One in 6 children is sexually abused, 90% by someone they know and trust, within the family fold. I was one of those children. An author of five books, I now turn myself to raising awareness, breaking the silences, and sharing lived experiences of CSA (Child Sexual Abuse). We must speak and stop this. The time is now.
Today is Mothering Sunday here in the UK, so I dedicate this post to my mother, another survivor of sexual abuse perpetrated by her father.
Last week I was in Newcastle (UK), where I helped do a LOUDfence on the railings of St Mary’s Cathedral. As ever, the act of tying ribbons — colourful, fluttering — releases something purposeful in me and I think in others. The tags which are attached by the ribbons recount grief, and loss, and sorrow, and in some — betrayal. They also speak of support, validation, and the determination to make a difference in every walk of life. To say loudly: we hear you, we believe you, we are so sorry. And we want this never to happen again.
A new and powerful symbol in LOUDfence is the introduction of empty shoes: children’s, priests’, religious sisters’, laity’s. They all represent people who aren’t there, who can’t be, and people whose shoes we need to walk in, to be with, and hold close. Abuse is a destructive force. It rips us from those we might love, and from the roads we might have walked.
LOUDfence is making a difference. It’s reaching beyond countries, and beyond regions. Beyond silence and silencing. Victim survivors from every walk of life can see themselves — can feel themselves held. Know that they are seen too, in some cases by the very people who did them harm.
Change comes through a gathering which reaches critical mass, a tipping over into the clear sense that we MUST enact cultural change. On all fronts.
I’m so proud to be part of this movement. Next stop: West Virginia USA in April.
***
Antonia Sobocki (founder of LOUDfence UK) asked me to write a poem for the Newcastle LOUDfence. Here it is. I am not usually one for writing to commission – I tend to freeze up! – but this time I had the gift of a pair of baby shoes I had found in my mother’s belongings after her death. Here are the shoes, and here is the poem.
(apologies for the poor quality reproduction here — the clumsiness of WordPress!)
A couple of weekends ago, I went to Cardiff for my first LOUDfence. Founder and Director of LOUDfence UK Antonia Sobocki had invited me to help launch Wales’ LOUDfence movement.
As victim-survivors, we have come to expect emotional turmoil around Child Sexual Abuse: being misunderstood, not being heard, not being ‘seen’, not being believed. We have come to expect physical turmoil too: not feeling able to go someplace (church, for instance), or revisit any childhood location without fear, or even wear certain clothes, smell certain smells, hear certain sounds — without triggers which drive us far away from our lives.
In Cardiff, I was prepared to feel a lot of this turmoil. I was prepared to feel on the outside looking in. To feel at arm’s length from the huge ‘authority’ figure called the Church. I did not expect to be moved.
I am generally not a church-goer. However, my husband’s family are Catholic, we were married in a Catholic church, etc — and I feel comfortable with a Catholic mass insofar as hymns and actions and words go. At the last minute in Cardiff I was drafted in to do the first reading, from Ezekiel. This too was absolutely fine; I am used to finding a calm place in myself from which to read, in any environment really.
Archbishop Mark O’Toole took the mass. Antonia and I were in the front pew. And as he spoke, something started to let go in me. He was soft-spoken, sad — and offered a profound apology. He took responsibility for the failings in his beloved Church. He directly addressed survivors, many of whom (it turns out) were in the congregation. He made room for their – my – suffering. For their – my – trauma. He spoke about the betrayal all of us — whether abused in association with the Church or not — had undergone, perpetrated by the very people meant to take care of us. He acknowledged his own guilt too, by proxy, in perhaps not responding as he should have, not taking note of everything he needed to, and of not making it his responsibility to understand and enact change. He showed his own pain in the face of all of this.
I began to feel he was speaking to me. Directly to me. He was saying he was sorry. He was saying that he ‘saw’ me, saw all of us survivors. And I found myself crying almost uncontrollably. It was the first time in my life — my whole 45 years of living with the debris and breakages from five years of sexual abuse when I was a child — that anyone with any authority, part of any institution AT ALL, had apologised. Sorry. Had opened their hands palms upward in a gesture of responsibility, of grief, and reparation. We are sorry.
Through his humility and gentleness, Archbishop Mark brought the part of me which feels undeserving — the broken part, the abused part — back into the centre of the Church’s responsibilities and concerns. How many times have I felt I was writing/shouting/crying into a wind which blew it all right back into my face? How many times have I felt ignored? Hundreds of times, as have all survivors. The trauma of sexual abuse haunts us, and for some of us, it haunts us most particularly in the place where witnessing faith might help: the Church. And yet: this time our words and feelings were held there. Believed. Grieved for.
It is not in my nature to be loud about my experiences of abuse. Although I consider myself an activist, I am a fairly quiet one. My activism is through my writing, through the research and arts projects I participate in, and through being open and frank about my own experiences. Over time, my transparency in every aspect of my life has encouraged numerous people to disclose their own experiences of abuse to me. Part of what I hope to do is make room for conversations in contexts which have nothing to do with abuse. What matters is that people who confide in me know that they are safe. That I won’t shout about their abuse. That they can trust me. That we are in this together.
