Posted: 3-23-2006
THE TOUCH THAT HURTS: Survivors struggle with lifelong pain
Part III of a series
(Yesterday, this series looked into the law enforcement aspect of developing a criminal sexual conduct case. Law enforcement agencies recognize their court cases are only as good as the victims’ abilities to tell their stories. Today, this series looks at how survivors of sexual abuse cope and heal.)
By JOE BOOMGAARD
Daily News Staff Writer
Sexual abuse survivors face a troubling fate.
If they tell their painful secrets and prosecute the abuser, they could be stigmatized as damaged goods and have to go through the ache of telling their story. If they don’t tell what happened to them, they struggle with the inner demons forced upon them by the abuser, and the abuser remains free to again victimize them or others.
Robbed innocence
Sexual abusers effect life-altering change on their victims. For the survivors of sexual abuse, myriad emotions and fears make the abuse unspeakable. Some survivors eventually find their voice.
One mother of an abused child spoke with the Daily News on the condition she would remain anonymous.
Even though the abuse occurred more than two decades ago, affects of the abuse linger on for both mother and child.
To woman’s ex-husband pleaded guilty to third degree criminal sexual conduct after years of sporadic, but nonetheless terrible abuse. He served time in prison, was released back into the community and lives minutes away from his victim. Because the incident took place before the sex offender registry law was passed in 1996, his name does not appear on any sex offender list.
After 25 years of learning to cope with the abuse, the mother and child have strong feelings. They hurt for each other and are angry the abuser now walks free, waiting for other opportunities to strike again, in their opinion.
“Intellectually, you can understand a lot of things, but emotionally — not so well,” the mother said.
The mother still bears the emotional burden of not realizing the abuse occurred. She feels she let her child down by not protecting the child from the abuse.
“Why didn’t I see it?” the mother said. “My ex-husband was the last person I would have thought of. You don’t expect that kind of person is the one that you love and trust the most. It was something so bizarre to me. We’re always supposed to tell children to protect themselves from strangers. You just don’t look for it in the people that you trust. I didn’t know I had to protect my child in my own home.”
When her child revealed the abuse, she fell into a fit of disbelief and could not stop apologizing for “failing” her child.
“My ex-husband was a good member of community. By all appearances, nothing was wrong. Everything appeared average. You can’t look at people and tell they’re an abuser. There is no stereotype.”
Abusers prey on children
The type of abuse in the child’s case is not unusual. The most common victims of sexual abuse are minors.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 66.9 percent of victims of all reported sexual abuse are age 17 or younger. Only 7.4 percent of reported sexual abuse victims are older than 34 years old.
Kids’ House, a part of the Andre Bosse Center in Ludington, deals with child victims of all kinds of abuse, not just sexual abuse. Nonetheless, the group sees nearly 500 cases of sexual abuse each year. Counselors there try to turn child victims of sexual abuse into survivors. The staff at the center promotes healing by providing a safe, caring environment.
“We try to feel comfortable, not official,” said Marta Kistler, child advocate coordinator at Kids’ House. She and the staff pool community resources to “offer services to the families to make the situation easier,” she said.
The child-friendly milieu makes it easier for the abused to feel comfortable enough to tell their story.
Cynthia Cole, program director and forensic interviewer at Kids’ House, said children have a difficult time talking about the abuse because it’s often committed by someone they are taught to look up to and trust. There is no blanket description of a sexual abuser, she said.
Younger children also have the hardest time telling what happened to them.
“Older kids are clued in by preventative programs,” Cole said. “They’re not as naïve. But the younger kids don’t tell for a long time. They’re afraid their parents won’t believe them or that they’ll be mad at them.”
Parents won’t always see obvious signs of sexual abuse, according to Cole. Physical signs of sexual abuse only occur about 5 percent of the time. It’s usually up to the child to reveal the abuse.
Once children open their doors, it’s up to the forensic interviewer to make a case that will stand up in court. The forensic interview gleans the information from the children and assesses the validity of the statements.
“If they can disclose the abuse and get it out, then they can put medication on it and start to heal,” Cole said. “The child who was molested always knows what happened, and they need to get it out. It’s not their fault. They’re still OK; they’re a good person; they’re not dirty.”
While getting the story out can be healthy, the setting in which it’s told must be considered. Telling the story in front of an accuser in an open courtroom often proves difficult, as the mother found out.
