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!)
It’s taken me 10 weeks to come here and say this. That’s how silenced I have felt.
What silences sexual abuse victim/survivors? What silences ME?
To somewhat answer this, I’d like to highlight this article. Absolutely none of it will be news to survivors who struggle with their families, particularly if the sexual abuse they suffered was perpetrated by a member of the family.
None of this is news, but none of this can be solved either.
I cannot say much more. I have written and erased this post several times. This is how silenced I feel, and how much I am checking myself, worrying about my words.
For weeks my husband, children, other family, and close friends have been my scaffolding. Alongside me and checking in every day. Thanks to them, and to the years of excellent therapy, the ‘top up’ therapy I’m doing now — I know I’m okay, and always will be.
I love my life. I won’t be dragged back into tangles of secrets and blame. There’s no reconciliation in that. In the words of glorious Fleetwood Mac: never going back again.
This is one of the recurring dreams I had during the abuse, and afterward during my initial therapy. I have felt very much like this over the last few weeks. Nothing to stand on, falling, exposed.
But I’m back on my feet now. For good.
from my memoir, Leaving Locust Avenue:
***
I have versions of the same dream.
This time I am freezing. I am freezing because I hardly have anything on, and the wind blowing through the walls, the walls that aren’t there, is cold. Still I have to decorate, I have to stand on the chair and hang plants, think about colours, make things just so. I begin to shiver, and the leaves of the plant I am holding shake with my shivering. I try to stop, but the more I try to stop the worse it becomes, until my whole body is shaking.
I manage to hang the plant, putting the chain over the hook. I manage to smile into the darkness, push my hair back as if in front of a mirror. Then I take a step off the chair, and my foot keeps going down, down further than I thought the floor was, and when it touches, I fall after it into a ditch.
I know I have broken some bones, because they are too cold and brittle. My arms are pinned to my side in the ditch, my face pushed into the mud. In the fall I lose my nightgown, and my bottom is exposed. But I can’t move. I am useless, and leave myself there for dead.
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.
I thought I would take a minute here to acknowledge the shifting of my memoir title from Learning to Survive to Leaving Locust Avenue. First things first: a big THANK YOU to Caroline Litman, gifted writer and fellow Highly Commended author in the Bridport Memoir Awards. She read my book, and floated this title with me. I immediately knew it was right. So grateful to her for this stroke of insight.
Second: the title makes clear that this house is at the centre of the abuse. On this avenue. In Southwestern Virginia suburbia. It feels right and important to flag here that Child Sexual Abuse occurs everywhere and anywhere. Including within the four walls of my childhood home. My sexual abuse did not happen in some ‘deprived’ area, by parents who were ‘addicts’ or ‘on benefits’ etc etc… I make these points because, believe it or not, over the last couple of years I have had people say exactly these things: ‘oh I knew it happened in some parts of town’, and ‘oh but you are doing so well, how?’ etc. All judgments of not only me now, but the circumstances I and others grew up in. And a ridiculous, shaming attitude toward those who grew up differently. This attitude conveniently keeps CSA at arm’s length — over there, not in my backyard.
Once and for all, here it is: Child Sexual Abuse happens to at least 1 in 6 children across all socioeconomic levels. I am happy to provide the resources I and others, including dozens of charities and organisations, use to arrive at this — but I would also encourage you to look it up yourself if you have questions, as along the way you will find out a great deal about Child Sexual Abuse.
My father was a professor, as were many wage earners living along this particular avenue. And his crimes were completely hidden in this house. How many more houses along this street hid Child Sexual Abuse? Statistically speaking: several. Yes, almost certainly: several.
Third and finally, I come to my leaving Locust Avenue. It was the last thing I wanted to do, in so many ways. But I felt forced out, scapegoated (as I now know is typical in family cases of abuse) — and I had to do something to save myself. As followers of this blog will know, I had to leave behind my [half] brother and [half] sister after 11 years of living with them, and was forbidden from telling them anything. It was a terrible secret to keep. Feeling forced to leave my childhood home destroyed it for me, forever, regardless of any good times there.