And for the first time in my life, two weeks ago I was welcomed into the centre of someone else’s openness and transparency. For the first time, I felt that our experiences as survivors were at the centre of things, not around the edges fighting hard to be heard. I felt respected and believed.
At the end of the mass, Archbishop Mark invited Antonia and I to process out of the church ahead of him and the rest of the clergy. I reached for Antonia’s hand. We walked out together.
It was one service, yes. One priest. One church. There is still so much to do in challenging and changing our cultures both from inside and outside our faith institutions. But for me — Cardiff was an enormously powerful beam of hope. Maybe change right through to our oldest and most revered institutions is actually possible. Some of us move more quietly than others — but we are all, each of us, centring survivors, sharing our stories, trying to protect children, and, step by step, one foot after the other, shifting cultures. We are all loud now.
Archbishop Mark’s homily begins at about 26 minutes in.
Over the weekend I discovered a note given to me by my Social Studies teacher when I was 14 (1978). I clearly remember the circumstances surrounding it: my father or my stepmother had told me that I had ‘illusions of grandeur’. I went to this teacher, Mrs G, upset. Ever since I could remember, I had harboured feelings of wanting to do something important, something meaningful. I don’t know why I apparently confided in my father or stepmother — but I do remember being very hurt by them. I felt belittled.
Mrs G however: as the note above shows, she believed in me. For my part, I adored her, absolutely adored her (as I did many teachers throughout my formal education, feeling handed between them like a baton in a relay race, for safe keeping). She was mischievous, an individualist, and taught me more about good essay writing than anyone else, before or since.
I must have kept this folded piece of paper because it helped. She believed that I could do something. And she would know. She would know, I thought, possibly more than my father or stepmother would. She was in the world in ways they weren’t — I sensed this, already.
Now though what strikes me about this note are the words at the end: ‘I am only a telephone call away if you need me.’
I have no memory of these words. No memory of that level of care at this age — the age at which I now know some of the most harrowing and damaging instances of sexual abuse occurred, seemingly relentlessly. I wonder what I thought about those words then? Would I have considered speaking with her? Would I have ever thought about phoning?
And why such a pointed offer of help? Did I show more than I think I did? Did she suspect anything?
I was a very high achiever throughout my formal education. I was not shy. I had friends. I was principled, political, and often revelled in being ‘a bit different’, particularly in terms of fashion. By age 15, in the days of mostly preppie wear, I wore patent leather heels, balloon black trousers, a thrifted double breasted red top, and put my hair in tiny braids so that it was all kinky the next day. Etc. Yet: I never misbehaved. I never actively rebelled.
I now know that I stuffed the sexual abuse I was experiencing into a box in my head — and slammed the lid down tight. I did this almost from the start, almost knowingly. I remember the gut response when my mind flitted to the abuse: pay attention to what you like: forget everything else, forget it. This separation of mind and body preserved my mental health for many years. Until it didn’t. I know this story is so familiar to so many.
Recently there’s been a bit of discussion on X (Twitter) about whether signs of abuse were missed in us survivors when we were being abused. And the more I think about it, the more I become confused. Maybe there was enough ‘unusual’ about me to make teachers think, or wonder? Certainly I was always hailed as ‘very mature’ for my age — not physically, but emotionally. I often felt out of step with peers. All the talk of boyfriends, crushes, and dates — I found excruciating and terrifying in equal measure. I wanted nothing to do with it. My overriding priorities were learning, writing, and ballet. Not much else mattered very often. This might have been interpreted as ‘mature’? Was it noticeable? Was this a ‘sign’?
The truth is, I never would have phoned Mrs G, although from here I fervently wish I had been able to. And there were other teachers, after her, who often seemed to be waiting for me to say something. But what? What?
What can children say about the dangers they live in? Precious little, I think, is the answer even now. So it’s up to teachers? But that can’t be right either, as even if something (what?) is ‘noticed’ — chances are high that a child will lie when asked directly. I am certain I would have.
There are so many variations of ‘signs’ of abuse — many that are in fact seen as ‘fine’ (good behaviour, quiet etc) — that there is no rulebook here. None of us can produce a definitive list. What’s clear however is that adults in the position to notice need to be given the training and the space to act; similarly, children need to hear and see that sexual abuse can enter conversation. If there had been a space to speak, or to write, about what was happening to me — one that wasn’t judgemental, that didn’t put me in a vulnerable place, that wouldn’t pity me or think less of me, one that I trusted to look after me — I might, might have found a way to send a clear message.
But there was no space for that then. Despite Mrs G, and despite all of the kind adults in my school life as the years progressed — the thought of mentioning anything to them about the abuse I experienced never, ever occurred to me. And indeed: no one made me feel safe enough so that I knew, if asked, I could answer honestly. So I never even got close.
I’m heartened by the work of the many survivor-centric organisations and charities now on the ground, going into schools, speaking with medical students, within the police, with churches of almost all denominations, scouts organisations, community leaders etc. This is the training and awareness which is so desperately needed. I pray that the enormous differences they are making hold fast. I pray for a future in which a teacher, nurse, doctor, pastor, priest, vicar, scout leader — neighbour, friend, anyone — feels empowered to ask, carefully and with respect, knowing there is support available: is something happening? And for a future too where another child like me (like so many of us) might go back to Mrs G and be able to say: something is happening.
