Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

We're re­turn­ing to child sex­u­al abuse for two rea­sons. First, a friend asked me, "Has any­one been spared?" and that thought gave my in­nards a ner­vous en­er­gy like no oth­er had. It im­pelled me to pose the ques­tion to those present in the hope of find­ing out that abuse was the ex­cep­tion. Atyp­i­cal­ly, I asked a no­tice­ably qui­et as­so­ciate if she'd es­caped and she sketched an awk­ward re­sponse like, "Yes. Well, on­ly if you count, like, touch­ing and them lit­tle things." Sec­ond­ly, I'm prompt­ed by a call I?re­ceived af­ter the col­umn which dealt with boys as abuse vic­tims. My rel­a­tive greet­ed me, say­ing, "I read yuh col­umn and I say­ing I sure is you yuh talk­ing about and yuh try­ing to cov­er it up as some­body else sto­ry." Let it be known: I have no com­pul­sion to hide any abuser's wrong­do­ing. I'm vo­cal be­cause of the men­tal in­jury that abuse cre­ates and be­cause I recog­nise it as a dif­fi­cult sub­ject-even as we're dis­cov­er­ing that more of us have been abused than not. In fact, this week I in­tend to be as open as pos­si­ble, hop­ing my young read­ers will be en­cour­aged to speak up. The mes­sage will be that "em­pow­er­ing your­self through tough sit­u­a­tions will trans­form you in­to an out­stand­ing per­son and help you to live a full life." They must know that through open­ness and coun­selling they can trans­form any in­jury or con­flict in­to pos­i­tive en­er­gy. I keep think­ing, al­so, that ac­cusato­ry and flip­pant at­ti­tudes con­tribute to peo­ple's coy­ness about ex­pos­ing abuse. I hope to en­cour­age oth­ers to hold their judg­ments un­til we can ap­proach the sub­ject sen­si­tive­ly.

Defin­ing abuse

Abuse can be phys­i­cal, men­tal, sex­u­al, ver­bal, child ex­ploita­tion, ne­glect and or, sub­stance abuse. It can hap­pen at home, school, with care­givers, or in pub­lic spaces, and in­cludes in­ci­dence of cy­ber-abuse. Sex­u­al abuse en­tails ac­tiv­i­ties by a par­ent or care­giv­er such as fondling a child's gen­i­tals/breasts, pen­e­tra­tion, rape, mo­lesta­tion, sodomy, in­cest, in­de­cent ex­po­sure, and ex­ploita­tion through pros­ti­tu­tion or porno­graph­ic ma­te­ri­als. It in­volves any sex­u­al act, im­plic­it, covert or overt, or any co­er­cion, in­duce­ment, or en­tice­ment in/to­wards the sim­u­la­tion of such acts. Abuse can stunt de­vel­op­ment, ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al growth. The in­jury deep­ens on the ba­sis of fac­tors like the child's age, the type/fre­quen­cy of the in­frac­tions, as well as the re­la­tion­ship with the abuser. It leaves life­time lac­er­a­tions on the psy­che.

Be­tray­al and guilt

Vic­tims nor­mal­ly feel be­trayed, since, in more in­stances, some­one in whom the care of the child had been en­trust­ed, ei­ther by fa­mil­ial re­la­tion­ship or by se­lect­ed care­giv­ing, does the vi­o­la­tion. Re­mark­ably, no par­ent I've asked has said they'll leave their child with a known abuser, yet many peo­ple we charge with over­see­ing our chil­dren are, in fact, the ones who ex­ploit them. Not mean­ing to cre­ate para­noia or hys­te­ria, but, as a par­ent, I'd rather as­sume that some­one in the house­hold, day­care, school, church or club is an abuser and would be­gin by prepar­ing my chil­dren teach­ing them what's un­ac­cept­able in the way peo­ple "show them af­fec­tion."

Parental vig­i­lance

Even the most vig­i­lant par­ent can't an­tic­i­pate and re­spond to every sin­gle need of a child. Watch­ful­ness could be­come a full-time job so chil­dren are en­trust­ed to the good judg­ment of adults. My par­ents did their best to raise us. My fa­ther was es­pe­cial­ly vig­i­lant in his con­duct with his six daugh­ters. In a small space, which housed us, he nev­er ven­tured in­to our bed­rooms and nev­er once ex­hib­it­ed any be­hav­iour that in­ter­fered with our per­cep­tion of the sa­cred bond be­tween fa­ther and daugh­ters. Be­ing the last of eight chil­dren, I got the timeli­est in­ter­ven­tion from my sis­ter Judy. We de­vel­oped a strong bond when she re­turned home from liv­ing at an old­er cousin's and that made it easy to tell her when her boyfriend at­tacked me.

My vil­lagers have al­ways placed nom­i­nal val­ue on ed­u­ca­tion. So I was the on­ly child whose par­ents en­sured I took Com­mon En­trance lessons. Af­ter class­es, I'd walk home alone for al­most two re­mote miles. One evening, that man, whom to­day I still see, tried to man­han­dle me, at a lone­ly spot just atop Be­har­ry Hill. He sent me to re­trieve a man­go he pelt­ed; then he pounced, pulling me in­to the bush­es. I es­caped run­ning, my chest burst­ing with fear. My moth­er con­front­ed his moth­er, telling her that when he ac­com­pa­nied me on the premise of go­ing to vis­it my sis­ter, he tried to rape me. His moth­er claimed he nev­er left home that day. He re­mains one of sev­er­al men I had to fight off be­fore my 11th birth­day. But I've got a healthy un­der­stand­ing that it was not my fault or wrong­do­ing and both he and I know, re­gard­less of his now-dead moth­er's de­fence, he did at­tempt to "hold me down." Child abuse is "a crime by law and in­hu­mane by na­ture." With the ap­pro­pri­ate, time­ly in­ter­ven­tion, heal­ing is pos­si­ble.

Here are some help­ful In­ter­net re­sources for the re­cov­er­ing abused: www.my­childther­a­pist.com www.buz­zle.com/ar­ti­cles/child-abuse