So yes. Leaving Locust Avenue is right. It captures so much at the heart of this book.
Here is an excerpt from the memoir which recalls when I first arrived at Locust Avenue.
***
Ommie and Granddaddy take me to Blacksburg the first time [when I am six years old]. Ever the intermediary figures, with them I feel entirely at ease. I remember no feelings of apprehension or even distress saying goodbye to my mother. I don’t remember saying anything to her, or her words to me. I believe we drive up, taking the two days along the Natchez Trace, through Alabama and a corner of Mississippi, then up through Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina, arriving at last in deep Southwestern Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The only clue I have to the nature of the experience is that later my grandfather tells me he catches me sleep-walking on the journey. He wakes up in the middle of the night in the Best Western, and I am standing there, with my hand on the door handle of the room, about to open it. We are two floors up, and outside there is a metal railing around the rectangle of the pool in the middle. Needless to say, he leads me back to bed.
The house on Locust Avenue, in Blacksburg Virginia, where I mostly live for the next 11 years, is medium sized. Set in a hilly suburban area, it is a single storey olive green clapboard with a steep drive up to the carport. With three bedrooms, a living room, a lounge, dining room/kitchen and two small children, until I arrive it must seem relatively spacious. There is a large flat space out back, the only flat place in the neighbourhood in fact; in later years we brave my father’s warning of killing the grass every evening in order to play kickball, softball, and ‘ghost’. It is a real neighbourhood, with at least a dozen kids of all ages in the streets, especially in summer.
Of course, I know nothing about anything at first. I am impressed by the swings under the big tree, and remember swinging in them with a kind of aimlessness, while Ommie and Granddaddy stand close by watching.
I am impressed too by my half-brother and half-sister, six months old and two and a half, respectively. Already I have missed having siblings, and this ready-made family thrills me. I remember picking [my sister] up, and half-carrying, half-dragging her down the hallway to her room, delighted I can do it. I remember [my stepmother’s] anxiety about this action, afraid I will drop her.
[My sister] is a beautiful child, with enormous blue eyes like Granddaddy’s, and long ash blonde hair. The photograph from close to this time shows her sitting serenely with her legs tucked out to one side, in a blue velvet dress with her hands folded neatly in front of her. Her hair is pulled back just at the crown, her widow’s peak emphasising her high forehead and her gentle, serious face. In the picture she looks vulnerable, like life has caught her unawares, and it is true that from the instant I walk into that house I feel protective of her.
I am ashamed to admit that in all of our years together I never really consider the effect my entrance must have on her. It is only with my own two children, with the exact same age difference, that I can see how I – this vocal, eager to please, attention seeking child – might have overrun and quieted an already naturally introverted little girl. Suddenly [my sister] is the middle one, and despite the several visits to Texas I take in the first years, she remains so until I just as suddenly leave the house eleven years later.
Both [my sister] and I, in a sense, and differently, become stranded. It is due to her quiet determination to keep in touch that we manage to communicate at all in the years after I leave the house, given what will happen.
I imagine that for [my brother], being so young, my entrance is more seamless. My earliest memory of him is noticing his bottle propped up on the cushion of the sofa while [my stepmother] prepares dinner. I remember going over to it and holding it for him; I want someone to feed him. Is it my imagination, or does he look me in the eye then? I wonder now if my deep affection for babies begins with him, with the desire to connect.
Physically, [my brother] too has the long face, the blue eyes of our family. He is always [my stepmother’s] baby though, and I have clear memories of him sitting on her lap, her going through his hair, looking in his ears, grooming him like a chimp grooms her little one. For many years, until recently, he and I fall entirely out of contact, which I regret. As with so much else, I feel I failed him. It was not my job to catch him when so many things seemed to fall apart, first for me, then for him; nevertheless, I wish I had been able to.
