Strength in Numbers? / What's The Matter, Pedophile Got Your Tongue?

We have all heard it said many times before.  There is strength in numbers.

I have my doubts.  

In many ways, many who have been beaten down and conditioned due to age, gender, sexual orientation, color etc., often do not have the strength, power or knowledge to stand up for themselves.

Many do not come forward because they fear the reaction by friends and family.  Will they be supported?  Will they be rejected?  Will they have friends or family after they confront the abuse?  

The matriarch of my paternal family is a woman who I know was sexually molested.  She joined the convent when she was 8.  This was many years ago and times were different.  So……first off I think while she said she had a calling, I believe she had a means of escape.  Her older sister had a true calling even though she was only 9 years old.  The older sister was a nun for I believe around 70 years until her death due to cancer.  The younger sister was a nun for 20 years.  She left and was a revered teacher for many years.  I once visited her when I was 16 years old or so.  I stayed for a long weekend.  She had a very nice stereo system and I changed the station to what was the same music but it was with vocals. It was the music of Frank Sinatra and that era.  Same music but my aunt would only listen to the instrumentals.   I was camped out in her spare room of her condo and she came in and seemed quite agitated.   She asked me if I could change the music back to what she had before.  I said I would and that was the end of that.  When I first began having memories of her brother being my pedophile she refused to speak about it.  NEVER.  Direct questions, answers to something I did not ask.  Brick Wall. 

From what little I have witnesses I am sure that she was a survivor before me.  But……..A pedophiles got her tongue.  There is just no speaking with people who refuse to speak with me.  She silenced her music and she silenced herself.  She is now 81 years old.  

There has been a long silence from my family in retaliation to my having to step back when I had no support in a volunteer project I was involved in.  Unfortunately the project lasted 20 years.  While it was sad that there was that long a separation from my mother, since I did not bond with her due to the molestation of my pedophile, I have for the last 5 years tried to reconnect with my "mother".  I call her by her first name as I did not bond with her.  She will not call me by a nickname she gave me or my new chosen name.  Bones of contention.  Basic respect is what I ask for.  Jumping through hoops is what is seemingly expected.  And of course I can not jump through the hoops when they are not presented to me.  

A friend of mine told me about an attack in Loring Park, MN many years ago.  It was an attack on gay men with baseball bats.  The two who had bats where greatly outnumbered but the gay men all ran away and did not try to defend themselves.  Had they been beaten down verbally, or physically before? 

Did they not have the means or support in the past?  

We have come a long way in some places and we need to come a lot farther in others.  

The numbers of child sexual abuse cases / incest survivors is staggering.   The number of people involved in the websites dealing with this epidemic seems to be a fairly high number but the people really speaking out about this epidemic is relatively small.  

I have tried to speak with my "family" for over 20 years about what I have survived and what was and most likely is still a part of the paternal side of my family and the next logical step is to come out.  

I will give them every opportunity to show their family support to me or I see no reason to continue to show them my family support to and for them.  

Tick Tock.

I will inform all parties (all family members) of my intention for family health and invite them to join in the discussion.   Would you join in a family discussion about sexual abuse in your family?!?

JUDGE NOT LEST YE BE JUDGED!

*Whats The Matter?  Pedophile Got Your Tongue?!?   

A Kind and Healing Response From healingfromsexualabuse.com

Dear Readers,  I have made comments on many websites and articles I read on the internet.
I rarely get any follow up mention or response but the following response from Amy Marschak very much warmed my heart.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am very sorry to hear that that happened to you.  Many people who are
survivors of sexual abuse feel like orphans, especially if their family
abused them in any way or if their family did not protect them.  If a
family protects the abuser they are not real family.  Real families love
and protect their children.  Siblings brought up in an unhealthy family
can also learn to become or support perpetrators or they can realize
that they want to be kind people and choose kindness and protecting
other children.

I wrote a post with some ideas on how to be your own parent called
"Surviving Mother's Day and the Holidays" at
http://www.healingfromsexualabuse.com/ideas-for-healing-from-abuse/surviving-mothers-day-and-the-holidays/

Also if you have not recently reached out to heal more you can try
calling 1-800-656-HOPE and get connected to your local rape crisis
center.  I write this because even though you had a terrible family of
origin does not mean that you need to feel like an orphan for the rest
of your life.  If you feel supported by the hotline, that is great, if
not hang up and try again later or reach out to other resources.  Keep
reaching out until you feel so supported in your life and so great in
your life that you no longer feel like an orphan.

You might also want to check out http://malesurvivor.org/ they also have
a conference coming up at the end of this month.  No one needs to deal
with sexual abuse alone.

Feel free to write back with any questions, updates or successes, it
helps give hope to other survivors.

Sincerely,

Amy Marschak

healingfromsexualabuse.com

Thank you Amy for such healing words of advice.  How very kind you are.  

I have this posting to show that reaching out and networking really do pay off.  You need to be connected with others and reach out to people such as Amy Marschak!    

A Parents Right?

           

This is a picture of Claude Rains.  He played Dr. Jaquith in the movie "Now, Voyager". 

It is one of my favorite movies.  I have written about this movie before.  I was thinking how as my parents really did try to do the best for me, they were not educated enough, whether school taught or in lives lessons, to make the right decisions for me.  I did get the nick name Bucky when I was very young as I always wanted to do things my way.  It had to do with the distrust I had for everyone in all the places were sexual molestation took place.  Here are some lines from that wonderful movie that depict a kind of parallel situation.  Details, of course very different but the mind set of the parent or parents is the same. 

Dr. Jaquith-My dear Mrs Vale, if you had deliberately and maliciously planned to destroy your child's life, you couldn't havoc done it more completely.  

Mrs. Vale- How?!  By exercising a mothers rights? 

Dr. Jaquith- A mothers rights?  Twaddle!  (rubbish)

A child has rights a person has rights, to discover their own mistakes , to make their own way, to 

grow and blossom in their won particular soil.  

My moto has always been, Let Children Be Children.  There are so many things children miss if they are used as sexual object.  There are also many things survivors of incest and child sexual abuse miss out on if they in turn are abandoned if they dare to speak of their survival of such atrocities! 

A parent never has the right to use their child for sex.  

Focus Away From The Poisoned Houses and Places of Molestation

I have been thinking about how the houses I grew up in were basically poison.

                                                 
This is not the house I grew up in.  This house is in the neighborhood I live in now.  It looks exactly like the house I was in the longest in my childhood.  The houses I grew up in were what I call the scenes of the crimes.  For some reason my father was attracted to infants and children so each house I lived in started out very nicely but quickly turned bad for me when I was molested in each house.  My parents and more so my mother had many places that I and my siblings would go to over the years.  There were many wedding dances, church picnics, parks and lakes and water-skiing, and camping and family gatherings.  There were very large gatherings at Christmas time and from any persons point of view if you saw all that was presented to me and my siblings you would think that we had it made!  Such generosity of activities and many sacrifices to make all that happen!  Some of us had it made but I was not one of those lucky ones.  The main foundation of your life is where you live.  If you have been violated in a building and forced to live in the place of many violations, that crushes you.  You really do not form a bond with siblings and certainly not your parents as one is violating you and the other trusts her husband explicitly!

At least I have those memories and snippets of relaxation so I try to focus on that part of my past memories.  I have to move beyond the major stresses that living in poisoned houses left me with and focus on the memories away from the poisoned houses.