Overcoming Sexual Abuse » blame

Male Childhood Sexual Abuse: Suffering in Silence

Guest Contributions — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:27:36 +0000

by Gordon DeLand

I have been silenced, me and my trouble.

I first silenced myself in shame, not even knowing exactly why, but somehow… it was wrong, what had just happened. And I knew it. I looked for a friend but got something else. The trust I had put in him had been violated, shattered. I was pretty sure it was wrong, but there was no one to ask without shaming myself for “not knowing better” It was just a vague feeling then, but it needed a private answer and there was no one to ask. So I silenced The Question. Thus The Silence began.

Then my abuser said, “Don’t tell.” We both knew what had happened. But both of us—my abuser and I— had The Question. But it was a hard question, hard to figure out what the question really was, too hard to figure out the answer alone, and it was too shameful to ask anyone else about. So my abuser told me what he told himself: “Just shut up about this—tell no one.”

Finally, I felt so much shame and guilt that I finally did go ask. I asked someone in charge of me, asked The Question, or what I thought was the question: Was it okay doing that? But when I asked, they did not know the answer, and more than that, they were shocked at the very asking of The Question and the questions that The Question brought up. I was told to be silent. Or that I was wrong, it couldn’t have happened, could it? Or at very least, be very quiet about it now.

So, there! I knew I was right. What I had done was something bad! Now I knew. What a relief! Except that, now, I was bad. Asking the Question had proved that. And now it was my responsibility to maintain The Silence about the bad thing I had done. Telling would not help, I knew that now for sure. And telling more people now—any other people—would also be bad, just like my abuser said it would be. The abuser was right. I was wrong. And I was the bad one for trying to tell. Bad, stupid me. And The Silence got stronger.

But there was hope: I could be a good boy, a big boy, by keeping The Secret and The Silence.

And life went on. The abuse went on, too, although we didn’t call it that. We were friends. Nothing violent or hurtful. Just Special Friends. There were times in between abuse when I could forget and just be a good, big boy and do my duty to not tell. Then more abuse and again I was a good quiet, obedient boy for my abuser, even though I knew that, somehow, pretty sure, less sure, that this was bad. And The Silence grew again.

Then the day came that Someone Else found out about us and the abuse stopped. No more being good for my abuser even if it was wrong and even if I was bad for doing it. The Someone Else who found out made us stop. They told, but they didn’t keep telling because it was nasty, dirty and bad. And no one wanted to hear that. And soon everyone forgot about the whole thing. Everyone but me.

And two things happened. First, I didn’t get to be with my abuser anymore, and the sudden, complete separation from the only one I dared be close with made me think maybe this would happen to anybody I got close to. Second, there were some new rules. First New Rule: No getting close to anyone sexually. Maybe when I was older, or married, they said. But not now. So I figured, no friends allowed (what other way of being close was there?).

I was told boys don’t do that kind of stuff with boys. It was nasty, dirty and bad. So, Second New Rule, one I thought up all by myself: Since boys don’t do that, and since I did do that, I was not really a boy. Not a girl, for sure. But not a boy. BOYS don’t do what I did. So…I wasn’t sure what I was, but not a boy or girl. And whatever I was, I was nasty, dirty and bad.

Also, I was told boys don’t do that kind of stuff with boys. It was nasty, dirty and bad. So, Second New Rule, one I thought up all by myself: Since boys don’t do that, and since I did do that, I was not really a boy. Not a girl, for sure. But not a boy. Boys don’t do what I did. So…I wasn’t sure what I was, but not a boy or girl. And whatever I was, I was nasty, dirty and bad. And The Silence and the shame and guilt and confusion grew.

Steadily, slowly, they expanded as I got older and my own world expanded. My guilt and shame were always there for me, familiar, comfortable. And they and the confusion always expanded to fill whatever new experiences I had, experiences that made me grow up and out of childhood. Grow up into…what? Good question. Into what? Manhood? I knew I was different because I had not been a boy. So, now, how could I be a man? Not a girl, not a woman, for sure. But what, then? Very confusing. And no one to ask. So I kept silent. And The Question still remained.

And besides, I should be able to answer all these questions for myself by now, for god sake! I’m an adult! And who cares anyway? It was a long time ago. The other guy is dead now, even. Forget it. Shut up. Keep silent. Please.

“Please, please, please! Just SHUTUPaboutit! For god sake just shut up!” That’s what I kept telling myself.

But as an adult, the day came that someone found out about me. What I thought I had hidden so well, for so long, all came out.

