KEEPING INCEST A SECRET EATS AT YOU & TEARS YOU APART

“I believe when you are attacked, either as a child or as an adult, that you are put in a position of choice. You can either allow it to consume you and watch it destroy you or you can fight against it. Only you can make yourself develop the courage to overcome it and talk about it openly. When you carry it as a secret it will eat at you and continue to tear you apart.” 

(Patricia A. McKnight, My Justice, 2011)

With these words, Patricia, one of the bravest women I know, brings the last few pages of her real life story of abuse and incest to a close. I have never met Patricia in person. We are friends on Facebook now, but my first encounter with her came when I was researching incest on YouTube and found her video that I shared in this earlier blog post here. As she gave a few details of the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her step-father for 12 years, I was shocked, but compelled to read her book, My Justice, available as an eBook at LULU.COM, or as a soft cover at Amazon and other online sites. 

As someone who is now writing her own story of incest, I had to know how she wrote her story and how much detail she provided. As a fellow survivor, I had to know about the reactions of her family, friends and others had to her terrible disclosures and most importantly, what have been the long-term effects of the dreadful abuse she suffered, not just at the hands of her father but several other abusers who took over where her step-father left off. 

My Justice wasn't an easy read, for me, not so much for the violence Patricia suffered (which was often-times horrific) but for what it said about her own mother's denial, ignorance, and lack of love and support for this poor child with the brilliant blue eyes. Throughout her 40 + years of abuse, Patricia tried time and again to win and hold onto her mother's love. She desperately wanted a good relationship with her mother, some acknowledgement that "Trecia" was indeed a good person to whom bad things had happened at the hands of her own husband. And her mother never, to this day, gave her that vital pleasure. This mother, for me, is as loathsome as the step-father. In the criminal justice system, people are charged, tried and convicted for aiding and abetting a crime. I can think of Patricia's mom in no other terms: she aided and abetted this ugly, abusive step-father who took her virginity by ramming a rifle up his step-daughter's vagina! Patricia's mother stood beside this monster till his death, but she never once stood up for or protected her daughter. For me, this is the saddest part of My Justice. 

The last few pages also drove home another ugly fact about incest when the family doesn't know the details, or when it does, turns a blind eye toward the truth. The accuser becomes the accused: the abuser is believed over the abused. What's wrong with this picture! In my Facebook group, SPEAK OUT FROM UNDER, it's heartbreaking to learn from other victims that this is the reaction in their families too. We rail against the honour killings in other cultures, but by insisting incest and child sexual abuse be covered up, hushed up, not talked about, how different are we? These children die too ... just more slowly. It may not be a physical death, but unless they can open up and someone believes them, they die mentally and spiritually. Death by the long term incarceration of silence as opposed to hanging. Which is worse?

And then there's the effects on the children of an abused parent. It's heart-breaking to read how Patricia's past has negatively affected her relationships with her daughters. Her past made Patricia ill-equipped to handle the ups and downs of motherhood, though it's obvious she loved her children more than herself. Sadly, they don't see it that way. They saw her constant searching for a kind, non-abusive male companion as whoring.  At one point, her own children were now calling her what her abuser had called her: a dirty, ugly whore. 

How Patricia has survived all this mental, physical, spiritual and sexual abuse is something only she knows. It's something each of us who have gone through similar, easier or worse, knows. We all have different levels of strength and resolve. Some of us can take more, some less. Some of us can come out from under enough to talk about it privately, or as Patricia and I am now doing, publicly.  But it's never easy and even after it's done, it's still fraught with anxiety, worry and insecurity that we are doing the right thing by talking about it at all. But silence is deadly. 

I thank Patricia for showing me the way with her book. While I had decided to write my own book before I'd ever heard of her, MY JUSTICE has given me the courage to continue writing. My conversations with Patricia via Facebook and private emails have shown me the beautiful, caring person she is and has always been. She is a classic example of what it's like when bad things happen to good people but she has come out on top and is now devoting her life to helping others who are suffering as she did. I urge you to not just read Patricia's book, but to join her newest site at PATRICIA MCKIGHT'S JUSTICE and to follow her blog at SURVIVOR'S JUSTICE.

