If we were to be completely honest and truthful, when sexual abuse scandal happens, are we not more shocked at where it happened, than to whom it happened to? Are we not more blown back by the place and circle, than to the victim themselves?
I see it as being two wounds.
One to the victim and child, whose life will be forever changed. Whose love and trust and innocence is destroyed. The vastness of effects from being abused will follow them into each and every relationship they enter. The composite of who they were born to be has been severely altered. A wound that will be part of them for the rest of their lives. A survival self will now be who they are.
A victim's life will not be able to remove or eliminate the abuse, instead it will be incorporated into a life.
The victim can't make herself back into what she was prior. Just as I doubt any institution or family can. You simply can't pretend to pretend it isn't part of your whole.
Regardless of your holy state, your loving state, your trusting state, once sexual abuse happens, it is no longer in that condition.
You have to now include, that said place is unsafe for children.
It is a fact.
Evidence shows this to be true.
The second wounding happens to the church, family, or institution.
This wound is typically, the first and only wound that people focus on.
They want their church to be restored to its pristine nature.
In my experience, the first defense is upon the wounding of the group identity.
A church will be defended, loudly, and by many.
A family, will defend itself by ridiculing the victim who speaks out.
If you can at least see the two separate wounds and see where the focus goes, you will then see how a victim is left to fend for himself.
We are left in the ringing silence while you all shore up the cancerous hole left by the abuser who abused us.
You are not paying attention to the child, adult child who was hurt.
It isn't your intent.
You are in shock and of the two wounds, you go to the one you know best. The one you feel most connected to. The one where you find your salvation, and love.
I get it.
I do understand.
But, I also understand where it leaves the victim.
As you try and explain the whole, as pure and holy, you are blatantly ignoring our truths.
We are telling you that the whole is abusive.
Certainly, among the whole there is good.
And, it is the good, that fails to see us.
For it is working to keep the faith.
In the one two punch, the first being we have been betrayed and abused by family/church, we then see you supporting it, defending its wholeness...a second hit to our hearts.
When good people do nothing, evil flourishes.
Yet, it isn't nothing they do, it is which blow they attend to.
Again, I am with you. I understand. I was the biggest supporter of my family and for my earlier years, the church. I had begun to have doubts with the church, and there were parts of me that was struggling with my family too. And, then abuse was exposed.
While it was a horrible shock, it was a relief too.
It validated who I was.
I was a victim.
I had signs and signatures of being a child of sexual abuse.
I didn't rush to defend the family and church.
I instead, looked at myself, my wounds.
I can never return to my natural state of innocence, nor will I ever be who I was born to be, but I can embrace and love my imperfectness.
What I would like, at the very minimum, is for those to acknowledge the imperfections of their churches. They are not simply a place of worship, a salvation game, they are indeed, the perfect set up for child abuse.
Perhaps then, we can work to eliminate the threat to children.
Will they come with warning signs, "Unsafe for children to attend."
