Brutal news week.
I used to draw down a wall between my life and the news. As I anchored the news, reading about others’ pain, I didn’t feel my own. I was inured from the intrusions of decades of sexual abuse. I could focus on WhoWhatWhenWhereWhyHow and script the stories, read my own words, tell the story. That’s over. It’s actually been over for a few years until I could finally break down that inviolate partition. I was healed. I thought.
But this was a brutal news week.
I can’t get Penn State Assistant Coach Mike McQueary’s words out of me. McQueary heard “skin-on-skin slapping sounds” as Jerry Sandusky sexually assaulted – call it rape, it was raping – a 10 or 12 year old boy, arms around the boys’ waist. Their eyes all connected, McQueary testified – the victim, the perp, the young coach. They all knew what happened. No one told.
Let me say that again. No. One. Told. This is the biggest crime of sexual abuse, of raping children. It makes the child complicit in the lie. It silences the child until some horrific trigger unleashes a cascade of pain. And, until then, all the brain synapses get connected wonky. Nothing is normal again. Smells wire with a touch on the back of the neck. Ice cubes crashing into a glass wire with a pedophile entering a dark room in the middle of the night. And, the skin-on-skin slapping sounds wire with another time, another place of shrieking sexual violence. Scientists say “what wires together, fires together.” Violence done fifty years ago screams in every cell.
I’m telling you about my experience, as well as every other grown child who was raped by a “trusted” adult.
There were two other stories this week. Two girls. One was about ten, and the man kept coming to her in the middle of the night, saying it would be the last time. It is now. The man was killed in a hail of his own gunfire inside the home he set fire to. The day before he had to turn himself in on charges he had been sexually abusing the girl. The Washougal Washington man also killed his wife and her twin sister with whom he lived. The Clark County records say the women didn’t believe the girl’s accusations.
“I just wish it would stop,” she told the deputies.
The other story. A mom let her fifteen year old daughter stay for a few days with a couple of friends last month. The female allegedly plied the girl with booze and pot, and the 35-year old male raped her numerous times. The mom figured it out through her daughter’s Facebook account, and, pretending to be her own daughter, communicated with the perp, getting enough evidence from her former friend to have him arrested.
The two girls survived. The boy in the shower with Sandusky survived. But not really. Even after therapy, even after it seems there is healing, there are triggers.
Skin-on-skin slapping sounds.
I was four and-a-half when my stepfather first charmed my mother into believing he was just tickling me. She walked right past me lying on the floor. Under him. Being raped. Skin-on-skin slapping sounds – my trigger today. Not every day has a trigger. But today did. Those five words turned multi-sensory, and tortured me all day.
My stepfather was a handsome man. Looked like Dean Martin. A few years older than Penn State Coach Joe Paterno, my stepfather had played Defensive and Tight End for the Nittany Lions. Makes you wonder.
These pedophiles. Often, they are family friends, father surrogates, physically attractive and seductive liars. A study released this week via the CDC says one in five women reported rape. 35-percent of the women who had been raped as minors were again raped as adults. I was – by at least three that I recall in this moment. I don’t want to remember their faces or the weight of their bodies on me. 28-percent of the male rape victims were first raped before they were eleven years old. Like the boy McQueary says he saw in the shower with Sandusky.
I’ve overcome DID – dissociative identity disorder – and PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder – that I got from the fifteen years I lived under my stepfather’s roof. Under his roof – rape, violence, alcoholism, mental illness, neglect, suicide attempts. I never knew what would happen. I lived hyped in every instant. Any uncertain moment could explode in terror, rape, violence. Forgive me, if I ask for a definite schedule, if I seem fragile, if the uncertainty of going with the flow is a difficult fit right now.
It was a brutal news week.
If it felt this way to you, too, talk about it. 1,300,000 women say they’ve been raped.
Tell it. Find a compassionate ear. You must. So it will stop.
thelondonflowerlover said,
December 16, 2011 @ 11:09 pm
Thank you for this important piece of work
Sam Ruck said,
December 17, 2011 @ 10:03 pm
“Forgive me, if I ask for a definite schedule, if I seem fragile, if the uncertainty of going with the flow is a difficult fit right now.
It was a brutal news week.”
I understand, Diana. I’ve been helping my wife thru the healing process for d.i.d. I hope next week is better for you!
Sam
Diana Page Jordan said,
December 17, 2011 @ 10:47 pm
Hi Sam,
It takes courage to be the support, too. Thank you for being that for her. As for me, once I wrote the blog – and published it – everything made sense, and it all began processing. The whole triggering/unsettling/reestablishing took probably twelve hours. I’m happy and solid again today. I’ve had so much therapy, triggers that used to put me in a deep dark hole for days, weeks, months, now just take hours. For anyone going through this, I highly recommend an excellent, specialized therapist, journaling, and exercise that you love – as well as supportive and knowing friends and family.
all my best,
Diana
shermeekaflies said,
December 18, 2011 @ 10:04 pm
Hello Diana,
I just stumbled upon your blog and it hits home with me. I am not only new to the WordPress world, but I’m also a survivor of sexual abuse and other sorts of trauma. No matter how much therapy one goes through, the fear of it happening again never goes away. It doesn’t sting the way it used to, but the fear is always there. But I choose not to let the fear run my life and I have to do something about it. I’m seeing a therapist right now and very active in art therapy. I even started a blog dedicated to those who’ve experienced trauma. Thank you so much for sharing your story and concerns for children who don’t have a voice. Someone has to look out for them.
Diana Page Jordan said,
January 2, 2012 @ 10:14 pm
Hello,
If enough of us find the courage to use our voices, they will be heard! And, children…as well as the tortured children inside adults who have never spoken the words…will take their power back.
Art therapy! What a wonderful journey that is! I refused my therapist when she begged for me to join a group – until she pulled together an art therapy group. Enormously helpful! That therapist and a later one used EMDR with me, which is a phenomenal way to heal PTSD.
all my best to you! And, thank you so much for sharing! I will check out your blog.
Diana
Susan Rich, author, public speaker said,
January 2, 2012 @ 3:43 pm
Moving, powerful – words fail me, except the obvious: IT MUST STOP. Thank you for sharing.
Diana Page Jordan said,
January 2, 2012 @ 10:18 pm
Hi Susan,
Thank you! Tough subject, but it must be voiced.
Good to hear from you! And, best of luck in your work, Susan.
all best,
Diana