This extract from Leaving Locust Avenue follows what happened when I decided to move schools at 17, at the beginning of my senior year of high school. No one asked much, but looking back — I wonder if at least a couple of them wished for the space and permission to do so.
All I really remember about the decision to go is getting in the car and driving. I cannot remember whether I have permission. But I get in the car and drive a few roads, some out by S’s house which I love, in the country, between mountains.
I find myself at the shopping area close to our house. The strip mall, which used to have that A & P, a department store, a hairdresser. And a phone booth.
I park the car next to the phone booth. I phone, incredibly it seems now, my therapist. I have a plan. When I tell her, I sense her relief. I sense – oh as I have in so many situations, so many times over these years – a woman urging another woman to go, to run, to escape. She approves. She agrees. And I allow myself – for a millisecond of a moment only, so caught up in my own moment of course – to think that she too has been trapped by [my father].
Even now I am astonished that I know this from the conversation. But I do. And it gives me the impetus to phone my mother.
I phone her right there and then. I ask her if I can come live with her. I say I am ready. That I must, must leave. And I must leave now. She, to her credit, rises to the occasion. She asks me, once, if I am sure; I only have one more year in Blacksburg after all – am I sure? I say I am sure. And then – perhaps like my father 11 years earlier – she agrees with no hesitation, no consultation. She will have me.
I know I am going. I am 17 years old, and am a month into my senior year of high school. I am placed second in my graduating class, the salutatorian, only a whisker away from valedictorian. And I am leaving.
*
My childhood friend Val is perhaps the most upset about me going. I remember she starts crying, right in the classroom. She wants to know why. And I have my answer, the one I use over and over ‘I just want to live with my mother before going away to university.’
I do not realise that Val still cares about me. I do not realise, if I’m honest, that anyone except Alice really cares. Yet my going disturbs the surface, and numerous people – students, teachers – seek me out to wish me well, and ask questions. The Principal of the school asks me into his office to see if he can do anything to make me stay, and if everything is okay. To which I say No, and Yes.
Of course it is Mrs A [my English teacher] I dread leaving the most. But again, to her credit, she doesn’t try to convince me otherwise. She wishes me all the best. She tells I will succeed in everything I do. She believes in me.
I encounter a curious mix of sorrow and knowingness when I announce I’m leaving. Looking back, I think that the sorrow mainly comes from those who cannot imagine how this has happened. Whereas the knowingness, the unspoken, rises through the eyes of those who may know something or suspect.
From here, I see our joint powerlessness. I see how mistreatment, how abuse, is too often communicated in silence, implied. How it is up to the women to get away, how other women must urge them silently. How they are brave, deserting everything. Leaving everything – their children, their lives, their homes – behind. Forced to cut and run.
Whereas really it’s my father who needed to leave. Really he should have been arrested. And I should have been able to stay put, and never lost [my sister] and [my brother], the heartbreak of my life. And they in turn would never have had to carry their own complex and heart-breaking confusions – with no help from anyone — around for so many years.
It has been SO LONG since I’ve been here. As with everything, then the guilt of NOT doing something accumulates, and then there’s so much water under the bridge that… the task becomes impossible. Or feels it.
However. It is not like me to stop something or give up. There are lots of reasons — some of which I’ll post about here — why I keep repeating this to myself. Never give up.
First: the really fab news that I hinted about last time. Way back in March of this year, 30,000 words from my memoir about Child Sexual Abuse (Learning to Survive) won Highly Commended in the Bridport Memoir Awards. Soon after, I discovered that there were about 1,000 entries. Top 5 out of 1,000 entries. It has been such a joy, a real lift, to have my work validated and valued in such a competition. One of the HUGE blocks to getting stories of CSA out is the resistance of the ‘mainstream’ (whatever form that takes — whether media, arts, medicine) to hearing about these stories. Those of you who circulate in this world of survivors know all too well: the ‘mainstream’ is hugely more likely to draw back than to bear witness, or listen, or support. The ‘mainstream’, generally, turns away.
My prize in the Bridport felt like the beginning of something — at last! I have been struggling for two years to get a bit of purchase for Learning to Survive. My frustration has always been: I have published five books, one of them prize winning, and my work has been collected in various high profile national anthologies, published in newspapers etc. So WHY — why?! — is this book, a book I know is worthwhile and sound and well-written — staggering through almost universal rejection from literally dozens of potential outlets? The Bridport win gave me hope that the book may now be championed — despite the lack of precedent in the publishing world for stories such as mine (as OURS) — hope that someone may be willing now to take a risk.
Second, and alas, it’s clear now that the Bridport accolade has made little difference to the book’s future, at least in the UK. As a result of the Bridport however I have met some wonderful people, people cheering me on, people who — alongside me — are shocked that I’ve not been able to place the book. I’ve also been in touch with some of the judges/readers of the Bridport for advice from within ‘the industry’: from each, the writing is lauded (more than my writing has ever been lauded before, just for comparison), the subject acknowledged as important and vital, my handling of it ‘just right’…. but these effusive compliments are mitigated with ‘the subject is too dark to sell’, ‘maybe child sexual abuse has been done to death’ — etc. In other words: great writing, but the material itself is unpalatable. It’s scary. It’s ‘too much’ for readers. Not worth the risk for publishers. I want to scream what about memoirs about the Holocaust? What about memoirs about domestic violence? Murder? Grief? They exist, and they are ‘dark subjects’; they are horrifying and difficult. Yet somewhere along the line, someone has considered them important enough to be in circulation. Important enough to learn about, to witness. Not so Child Sexual Abuse, clearly.
