Tag: scapegoat

did anyone suspect?

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.

[I cannot finish this post without signposting some of these vital organisations. I really only know a bit about the UK. I urge everyone please to add more in the comments. The Flying Child Project, Survivors Voices, LOUDfence, Barnardo’s, the NSPCC, Survivors Trust.]

***

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.

in hope or in despair

The Flying Child’s recent blog post about arranging to see her abuser again — and what happened in that visit, in public — has stayed with me for several days.

Over and over in these days, I replay the scene in which I did something similar: I went to go stay with my father — my abuser — for one night when I was 20 years old. He was living alone in an apartment in Washington DC. The excerpt from LEARNING TO SURVIVE, below, recounts what happened.

That night marked the last time I saw my father. But it didn’t mark the end of me trying to ‘solve’ the family dynamics, of me trying to make him accountable, accept responsibility. Of trying to get an apology. These useless hopes, this belief that maybe just maybe I could ‘fix’ something — went on for another 10 years or so, through letters, therapy, and a few more conversations. To no avail: I do not believe he ever accepted that his actions, his arrogance, his delusions and pathology, were at the root of every single messed up relationship not in only his life, but in the lives of every member of his family. Delusion is indeed the word.

And so I return to why I — and Sophie of The Flying Child, and others, I’m sure — thought seeing our abusers again would be anything other than excruciating, or at worst, dangerous. For me, I can see now, I desperately wanted everything to be over, to be passed. I wanted him to be a father — as in fatherly, parental — and thought, somehow — because the warped world view of abuse also affected my self-perception — that I could lead him to that change of role simply by inhabiting a daughter role fully, and pretend nothing had happened. It’s important to note here that Child Sexual Abuse also skews how the victim views themselves: in my case, because my father seemed unable to ‘control himself’ in my presence, for years, I thought I had some influence over him. And I wanted to ‘use’ this ‘influence’ for good. Somehow. Looking back, knowing what I know now about abuse, I can see that this odd inflated ‘power’ dogged me for years. My perception of all relationships alternated between me having ‘no power’ and me having ‘all the power’. Just like how I registered the abuse.

So when I went to see my father, deep down I wonder if I figured that this was a time when I had all the power. That he would be able to see I needed to be free of him, and that the only way I wanted him in my life was as a father.

I was crushingly wrong about all of it. And yet only ten years later did I truly give up hope — and this giving up involved me cutting ties, me set adrift all on my own. As victims, we are forced into isolation, loneliness and confusion in exchange for escaping unresolved abuse and its attendant distortions. As a result our pain and despair can appear self-inflicted. Yet another way in which the abuser screws us. We strike the world and our families as self-destructive and stubborn. When all we are trying to do is save ourselves.

From Learning to Survive:

***

The summer between my junior and senior years of university, I see my father for what turns out to be the last time. I have worked all summer in a yet another restaurant in Roanoke, a country and western one this time. My father is doing some work in Washington DC, also looking for a permanent job there, never having made the progress he wanted in academia. He is living on his own in an apartment at the weekends. I am not certain what takes me to DC – perhaps I am seeing my friend Daniel, who lives close by, or perhaps I still have the particular blindness that comes with abuse, the compartmentalising that leads me to think that everything is manageable. In any case I am there on my father’s floor in a sleeping bag.

            It is an uncomfortable night. I become afraid that he will come in, that he will touch me. Eventually he does come in, but ‘only to talk’; he wants to ‘see how [I am]’. I am lying on the floor; he is crouched next to me. He wants to talk about the abuse somehow, to discuss ‘it’ – but I cannot imagine how this will happen. Ever, really, at this point, and never with him.

            I survive the conversation, virtually mute. He touches my hair. I am afraid I am going to throw up, although I have never thrown up in his presence before. Paralysis sets in. I know now that I want to hit him, to push him away, and that this is why my arms ache. For the first time then though, I know, I really, truly know it’s not safe: that I’m not safe. That I must go away for good, and not come back until things have changed, if ever. I leave after that night, and never see him again.

            Once the compartmentalising breaks down, it is impossible to put the cat, as it were, back in the bag. I know now that because I am by senior year mostly happy, settled, and with direction, I am for the first time grounded enough to open Pandora’s box. Apparently my body and mind now believe I can withstand whatever emerges, although I do not know this at the time, and although at many points over the next two and a half years, I do not feel I will ever make it through.