Sexual Abuse

A few weeks ago, a friend posted this article on facebook - http://preventconnect.org/2012/01/rape-more-common-than-smoking-in-the-us/

The article states that 18.3% of women over the age of 18 reported being sexually abused, while only 17.4% reported smoking.  I looked at the article and immediately became flush with anger. As my body heated up, I thought about two things:

1.     That statistic must be low.  I have had conversation after conversation with women who have been sexually abused in their lives.  In fact, I bet if I were to survey the women I know personally about sexual abuse, the results would be more like 25 – 30%.

2.     I have been told directly and given messages indirectly over the years that sexism is not a problem in the U.S. When I see these statistics and know that they are low, I want to scream, “How much proof do you need in order to start doing something about this?!!”

It was then that I realized I needed to tell my story.

When I was approximately 6 years old, my 12-year-old, male cousin sexually abused me.  We were at my house and all my cousins and sisters and I were playing in finished part of our basement, while the adults were upstairs. I remember them coming downstairs occasionally to check on the ice cream maker, which was churning quietly in the unfinished part of the basement.  

A bunch of us kids were playing a game of “truth, dare, double dare, promise or repeat”. Do you know this game? Everyone sits in a circle and when it’s your turn you pick someone else in the circle and ask them one of these 5 things.  For example, I might pick someone and say to them, “truth” and then ask them a question about their life.  When you’re as young as we were when playing the game, the game tends to go like this:

Me: “Jenny. Truth. . . what’s your favorite color?”

Jenny: “Yellow”

It tends to be simple and innocent. However, when it came to this older cousin’s turn, he dared me to let him "get his hand wet."  I remember feeling confused by what he meant, and then thought he must be saying that we would go together to the faucet and he would put his hand under it while I turned it on.  I worked out that understanding in my own head and then I agreed.

We went back to the corner of the unfinished part of the basement where there was a sink, far enough into the corner that the adults couldn’t see us if they came down the stairs.  Instead of moving his hand toward the sink, my cousin stuck it down my pants.  Now, I don’t remember the details of how it felt to have his hand down my pants or how long this lasted, but I do remember feeling immediately ashamed.   At 6 years of age, I instantly believed that it was my fault that he had done this to me because I had agreed to the dare.  I felt so dumb and ashamed that I didn’t tell anyone about it and I repressed it completely for a long time.

Growing up, I recognized my discomfort whenever I was around this cousin, but I did not know why I was so uncomfortable.  Fortunately, we only got together with his family once or twice a year. During those times, I usually stuck very close to my immediate family members and kept my distance from him.

It wasn’t until I was 17 or 18 that I began to remember the abuse.  It started coming back to me in visions and at first I thought my mind was creating something that did not actually happen. But the visions gradually became clearer and I began to remember.  During the summer after my senior year of high school, I told my best friends about it.  They were the first people I ever told and as I told them, I still felt ashamed for not knowing what “get my hand wet” meant and agreeing to the dare. I still felt like I should have known better.   And it was because of this shame that I largely kept silent about it for most of my adult life, only confiding in a few very close friends or those who confided in me about their sexual abuse.

It wasn’t only the shame that kept me silent, but also a fear of how it would impact my family and a false belief that it wasn’t a big enough deal to speak out.  Although this abuse is minor compared to the sexual abuse that many women I know have experienced, I have still been permanently impacted by it.  

bell hooks and other feminist scholars tell us that young girls are constantly receiving messages from the media, their families, and the other adults around them that they are not as valuable as men.  This sexual abuse served to reinforce some of those messages for me.  It reinforced the idea that I wasn't as smart, that I did not have as much power, and that I was not really human.  Because my cousin used my body to experiment on sexually, my value was reduced to that of an object.  The experience also reinforced a message that I was responsible for the things that other people did to me. That I caused the sexual abuse by agreeing to it.

I know now that it was not my fault and that I couldn't have known what was going to happen.  But, the shame and dehumanizing effects still sometimes surface in me and it's something I still need to heal from. Just recently I realized that in protecting my family members from the pain, I was neglecting to care for myself and help myself to heal.

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that one 12-year-old boy was a "bad kid".  My sexual abuse was not the fault of one kid.  He learned this behavior from the multitude of messages he received about girls. Abuse of any sort can never be tracked back to only an individual.  There are a myriad of ways that he could have received the message that it was ok to experiment sexually on little girls.  It's a societal problem and we can see evidence of that fact in the statistics and in the stories I hear from my female friends.

We all can contribute to changing the things that maintain a society where sexual abuse happens.  One of the ways we can do that is by no longer staying silent about our experiences with sexual abuse and other experiences with sexism.  I hope you’ll join me in raising our voices.