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sexual abuse

In a week and a half

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A week and a half ago (is that all it’s been?) the Trump tape came out. The next few days I was filled with anger. We took to social media, I mainly lived on Twitter, and we expressed our outrage and disgust. The debate followed and more anger followed. Everyone knows this story. This is nothing new.

And then this past week I still felt angry and fired up. But Friday night, I deflated. Maybe I just am not meant to be angry for so long. Maybe it was bound to happen no matter what. Maybe a balloon can only get so big before it’s bound to pop.

And I lost it. Not in a crazy way. Not in a meltdown way. But anger turned to tears and I cried. And periodically this weekend, my heart has felt heavy.

It’s great – truly – that this tape, and its results have inspired thousands of women to share their stories. Check the Twitter threads #whywomendontreport and #iamasurvivor. Look at what Kelly Oxford started, simply by inviting women to share their stories. People started talking and sharing stories that maybe they had never shared before. People are connecting and talking. And maybe, as a friend suggested, this is the beginning of a revolution.

But that doesn’t change that there are still so, so many girls and women that are in pain and hurting and I just want to hug them all. And where it gets me the most? That we can all share our stories, I can scream my stories from the rooftops over and over again – but girls are going to continue to be assaulted. People are going to continue to be abused. In talking, we’re collectively healing, but we’re not stopping the problem.

There’s so much that I want to DO. And I don’t know how to do it. I want to work on laws and policies around rape and assault. I want to end the backlog. I want to create more online support, particularly for children and adolescents who are too afraid or unable to tell their story to an adult in person – but with the advent of technology would seek out support online. I want to tell my story over and over again to anyone who wants to hear. I want to listen to anyone who needs to tell theirs. (Because if statistics are accurate – which they are, they’re statistics – there are a lot of people out there with stories.)

I am sick of people referring to someone sharing their story as “personal”. “She keeps sharing so much personal information,” or “Why is she telling the world about that – it’s personal.” Must I scream it until my throat is raw – it’s not personal. Nothing about it is personal. The events (which were crimes. Don’t lose sight of that.), the shame, the guilt, the fear – we made them ours, but they were never supposed to be ours. We don’t have to carry it anymore. It’s not personal. It had nothing to do with us.

The thing is, I don’t know what I can do or how to do it. But tonight, I can write. And it’s not new, and it’s not eloquent, and it’s not brilliant. And so be it.

The day that we talked about rape jokes

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One day this summer, staff of our oldest boys came up to me.

“Jen,” they said. “Can we do a group on rape comments? The sexual jokes keep coming and yesterday [Name] made a joke about what he would do to [Celebrity] if he found her drunk and passed out. They just don’t get that rape isn’t something to joke about. And I think they get so much of this from the internet. They just don’t understand.”

[For a little more context: these boys, besides being clueless adolescents, also happen to all have Asperger’s Syndrome, or related social-cognitive challenges.]

And so the following morning I sat with the group of 13-15-year-old boys.

“Remember a few weeks ago we talked about jokes?” I began.

“Yeah, like the deadly jokes?” one of them asked.

“How you can’t joke about suicide or religion or race,” another added.

“Right. And what did we say about sexual innuendo jokes?” I asked. We quickly reviewed how, at their age, innuendo exists, and it’s funny. It can be funny to look at a banana and think it looks like something else. It can be funny to hear someone say “I blew so hard,” when talking about blowing up a balloon. It’s okay. That’s expected. It just depends on who you share innuendo with, and when. You don’t make that type of joke with a staff member, or a teacher, or a parent.

I asked them if they knew of any other deadly topics that we hadn’t talked about, and after guesses like, “family” and “disabilities” (they are such good kids, SUCH good, sweet kids…), one of them guessed, “sex?” And another guessed, “rape?”

They all burst out laughing. As expected. But I waited, and then I asked them, “Who knows what the definition of rape is?”

As we began to walk down this path of conversation, laughter came in and out, but I held their gaze and I told them, “It’s okay. It’s an uncomfortable topic. People laugh when they feel awkward or uncomfortable. It’s okay. If you need to walk away or take a break, it’s okay.” They all stayed.

