Friday, January 22, 2010

Address Child Sexual Abuse

I come from a Catholic backround but knew early on that that religion was not for me. I struggled for many years and searched out many paths to spirituality. I found that with all my questions the majority could be answered through a church of Gnositic Christianity. Gnostics believe that we choose our lessons before we come to this earthly plane and I know that for a fact because I remember going through the process. We all have to remember that GOD is perfect. There is a saying that states that "God does not give you more than you can handle". I do not believe that to be true. It gives us a the ability to blame God for what we are going through. NOT TRUE. We have to be accountable for everything in our lives because WE chose this. It SOUNDS crazy but as I said I remember the process. Why would anyone choose to be sexually abused? For one thing I have chalenged myself to work this all out through spirituality. For another reason and I believe this to be the key......What better way is there to understand what it is all about and ADDRESS IT than to experience it first hand. Now comes the diffecult part. In the many years that I have tried to ADDRESS CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE I have come up against nothing but brick walls from relatives, family members, countless professional organizations that touch on the subject of child sexaul abuse and .....well the list goes on. I started trying to do this when I was 26 years old and now I am 47 years old. From what I have seen there has been little progress in the fight for childs sexaul safety and the actual numbers seem to be growing at an alarming rate.

So....How do we address this issue to actually bring the numbers down?

For me I wrote a letter to the main person who sexaully abused me. I told him of all my memories starting when I was only months old to when I was 16 years old. The only thing that letter did was have the majority of my relitives turn their backs on me. I do come from a very large family and most of them have not spoken to me in over 20 years! OUCH.
But they just don't think clearly about this. What if someone sent you a letter stating they remember you doing X, Y and Z to them when you babysat them? There were memories of a certian building you took them to and details of what happened there. There was a room in the house you grew up in that an inappropriote sexual act took place. What if there were 10 pages of detailed memories of you and all of your involvement? If you were not a part of any of it how do you think you would react? With the letter I sent, the report I got is that the man I wrote this letter to cried for a very long time. It was reported back to me that no one had seen this man cry more than when he read my letter. If this man was not involved in all that I wrote I do not believe he would have cried at all! He would have, if he was a loving person try to get me some professional help and get to the bottem of my personal problems. But with that letter it uncovered a double life that he didn't want to deal with. It thrust into this persons face all the abuse that he inflicted over an almost 16 year period. Everything that happened was in a very quiet, hidden place and it still is! It turns out that I am the bad guy in all this and now I have to struggle to get people in my life that I can CALL family as my own family is not there.

I believe there is a great deal more sexual abuse out there than any "expert" would have any idea about. If you believe you are an expert in the field of child sexual abuse I would welcome an open discussion with you.

Question: How many people does it take to protect a phedophile?
Answer: How many family members does he/she have?

Question: How many people does it take to abandon a survivor of child sexual abuse?
Answer: How many relative does he/she have?

I truly belive this to be the case.

The people that need to be reached are the people who do not investigate fully what a child or young adult remembers. From what I know and what happened to me, the majority of people remember their abuse in their mid twenties. I remembered when I was 26 years old. When I wrote to my sexual abuser all I asked is if he still had the urge to sexually abuse children now and if he would just be honest with me. Honesty, thats all I asked for. I didn't want to bring the police into it. I didn't call lawyers, how could I prove it anyway? My abusers reaction to my letter pretty much proved it to me already but again when all his family saw the hurt and pain he was in...case closed. I was the evil one! I did contact my sisters and told them I would not trust him to watch their children. From what I know they did trust him and his wife. I do not know if he "got after them" as well. Only time will tell if this family legacy is continued.

I would like people to ask themselves, "What do you know?/ How do you feel about Child Sexual Abuse?"

Write it all down and reread what you have written.

Ask yourself also about pedophiles.

Again, "What do you know?/ How do you feel about pedophiles?

What would you do if a person came to you and confided that they had been sexually abused?

If a person DID come to you...answer this.

What did you do when a person DID come to you and confided that they had been sexually abused?

From what I know and from personal experiece speaking with others who were sexually abused the majority of people who seek out help from family are turned away and often times cut off on all levels. It sounds like a crazy statistic but I am part of the crowd turned away.

What if sexual actions upon a child were learned? I belive in most cases this is what happens. What if we just trace back to where that occured in the life of the person who now is attracted to children? Find the common denominater and trace it back as far as you can. Find out if the person in question is still attracted to children and seek out treatment. I belive that the majority of sexual preditors continue the cycle so that cycle has to stop. Regarding the main person who molested me, I was not interested in legal action. I was wanting to learn what happend to him. What could I do to help him address his past and ensure that this cycle stops with me and my trying to ADDRESS CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i will always remember how i felt and how i still feel, now 7 years later. i wish that i had been a smarter child, because in my head i knew it was wrong. its only just recantly that its started to impact my life. i too would hope that one day this wouldnt happen to anyone. when i think about it, i feel that if parants of young kids are informed on this at that they would talk to their own kids about it that it could make a difference. if your not told that its wrong how could you know? i still blame myself, my parents, and my teachers. i felt that if they would have explaind of the unfamiliar that it wouldnt have happened. and one thing i never did tell people is that it wasnt just one time, it was 3. and 2 were by family. it has to stop.

-hope18

Anonymous Survivor said...

If I had been on the ball I would have responded immediately to the survivor who left this message.

I pray this person has found some kind of support. I strongly feel that we all need to be involved with some kind of community.

What strikes me the most about this message outside the very sad content is that this person wrote of themselves with a small "i". We all need to use the CAPITAL and think of ourselves better.

My apologies that I totally dropped the ball on this one.