Don't let YOUR secret "eat at you and continue to tear you apart." As Patricia says in the final line of her book:

“If your world is not what you want, then I hope that you can find the strength to survive and move forward away from the pain.”

COME OUT FROM UNDER!

SO IF IT'S PART OF A CULTURE, SEXUAL ABUSE IS OKAY, RIGHT?

 

This morning, the photo above was posted on Facebook by a contact of mine. I blinked twice, enlarged the picture, and my stomach turned. What the heck is this? Where was it taking place? And most of all, why were all the people, including children, standing around and ... smiling? Yes, smiling! What is pleasant about looking at a young boy being goaded on to do what this child is doing? And just who is that woman and that man? His parents? I couldn't believe my eyes. 

The poster's purpose was not, thank heaven, to titillate but to suggest that  the only thing children who are exposed to this kind of thing will learn is sexual misconduct, along with developing a very poor appreciation of a woman's role in society (what else is new!) and a confusing concept of their own purpose in life. I couldn't agree more. But then, after a barrage of responses from others as shocked as I was, came a response that suggested this was part of that culture and that they did not see it as something wrong. That commentator suggested this is not so much "sexual abuse" as "sexual misconduct". Be that as it may, is it okay? I think not!

Sadly, that same commentator, who incidentally did not condone what was happening in the photo but was trying to explain why it happens, indicated there was nothing anyone could do about it. This was a "culture thing". She said it's just like girls being stoned for bringing dishonour to the family in the middle east: it's a culture thing. Therefore, we can do nothing about it. Really?!

Saying we can do nothing about abuse of any kind is, for me,  condoning the abuse. Despite there being "nothing we can do", how gratifying it is to those of us outside those cultures to read that that Shafilea's parents were convicted for her death. (She had brought dishonour to the family... groan!) Would they have gotten their just desserts if her sister hadn't finally found the courage to speak up and tell the court what really happened? No, they would have gotten away with murder, just as those of us who suffered incest and sexual abuse for years allowed our violators, many of whom were parents and relatives, to get away with what they were doing. Remember, silence is consent.

As long as we adhere to the view that "there's nothing we can do about it" or are too afraid to face the horrid memories or too ashamed to tell others about it, we live under a rock of silence that buries us deeper year after year. We cannot and must not do that to ourselves. We must come OUT FROM UNDER and speak up, share our stories with the world. There are so many like us! Perhaps all they need is a nudge ... a nudge that comes from blogs like this one, or El's blog HERE to begin to open up and get that 10-ton rock off their chests. 

I'm doing it. You can too. Help others do for themselves what must be done if they are to move on and become whole again. On the upper right hand side of this blog I have posted a poll that asks the question: "What is holding you back from talking about your own incest story?" Multiple answers are allowed. This is not a contest. It's merely a poll. Your identity remains a secret. Tell us why you aren't COMING OUT FROM UNDER. Thanks for participating.

I'd also love to hear your comments on the photo above. Do you think "culture" justifies what you see there? 

NOW I GET IT! I HAVE SS - STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

Those who know the more intricate and ugly parts of the incestuous relationship between my father and me have often asked how come I didn't kill him. They don't understand how I can even talk about him now without going off the rails etc etc. Or sometimes, they just look at me funny and you know they are thinking "well it mustn't have been as bad as you say ... "

What little they know. And yet, I have asked myself the same questions over and over again and come up with no answers. Part of me always loved him even when I hated him. When he died of cancer in 1980, already a skeleton before he took his last breath, while I could not bring myself to cry, not then, not later, nonetheless I took his cold, already dead bony hand in mine and asked him sadly, almost lovingly, why he could never have been just a father to me. I had loved the father. I loathed the lover.