It happened a little at a time at first and then more and more, faster and faster. This person kept finding out things about me. They found out that it was me who had been abused, not the other guy. They found out that it wasn’t something I asked for—it was plain, simple Male Childhood Sexual Abuse. And they found out that it wasn’t my fault, that I was a victim. And then they did the one thing they promised never to do: They told The Secret. They told on me. They told the worst possible person they could tell, too. They told ME.

Yes, the person who told, was the same person being told on. I told on me, to me. I quit lying to myself and told myself The Truth. I quit lying about the abuse, that it didn’t happen, that it didn’t matter, that it couldn’t have been me that it happened to, that it was all my fault, that I asked for it. I quit lying that I was the nasty, dirty bad not-boy who was responsible for it all.

And in the end, I listened to myself. And I believed.

Now that you’ve heard my experience and thoughts about this, I’d love to hear yours. Please comment below and don’t forget to subscribe to the comments so you can continue to partake in the discussion.

It has been only the last six years that Gordon DeLand has actively addressed the fact that he is, indeed, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. In that time, one of his main passions has become writing about his journey of healing and helping others who are on that same journey. Gordon is a semi-retired “jack-of-all-trades” ranging from pastor to plumber and resides outside of Dallas, Texas.

The Secret About My Abuse I Was Too Ashamed To Tell

Guest Contributions — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 17:40:16 +0000

by Jennifer Stuck

When I first started opening up about my childhood sexual abuse, I felt like I was carrying a deep dark secret that made me different from other survivors. It was the part of my story I always skipped over when talking about my abuse—something I could barely admit to myself, let alone anyone else. It was the fact that my body responded to the sexual abuse I received as a young child.

When my abuse first began, he would perform oral sex on me (when I had no idea what that was or that it was wrong) and then he would tell me I had to do the same for him. Every time I didn’t want to do one of the disgusting things he requested, he reminded me that he had done the thing that felt good to me, so I had to return the favor.

I learned to hate myself and my body, and I blamed myself for the abuse. I thought I must have just been an over sexual kid and brought it on myself.

But in reality, I never asked to be sexually stimulated, or for the “responsibility” he placed on me of pleasuring him in return. The fact is, the human body is made to respond to sexual stimulation, and my body was designed just like adult —with one important difference. As a child, I was supposed to be allowed to go through a natural process of maturating and discovering sexuality on my own. Unfortunately, my abuser interfered with that process.

Thankfully, now I know that although they are rarely talked about, sexual stimulation and even orgasm are extremely common during rape and abuse, and it doesn’t mean that I wanted it or enjoyed it and it didn’t make my abuse any less traumatic. Through my healing, I’ve come to see how my abuser manipulated my body as a way to manipulate my mind and keep me submissive to his abuse.

Now as an adult I can clearly see that it wasn’t my fault that I was abused, or that my body responded to the abuse. And since opening up about my experience, I’ve found that I’m far from alone. I for one won’t stay silent anymore. I don’t have to be ashamed about my abuse and I won’t keep it secret ever again.

Does this resonate with you? Please join in by leaving your thoughts and feelings about this topic and don’t forget to subscribe to the comments.

Jennifer Stuck is whole-heartedly pursuing physical and emotional health and is determined to heal the wounds of her childhood sexual abuse. She loves to write, especially poetry. She is currently studying for a career in Physical Therapy. When she isn’t in school Jennifer is at home spending time with her two beautiful daughters.

Child-on-Child Sexual Abuse: It’s No Game

Guest Contributions — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:54:51 +0000

by Jennifer Stuck

Still to this day, anytime I hear the phrases “playing doctor” or “show-and-tell,” I feel a shiver run down my spine. Only recently have I realized that this is because my mother used those phrases to make light of my abuse from an older neighbor boy. She would even speak to other people casually about it right in front of me, like it was no big deal, saying things like, “I caught Jenny playing doctor with the neighbor boy again.”

I think using playful terms like those helped ease her own guilty conscience for not protecting me. If I was just “playing doctor” she could tell herself it was normal childhood exploring instead of seeing the reality that I was being sexually abused by an older child. When she said those things, it only added to the shame already felt about my abuse; it made me feel like I wanted to climb down inside myself to hide from the world so nobody could see how bad I was.

There are some instances where normal, healthy children may touch themselves innocently or may be curious about the anatomy of another child. However, what the neighbor boy did to me was so much more than normal childhood exploring. He taught me to perform sexual acts, forced me to do things with other children for him to watch, and degraded me in horrible ways. He even urinated on me as part of my abuse, like a dog marking its territory.

