Breaking the Silence on Childhood Sexual Abuse
by Tammie Rose
Very little scares me more than the threat of childhood sexual abuse.Personally, I have very strong feelings about what I would like to do to the abusers: none of the possible scenarios are pleasant. While I try very hard to remember that I do not know the personal history of the abuser, I also know that no child asks for or deserves abuse.
Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Grace Vos, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and a member of Survivor Advocacy Group for Empowerment (SAGE). Most members of the organization are survivors, but they do not view SAGE as a support group. While SAGE is a supportive organization, its mandate is to stop childhood sexual abuse. The group is considered an educational body, based on Prince Edward Island, and focused on sexual abuse prevention. SAGE gives its members the opportunity to self-heal while contributing to the cause of ending sexual abuse altogether.
As most instances of childhood sexual abuse are unreported, it is impossible to know exactly how many children are sexually abused. We do know that the Canadian Department of Justice reported that, in 1998, there were 0.86 confirmed cases of sexual abuse per 1000 Canadian children. Most instances of sexual abuse go unreported because the child cannot or refuses to tell or no one reports the abuse to authorities. The report also cites reasons that this abuse is kept quiet, ranging from people not being able to identify the signs of abuse to wanting to stay out of the situation, to a variety of issues with a child’s understanding of the situation.
In November 2005, SAGE put out a call to action to bring together survivors for a week-end of brainstorming and education. Forty women representing a cross section of backgrounds, ages, and cultures responded to the call, all wanting to do something about the problem. Their task was to identify the things they wish they’d had when experiencing the sexual abuse. The women were instructed to share only as much as was needed to help further the educational experience; SAGE wanted to focus on solutions throughout the course of this weekend.
This weekend resulted in a report presented to the Muriel McQueen Ferguson Foundation for the Prevention of Family Violence and the beginning of Breaking the Silence, a book that allows survivors from across Prince Edward Island to put their voices to paper. There are currently twenty-one women across the Island who have agreed to write their stories for the book. SAGE has organized a series of writing workshops with a professional author to facilitate the process and connect those who have trouble writing with authors for their stories. Grace Vos’ is one of the voices being put to paper; she spoke candidly to me about her experience and why she feels so passionately about both the project and SAGE.
Grace was sexually abused when she was a child. Like many children, she reached out for help by telling her mother. Her mother asked her to keep the abuse a secret. Grace’s feelings toward the abuse and her attacker are hard to identify with by those who did not go through abuse: she felt that she was chosen for this experience, and that the abuse created a bond between Grace and her attacker. Several years later, Grace is no longer keeping the secret. In fact, she wants her story to help others.
“Child sexual abuse happened to me,” states Grace. “It does not own me, nor does it define who I am. It was an experience, as well as other experiences, that has helped to create the person that I am today.”
Grace wanted to know that she mattered in a safe, respectful way. By connecting with other survivors and working on a project that aims to end Child Sexual Abuse, she felt safe, that she mattered, was heard, and her voice counted.
All of the women involved in the book project feel that their stories will help to educate a number of groups. The stories will provide others with similar experience the opportunity to identify with someone else and find comfort in not feeling alone; they will arm readers with clues to abuse that they may not have previously known; and they will help those close to people who suffered sexual abuse with a window into the kinds of feelings, thoughts, and logic that a child experiences.
Child sexual abuse is a subject that is addressed frequently in a variety of mediums, from talk shows to news stories to a number of best-selling biographies. Nonetheless, it is a subject that is uncomfortable for most people; we do not want to think of it happening to someone we love and find it hard to deal with when it does happen. “Denial allows [sexual abuse] to be perpetrated,” says Grace. “The perpetrator banks on the fact that we will deny it. Society helps to create [opportunities for] childhood sexual abuse, and the perpetrators know it.”
Breaking the Silence is only one part of the educational experience that SAGE hopes to bring to the world. In the future, the group hopes to work with pedophiles, to give them an opportunity to reach out for help. SAGE hopes to identify some of the reasons why pedophiles feel the need to achieve power through manipulation and the seduction of children. By focusing on the knowledge of adult survivors, SAGE, through these and other projects, has the potential to dramatically change the ways the community responds