We talked about what rape is. We talked about where they hear rape comments (the internet, they said. One boy said, “Everything is inappropriate. It could be a video of a TREE on YouTube, and if you scroll down, there will be racist and sexist jokes and comments about sex.”).

Next we talked about the difference between sex jokes and rape jokes.

“While sex jokes are often “deadly”, meaning that they can have negative consequences depending on who you say them to, rape jokes are ALWAYS “deadly”, no matter who you make them with. And that’s because sex and rape are not the same thing.” I said.

“But they kind of are,” one boy said. “It’s the same actions.”

“I’m glad you brought that up,” I told him. “Does anyone know why people have sex?”

They laughed again.

“Horny!”

“Love!”

I told them they were right. “Does anyone know why someone rapes?”

Silence. And then,

“Attraction?”

“Lust?”

I looked at them and said: “A person rapes for one reason: power. When a person rapes someone, it isn’t about sex. It’s not about attractiveness.”

“Wait,” one boy said. “I get it. So even though the physical actions are similar, the intent is different.”

Another boy added, “I guess you never know what someone has been through, which is why you shouldn’t joke about it?”

Yes. Yes. Yes. Kids are so smart.

“Right.” I told them. And then I shared some statistics about sexual abuse and rape. I watched their eyes widen as they looked around the table, counting the number of boys and the number of women. “Wait….” one of them said. “So someone here might have had that happen to them?”

You just never know. You don’t take that chance.

We talked about how damaging it can be for someone to hear a joke about rape. We played out some scenarios, doing Social Behavior Mapping, to look at the effects of a rape comment. They talked about how maybe people would feel unsafe around them, might be worried that they were going to harm them, might think that they disrespected women and maybe wouldn’t want to be around them anymore. These were their ideas. Their thought processes. They got it.

We talked about the kind of people they want to be. We talked about what they can do if they hear a rape comment or joke. How they could be a bystander or not. How they can choose to laugh or not. How if they choose to laugh, what message it sends. They got it.

We could’ve skipped all this. We could’ve sat them down and said, “You will have a serious consequence if I hear one more of those comments.” We could’ve. But what would that have done? The thing is – we have to have these hard conversations. It’s okay if they laugh. It’s okay if they want to walk away. It’s okay. But we have to talk about it, because otherwise they don’t know. Otherwise they don’t have the space to ask the questions. Otherwise they go on doing what they’re doing because nobody has given them a reason or an opportunity to do otherwise.

So we talk. We have the conversations, and over and over again, we talk.

It’s time

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This has been a long time coming. It started with a whisper in the back of my brain and I wrote Musings. Then it grew to a hunger in my soul and I wrote Telling Stories. And now I just know: it’s time. It’s time to press publish and say:

I am a survivor.

Of sexual abuse. Of sexual assault.

And right now, statistically, 1 in 4 girls, and 1 in 5 women who reading this are going to say, whether in a whisper to themselves, or as a shout out loud: me too.

I walk by survivors every day. I talk to survivors every day. I just don’t know that I’m talking to them, and they don’t know that they’re talking to one too, because nobody is talking about it. Because of fear. Of shame.

Fear and shame that stopped me from speaking about it for years.

But I’m working through it. With some time, some healing, long conversations, a lot of love and compassion, and the guidance of some incredible women, my mindset is shifting. The deep dark secrets I’ve kept don’t have to be deep and dark. And they’re not secrets, they’re stories. Secrecy implies there’s a reason to keep quiet. And with this – there isn’t. And while nothing positive comes out of silence, a lot of positive comes from speaking.

I’m reframing.

Because:

Do people who have been hit by a car feel fear in sharing their story because they think they’ll be blamed? Do most victims of a crime sit and stew over telling friends about the crime that WAS COMMITTED AGAINST THEM because they think people will shame them and point a finger?

When someone is killed, it doesn’t matter if we say killed or murdered. Dead is dead. We don’t only consider it a crime if it was a gun and not a knife. It doesn’t matter if we call it robbery or burglary. We don’t tell someone who had their wallet stolen, “Well, you DID have it in your pocket where it was easy to grab. So you kind of asked for the thief to take it.” We don’t ask victims to defend their experience. Because it was a crime. A crime was committed against them.