I have indulged in a couple of threads on Twitter around these responses. Here, in short:
1)CSA affects at least 15% of the population, of ALL adults and children. THERE’S your readership publishers, not to speak of the millions of people who love, support, and care for survivors. It’s a huge audience, ready-made, an audience in dire need of stories which speak to their experiences. Which break the awful silence and shame, which raise social awareness. Which comfort and support, which tell them they are not alone, that there is a future for them and all of us.
2)Child Sexual Abuse has absolutely NOT been ‘done to death’. What we do hear a lot about are ‘serial’ pedophiles such as Savile, Maxwell, Epstein. What we do hear about are ‘monster narratives’ about ‘evil people’. We read about abuse that happens ‘over there’, that is NOT in our lives. We do not read about intra-familial CSA, or CSA perpetrated by someone the child knows. Which makes up 90% of all CSA. We do not read about abusive fathers, uncles, grandfathers, brothers, babysitters, boyfriends, carers. We do not read about the most common form of CSA, that which happens in our lives, right under our noses.
3)There is a clear moral imperative to publicise these stories. Given that there are millions of survivors in the UK alone, and thousands of millions of survivors around the world. Given that these victims and survivors are — wholesale, forcibly — drowning in silence. Given that most survivors of ‘everyday’ CSA believe that they are pretty much the only victims of this in the world. That they are alone in their trauma and loss and shame. Given all this, survivors surely deserve better. There is only one literary memoir published in the UK about CSA (by Clare Best), and only a very few in Europe and Australia. We deserve more. We deserve to be seen. We deserve to be included in the long list of wrongs which need righting in our world.
4) Finally: it’s insulting to label anyone’s suffering as ‘too dark’ for general consumption. Particularly if that suffering is widespread, or ultimately turned toward doing good. My book and writings, and the work of so many other survivors, exist with the explicit aims of relieving suffering and of prevention. Of reaching out, empowering, and bringing strength and hope. All of the abuse in my book is finished by 30,000 words in. The rest of the book — 35,000 words — is about survival, hope, and living.
***
I could go on. Fortunately, as you can see, my anger has returned. Anger turned inward is sadness and depression, and I admit that I have been battling these consequences over the last couple of months. I am silenced AGAIN. We are silenced AGAIN. It’s painful, re-traumatising, and heartbreaking.
I am holding on to the belief that things may be shifting. Slowly, granted, but shifting. There are hundreds of us doing work around CSA in the UK alone, and much of it makes forays into the mainstream. Recently, Channel 4 aired a documentary which told Emily’s story: her father was her abuser. Recently too, Nicole Caroli featured in the Metro newspaper — telling her story and raising awareness. (Nicole also runs an excellent blog, here.) Sophie Olson’s (The Flying Child’s) ‘Last Taboo’ Radio 4 programme, aired nearly two years ago, continues to break down barriers, as does her work with schools, midwives, social workers, etc (Sophie’s blog is here). The glorious and indefatigable Viv Gordon continues her moving performances and showcasing of fellow survivors, championing the necessity of their work. Elizabeth Shane publishes poetry and devotes her time to supporting and speaking up for survivors. Jane Chevous at Survivors Voices and Antonia Sobocki of LOUDfence (also at Survivors Voices) are frankly astonishing in their breadth and dedication to raising awareness and holding others to account in the world of CSA.
There are many more. We are forces to be reckoned with, and there are lots of us.
Many activist/survivors are old hands at this. They know the battles and are not giving up. I’m very new here. And the stark nature of these battles has hit hard. The reality that CSA is drenched in stigma and silence, at every turn, regardless of external validation and the accompanying shocking statistics around CSA — still, in the 21st century! — has hit hard. The fact that my book seems not to stand a chance in this country due to social attitudes toward something that has nothing to do with me — that was not my fault, that I did not choose, that I wish more than anything had never happened — has hit hard. Once again, I’ve had to face that none of this is my fault. Yet I still suffer the consequences.
Saying all this: I cannot give up. I won’t give up. I am able to speak when so many cannot. It really is that simple. I’m back on the horse, with my sights now turned to the US market. I welcome any tips, advice, leads. Something has to give.
Obviously, mine centred around my memoir LEARNING TO SURVIVE, and my connected work to do with Child Sexual Abuse.
It was such a very good thing to do. Lucinda was wonderful, the audience was palpably attentive — and I felt like some of what fires me in this world for the last couple of years took flight.
The interview is necessarily general in some ways, but does bear witness to some of my own experiences, my own lived experience, the nature of it, and touches on the beginnings of how this all has impacted my life, and lives of so many others.
I want to thank everyone who came, and everyone who shared their own experiences then and subsequently. We are in this together. We are making progress and raising awareness. Together.