When a child acts out sexually on another child the way my abuser hurt me, that means he or she experienced some type of abuse themselves. That of course doesn’t make it okay for them to hurt and abuse another child, and it didn’t make it okay for my abuser to hurt me. The truth is, all abuse is damaging, and abuse from one child to another is just as damaging as abuse from an adult to a child.

When my mother failed to see the seriousness of the situation and called my abuse things like “playing doctor” or “show-and-tell”, then scolded me for allowing those things to be done to me, she put all the blame on me and none on the abuser. It made me feel like I had done something wrong. Instead of protecting me and keeping this older, more aggressive child out of our home, she told me not to LET it happen again. That was a responsibility I shouldn’t have had to carry at that young age, and it was something that kept me from reaching out for help for many years.

Those terms were also highly confusing to me. At the age my abuse began, I had no idea what sex was or that what was being done to me was wrong. All I knew was, parts of it made me feel really icky, parts of it felt good, and my abuser told me I would get in trouble if I told anyone. Then when my mother found me being abused and I DID get in trouble, and nothing happened to my abuser, that sent the message to me that my abuser’s lies were all true.

Had my family only understood how damaging child-on-child abuse is, maybe they would have stepped in. Maybe they would have kept my abuser away. Or maybe they just didn’t care enough to protect me. I’ll probably never know for sure. But one thing I do know is, now as an adult with children of my own, it’s extremely important for me to spread the word about how damaging child-on-child sexual abuse really is. It’s no game, and it’s nothing to be made light of.

Does this resonate with you? Please join in by leaving your thoughts and feelings about this topic and don’t forget to subscribe to the comments.

The Truth About Blame

Christina Enevoldsen — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 16:52:00 +0000

by Christina Enevoldsen

Blame has a bad reputation. People say it’s useless and unproductive. It’s been accused of preventing people from moving forward. It’s been blamed for keeping people in victim mentality. I was one of those people who blamed blame. I spread rumors about blame, believing them to be true.

I quoted things like:

“If it’s never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it. If we can’t take responsibility for it, we’ll always be its victim.” Richard Bach

“When you blame others, you give up your power to change.” Douglas Adams

On my healing journey from childhood sexual abuse—and all the other abuses that accompanied it—I’ve discovered many of the so-called keys to healing or moving forward actually prevented me from any progress. My childhood was already so filled with lies that I was desperate for the truth. Though the truth is very often painful, it’s also been the only thing that has healed me. Lies kept me imprisoned to the effects of abuse, but the truth sets me free.

I’ve learned to question everything, especially the “truths” that “everyone” knows and distributes so freely. I started to wonder, if they are so true and so many people know about them, then why is the world so messed up? So my truth test is to look at the fruit of those truths. What actions do those beliefs produce? Do they end in freedom or bondage? What do those “truths” really mean?

One of the “truths” about blame that I questioned was, “If I don’t accept the blame, I can’t change anything.” Does that mean that if I didn’t break something, I can’t fix it? If I didn’t make the mess, I can’t clean it up? (Any mother knows that’s certainly not true!) But I tried for years to apply that to my abuse. I accepted the blame under the false belief that I had to accept “my part” in it so I could move forward.

The truth is that I can place the blame on whoever perpetrated my abuse while still taking responsibility for picking up the pieces of my life. I can know it was my abusers’ fault and still have power to improve my condition. I don’t have to blame myself or take ownership of a problem to fix the problem. I wasn’t the problem, but I am the solution.

But my tendency to accept the blame instead of placing it on my abusers started in my childhood. I couldn’t believe that my parents were the problem. If I thought that, my world would have collapsed. If they were the problem, then they would never love me. On the other hand, if there was something wrong with me then I could work to fix it so there was hope that they would love me. But until then, I didn’t deserve their love anyway. I struggled to be perfect, but I failed. My parents didn’t fail me; I failed them. I was to blame for how they treated me.

Blaming myself gave me a sense of control I needed—that I was desperate for. I hadn’t figured out the key to not be treated so badly, but I would figure it out and stop being abused. I just had to try harder.

My own coping method of taking the blame was reinforced by my parent’s attitude toward me. After my dad abused me, he treated me as though I disgusted him and he was quick to escape my presence. My mom gave me the same message. When she acknowledged my presence at all, it was as though I was an inconvenience to her. I felt unworthy of attention and protection. I was inferior and I was the problem.

