What Keeps Us from Speaking Up?
One of the primary reasons I have started a website and blog, other than wanting to stop the cycle of abuse in my own family, is to ensure the education of other victims and families in similar situations. If something does happen to me as a result of breaking my silence, I hope to show others a way out, even if it means learning from my mistakes.
A great first step when embarking on the journey to break the silence and end a cycle of abuse may very well be to examine the reasons why it is so hard for some folks to come forward and confront or report an abuser. Let’s explore our weaknesses as advocates.
90% of People Know the Abuser
Misplaced Loyalty
Most people are extremely loyal to individuals they perceive as friends & family, which often times are the very same people who need to be reported.
Shame
The fear of being judged is pretty deeply ingrained in our psyche. When it comes to appearances and reputations of close personal contacts and family members, people are pretty driven to protect each other…no matter how old we get.
As my brother, who coincidently has escaped the proximity of certain abusive kin, stated during a recent conversation with me, “I don’t want people to know the kind of crazy I come from.” We hide each other’s shameful behaviors as a matter of self-protection.
Potential Consequences
According to Committee for Children blog “Then & Now,” author Joan Cole Duffell, “One of the biggest gaps in changing the trajectory of sexual abuse is parents being afraid to speak up. Getting adults to do the right thing in the face of potentially serious social and legal consequences is tough, so it’s equally important to train adults to not just be receptive, but to take action.”
Joan also writes, “when a child has strong social-emotional skills, they have an even greater sense of personal agency to tell when something inappropriate has occurred.” Source: www.cfchildren.org
Lack of Appropriate Skills
I hypothesize, that when child sexual abuse occurs in the home, the parent or caretaker has likely been the victim of some type of abuse themselves. Therefore, no one has strong social-emotional skills to deal with the situation or to take action.
Like the tale of a boiling frog, a person who is raised in or gradually introduced to a negative/abusive environment will likely stay in it until they boil to death. They do not instantly leap out like a frog who is thrown into it, but learn to deal with the circumstances as an acceptance of their life as they know it.
Poverty
For many families in this type of situation, poverty adds to the problem. During National Crime Victims’ Rights Week in 2021, acting U.S. Attorney Jonathan A. Ophardt “noted that prosecutors frequently saw that some victims found it challenging to come forward because the victim is dependent, perhaps financially or emotionally, on an abuser.”
Financial dependence on an abuser keeps other adults from speaking against them or encouraging their children to do so.
Rationalization
As in my case for example, my sister was financially dependent on my attacker. So, even though my sister’s children were potentially at risk also, the adult in my life renationalized that since my sister’s children were boys, they would not be sexually abused as I was.
All of us proverbial frogs stayed in the pot of hot water and continued to boil as the temperature has slowly risen over the years. Now, forty years later, there are grandchildren at risk, some of them females.
Difficult and Unfavorable Choices
The particular part of family still dependent on my abuser’s income, how am I to speak up and potentially save them from abuse? The fear being that if I do, none of the others of us will be able to financially support or house them, the same dilemma my protector had when I came forward as a child.
Or even worse, I fear that the children will be taken away from their parents who are innocent of abusing them and it will rip their tiny family apart.
When it comes to abuse at home, fear and low income often work simultaneously to keep people from speaking up for good intentions. It is a fact of some peoples’ lives.
Repercussions
In my particular case for instance, there is also a fear of retribution. My attacker is known to have been in possession of explosives in the past and is on a government watch list. My life may literally be in danger for coming forward.
This leads me to believe that other victims of childhood sexual abuse are also threatened by other means of abuse, violence or harm in their homes that prevent them from coming forward when it is a family member involved.
There is a belief that no one can stop the abuser before it is too late to save us.
Naivety
When the protector of a child has had no protection from abuse themselves, they can see no other way or a way out. The responsible adult and the child, aka the “frogs,” will continue to “boil” together because they do not realize they are in danger.