The link to the interview on the Goldster page is here. It is free to access. Scroll down to the ‘most recent’ programme.
It has taken me a long time — years — to allow myself to feel feminine. This is not to imply that all women need to be feminine — far from it — but I’ve always been drawn to fashion, accessories, and ‘dressing up’. So the idea of the feminine has always appealed to me.
However. For most of my adult life I have worn somber colours — blacks, greys, browns. I have steered clear of anything bright, or patterned. I have steered clear of anything overtly feminine, except in small ways.
It almost goes without saying — now that you are here, and you know this blog is generally about Child Sexual Abuse — that I have been careful most of my adult life never to wear anything which might be considered ‘too feminine’ (read: ‘revealing’), either.
I have been afraid, all my life, of attracting unwanted attention from men. And because the ‘attention’ I got from my father didn’t make sense, and felt out of control — I thought ALL men were like this. Liable to put their hands on me. That I was liable to ‘make’ men ‘lose control’. Logically I knew this didn’t make sense — but it was what my experiences as a child, and then as a young adult survivor, told me: men only wanted one thing, and if I don’t ‘give’ it to them, I better be careful.
In my last post I mentioned that I’ve been fortunate enough to be working with other survivor/activists and with academics at the University of Bristol Dental School, developing ideas for increased access to and trauma-informed care in dentistry for CSA survivors. The experience has been eye-opening in lots of ways, and hugely empowering. It has been a gift to sit with others who get it, and who want to make a difference.
In the first workshop, we were asked to draw ourselves as a plant that had everything we needed. I am VERY far from an artist, but I instantly knew what plant I’d be: a pink clematis, climbing up the warm brick wall of my grandparents’ house, supported and loved and feeling beautiful. This is what I drew:
Notice that the flowers are PINK. I was surprised I drew this — pink? I don’t really do pink. And yet, I thought again: in the last year, I have purchased a mauve pink top, and just recently, a bright pink cardigan. And a few weeks ago — I went for the bright pink nails heading this post.
There’s another reason femininity — and specifically pink — have made me wary in the past. Because I associate pink with the body. With orifices, with genitals, and with danger.
But NOW! Something in me has been able to reclaim pink. Enjoy it. Revel in it. Pink is lovely. It’s not dangerous. It’s not attention-getting. It’s not about sex.
As for revealing clothing: this too seems to have turned a corner for me recently. I haven’t worn a real bikini except in front of my nuclear family in decades; revealing skin has up til now made me very, very nervous.
But NOW! For the first time I can remember I’ve got up the nerve to purchase a bikini for wearing when we go away in late August. I WANT to be like other women and not worry about it. Not be ashamed. With empowerment and understanding, I’m more settled in all aspects of my body and my femininity than I ever thought possible.
Next up: pink bikini?! Hmmm.
This extract from LEARNING TO SURVIVE captures some of what it’s like to feel disassociated from my body, constantly observed, and fantasised into a ‘relationship’. Which I hated.
***
just looking
The next summer, I end up in Blacksburg. I am keen to spend time with Alice and her new college friends, and have no trouble getting another restaurant job with evening shifts. I have the days to myself, and stay out of the house as much as I can; Alice and I go to a pool every day to swim, sunbathe, and drink margaritas. On my nights off, I go to the clubs, having several probably quite dangerous sexual encounters with strangers. There is also a woman I work with who appears desperate to sleep with me. I resist. And, as ever and at this point, none of this activity is important to me, despite various one night stands actually ringing my home phone in an effort to see me again. Sex means absolutely nothing to me, yet I seem to attract people, constantly. I wonder, in time, whether this happens to me becausethey know something about me, sense something, smell something almost. Sleeping with men – going straight to the sex, no enjoyment, seems required of me. I don’t know how to do anything else, or see myself, or them, otherwise. I don’t want to cuddle. I don’t want soft words. In fact: softness and fondness make me feel a bit sick. The sooner it’s over, the better.Let the hormones take care of business. Then leave as soon as you can.
At the time, I feel I am wise beyond my years, that I know something others my age don’t: this is all there is; get used to it.
That same summer, the household in Blacksburg acquires a set of weights and some gym mats. They are in the basement, in the half of the downstairs sitting room which has never been used for much. After a serious knee dislocation during a modern dance rehearsal at Oberlin, I am in rehab, building my leg muscles, generally getting back into shape, and use the weights every other day, doing core exercises etc as well. When he’s home, my father comes downstairs to watch me. He says he is learning about weights, and smiles, laughs a half-laugh. But I know he’s simply coming down here to look at me. When June comes home, he quickly gets to his feet, goes upstairs.
Encounters like this are common, I realise now. From age 16, when the abuse stops, right up until the last time I see him, at age 21, every time we are alone he behaves as if I am party to a secret, a secret between us. He behaves, I realise now, as if we are in a secret relationship. As if external forces have ‘broken us up’, but we still long for each other.
For me of course, nothing could be further from the truth. He repels me, disgusts me. His laugh, his hands rubbing together, fingers clasping. His physical awkwardness. I have a hard time being around him at all. I have no wish ever to see him again. Yet: here I am. Here is the family. Here is Blacksburg. Here is where I grew up.