And what of my father and stepmother? They inspire in me no emotions, and I suppose at first I look at them as just the next set of grown-ups to take care of me. I am used to living elsewhere, so at first my father’s house is just another in a long line. I remember that he has black glasses and dark hair. I remember [my stepmother’s] long hair and long legs, her quiet, slow-moving ways. Her distance. My father teaches mathematical physics at Virginia Tech, and is at work most of the time. I remember a few arguments, raised voices, and going into school afraid that they will get divorced. But in the main, I remember no display of emotions either from my side or theirs, only the unspoken sense that I have to be good – I have to behave – in order to stay. And that staying is imperative. Underneath it all, beneath the daily smooth running of life, things are desperate somewhere, and I know it. And as is the way with children, I end up feeling like everything, all the ways in which this will or won’t work — everything ultimately depends on me.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my mother over the last few weeks. Her illnesses. Her pathology. Her recurring cries for help.
She unfortunately married an abuser. Who, over ten years after they were divorced, began to abuse me. When I think back to telling her I was abused…I wonder if then, right then, she gave up almost completely.
My aunt and I believe that my grandmother was also abused by a family member. And we are sure there are more. How my father figures into this history of abuse is not something I will ever know. I am sorry if something happened to him, in the way that I am sorry when I hear of any abuse. But it is not a consideration when I face his abuse of me. After all: I am not an abuser. My aunt (whom he also abused) is not an abuser. My mother, abused by her own father, was not an abuser.
It is a myth that victims of abuse go on to abuse. It is a dangerous and wholly inaccurate assumption, one which partly absolves perpetrators of responsibility and accountability. The truth is, abused in childhood or not: the decision to abuse is down to the abuser. It is the abuser’s fault. No one else’s.
All of the abused women in my family have tried, and mostly succeeded, to break the intergenerational line of sexual abuse. My mother’s attempt to save me from her suicidal and infanticidal actions — her more or less throwing me from her sinking boat onto the boat which appeared to be floating, my father’s — was also an attempt no doubt to save me from her abusive past, and the fear of how she might harm me. She said to me many times that giving me up was the hardest thing she had ever done, and that she was wracked with grief for over a decade afterward, until I went to university. Later, when I told her about my father’s abuse of me — all of her sacrifice must have seemed for nothing. Must have destroyed whatever she had left, on all fronts.
Two and a half years after she died, I am finally going through her things. As I’ve known for a while, this is all — somehow — my next book. The photo above is I believe her graduation photo, from high school. She went on to the University of Texas at Austin and did a double major, in English Literature and Maths. She was smart. Very, very smart. The loss of herself over her lifetime is heartbreaking. So much promise, so much life. She was 79 when she died, destitute and completely alone in a high security nursing home, trailing a number of psychiatric diagnoses. In the pandemic. Despite our years of trauma with each other, it was the thought of her dying alone which really undid me, the night I received the email.
This short excerpt from my memoir — now titled Leaving Locust Avenue — recounts when I told my mother about my father abusing me.
***
Back [at university] for my final semester, I now begin to tell everyone else in my life about my father’s abuse of me. My close friends, including Lia and Dan and Alice (two of whom, it turns out, have their own stories of abuse), and, at my therapist’s urging, my mother. The longer I hang onto this, she says, the more damage it does. The longer I protect people, the more I hurt myself.
So. I ring my mother after that Christmas and Winter Term, back in my house at Oberlin. And, after she becomes angry at me for being in therapy ‘again’ and why am I not yet ‘over’ my early life with her, I tell her.
She is speechless. Apoplectic. Understands now why I came to live with her [when I was 17]. Wants to know more details than I can possibly say right now. There is so much I can’t yet say.
And soon after, within a couple of weeks, more secrets. My mother herself starts having flashbacks, and begins to remember being abused by her own father at a very young age. She tries to tell me details, but I cannot listen. I don’t want to listen. She tells me instead some of the things my father did to her – demand that she sleep with him after their divorce, when he was already remarried, nearly rape her when they were married, follow her, spy on her.
