Understanding child sexual abuse
published: Sunday | October 12, 2008
Heather Little-White, PhD Contributor
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20081012/out/out7.html
I found this article from 4 years ago
and Thank God I found this one today - there should be daily or at least weekly articles....
Silent Families Perpetuate Sexual Abuse Of Children
Published: Tuesday | April 3, 201220
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120403/lead/lead2.html
Meanwhile back at the ranch - I have been thinking about this a lot - for years and years - One thing people need to understand is that your reaction to want to kill or castrate (not a bad idea lol) the perps is a normal and most likely ahealthy reaction
HOWEVER - One must consider that these same perps are people sons, daughters, grandfathers , uncles, aunts , mothers, brothers and sisters. Lets not forget they are also their teachers, bosses, counselors, preachers, deacons, doctors and whatever else you can think of.
Incest is often generational - it is also something we are taught to not speak about - "If I tell the family Daddy is getting in bed with me and doing those things - everyone will hate him"
My first cousin told us about her father doing this one day when she was drunk in her twenties - that was the first and last time she spoke about it to anyone.
She didnt want the family to hate our uncle.- instead she distanced herself from us - I have not seen her in 30 years - we were very close growing up - She was 16 when he started - she felt she was old enough to say NO - so she blamed herself - she is an alcoholic - She is in denial -
I wonder if she kept her daughter safe - the odds are strong that she may not have - Her daughter is a grown woman and I dont have the pleasure of knowing her -
This is one little example of how deep this problem runs
I know for me, I was able to speak out and stop the cycle - however it took a lot to get to this point. I was molested when I was 8 -9 by an Uncle - I buried the trauma and unknowingly lived in denial with PTSD until my late twenties. When my daughter was reaching the age it happened to me my memories started surfacing. I discovered that the cause of my childhood epilepsy was sexual trauma -
I spent the next ten years reading every book and article I could find on the subject. I went to psychologists, social workers and group therapy - I studied this subject for six solid years and wrote all of my papers about it - I became a specialist . I spoke out publicly about it to try and help others. I worked with victims and I worked with perps. I was obsessed with this issue. I didnt miss a "lifetime" movie and i resad every self help book that came off the press.
One day - when my daughter was just 15, she was working at a family run arcade on the beach were some of my friend's children also worked. We lived at the beach and we were all like one big happy family - I was good friends with the owner. I was a single mother and he was very good to my daughter. He taught her to drive and he was helping her research colleges. He was a professor at UMass. He would take us out to dinner and I would have him over to eat at our house. My daughter loved Doug - he was like a father to her - after two seasons she was going to be a manager her senior year.
Now, here I was with ten flipin years of therapy under my belt and ringggggggggggg ringgggggg ringgggggg - we get a call and we are told that some of the workers who were getting the arcade ready to close for the winter came across a box of video tapes. It turns out the owner - our good friend had been video taping the kids in the employee bathroom.
It hit headline news and the word was out in my daughters High School. The other kids who were on the tape were all summer kids so my daughter faced this battle alone at school. She was teased about it - can you imagine how painful that was for her?
At that point, as you can imagine, my world fell apart. All that training to protect people and I wss still having a perp to my house for dinner. I allowed and encouraged my daughter to work for a perp.
I have spent the last ten plus years recovering from recovery.....
I quit social work - I went as far away as I could from it. All that education , all that work. I thought I was abused in order to help others. Hell I couldnt even help my own daughter. They all say dont go into social work to heal from your own abuse - I refused to listen.
A few years later my daughter won a little law suit and guess what she did - She brought me to Jamaica. It was my first trip. She knew I had been wanting to go there for as long as I could remember.
I saw the ramifications of childhood sexual abuse all around me in Jamaica. I had to work to block it out. I am highly sensitive and can feel others pain - I hate it - Ive learned I can't block that out. The only thing I could do was smoke a fatty and try not to think about it.
Well - I shared this story to help teach people that there are soooooo many layers to this issue - a knee jerk reaction is "kill the buggers" but that really doesnt solve anything.
The only solution that I know of is to - talk and educate - talk and educate - keep this on the front burner not the back. People will try and kill the messenger - people do not want to deal with this subject -the people who are in denial themselves will fight the most.
Get up stand up - stand up for the fight