What I struggle to accept now is my tolerance of the situation. How do I not storm out and never come back? How do I eat in the same room? How do I smile? How do I breeze in and out every day? Secrecy, I guess, is hard to break the surface of. It holds firm, membranous and tough, despite the liquid chaos underneath.
And I suppose, if I’m honest, a part of me still hopes. I hope that this will pass, and I know that some part of me is strong enough to last until it does. I continue to hope – for years – that he will change. That he will seek help in the ways that perpetrators I later witness are forced to seek help. I know – deeply and with real regret – that everything about his attitude to his relationship with me is wrong. What takes me so many years to do is give up on him. Give up on the family, give up on [my stepmother]. And it’s this giving up which brings lasting pain, to this day.
I feel like I’ve been ‘gone’ for ages. But I’m back, after four (?) weeks of resting, teaching, discussion — and investigations into my body’s insistence in going off piste.
First, we went away for a few days. I painted my nails pink. More on pink and what this means to me in another post!
Second, I participated in several weeks of a research project being carried out by the Dentistry School at the University of Bristol — with the aim of a co-produced outcome between survivors of Child Sexual Abuse activists, and academics, all of us keen to improve access to dentistry for survivors of CSA. More on this incredibly worthwhile endeavour in another post. And watch this space for the first outcome!
So to my health. Regular readers may recall that I’ve been dealing with nighttime coughing and choking episodes since January. After numerous interventions (two rounds of antibiotics, steroids, change in asthma treatments) and tests (peak flow, CT scan, X-ray), my own instinct was that something in me had been ‘triggered’ and had gone into ‘overdrive’. Fortunately, and finally, a GP in my surgery contacted me, remembering that she had had another patient with similar symptoms. She wanted to refer me to an allergist/immunologist, as it was also clear that I had an ‘allergic disposition’.
I decided to go privately, as the wait on the NHS was likely to be around nine months. My own instinct (and that of my GP) was that this was somehow related to my mast cells (a theory I raised a month ago on this blog). It took me three days, but I found a formally trained allergist who openly declared an interest in mast cell issues.
In preparation for the tests he wanted to run, I had to come off all antihistamines. I have been taking two one-a-day antihistamines for years. Coming off of them produced a TON of nasty things: sweating, all over body itching, a low fever, headaches etc. Interestingly, my chest did NOT worsen. But clearly: the antihistamines were suppressing a LOT that I was unaware of. I had one set of tests, then a few days later had to come back off the antihistamines again. This time I had dramatic joint and muscle pains, incredibly painful. Argh.
However. Long story not-so-short: blood tests, patch tests, and skin prick tests later, a bit of a shocker. It looks like I am allergic to NOTHING (nothing we found, anyway). I have been having ‘allergic type’ symptoms for 30 years — hayfever, asthma, various food intolerances — which have gradually worsened to the point of being quite debilitating… and yet I’m allergic to nothing. What IS evident though is that something is driving my symptoms: the overall antibody level (Ige) is significantly raised, indicating ‘allergic’ response levels are raised regardless.
Anyway. It turns out that most people who experience what I am experiencing are women. Most are middle aged, middle class, and make efforts to be healthy in their lives. Like me. And yet: something in their bodies seems to be constantly in ‘fight or flight’ mode, essentially.
I’ll let that sink in.
Did I mention CSA to this consultant? Yes I did. Did I outline the statistics? Yes I did. Did I make clear that there is research which shows that CSA survivors are much more likely to develop inflammatory conditions, autoimmune conditions, and chronic conditions? Yes I did. We talked about how the immune system seems to shift with trauma, physiologically. He was open, interested, and listened. He believed me.
So. My guess is that my chronic uticaria/mast cell activation springs from childhood trauma. I don’t like those apples at all, but I suspect this is the root of it. I suspect too that the several thousand of mostly women my consultant has treated for this have also undergone some kind of trauma — be it serious illness, domestic or sexual abuse or neglect. And the body (which keeps the score) has reacted like this.
That’s the super irritating news. The good news is that with several months of high dose antihistamines and montelukast (Singulair in the US), my agitated system is very likely to calm down enough to be able to very much reduce the meds or get rid of them completely. This is his experience. He also (wisely) advised me to stop trying to ‘figure out’ triggers; this in itself can ramp up the system, which intensifies reactions. This all makes sense, and I’m now enjoying NOT worrying about what is ‘setting me off’!
As I’m only now confronting the lasting physical ramifications of my childhood, there is little in LEARNING TO SURVIVE which considers it directly. This though from the end of the book does capture the sense that you don’t ‘get over’ abuse. You can’t. It stays with you, in many forms. What we strive for is how to manage it, and how to live well in spite of it. We are the ones who have to learn to live with it all.
***
My own father died unexpectedly in October 2018, while I was in the middle of planning this book. He was an abuser. I am a survivor. That isn’t all he was, nor is it all I am. But it has shaped me and continues to shape me, no matter how hard I have tried and continue to try to keep it away from what matters. I do not know and now will never know the extent to which his sexual obsessions shaped him, but I am also, unsurprisingly, not sure either the extent to which I care.
