What If Survivors Don’t Have Supportive Families?
Most survivors of s**ual abuse will never get the validation they deserve
There’s a scene in Richard Gadd’s phenomenal Netflix hit Baby Reindeer that caused me a lot of grief – it’s the scene where Richard’s character Donny tells his parents he was raped. Whilst Donny received the support and validation from his parents that all survivors of sexual abuse and assault should get, his story is a rare one. Most survivors, including myself, are either gaslit, not believed or met with stupid questions and assumptions such as “what was you wearing?” or “it could have been worse” or “it only happened once” to name a few.
Watching Donny be treated with such kindness had me crying myself to sleep as the teen in me asked herself – why didn’t that happen to me? What made me so undeserving of such gentleness and understanding at a time when I needed it most?
My family was not quite the safety net it was supposed to be; they became the catalyst for what was to come. I think drawing the emotionally reactive mum, the Peter Pan dad, the vulture aunts, the pervert grandfather, and a whole other host of shockingly bad tickets in the family lottery – does something to a person in the eyes of predators; I was the perfect bait for bad men since the chances of me turning to my family…
