TRIGGER ALERT: please take care of yourself if conversations around childhood sexual abuse are triggering for you. It's a hard, complicated topic, and you get to handle it however you want. Any time the topic comes up in the news, you have the right to turn it off, avoid it, and refuse to engage. This post is about my own way of handling it, but my way or anyone else's way doesn't need to be your way.
I was already thinking about editing and republishing a post I wrote back in 2014 --about my response, as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, to the news cycle around the person I called FFD in the post (famous film director, it was Woody Allen). Then yesterday I saw the news about Alice Munro's daughter's public statement about her abuser, Alice's second husband, and it seemed like a sign.
This is not in any way intended to be a commentary or response to Andrea's news. Her story in many ways is similar to mine, and I am entirely on her side. I just want to support all victims in finding their own way to respond. When someone goes public with their story, as Andrea has--and if it helps her heal, it is the right choice for her-- there can be enormous pressure on people who have chosen not to go public.
So I just want to state something that doesn't always get said: you get to handle your response however you choose to do so. Don't let anyone, not a concerned family member, not an outraged friend or spouse, not even your therapist, tell you that you must do certain things in order to heal. Sometimes their response is about their need to be angry on your behalf, not about what is best for you.
----edited version of 2014 post below, to read the original, click here
If you've been around awhile, you may remember that I wrote a post a couple of years ago about what it was like to be a survivor of sexual abuse while all of that mess at UPenn was happening, and how difficult it was to have it thrown in your face all the time. Guess what? Thank you, Woody Allen, it's happening again (and now again with the Munro family).
But there are a few parallels between Dylan Farrow's story and my own history, so I've been re-thinking some of my own decisions. Is it necessary to go public to heal? My abuser was also a public person, although on a minor, local scale compared to Woody Allen. It's a difficult call to make.
If you say nothing, then (obviously) no one knows. There is a feeling that the perp is getting away with it. Or that you are letting your fear of confrontation slow down your healing.
But on the other hand, if you're a private person, making a public statement and causing a public scandal is its own kind of trauma. I'm a very private person, so I decided long ago that I would rather deal with my healing in private than make a big public statement about my abuse.
As Dylan has stated, it is enormously difficult to maintain your trust in your own perceptions, your own experience, when that experience is being denied again and again by the people around you, people who have no idea what happened, but who respect and admire the perpetrator.
Once I did finally tell my therapist about it, I was obsessed with my recovery for two or three years. I needed to be. That's how you work through it. There was a long time when I thought that the fact that I had been sexually abused as a child was the most important thing about me, the defining thing that made me who I am. But eventually as I worked with a therapist, attended a support group, and read and read and wrote and wrote, I began to heal.
At some point when I was in my late 30s, I realized one day that I hadn't thought about my abuse in weeks. It made me so happy. It still comes up --here I am, you know, typing this-- and every once in awhile it gives me a few really bad hours or even days. But it doesn't consume me anymore, and it sure as hell doesn't define who I am.
Besides my support group and my therapist, I did tell some people about it, but other than my immediate family, I never told anyone who knows my abuser. I was fairly sure I was his only victim. I was dealing with this as an adult, so I could rationally think through the fact that most abusers have a pattern, and the pattern of behavior he exhibited with me was something that almost certainly couldn't have happened with anyone else--and that's all I'm going to say about that. If I'd been worried that he was still abusing other people, maybe I would have decided differently.
I'm not sure I buy parts of the conversation about what it takes to heal from abuse, and I certainly don't buy "if you don't say anything, it means he got away with it." Someone who abuses a child is dealing with demons the rest of us can't even imagine--I know that because I could feel them. He didn't get away with anything.
For what it's worth, I did eventually confront him, and he absolutely, categorically denied that anything had ever happened between us. The confrontation was an enormously difficult thing to do, and it was entirely unsatisfying. My word against his word, my hazy memories against his firm denial.
If I had it to do over again knowing how it would have turned out, I'm not sure I would do it again. I guess the one benefit is that now I know what he would say--before I confronted him, I had no idea how he would respond. A part of me secretly hoped that he would break down, confess all, and feel terrible about it. But that didn't happen.
I think there is a script among some therapists: You need to do x, y and z to heal. You must confront your abuser, you must publicly speak your truth. But you know, that puts a lot of burden on the victim, especially if the victim is a private, introverted person. It makes you vulnerable to hate and backlash from people who have no idea what's going on, and it sets you up to be ridiculed and accused-in-return by your abuser. It also requires a big public exposure, which is in itself a form of punishment for an introverted person.
For me what has been more important is to learn to trust my own experience, my own knowledge of what happened to me. And to learn to send a silent, mental FUCK YOU to him whenever it comes up. I'm leaving justice and karma to someone else. That was difficult early on, but 2024 me can tell you: I almost never think about it any more. It comes up maybe once or twice a year--and that's not nothing, of course. It made a huge difference when he died several years ago. I am often glad he's gone, and maybe that's my own form of revenge.
If you're going through this, I hope you have help and good support, and someone you can talk to. And also I hope you feel empowered to heal in your own way, in whatever way seems good to you. Take your time deciding. You can always change your mind and go public later, but once you've done it, you can't go back.
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