I have for the most part grown around the deep-running grief and betrayal that I can name. But after years of saying (perhaps more in hope than belief) I am ‘past it’, that I am ‘totally fine’, I now accept that the legacy of abuse never ends. You never ‘recover’ to the point of completely letting go. These days I ask different questions – no longer why and why me – but rather: who would I be if this had not happened? What might I have written, done? Who would my brother and sister be? And my mother? My aunt? My stepmother?
And then, of course: how has the abuse affected my own children? All aspects of my relationship with my husband, and the way we live our lives? The things I am afraid of, the things I can’t explain. The lasting sense I have that life is fleeting, and apt to disintegrate. And that I must always be prepared for the worst to happen. That what I think and feel, when it comes to it, aren’t of real significance. Would these anxieties still be here? And if not, might I have taken more risks, been more ambitious? Had, more so, the courage of my own convictions?
I have no answers to these questions, and never will. There remains so much, so much I don’t know and will never know, and despite my survival, all of our survivals, there is so much too with which I will never be at peace. And there is so much loss. The ripples of my father’s paedophilia, his deluded selfishness, his refusal to accept responsibility, go on and on, and continue to damage all of us, and all of our loved ones. When the ripples hit the shore, they just come back again. They never disappear. It is this fact which brings the most despair for me, and these days, anger.
This book emerges here and now partly because this is a story I need to tell, like all stories which find a writer. This book is also here, I hope, partly as a way of helping to make the invisible, visible. To help stop this. To be seen, and heard: I am here. We are here.
I’ve been on my own this week. As I often do at such (infrequent) times, I decided to challenge myself a little. So I watched both of the new documentaries about family dysfunction and sexual abuse: House of Maxwell and Jimmy Savile: a British Horror Story.
I think I do this on my own because I can react as I wish, in private. I can stop and start. I can drink wine. And I can take time to just think about it all. I don’t know if it’s unusual, but I don’t find these things triggering. Neither documentary is sensationalised — that’s what I hate, when things are sensationalised — so I always felt on secure footing.
It was all damning of course. Decades into dealing with my own childhood and the fall out from that, I am well acquainted with the enormous intricacies and confusions and horrors indeed which surround Child Sexual Abuse.
So I didn’t expect to hear anything new. Yet the producer of Jim’ll Fix It, Roger Ordish, said something which completely threw me: ‘How,’ he said, asking himself, asking the interviewer, musing, ‘could I have been so naive?’.
Naivety. I confess that I have never, ever, even THOUGHT about that word in relation to not ‘seeing’ abuse.
And I suddenly realised: I am so steeped in the dysfunction of my young life — that I don’t know any different. Living in awareness of dysfunction is my ‘normal’. I have absolutely NO idea what it would be like to live a life WITHOUT the knowledge and suspicion of sexual abuse, or abuse of any sort really.
I don’t know what it might be like NOT to suspect abuse in the first instance.
Naivety isn’t an excuse, but it IS a reason not to know about abuse. I now — suddenly — understand that sometimes abuse isn’t seen simply due to a (blessed) lack of knowledge. Simply because it doesn’t seem possible. Not within the realm of your experience.
The photograph at the top of this post, for instance: what does it make you think of? We read situations according to our experience, like it or not.
As activists and campaigners and makers and survivors — we need to understand that some people have been lucky. Really lucky. That the whole idea of abuse is alien, and that therefore they lack all awareness of its possibility. That they are not ‘looking away’ (seeing something and dismissing) so much as not even registering the possibility of abuse.
So ‘raising awareness’ can be literal. Not just making something ‘more important’ — but making it important AT ALL. And from there — and only from there — can come action. We can break the incidence of sexual abuse to others as gently as possible, but break it we must. None of us can afford to be naive, as painful as it is to face that. I’m as sorry as the next person that the world is like this, but as we have seen: horrible people take advantage of a naive world.
From my memoir Learning to Survive, about sensing what might threaten below the surface.
***
X is for X-ray Vision
What I am afraid of, deep down and unacknowledged, when moving to Virginia, I do not understand for a long time. I have already been through so much in my six years that this – a house, a family – might well have been for the best. Security. And I have no doubt that everyone involved – my grandparents, my mother, and, I’m guessing, my father – all believe this, despite the inevitable and distressing first shifts in a new place.
So what do I know? What about my life so far is already sending me messages?
I do not think I have any articulable way of knowing then. But I do know now. I now understand the messages that I sense under surfaces, behind smiles, in silences.
There is a man here at Gladstone’s Library where I am working. And I don’t like him. Not one bit. He has a soft face, a spoiled face. He moves deliberately. He watches without wanting to appear that he watches. He repels me. I have seen him in conversation with others, and he seems perfectly nice. This doesn’t, however, change my mind. I know what he is.
As a result of being silenced during sexual abuse and beyond, I now have an almost pathological and immediate response – physical and psychological – to feeling silenced. I shut down. Very quickly.
This paralysis, accompanied by feeling very low emotionally, hopeless, I now see as directly related to the silencing I have experienced but also somewhat enacted (to save my own pain) as a result of being abused in childhood. This is a very recent realisation — within the last six months, and 40 years after the abuse ended.