Today, as I read through another incest survivor's pain--filled blog, she several times mentioned "Stockholm Syndrome".  She wondered if she had it. Where she had shared some last letters she had exchanged with her father, she signed off with

Love you always,
me”

He had signed off similarly. And yet, he had molested her for years, physically abused his wife and the writer's brother most of their lives together, and all up, was one horrid person. Yet she said "Love you always". Does she have Stockholm Syndrome? You bet! Do I? Well now I know I do.

What is Stockholm Syndrome? Dr. Joseph M Carver who has written the 4-page article I found, does a far better and more comprehensive job of explaining it than I can ... and I also cannot condense 4 pages into a few sentences in a blog. Perhaps the shortest explanation is what he says in this paragraph:

In clinical practice, some of the most surprised and shocked individuals are those who have been involved in controlling and abusive relationships. When the relationship ends, they offer comments such as “I know what he’s done to me, but I still love him” 


 and 

While the situation doesn’t make sense from a social standpoint, does it make sense from a psychological viewpoint? The answer is — Yes!

That's the situation I found myself in, before, during and after the incestuous abuse ended when I was around 23. The abuse had started somewhere around the age of 11 - 12, slowly at first, then intensifying  over the period of about a year. Because my father was so physically violent, I was terrified of him, as was my mother. Even as an infant, I was afraid of him. His big leather strap had left welts on my bare backside many times by the age of 10. My face had been smashed into the hard kitchen table when I couldn't get my math questions right. My ears had been boxed till I could barely hear. I had been called "stupid" too many times to count. All my life with him, even at 23, I walked on eggshells around him all the time ever fearful of inciting his rage. And yet, part of me loved him. What's up with that? It made no sense. But now I see it was, without question, Stockholm Syndrome.

So how can this be? How can someone who brutalizes you mentally, physically, and sexually still have your love? Well there are many reasons and scenarios cited in that article above. You'll have to read it to see which applies to your situation. For me it was that he wasn't always horrible. In fact, many times he was downright nice, even nicer to me than my mom was. While he was doing the dirty, so to speak, he was also working hard to provide me with all my basic needs: food, clothing etc. If I got hurt, it was he who took care of the cuts and scrapes. If I was ill, he nursed me back to health. If I needed protection, he provided it. I knew I could count on him if I were in danger. All of this made it difficult to fully hate him. When he did these things for me, he was acting as my father. I loved the father in him.

Also, somewhere along the way, he confided in me about his own past: the heartbreak he felt losing his mother to TB when he was only 10; the beatings he suffered from his own abusive father; the agonies of  living in war camps during WW2 when you didn't know if you'd be alive tomorrow and you were starving while doing hard labour. And then there was his disappointment and anguish when he had gone to Australia, ahead of my mother and me, to set up a home for us after the war and word came to him that my mom was having an affair back in Germany. For the second time, a woman had broken his heart.

All this obviously created an empathy within me for the person I knew he was or could be when he wasn't being a predator and child molester. According to Dr. Carver, this is what is known as the "Small Kindness" shown to the victim by the abuser. When the abuser shows the victim small kindnesses, it gives the victim hope that things might improve and makes the victim feel the abuser is not "all bad".  When the abuser shares details of his/her own difficult past, revealing their own "soft side", the victim feels sorry for them and even wants to help them, believing that things might just change for the better over time. Of course, all the while the abuser is sharing these things, he/she is also, consciously or unconsciously manipulating the victim,  exxonerating himself or herself of all the blame for the situation. After all, he/she has been a victim too, right?

But all that said, now, years after his death, as I finally drum up the courage to share my story, I cannot and do not forgive him for what he did to me. I see no reason to excuse his actions. I have been horribly abused but that doesn't give me the right to abuse my own children. And he had no right to do what he did, regardless of his own story. Sadly, all I ever wanted from him was a father. He became more than that and I hated it. I realize that to this day I still suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. Do you? I'd love to hear your story and hope that by telling you mine bit by bit in this blog, you'll find the courage to tell me yours. The freedom that comes with sharing your story is worth the pain of telling it.