#MeToo @Home
A Movement
The #MeToo movement served to demonstrate the common experiences women have with sexual abuse. In 2006, the activist Tarana Burke began the movement to support children and young women like herself. The hashtag became popular during the 2017 Harvey Weinstein case. This feminist movement courageously drew attention to how devastatingly common it is for men to abuse women, especially in the form of childhood abuse. However, it seems some of the facts remain hidden. We’re still facing the obstacles of shame-driven barriers to discussing this important topic openly.
Statistics of sexual abuse occurring mostly within the home are consistent and clear. Yet, women remain hesitant to openly discuss sexual trauma from family members. Since the Roe V Wade controversy, we have started hearing echoes of “little girls who are pregnant from their father.”
It’s eerie how opponents brush off this argument for abortion rights. Ignorance leads people to believe this is an outlier situation. Rather than treating this topic as the reality check that it is, we avoiding facing this uncomfortable cultural norm. Why? Embarrassment? Fear of the consequences of severing ties with the family unit? Worried to lose our support system (even though that system abused us as children)? Do we fear people judging us? Will we be shamed and blamed for the abuse we suffered?
Normalizing The Discussion
I grew up with one of those young girls. She used to push her baby-doll around in a stroller in our trailer park. At age 11, there was an actual infant in that stroller: hers and her step-father’s. Within the past few years, I’ve personally known two women who overdosed. Both had previously disclosed to me that their fathers raped them as children. Multiple women have shared their childhood stories about their fathers and other family members raping them as little girls.
For example, one girl I knew was raped for years in childhood by her older brother. Another friend was abused nightly for years by her stepfather. One young woman discovered her husband was secretly raping her younger sister. One girl was raped at gunpoint by her father. Countless girls revealed being raped by their fathers. We shared these stories of abuse openly as teenagers with other teens. The only support we found was in each other. Not yet a movement, we understood #MeToo was real and prevalent in our communities. Although most likely under-reported for public record, these traumas occur with great frequency.
#MeToo, Pervasiveness
In addition to #MeToo, other women in my family were sexually abused as children. These conversations were discussed in secret and with very few words. Girls were better seen, not heard. My grandmother did not disclose her sexual abuse to me until her last year of life. She finally shared her story for the first time after I unveiled my own struggles with PTSD resulting from childhood sexual abuse.
Many women over the years have disclosed their sexual abuse privately, and every time the story begins at home. I’ve found that when I’m vulnerable about my personal experiences, people begin sharing their stories with me, often for the very first time. If it sounds odd to you that so many women were abused sexually as children by their own family and close friends, it shouldn’t.
#MeToo, The Facts
Studies show that at least 1 in every 3-4 girls are sexually abused before the age of 18, and 1 in every 6-8 boys (1). Most people never disclose their abuse, so it’s reasonable to assume the numbers are much higher. These traumatic abusive experiences are occurring mostly before adulthood. We know that childhood abuse increases the likelihood of a cycle of abuse. Girls are most often violated, not by a stranger, but by their own brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins, stepfathers, and close family friends.
US News and World Report highlights this problem by pointing out that there are twice as many children living with sexual abuse than there are children with cancer. Why is the inspiration for ending childhood sexual abuse less prevalent than the urgency to cure childhood cancer? Let’s start talking about childhood sexual abuse as openly and shamelessly as we do other issues affecting children.
In an article titled, “The Silent Epidemic: Child Sexual Abuse,” Elain Cox, MD reports that these sexually abused children are 7-13 times more likely to commit suicide (1). Most substance users were abused as children. In fact, one report gives a staggering statistic that 90% of female alcoholics reported childhood sexual abuse (2).
Not Alone
From a young age, I realized I wasn’t alone. Other girls began sharing their experiences of sexual abuse in middle school. We told each other. We rarely told adults; they never listened. The first time I heard an adult share their story of childhood trauma was in high school. One of my JROTC instructors shared an inspiring story of a little girl who had suffered immensely. She overcame many traumas and became one of the world’s most famous women.
Oprah Winfrey has bravely shared her story of survival. She was abused for years by multiple family members, including cousins and uncles, and even forced to birth a child at age 14 (3). I immediately connected to Oprah’s story. I admired her vulnerability. She showed post-traumatic growth (4), and I always wanted to share my story the way she shared hers.
We should be concerned. The number of victims correlates with the number of perpetrators. Rapists are just as common as the victims. Stop saying stranger danger. These are not strangers. They are people we know, and probably love. These are young boys and men who live in our own homes. You are making a huge mistake by being suspicious of strangers. The ones to keep at a distance from little girls live in your home. Pay special attention to any signs of “grooming,” which is when an abuser treats one child more favorably than another, and gives him or her special attention.
Speaking Out
There’s no denying that speaking out against sexual predators within the home will have consequences for us victims. Coping and grieving the coming out process is mentally draining. Childhood abuse is difficult enough, but then facing re-victimization by family members during the healing process can be even more cumbersome. When we speak up, we risk losing our support system. Our families often punish us by withdrawing their affections. After all, their family reputation is at stake.
Purity culture seeks to blame victims for their abuse and perpetuates the cycle of abuse we face. Instead of having frank conversations about why the perpetrators abuse us, skeptics place us on trial. We are examined for having caused or contributed to the abuse. Not to mention, the common trope of expecting us to say as little as possible about the events that took place in order to save other adults from feeling guilty over their failures to protect us, and even the pressures to protect the perpetrator and their family’s reputation.