I bring this up now because I realise that I also fall silent when I feel I have no reason — no room — to speak. Silence is silencing, indeed. It feeds on itself.
This week I have found myself feeling silent/being silenced in light of the war in Ukraine. There is just so much sorrow, so much desperation, so much depravity at work there. The trauma from this, for those there and well beyond, will echo for generations. What a waste of human life and love. What tragedy. It has been hard to see my own and others’ struggles with Child Sexual Abuse as deserving space in all this.
But I guess the reality is precisely the opposite: that this is in fact where we all meet, on the level of lost lives. Man’s inhumanity to man.
Silence begets silence. It grows deeper and more opaque with time. We are duty and morally bound to break silences, to prevent loss of life and living, whether spiritual or literal.
Instead of my own work this week, here’s a poem that runs on a loop in my head, and has done for many years. We all have a job to do here, folks.
Telling people you’ve been sexually abused is almost always difficult — sometimes for you, sometimes for them. Sometimes for both.
In the last three days I’ve found myself disclosing to two people. In both cases there was a context of sorts; we were having ‘normal’ conversations about families, and, rather than brush over, or tell white lies, I told it like it is: my father sexually abused me for about four years, and my mother (not living with us) had several mental illnesses. My stepmother, for her own reasons no doubt, seemed unable to act. So my ‘Christmas plans’ have not included any of my parents for decades.
Why say it like it is? Isn’t it easier to brush over? Short answer: yes, it is. It is easier not to be damaged or complicated — but for most people, whatever has happened in their lives, that’s a lie. My damage and complexity just happen to spring from several places which make most people uncomfortable, or even reel back in some horror: this is too dreadful to be true they seem to say, the expression on their faces passing through pity, disgust, grief, and settling to neutral.
Again, why do this? Because, and it’s quite simple when I think about it: it is not up to me to apologise or ‘be over it’. It is not up to me to hide facts which were completely and utterly out of my control. It is not up to me to protect others’ sensibilities. We don’t protect each other from the bad news of cancer, or bereavement — we say it all, and hope the listener figures out how or if to respond.
In recent years when I finally could bring myself to disclose the sexual abuse, I would rush to — as in the next sentence — say ‘but I’m okay, I really am. I’ve had lots of therapy and I’m really well.’ Some of you reading this blog will recognise this from our long friendships. I did this to save my listener from pain, disgust, pity — and helplessness in the face of this horrible thing. The desire to protect the world from the dirty secret — to carry it, to carry the shame indeed, the unresolved triggers, the mess of it all — always took precedent.
But it’s good for ME to finally say it like it is. In public, without feeling sick or wanting to run away. To stand by my experiences. I was not able to say more than a vague ‘my father…. mumble mumble’ for decades, just hoping someone, even therapists, would understand without me having to actually SAY it. My silence — repeat after me folks — is one of the many silences which enable perpetrators to carry on abusing. It’s that simple. My pushing it away keeps abuse hidden. That simple.
However, what I do know is that not everyone can speak. For numerous reasons. Where we are in our journeys, who we have around us, how involved we want to be in taking a stand.
Which is why I am and so many others are now here, speaking out. Raising awareness, educating, and trying to redress the imbalance. Taking the power away from the abusers, where it has rested for centuries.
So. If you can’t say it — yet, or ever — let us say it for you. Let us share the burden. We will all get there in the end.
***
From my memoir, Learning to Survive. This is the first time I tried to tell someone what was happening. [NB: I have permission to use she/her pronouns; in time they moved into he/him, and into a much happier place. I have asked and have generously received permission to start here. Thank you, Joshua.]
Suzanne
When I am 16 years old, I fall in love with a close friend, and she with me. Although I do go on to have lesbian relationships (sort of) in university, out of love and respect for this person I need to say that in a few years this close friend will be a man. However, at the point in which we are in a relationship, he presents as female, a fact which for me, given what I have been through, I recognise even then as crucial.
I speak to no one about my relationship with Suzanne, and have no memory of writing anything, at least in the early days, either. As far as my father is concerned, she is a friend, and we are able to spend many happy hours together, many months in each other’s company, before he seems to have an inkling of what is going on. If I could remember, I might place his knowing concurrent with my beginning to write about her in my journal, but of course – this is another empty room, another empty space where memory should be.
Early on, Suzanne senses my intense fear around my father, about doing anything ‘wrong’ or attracting ‘suspicion’ – and she sees through it. One night on campus as we sit in a classroom working out trigonometry on the blackboard (her father also teaches at the university), she stops. What she says seems to come from nowhere, like she hardly knows she’s saying it: ‘It’s almost like he loves you like more than a daughter.’ She turns to me. ‘Does he? Does he love you like that?’
I cannot bring myself to say yes or no. But somehow Suzanne knows from my face. Her anger and horror are instant – she makes thick white chalk lines over and over on the blackboard no no no no no. And more than once in the months that follow, I hear her car outside my house, driving around the block and up and down the hills, over and over, the horn blaring.
We never speak about the abuse, and my father’s possessiveness, more than that. I start shaking too quickly, and it’s all so ugly, and all we want is to be together. I believe that she is saving me, and I think she believes this too, and to an extent, she is.
PATRICIA DEBNEY 