In the first go-around in court for a hearing, the child took the stand, but “when it came to more intimate details,” her child “clammed up and wouldn’t talk.” The second time around, the mother worked with her child and told the child to look directly at her during the testimony — not at the prosecutor, not at the abuser, not at the attorneys. The child was able to testify enough that the father was charged. He pleaded guilty to “spare the family from embarrassment,” the mother said sarcastically.
“By him going to jail, it showed the blame didn’t belong to my child,” the mother said. “The perpetrators need to have the blame put on them. It’s so important sexual abusers be prosecuted. The victims need to know it’s not their fault. The older they get, the more important that becomes.
“The victims don’t have to live as victims their whole lives, but the remnants of being the victim are there their whole lives. The trauma stays there.”
The healing process
Once the story is told, and perhaps after the court proceedings are over, children can begin to heal from the pain of the abuse.
Cole said many victims are reluctant to go to counseling, but they need “to put the abuse back here on the shelf. It’s always there, but they need to say ‘I’m done with it.’”
The mother said the counseling came many years later for her child. Although the child refused to talk about the abuse, the mother sought advice from a crisis counselor to learn how best to help her child heal.
“The counselor said at some point in time, my child was going to need counseling, but she felt that you don’t over-traumatize a child who’s been traumatized,” the mother said.
While her child coped “surprisingly well,” the mother said problems still existed. The child had a difficult time learning to trust peers and adults.
“My child’s been let down by a lot of people,” the mother said. “Friends’ parents wouldn’t let my child come over anymore after the abuse. After finding someone who my child thought was a great friend and told the story to, the friend blurted out the story in a classroom. That was a most traumatic thing.”
Shortly after the child told about the abuse, other problems arose when the child was sleeping.
“Waking my child up was a real challenge,” the mother said.
No one can touch the child to rouse the child from sleep. People were hit over the head with a clock or scratched trying to wake the child.
“There’s a terror in my child’s eyes — you don’t ever want to see that terror,” the mother said.
As a coping mechanism, mother and child have became devoted friends, an emotional support team.
“We depended on each other,” the mother said. “We were the only ones we trusted, and we learned not to talk about it with anyone but each other. It took years to put it on the back burner because we were so hurt by what happened. But we were there for each other emotionally.”
Just as the crisis counselor predicted, the child eventually sought counseling 20 years after the abuse and prospered since, according to the mother.
“You’d never guess what my child has gone through,” the mother said.
Emotional problems persist
Others abused children aren’t so lucky.
Cole said victims may be extremely compliant or aggressive following the abuse. Therapy and counseling combat these behaviors, Cole said.
Children are impressionable and willing to please, something playing into abusers’ desires. Some children think they must continue with behavior pleasing to the abuser even after the abuse stops, according to Cole.
The child is so inclined to act on the abuser’s urges that the child may not understand the nature of the action. The key, Cole said, is for caretakers to set boundaries.
Some victims go down the road of self-destructive behavior, according to Cole.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), “Sexual violence can have very harmful and lasting consequences for victims, families and communities.”
Besides physical problems arising from sexual assault, victims can endure many psychological consequences.
The CDC lists immediate psychological consequences like shock, fear, denial, guilt and distrust, as well as chronic mental issues like depression, attempted or completed suicide, alienation, post-traumatic stress disorder, and unhealthy diet as resulting from sexual violence. Social relationships can also be strained.
Some research has shown sexual abuse victims exhibit risky, unhealthy behaviors like engaging in high-risk sexual behavior and using harmful substances including cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs.
Kids’ House tries to direct these victims and their families toward community resources such as counselors and parenting classes to prevent those problems. Kids’ House tries to help the healing process begin.
They help out with little things, too, like care packages and blankets for the children once they’ve told their stories in forensic interviews. The gifts act as rewards to reinforce positive behavior for telling the secrets, Cole said.
Pain lurks around every corner
The saga doesn’t end when the abusers get out of prison, the mother said.
Living in a small community, the child had a chance encounter with the abusive father 25 years after the abuse — after he had served prison time.
“He came up to my child and said he had no remorse,” the mother said. “People think that the prison system works. That says it does not.”
The accidental meeting led the mother to realize the painful events have the potential to continue even after the abuser goes to prison.
“People think it stops when they go to prison and get out,” the mother said. “But the story doesn’t stop there, not for the victims — maybe not for the molester.”
The mother thinks the offenders should be treated like mentally ill patients who are not released into the community until officials are convinced the patients are not a danger to the community. In the mother’s opinion, prison might not be the answer.
“They need treatment so intense that a prison setting is not going to be able to provide it,” the mother said.
jboomgaard@ludingtondailynews.com
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