This is no different.

People get bogged down in semantics. Was it rape? Sexual assault? Sexual abuse? Molestation? Do the words REALLY matter? Do the details REALLY matter? Does it REALLY matter to know who put what where, and when, and what was I wearing and was I drinking and how old was I and how old were they and were they male or female and how many times did it happen and what’s my favorite color and what color eyes do I have? Does it in any way change the fact that it was a crime, and it happened?

The details matter to me, because they’re my story. My memories. The words of the chapters of my life. But they don’t matter in that they don’t change the underlying truth.

And it’s not “personal”. Because what happened actually had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t my event or my choice, so there’s no reason I should have to hold it as my secret. No reason I should have to carry shame about it.

The point? The point of speaking is to stand in my truth. The point of speaking is to stop keeping a secret that never should’ve been a secret. The point is to release that which I no longer need to hold within. The point is that silence will do nothing for me or anyone else but speaking will. The point is for any of you who read this, sigh, and say, me too. The point is any little bit of courage that this gives another survivor.

And now – I am rooting down. Standing tall. Holding tight. And owning my story.

The Exceptions

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Trigger warning: this post references childhood sexual abuse. You decide, in this moment, if you want to read it, or not. If not – that’s okay. Because ultimately, above all, I blog for me.

I can’t stop thinking about it lately. From stories in the news, kids I work with, loved ones’ past experiences, memories creeping up for people…it’s everywhere. And I won’t say more than that. Nearly every story seems to have one common thread:  Everything is about context. There are a million exceptions to the rule.

“Nicole, remember how you learned about Stranger Danger? Don’t go with someone who tells you he has candy in his car, or who says he lost his dog and needs help finding it. Run and scream and go the other way.”
Nicole is 6 years old. She knows that. What she doesn’t know, and has never heard, is a rule for what to do when her violin teacher sometimes has her sit on his lap during her lesson. It doesn’t feel right and it’s uncomfortable. But he is not a Stranger. So it must be okay. Even though it feels wrong.

“Tommy, nobody except Mom and I, and your doctor, can touch your private parts.”
Ten-year-old Tommy has heard this a million times. And it’s his doctor who is touching his private parts. So, despite the fact that at age ten, he knows that the frequency and the way in which his doctor touches him is wrong, and doesn’t feel right at all, everyone says that doctors can touch him. So he doesn’t say a word.

“Phoebe, I get that you don’t want to see your dad for the weekend, but he’s your father. He has every right to see you. Just be a good girl, okay, and listen to what he says.”
And four-year-old Phoebe tries. She tries so hard to be a good girl, and to listen to what her father says, even when it involves him asking her to do things that make her cry and feel yucky. And she doesn’t tell her mom because he says not to. And she’s a good girl. She’s a good listener.

“Mommy? You know how Uncle Trevor gives me my bath when he visits and we play the splashing game and it is so fun and I love it? Well, Henry said that HIS uncle gives him a bath sometimes and he washes him to make him super duper clean, but Henry doesn’t like it because he said his uncle shouldn’t touch him down there like that. But it’s okay, right? Because Uncle Trevor washes me and I love Uncle Trevor and he is not hurting me. So it must be okay with Henry’s uncle, too. Because the rule is that uncles can help gives you baths and part of giving baths is washing down there.”
Ben’s mom  takes a deep breath. How is she supposed to explain to her five-year-old that rules come in a million shades of gray – and that the exact same situation that both he and his best friend are in, are actually totally different?

I just….

There are so many shades of gray. So many exceptions to the rule. And nobody can cover them all.

All we can do is hope. And try to teach our kids to trust their core, their gut. To teach them to listen to that voice inside of them, and if that voice ever says, This is wrong, to tell someone. To tell someone other than the person who is making that voice speak. And I think that’s a concept that kids of all ages can grasp, on some level, if it’s taught in an age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate way, and reinforced over and over again. Trust your core. Listen to that voice.