So why am I asking you to face these hardships that we face together as survivors? The numbers speak for themselves. No matter how little we discuss this difficult but important topic, our communities and our world cannot improve with such constant trauma facing our children. These events of abuse result in various mental health difficulties from depression to drug abuse and a perpetual cycle of sexual abuse. This movement is about taking #MeToo one step further in order to build a safer society for our children. Little boys and girls, despite growing up in an overall privileged country, continue to face the worldwide problem of the silent, but normal, culture of being sexually abused as children within the secret confines of their own homes.
Act Now
At least one in every four little girls you know right now is being sexually abused. At least one in six boys you know are being sexually abused. If they meet the statistical standards, it’s probably happening at the hands of someone they love, someone they trust, and probably even someone you know and trust….Her older brother, his aunt, their cousin, or even that close family friend.
Protect Your Children
There’s no doubt that speaking up is hard. We don’t want to upset anyone or lose relationships over our honest concerns that someone’s child is showing signs of sexual abuse, or that we’ve seen signs of abuse from the perpetrator. Sometimes the perpetrator is also a child, leading to the common mistake of brushing these behaviors off as “just something children do.” But an older child abusing a younger child is still damaging in terms of the power dynamic and can still lead to mental health struggles for the victim if not consensual, no matter the age difference. And acknowledging and helping an older child who is abusive, could be paramount to the prevention of ongoing abusive behaviors into adulthood.
It’s disturbing to me when I hear parents make the comment that they don’t allow their child to go to sleepovers with people they don’t know, yet they have no rules or concerns regarding their children staying with extended family, or even allow their younger children to sleep with their older siblings. Ignoring these facts is doing your child harm. Let’s instead take the necessary steps to keep your sons and daughters safe. Check out this podcast on this important conversation: “Courageous Conversations to Prevent Childhood Sexual Abuse with Feather Berkower.”
Is your discomfort talking about sexual abuse by a family members stronger than your child’s life-long pain after being abused? As adults, it’s our responsibility to protect children. And the unfortunate fact is that most children never do tell an adult, so it’s also our responsibility to detect it and speak up. For more information on signs of abuse and prevention, see sources listed at the end of this blog.
#MeToo: My story
My older cousin sexually abused me for about 4 years that I can remember. He would touch and penetrate me on family vacations, under the water at the beach and river, in the back of the church bus, even secretly during Easter egg hunts, and almost every night in the bed while I was sleeping. He would often ask for me to sleep with him. Family members smilingly agreed and even believed he was being a sweet caregiver to me. At age 11 I began to tell my story of #MeToo. My family quickly shushed me with many different discouraging responses. Jared Johnson was 15 at the time I opened up to a family member for the first time. Although all the adults became vaguely aware of his abuse, not one of them approached or reprimanded him.
Fast forward into adulthood, I eventually attended therapy for some various disturbing symptoms I had experienced my whole life. I was diagnosed with PTSD and began treatment. As part of my treatment, I was encouraged to revisit telling my family about the abuse. Again, I was met with anger and implored to keep quiet and to “just get over it” and “weren’t you a child when this happened?” Not one of my family members was empathetic. One of them even hid my mailed letter which disclosed the abuse to other family members. In fact, I was accused of causing it to happen and told I would be banned from the family if I wasn’t careful.
Closure Doesn’t Always Exist
Furthermore, I was randomly harassed 20 years later by one of my abuser’s friends. Unprovoked (I’ve never met this girl), she told me I was not sexually abused, but accused me of being the abuser. She wrote me a long message about how “everyone here knows” that you threatened “that if he didn’t have sex with you, you would lie and say he raped you.” I can only assume this is some preemptive gossip my cousin told people to protect himself. Although laughable to any reasonable human that an elementary school child in the third grade said such things to a seventh-grader, these comments were nevertheless re-traumatizing. I’ve never received the closure I would hope to have from such painful experiences.
The only comfort I find is in sharing my story in hopes that #YouToo will not feel alone. We are not alone. The unfortunate truth it seems is all of us women, maybe on a spectrum of frequency and despicable nature, have shared experiences of either childhood sexual trauma, or adulthood harassment and victimization.
And #MenToo
Although fewer men have shared their stories of trauma with me than women, I’m typically shocked at hearing these stories after knowing someone for many years. Men seem to keep their stories secret longer, even from people they know and trust. Because of purity culture and the push to suppress emotions and emphasis on a strong and masculine sexuality in men, men have far too long suppressed their stories of childhood sexual trauma.
Trauma
A common side effect of abuse is PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is your brain’s attempt to recall how you survived previous stressful events, in order for your continued safety and survival. Because your coping skills worked then, your brain wants to remind you of how you survived. If someone has sexually abused you and you’ve never talked about it with a professional, I encourage you to do so. This journey of facing past events without professional help could be harmful, as revisiting these childhood traumas often makes things worse before they can get better. Below is a link to search verified therapists and psychologists in your area, and a link on self-compassion, which is a technique to help you on your journey towards healing.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists
Books and Movies on This Topic
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Color Purple
Precious
The Butterfly Effect
Forrest Gump
The Kite Runner
Signs of Abuse and Prevention
https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/prevent_sa_ts.pdf
https://www.stopitnow.org/ohc-content/warning-signs-possible-abuse
https://www.rainn.org/articles/warning-signs-young-children
Resources
- https://health.usnews.com/health-care/for-better/articles/2018-06-01/the-silent-epidemic-child-sexual-abuse
- https://healthycarroll.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/03.link-between-substance-abuse-and-sexual-violence.pdf
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9604633/Oprah-recalls-repeatedly-raped-19-year-old-cousin-age-nine.html
- https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/11/growth-trauma