This all makes an awful sense, but it’s a weight I cannot carry, and she clearly cannot help me. My mother and I drift apart again. She enters a downward spiral, which leads more than once to hospitalisation and psychosis, and I find that I must stay close to the people I love, and whom I know love me, the people who know right from wrong even when I can’t see it, especially of course R. By the summer after my senior year at Oberlin we are living together, and by August we are engaged, despite my mother’s protest of ‘not needing to get married’, but thankfully with Ommie and Granddaddy’s blessing.
My dear friend came to visit recently. After many years of knowing each other and being close as writers — we discovered only a few years ago that we are both CSA (Child Sexual Abuse) survivors. This was a shock to us both: keeping secrets, keeping abuse ‘over there’ is hard-wired in both of us. But we have come to know that much connects us, and that in a way this is cause for celebration. Despite our pasts, we have compassion, we have empathy. We have humour, and love.
This time we ended up alighting upon something I didn’t know she had as well: a violent reaction to feeling enclosed.
I’m curious: do most or all survivors experience this? I cannot bear the sensation of feeling enclosed, or struggling to swallow, or reaching for air. This means that last year when I had tonsillitis I was in a terrible, panicked state. Max sat with me, holding my hand, distracting me by watching sitcoms. I was barely with it. Tears of desperation squeezed out of my eyes with every breath.
Every time a duvet climbs above my shoulders I am panicky and shove it away. I almost always sleep with my arms out of the covers. I also find elevators (lifts) very difficult, especially small ones. I struggle with spiral staircases, and have had more than one serious panic attack while climbing them. I am physically disoriented very easily, and launch into a full blown panic attack when this happens. Whether in IKEA, or once in an observatory when the ceiling rotated — when I don’t know or remember how to ‘escape’ from someplace, I melt down.
My friend is the same. Almost exactly the same. We figured there must be something about being overpowered. About a large person hovering and smothering. About not being able to fight.
One of the first realisations I had in my early therapy was the fact that I wanted to push my father away. My arms ached with that realisation. But I never did. I was frozen, frightened, dissociated.
These triggers — phobias, fears, whatever you call them — are all collateral damage. Ripples from abuse. All of the above responses are valid, as are many more. They are normal trauma responses. Yet both of us have at times been made to feel deficient: buck up, be brave, there’s nothing wrong!
There’s a lot wrong when you are in fear for your life. When you think the breath will be squeezed out of you. When things are forced into your mouth and you can’t breathe. When you are a child and can’t bear the weight, the intrusion. These are the facts. They never go away.
We must respect trauma responses. We need to be trauma-informed. It is often NOT possible to ‘overcome’ these responses, and it’s a myth to believe everyone can. We all have to work with what we carry around the best we can. For survivors, these tangled and deeply embedded responses are unavoidable at times.
For me this means I almost always avoid lifts. For me this means I ask the dentist to raise the head of the chair closer to sitting, and have to ‘go someplace else’ when x-ray plates are in my mouth. For me this means I am always verging on panic when in a crowd.
My family know these things and accept them. They know where these responses come from. With time and recognition of these triggers, I am less compromised by them than I used to be. For me, speaking my ‘truth’ — admitting that I’m frightened, admitting that I’m disoriented and having to control my breathing — eases my panic, and often prevents it from escalating to the point where I can’t be reached. These issues don’t go away — but they have less sway over me.
This won’t work for everyone, clearly. Sometimes we are surrounded by people who refuse to understand, or whom we don’t trust, or with whom we don’t feel safe enough to show we are feeling vulnerable. I know I am very lucky. Without even realising it consciously, I landed on my feet when it comes to close family and friends.
Regardless of how memories manifest with you or with your loved ones, acceptance goes a long way. Lack of judgment goes a long way. Saying ‘it’s alright’ to feel this way, to react, goes a long way. Because next time the panic might not be quite as overwhelming. Regardless of the trigger: being seen and believed and supported can help dismantle these suffocating walls.