To accept that I was helpless, powerless, and that there was nothing I could have done felt like death. It was a matter of survival not to acknowledge that my caregivers were faulty and that they would never love me. I needed to accept the blame for their cruel treatment.

Since I believed I was inferior, I found many other abusers who confirmed my belief. I married an abuser and had abusive relationships with bosses, pastors and friends. Many people who saw my cycle of abusive relationships judged me for being a victim and “allowing” it. I “deserved” whatever I had coming to me. They were disgusted with me and I was disgusted with myself. People said the same thing in different ways:

“You can’t blame anyone else until you do something to change things.”
“You deserve what you tolerate.”
“You must have wanted it since you kept going back.”
“You were 50% to blame since you knew what he was like.”
“It’s not his fault since you did something to provoke him.”

I was told that since I was the common denominator in all my abuse—my childhood and later abuse—I was the problem. Supposedly, the remedy to that was to accept the blame so I could make the necessary changes to myself and my circumstances. I was supposed to stop being angry with others for their mistreatment since I was really the one at fault for allowing it.

The problem with that was that I got angrier with myself. I already thought I was a pathetic loser that didn’t deserve love and now I was lower than that. That didn’t motivate me to change the circumstances or myself. I felt incased, trapped in my powerless tomb. What good would it do to leave my abuser? If I deserved the abuse, why should I fight it? And since I wasn’t worthy of love, what was I leaving for? There wasn’t anything better. Taking the blame for my own abuse only kept me in the abusive cycle. It wasn’t the key that I was told it was.

Accepting blame is only helpful if I really am at fault. If I keep getting fired from every job because I’m on Facebook at work, blaming my boss won’t help me; blaming the company or my co-workers won’t help me. Blaming others in that situation will keep me in the cycle of employment problems until I recognize my responsibility and do something to change my behavior.

Accepting responsibility for things that are my fault can help me not to repeat the cycle, but accepting responsibility for things that are not my fault can also keep me in the cycle. The truth set me free. I needed to see who truly deserved the blame and when I did, I was free from the destructive cycle.

Before I understood the cycle of abuse—the build-up, the explosion, the honeymoon—I misunderstood the “provoking”. I thought it meant I was to blame for my abuse. In reality, I unconsciously knew the cycle and the build-up was agonizing. I knew it was coming, but WHEN??? I had to get it over with and get to the honeymoon part of the cycle, which is what I lived for.

I still believed I was the helpless child that I was during my original abuse, so the only choice I thought I had was when I’d be abused–not if. It took a lot of time to start to see where my thinking came from so I could see the true choices in front of me. But I’m not responsible for other’s actions. Believing that I am comes from misunderstanding boundaries and taking responsibilities that were never mine to take. It’s unhealthy to accept the blame for anyone else’s feelings or actions.

But why the need for blame at all? Blame is said to be a wasted and negative experience. Is it really necessary at all? This is another common sentiment about blame:

“We can sit for years and talk about blame and it gets us nowhere, except to become bitter, resentful, angry, vindictive people. It happened, it’s over and done with and there is no use in continually hashing it over because nothing will change the past. I resolved to change today and tomorrow and let the past go.”

There is some truth in this statement, “It happened, it’s over and done with and there is no use in continually hashing it over because nothing will change the past.” It’s true that placing the blame on the abusers doesn’t change the past. But just because it can’t change what happened doesn’t mean it does not serve a purpose.

When I finally placed the blame on the perpetrators of my abuse, I finally had permission to direct the anger toward them, where it should have been directed.

When I finally placed the blame on the perpetrators of my abuse, I finally had permission to direct the anger toward them, where it should have been directed. Before I did that, I was a very angry person and I focused my anger inward or in indiscriminate places. I never knew what would set me off. As long as I projected it in all the wrong places, I could never work through it; there was a never-ending supply. When I finally directed in the right places, I could work through it so there could be an end to it. Now, I’m not an angry person and when I get angry, I use it appropriately.

The truth about blame is that it’s helped me—but only when I used it through the lens of truth. As long as I thought it was a useless tool, I misdirected it. Sorting out the truth from the lies helped me to use it correctly so I could move forward in my healing process.

Christina Enevoldsen is cofounder of Overcoming Sexual Abuse, an online resource for male and female abuse survivors looking for practical answers and tools for healing. Christina’s passions are writing and speaking about her own journey of healing from abuse and inspiring people toward wholeness. She and her husband live in Los Angeles and share three children and four grandchildren.

[read Christina's story here]

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