You don’t understand why it takes so long for victims of sexual violation to come forward. You think that passage of time weakens the credibility of the story. Listen to the reason it took so long to speak up.
Because the first time we told we were silenced.
“I was sitting on my bed, listening to the angry exchange in the bedroom across the hall. Mom was crying. Dad was yelling…Dad never yelled, but he was yelling now. My brother was yelling back. A blow-up. An angry argument. It was my fault. I didn’t really think about the fact that anger, arguments, blowups were common occurrence. All my 6 year old mind could think was that this time…this blow up….this angry argument…was my fault. Because I told. I told them that someone had touched me in the night. I could feel his fingers exploring my body even as the argument ensued. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was a dream. I don’t know. All I knew was I would never tell again.”
“When I told my mom what happened, she told me to be quiet about it. We don’t talk about those kinds of things. So, I didn’t tell anyone again.”
“My older brother was there when it happened. I looked at him, pleading with him to stop it…to make this person leave. He said three words that silenced me forever. “Just do it.”
“I told my youth pastor that a couple of the guys had groped me at camp. He acted like he cared…listened to my story. But I realized the day he raped me that his concern was a facade…a means of gaining access to my body.” Telling someone in authority should be an avenue to safety, bu tis often an avenue to re-victimization. Cops, pastors, teachers…those who should be protecting us often use our vulnerability to violate us again.
The interrogation process is grueling. Question after question. Repeat the story again. Every single last detail. The mind of the victim screams for relief. “I don’t want to relive this over and over again!! I don’t want it etched in my memory! I want to forget the details you are demanding I repeat over and over again!!”
Because guilt and shame are powerful and invisible muzzles.
“I remember the partially painted walls of the room, flat black….like death. I remember his breath in my face. I remember the anger….he couldn’t manage to force his adult penis into my 8 year old body. I felt bad that I was too small…if I weren’t so little, he wouldn’t be angry. If I weren’t so little, this whole thing would be done sooner and I could go to sleep and try to forget it. Searing pain that felt like I was being ripped into two coursed through my pelvis…and I felt guilty. It took over 30 years for me to finally acknowledge that I had been raped. Raped. I thought that maybe if I didn’t say the word, I wouldn’t have the stigma attached to me that the word brings. Maybe if I didn’t say it, the avalanche of shame wouldn’t bury me alive.”
“When he was done and climbed off my small pre-pubescent body, he sometimes gave me a quarter, or 35 cents. 35 cents for my soul. But, I wanted the money. It meant I could get a Hershey candy bar the next day. So…it was my fault. I was getting paid for the deed. And wanted the money. Guilt and shame washed over me every time I took that 35 cents from him. Still to this day, over 40 years later, there is a voice inside me that says it was my fault…because I took the money…35 measly little cents. If I hadn’t wanted the money…if I hadn’t taken the money…it wouldn’t have happened. So I kept quiet…because it was my fault anyway.”
Because you don’t believe others who speak up. You think that woman had ulterior motives…or this one’s story didn’t quite sound right…or it’s one word against another.
“I was molested by my father, a pastor, when I was a child. When I was in the youth group, several guys began assaulting me on the bus ride to youth camp. Then, a friend at my Christian college raped me. Now, I’m a stripper. If you’ve been meat all your life…if men are going to use you, touch you take possession of your body, why not get paid for it? But, I can just imagine the sympathy my dad gets at church back home. I can hear it now… “I can’t believe what she’s doing now. She knows better than that! After all, she was raised in the church, active in youth group and even went to a Christian college yet look how she turned out? It’s horrible how she has shamed him.” But none of them know, it all began the first day he touched me. But I can’t say that…I’m a stripper and he’s a pastor. Who’s going to believe me?”
Because you blame others who speak up.
“What was she wearing? Were her clothes were too tight or too short.”
“She was so flirtatious. She was asking for it.”
“She got herself into it. She should have known better.”
“There is no way anyone is touching me like that. I know how to take care of myself.”
So, we stay silent. We shut our mouths and deaden our souls to the pain. We bury the memory deep in the recesses of our minds, hoping they will never surface again. They do…in our nightmares and in every story of every other woman who does speak up. Your reaction to her story is internalized and imagined to be the reaction to our story.
So, we stay silent. We shut our mouths and deaden our souls to the pain. We stuff all the emotions and pain and fear and guilt and shame into a box inside our minds and refuse to open it again. But, we can’t live authentically with all that pain buried. We can’t really live at all with all that death buried inside.
Some do stay quiet for the rest of their lives. Some take all this stuff to the grave with them. Some never tell a soul about the deepest pain of their lives, the moment their soul was destroyed. Some live with the shame and guilt, the pain and the brokenness, for their entire lifetimes. Is that what you think is best?
Would you prefer we remain silent forever so you can go on believing it doesn’t happen to nice people? Would you like us to keep our mouths shut so that you don’t have to question your own prejudice as to who really wears the white hats? Would you rather we keep all this buried so you don’t have to ponder the very real possibility that some child or teen you know is right now being molested by her father, her pastor, the guys in her youth group, a teacher, a cousin…or someone? Would you rather we keep it all hidden?
We won’t. And I won’t apologize that we refuse to remain silent any longer.
We are finding our voice, hoping to empower others to find theirs.
We are telling our story, hoping to embolden others to tell theirs.
We are breaking the silence.
“If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three things to go exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive. The two most powerful words when we’re in a struggle: me too.” -Brene Brown
No more secrecy. No more silence. And hopefully, no more judgment.
But instead…Empathy. Empowerment. And the resultant freedom from shame.
#metoo