In some ways, this is a simple post. Because love — unconditional love, offered freely — is in some ways a simple thing.
I think of this today in particular because last week we hugged and waved goodbye to my teenage nieces. My actual nieces. My [half] brother’s children, who came with their mother and stepfather. Where to start with the girls? Authentic, open, loving, kind. Fun and funny. And completely accepting of me.
To those of you who haven’t had family torn apart — by trauma, abuse, narcissism (take your pick!) — being accepted as a blood relative may be so automatic as to not be questioned. Brother’s children = nieces. Equals blood relation. Equals thicker than water.
And yet. As many of you will know, I left my father’s house at age 17, leaving behind my brother and sister. I was not allowed to explain why, although my stepmother ‘knew’. I had lived there since my brother was a baby, and my sister was two years old. Leaving them remains the most painful separation I have ever undergone, or had to bear. I cried in private for years.
Meanwhile, the damage unfurled. For me and for them. Eventually I realised that it was my father who should have left the house. He had committed the crimes. But my first therapist did not report him, as was Virginian law then. She broke the law. And consequently broke two of the most cherished ties of my life. Just like that. Before we’d had time to consider what might be happening, it was just too late. We had lost each other, through no fault of our own. Stuck with the painful consequences.
I hoped against hope that I could be ‘real aunt’ for my nieces, before they came to visit. I hoped, but had learned after years of tangled dynamics not to count on anything. If you don’t count on something, it doesn’t hurt as much when it doesn’t materialise.
I am blessed to have 20+ close relatives by marriage, three generations of them now. They have been in my life unconditionally for 35 years. I am thankful every day for them.
And yet. My nieces — my beautiful nieces — arrive, and they are blood. They call me ‘Auntie’. Their faces are open, loving. We laugh, we celebrate a birthday, we punt down the River Cam, we go line dancing (yes we do!). The pure joy I feel when I say to my dance teacher, flinging my arms out: ‘these are my nieces!’…. It’s hard to express how extraordinarily precious this is. How lucky I feel. How grateful. I slide hair clips into their hair.
What can I say? I had given up on ever being a blood aunt, and here I am, one of theirs. They accept me. They don’t blame me for anything. They don’t deal in loyalties or suspicion. There is nothing to (fruitlessly) unpick here. We start where we are. And all this is so much more, so unexpected, and I was so unprepared. I was not prepared to be free of the past, to land in this tender place. But I am with them. And they are with me.
It is possible to be surprised by happiness it seems, always, despite what can feel like intractable pain.
My first father, and the father who never harmed me, was my grandfather. That’s us in the photo. I’m three years old, and we are in Luling, Texas. My parents were divorced when I was just a few months old. In this photo, I hadn’t met my father yet. I don’t know whether I’m leaving my grandparents’ care to go back and live with my mother, or whether I am joining my grandparents to live with them for a while, leaving my mother to her instabilities and mental illnesses. I traveled both ways, often, up until age six.
My grandfather is holding both of my hands here. My face has faded with time, but his remains strong, in focus. Out of shot here I am pointing my foot forward in my saddle shoes, as if I am foreshadowing the decades of dance I would start only a few years later.
In hard times, I still channel Granddaddy for comfort, hearing his voice in my head. He died over 20 years ago now, but I can still hear him — quietly spoken, always giving me strength and belief.
Why, you’re not going to let a little thing like that stop you, are you? he would say, no matter what;
and
We’re rooting for you! even over the telephone, often at the end of our conversations;
and
You can do anything you set your mind to.
Both of my grandparents were the solid centres of my whole life. I carry their words and actions with me, always, and miss them, honestly, daily.
Happy Father’s Day, Granddaddy. Love you always and forever.
