovely but despotic spot of sand until they protect young children from rape.

Next contact your representatives. Tell them you want the US to raise concern about this vicious and destructive law.

The Maldives survive on tourist dollars. Help send them a message–state sponsored terrorism of raped children is not compatible with happy tourists.

And…research western interests/resorts in the Maldives. Complain. It will take a lot of voices to help these girls. So agitate.

And please– spread the word.

Maldives Rape

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I remember missionaries who taught in the Maldives recounting a story about their students cheering the destruction of 9/11.

Now this: Maldives whips rape victims. They take girls who have been sexually abused and whip them 100 times.

It is hard to be a rape victim anywhere. But in the Maldives the perps are handed a carte blanche to abuse.

Poor little ones. If their stepdads don’t get them, the law will.

The First Day

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The first day was awful. Awful because it meant I failed my kids. Awful because we weren’t safe. Awful because I believed a lie about someone I loved. And the truth about him was awful.

The first day you find out your child has been sexually abused is also a very important day for good things–

The first day I knew my adopted son abused my child was the last day of her abuse. She has been safer because she told.

The first day is important because when you tell you save others from abuse. All kids deserve safety.

The first day you just aim to survive. And love your kid, because she needs to know how precious she is.

I asked my kids today what they would tell a kid on the first day. They said:

it is not your fault
It is good you told
This happens to a lot of kids
You are brave
And this won’t ruin your whole life, it won’t be your whole life.

The last one means a lot to me. It means we are surviving. We are living through this together.

And if we can, so can you

Sex and the Super Bowl

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So the Super Bowl is a magnet for sexual slavery and child abuse. What can you do about it?

1. Pray. God honors our prayers.

2. Contact the NFL. Tell them you are going to skip the commercials.

3. Contact the sponsors Let them know that you plan to watch the game but boycott their increasingly violent, sexualized ads.

4. Tell your friends. I did not even realize this was an issue until a friend posted it on a social media site.

5. Contact the teams directly. Tell them you are concerned about forced sexual slavery in New Orleans surrounding the Superbowl.

6. Contact the NOPD Ask what they plan to do to fight sex trafficking during this event.

With the exception of prayer (free and universal), most of this personal activism can be made through online email forms or social media.

Just imagine what it would look like if we all raised our concerns on Facebook or Twitter to say let’s stop the abuse of children and the vulnerable this year at the Super Bowl.

There is an awful lot of money at stake. But one child saved is worth every penny.

And please….spread the word.

Herod and John

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Mark 6:21-29 (NIV)
Finally the opportune time came. On his birthday Herod gave a banquet for his high officials and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. [22] When the daughter of Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests. The king said to the girl, “Ask me for anything you want, and I’ll give it to you.” [23] And he promised her with an oath, “Whatever you ask I will give you, up to half my kingdom.” [24] She went out and said to her mother, “What shall I ask for?” “The head of John the Baptist,” she answered. [25] At once the girl hurried in to the king with the request: “I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” [26] The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her. [27] So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John’s head. The man went, beheaded John in the prison, [28] and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother. [29] On hearing of this, John’s disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

Not only do I hate this story, it creeps me out that C loved this story.

After I found out that C abused my kids, I raked through the Bible, questioning God– why didn’t He address pedophiles directly? Then I realized: this is the story.

Herod had violated big ticket Mosaic rules when he poached Herodias from his brother.

Herodias is not a good mother. Salome performs an illicit and explicit dance for men. She is young and vulnerable and her mother is perpetuating the idea that her source of power is sexual. The end of this power is state-sponsored murder.

The tragedy is too much to bear. For Herodias to plot to murder the one man who wanted to raise and restore her value is so hard to face.

It is also hard knowing that Jesus, king of justice was in town, so close. Why didn’t he zap people? Free John?

But that is the point of the story: faith sees the rest of the story–thousands of us have mourned John the Baptist and faced this story as a reminder of real faith.

John’s life is secured to heaven. There is no chance for Herod. He is a man who made his own place secure in hell. He lived a wretched life and died a wretched death.

The Loneliness

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When I was 35 I arbitrarily decided I was getting old. I ran a lot that year and I had a baby–so I ran early in the morning and late at night. I struggled with some deep loneliness that year even though I was surrounded by people.

One person I prayed for all the time was a young person I loved who was also lonely–struggling with not being able to tell the truth about who he really was (or what he really loved?)

There was a song I ran to a lot that year by Yaz(oo) called Mr. Blue

To me the song is a placeholder for Jesus. He is Mr. Blue and he promises to abide with us in our wasted, bombed out lives.

The baby is now a beautiful girl. She was hurt terribly by her adopted brother. When I faced the story I was broken that it happened at all, and scared for her. I did not want her to struggle with the sadnesses associated with being hurt by someone you trusted.

So I opted to listen to Jesus–the truth would set us free.

It did.
Free from a church.
Free from some family.
Free from a dear friend or more…
Free from easy trust or blind acceptance.

Despite our efforts we remain free of these things. But that is the point–had we tried to hide what was done to our children we could have kept the appearance of normal and allowed our children to pay for it.

Or we could all be lonely together. Alone, that is, with Mr. Blue.

When We Look Away

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How could any sentient person suggest that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake?

When I see the pictures of the victims I know that their families are lost in a sea of grief and pain. Not only do they miss their loved ones, they are caught in a vicious web of the beautiful life taken and the bloody end.

Yes. The pictures are there–a crime scene where there should have been snack time. The reality of what it takes to rob a person of her life with a deadly spray of bullets.

If we really want to make our families safer we must face the bodies of our dead.

And perhaps face the cost of our pornography of violence.