Even if a person becomes aware that they are in essence boiling, there is a fear of what is outside of the pot if they leap out, and what will happen to all of the other frogs left in the pot, i.e. their family, if the frog leaves them behind in order to save themselves.
A Sense of Guilt
Often, a child may not directly speak up against an offender, but may offer “clues” in order to prompt questions. This way they are not technically “telling,” but answering questions, which absolves them of guilt.
I believe the same logic applies to adults, particularly if a person is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse themself. Beating around the bush in some manner rather than coming out straight forward absolves a person of the guilt for saying something so horrible against a person they are closely connected to or their family.
In fact, it seems like this is exactly what I am doing with these blog posts instead of directly reporting the man to the authorities. Perhaps recognition of this will help motivate me (and I hope others) into doing the right thing a little more quickly than I am.
The complexity of adult relationships makes getting to the core of an issue or concern even more difficult amongst grown-ups. Particularly those with weak social-emotional skills and individuals who may be being abused in some form themselves.
Fear of Not Being Believed
Lack of action by others when asked for help leads to the feeling of not being believed and further promotes silence amongst victims. As one who sought help from my abuser both as a child and as an adult in 2008 and never received it, I feel like I have not been believed. As such, I feel like I need to build a case before I come forward and prove I have been abused.
In my mind, this website and blog will provide evidence which I hope will convince others what I have been saying all along is true. I need help, my family needs help, or at least this particular branch of my family tree does.
Lack of Mandatory Reporters
There is no public pressure for relief from abuse or a call to action when sexual abuse happens and is reported amongst families, particularly low-income families who offer no financial gain for lawyers to get involved. Therefore, there is no justice.
Early on in my recovery from the psychotic break and subsequent hospitalization, my therapist suggested that I contact a lawyer and pursue some sort of civil judgement for what my abuser had done to me due to the fact that at that time, the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution had run out.
After going over a list of my assailant’s assets, the lawyer turned my case down.
Except in certain instances where the profession of an individual adult involved requires them to report sexual abuse, there are typically no mandatory reporters at home.
Threats
This can include a direct statement made by the abuser or their ally of retribution if someone comes forward, or as in my case, what an individual already knows about the abuser and their criminal history or propensity for violence.
Proximity
Less than 100 feet separate my abuser’s front door from mine.
While my neighbor may not be a threat to national security, due to our proximity, he is certainly a threat to my personal security, that of family, friends and neighbors. His physical presence is certainly a detriment to my peace of mind.
I have to pause and think about the neighbors of the Unabomber and Timothy McVeigh when they were found out.
Fear
Talking about child sexual abuse is hard, especially when you are physically close to the people involved. Speaking up is even more difficult when there is a threat involved, real or perceived, and fear retaliation.
Yes, you have seen fear listed more than once in this blog. Fear takes on many forms.
Promises
When I told my parent as a child that my abuser had “touched” me, my parent instructed me not to tell anyone. While I am certain they had their own fears in telling me this, this instruction was the same as a promise in my child mind.
It was a vow that I would break for many years.
The underlying causes for silence among adults do not vary significantly from those of a child when it comes to reporting childhood sexual abuse by a close personal contact, loyalty and fear ranking high among them.
One has to really believe that doing so is for the greater good, for the other frogs in the pot boiling along beside them or groups of frogs boiling in their own pots of hot water, and therefore outweighs any potential danger to them personally.
My hope in writing this blog is to at least help turn the temperature down for myself, my fellow frogs and our families. By understanding our own motivations and fears to remain silent versus speaking up, we can seek help to alleviate some of our greatest concerns.
We are building a community, one that wishes to break its silence and stop childhood sexual abuse. We have the resources, technology and the power to make changes. There is no need for us to suffer in silence any longer.
Fear is a strong motivator to maintain…or to break silence.
We will face these fears together and we will overcome them.
Thank you for reading. Please show your support, continue to educate yourself and others, and join in this battle against childhood sexual abuse, particularly as it occurs within the privacy of home. Sign up for my email list at survivorwriter.com and get the rest of the story.