***
What I’m saying here too is that I cannot consider my biological father my father. I cannot begin to put him in the place where Father’s Day happens. He was my abuser, and although that’s not all he was (any more than being a survivor is all I am), his abuse of me when I was a child — sexual, psychological, emotional — far overshadows any good which he may have done as a father in my life in other ways.
Child Sexual Abuse is not just the crimes themselves. CSA is insidious, pervading, and tarnishes every aspect of your relationship with your abuser (and too often, everyone). My father’s actions and decisions made him not-my-father. Forever. I never hear his voice anymore. Once I got rid of it, it was gone for good.
***
Here are two excerpts from Learning to Survive, my memoir about neglect, CSA, living through it all and with it. The first is about my life with Granddaddy, the second about my father.
***
1.
I go everywhere with them. Granddaddy takes me out in the pick-up truck, sometimes even in the back if I promise not to move around too much. He drives around the block so I can feel the wind in my hair. For longer journeys, though, I sit next to him in the cab. Together we go to the hardware store, the gardening shop, the fishing tackle store. I inspect tiny drawers full of screws and nuts and bolts, and once, lots of extravagant fishing flies lined up on the counter. It’s not my world, but with Granddaddy in his overalls, his hand around mine, or often, his hands resting on my shoulders, I get a peek at it.
It is Granddaddy who sets up the swing and slide in the backyard, and who builds a sandbox around the bottom of a tree for me. Outside, it is always hot and wet, but with Granddaddy working next to me, I play. The chameleons on the house fascinate me; I stand completely still, just waiting for one to run from the green grass to the red wall so I can watch it change colour. In the front, together we see the squirrels fussing in the tall trees, running through the thick spiky grass. I sit on the front step and watch him mow, watch our neighbours mow their front yards, the hands they raise to one another. And always, should anyone stop to talk, my grandfather waves me over, rests a hand on me: ‘This is our granddaughter,’ he says, ‘come to stay with us for a while.’ And whoever it is, sensing something, or maybe just liking what he sees, says, ‘Well isn’t that nice. Isn’t that nice for you?’ And my grandfather, with a little squeeze, says, ‘It sure is.’
2.
After the age of 11, I cannot remember a single decent time with my father. That is, one that isn’t inflected with fear, or repulsion, wondering what his next move will be. Wondering how he will exploit any moment to bring me closer to him, to be with him, later. As I look back, I think I may experience some moments of joy, in theory – like listening to music with him, peering through a telescope, arriving at the correct answer to a maths problem together – but none of them exist separately for long. I cannot tease them apart from everything else; I cannot make them stand up against the steadily rising tide of distress and fear. They become meaningless.
So I forget them all. I forget any possibility of good in him, and it never comes back. That room, like so many, is entirely empty.
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.
This photo of me was taken a few weeks ago by the same brilliant photographer who shot E and A’s wedding last summer (Hannah Hall Beddoe/Cuts the Mustard). I have known for a while that I needed new author photos, as the wonderful ones I had (by friend Nancy Wilson Fulton) were over 10 years old.
After discovering that my work was shortlisted in the Bridport Memoir Awards this year, I needed author photos urgently. I’ll say more about the awards in the next post, but suffice it to say I’m thrilled to bits. Child Sexual Abuse reaching the top five in an international, open competition. This is a win no matter what.
But back to the photos. I went to see Hannah of Cuts the Mustard because I trusted her. She was in the Lakes (six hour drive from here), so a bit of a haul over a weekend, but I knew I couldn’t go to a stranger. Especially a man. That was not ever going to happen.
In the couple of weeks which followed the shoot, I tried to identify my feelings. The process of doing them had felt harder than I anticipated. I felt on the spot. I felt awkward. And at some point, I realised that I felt scrutinised. Not, I hasten to say, by Hannah — but by the camera itself somehow. I tied myself into a knot trying to appear ‘normal’, all the while feeling so very ‘different’.
It’s not rocket science to figure out what is going on here. Being forced to appear ‘normal’, to perform, when really so much is NOT normal under the surface. Really you want to run away forever.
To Hannah’s enormous credit, I began, as the session went on, to see the person behind the camera for who she is: a friendly face, a face which means me no harm, a face which believes in me. Hannah knows my history, and I began to think ‘oh, just be how you are every day’ — she likes you! You like her!
The shoot improved exponentially partway through. I can identify when I began to ‘risk’ showing myself. I realised she wasn’t going to use anything against me. That I did not need to hide.
Because that’s what my father would do. Swoop into any show of my ‘true self’, try to weasel his way in, try to ‘steal’ it — or so it felt. So I learned to hide the way I felt, nothing showing on my face. I learned to live with scrutiny, with my father seeming to examine my face, my movements, for anything he could bring up later, in my bedroom, that night. Anything to get ‘closer’ to me.
At some point, in my teens, while the abuse was still going on, my father took pictures of me. They are not explicit pictures, but they are agonising nonetheless. They look grown up, so focused on me, the camera’s cold gaze. I was frozen, yet required to be ‘relaxed’. A child forced into grown up poses. Thinking about it now, I feel just sick, sick to my stomach.
Somehow, these experiences led to me being convinced that I do not, under any circumstances, ‘take a good picture’. My children and husband are ‘photogenic’. I am not. I have felt this way for as long as I can remember.
When the photos come through from Hannah though, I am gobsmacked. And elated. There, on the page, in so many photos, I am myself. I recognise me. My husband recognises me, seeing in my movements and expressions so much that is ‘typical’. I look: yes, I am happy with that kind of ‘typical’. I am happy with how I guess I must appear to the world. This is me.
I have always hated representations of myself. They feel so far away from my nebulous idea of ‘me’. I harboured a fear in fact that I always looked fake, that there was always some of kind of ‘wall’ between my interior self and my external appearance, and never the twain shall meet. I honestly had zero idea that these photos could be ‘me’ in the world. But my friends and family assure me that they are.
So what happened? How did I arrive here? Later, I spoke with my good friend Clare Best (another CSA survivor) about this. It turns out that she wrote a blog post herself about having author photos taken — by her son in this instance — and how this led to a sense of growth, of being more rather than less grounded, connecting with the self in profound ways.
Clare mentioned the idea of ‘post traumatic growth’. I’d never heard of it. But reading up on it: this is clearly what has happened to me, in particular ways, over time. The latest one being finding my way through being photographed, and experiencing it differently than ever before. There is a part of me that might have turned away completely from having these photos taken. I did find it gruelling at first, extremely emotionally challenging. But at some point, unawares, I grew past/through the initial, old trauma. I can now see that I have done this a number of times in my life, around very specific things. It is patently obvious that PTG is by no means the inevitable outcome (‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ — NO!), nor should there (as the above linked article is careful to point out) ever be an expectation or imposed narrative of certainty around PTG happening. Because we all know that there are some things about having been abused which will always remain raw — different things for different people — but forever traumatic and triggering. It’s just that for me, surprisingly, being photographed is now not one of them.
Last night we went out to dinner to celebrate the Bridport prize. My husband took a picture of me in front of some nice food, to send to the kids. He showed it to me — ‘you won’t let me send this, will you?’ After 37 years together, he is prepared! But I looked at it and thought: nah, I don’t care. Send it! So he did.
***
The following excerpt from my memoir LEARNING TO SURVIVE, recounts being scrutinised by my father. This particular event happened when I was over 18, but it is one of many such occurrences throughout my teen years.
***
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 College, I am in rehab, building my leg muscles, generally getting back into shape, and I use the weights every other day, doing sit-ups and stretches 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 [my stepmother] comes home, he quickly gets to his feet, goes upstairs.
Encounters like this are common, I realise now. From age 11, when the abuse starts, 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 actually in a secret relationship. As if external forces ‘keep us apart’, 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 all of 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.
PATRICIA DEBNEY 