INCESTUOUS SEXUAL ABUSE

Working With Survivors In South Asian Communities
~ © Grace Poore, 2005 ~


Hand-out presented at Raksha Staff and Volunteers Training facilitated by Grace Poore, March 28, 2005 - Decatur, GA.

Incestuous sexual abuse causes a deep-down gut-level collision between home as a source of refuge and violation, family as source of comfort and betrayal. For most survivors the experience of abuse is a past tense that is framed within a permanent present tense. Past and present are shaped by a life-long dance between internal demons and internal warriors that appear like shadow puppets on a canvas, lit by the interplay of light and darkness, both of which have to be negotiated by incest survivors in order to survive and heal.

Like survivors of incestuous child sexual abuse from other cultures, South Asian incest survivors come from diverse backgrounds in education, religion, class and economic status. They could be activists working to end violence, factory workers in small towns, or corporate executives. They may have broken silences about the sexual abuse or never told anyone. Their struggles with silence and isolation often parallel the struggles of survivors from other cultures. The differences lie in the reasons for their community's silence and denial around incestuous sexual abuse. Differences also lie in the verbal and emotional language that people have access to (and are willing to access) about this particular form of abuse.

Most South Asian survivors of incestuous sexual abuse are initiated into the methods of silencing and the power of silence at a young age. First, they are encouraged to keep the abuse a secret by the perpetrator(s). Then, they are frequently instructed to remain silent by those who discover the abuse, even if there is positive intervention to confront the perpetrator and stop the abuse. Growing up, they observe how women use silence to negotiate bargaining power in their families. As adults, they see how quiet endurance is praised by society and valorized among South Asian women. These experiences shape how South Asian women deal with their childhood sexual abuse. They serve as incentives to keep the violation shrouded in secrecy. Eventually, many South Asian victims of incestuous sexual abuse teach themselves to find comfort in silence in order to cope with the abuse and its effects. They learn how to engage in silent rebellion and to confront adversity with silent tactics. They develop self-reliance and mental strength. Silence is no longer just a survival mechanism; it becomes a testament to resilience. It is equated with inner power.

Equilibrium at a Price

There are varying long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse. For adult survivors, these include: flashbacks about the abuse, body memories in the form of unexplained pains or health problems in parts of the body that were sites of abuse, chronic and unexplained illnesses, insomnia, depression, difficulties with sexual and emotional intimacy, difficulty trusting people, unprovoked and constant irritation, pent-up rage, unshakable anxiety, hyper vigilance, agoraphobia, a sense of emotional emptiness, overt or covert drug and alcohol abuse, overt or covert indiscriminate sexual activity, eating disorders (such as anorexia, bulimia or compulsive eating), suicidal thoughts, and actual suicide. Any of these effects can create a sense of inner chaos and powerlessness to deal with them.

Despite the lingering effects of the trauma of childhood sexual abuse and the compounding effects of silencing, isolation and shame, most South Asian incest survivors have managed to carry on with life. For some "carrying on with life" has meant conscious efforts to heal from the trauma of abuse. For others, it has not included healing from the abuse. Instead it has meant being able to function when healing or disclosure was not possible, or when disclosure resulted in negative responses from family members or no responses at all. For the latter, "carrying on with life" often means burying the abuse to keep it from disrupting everyday life, pretending it never happened, or explaining it away. These survival strategies often begin while the abuse is happening and continue several decades after the abuse has stopped.

For instance, one woman who asked for a copy of "The Children We Sacrifice" video wrote back after a few months to say that she had changed her mind because she was afraid it would undo the equilibrium she had worked so hard to maintain. Another woman said, her cultural and religious beliefs emphasized that she should "forgive and forget." Watching the video would ask her to revisit that time in her life when she felt helpless and powerless. It would force her to remember how the people she depended on did not, could not, or would not protect her from sexual violation. It would also make her remember when god had abandoned her.

The determination to "put the abuse behind you" can be a laudable goal as long as it does not create a situation where survivors no longer allow themselves to recognize and acknowledge abuse when it happens again to someone else. Often this denial is linked to the social and cultural pressures on victims of child sexual abuse to endure and forget -- as if endurance and amnesia will erase the injustice of the abuse. In fact, asking someone to forget childhood sexual abuse does not remove memories of the abuse or make the effects of the abuse go away. Worse, it does not prevent the perpetrator from continuing to abuse, and keeps family members entrenched in an atmosphere where healing for victims and future safety of others are never addressed. On the other hand, preserving memories of the abuse provides an opportunity to use the experience as a lightning rod for something pro-active like preventing more generations of victims in the family or preventing community silence around this issue.

Making Sense of the Abuse

As with incest survivors from other cultural backgrounds, South Asian survivors also rely on social, cultural or religious messages to understand why the abuse happened in their family and, more importantly, why it happened to them. For instance:

Some explanations place responsibility for the abuse on the perpetrator but attribute mitigating circumstances.

Some explanations blame other people for the perpetrator's behavior.

When the family, community, and/or religious group believe that sexual abuse is a victim's fault, survivors also turn blame inward and fault themselves for what the perpetrator did.

Some explanations hold other family members responsible for creating the situations that led to the abuse.

These explanations relate to being sexually abused by male perpetrators. But many of the explanations also cover the experience of being sexually abused by female perpetrators.

Domestic Violence: Overlaps and Differences

One study indicates that in 65 percent of homes where there is domestic violence, the women being battered were sexually abused as children. Although we do not know if this statistic also applies to South Asian women (as there has been no study), the correlation between incestuous sexual abuse and domestic violence should be taken seriously.

There is often an overlap between support services that South Asian women's organizations provide victims of currently occurring domestic violence and adult survivors of past sexual abuse who call for assistance. The focus with both groups might be helping them to figure out: how to assist children who are being abused, how to get away from the perpetrator, whether to obtain a restraining order against the perpetrator, what to tell the police, how to receive medical attention if necessary, etc.

Both groups of women may have had silence imposed on them and in turn learned to use silence as a means of survival. They may view silence as the only thing that helped them from disintegrating altogether. Also, in both situations service-providers may be working with women who are surviving within an interior climate of isolation, shame, and many areas of fear: of reprisals for disclosing, of being blamed or disbelieved, being stigmatized and rejected, disrupting family honor and harmony, and of family members turning against them.

Victims of domestic violence and victims of incestuous sexual abuse experience a deep sense of betrayal because the perpetrator is someone in the family or household who occupies their sphere or trust and safety. In addition, the perpetrator may not only be trusted, loved and respected, but also feared and obeyed.

One major difference between those who go through domestic violence and those who have been sexually violated as children is that many victims of domestic violence invariably suffer physical injury of some kind. With victims of incestuous sexual abuse, this may not be always be so. Unfortunately, this aspect of the abuse can and has been used against victims. For instance, despite mandatory reporting laws, physicians who have not found evidence of physical injury have refused to take seriously reports that sexual abuse might be happening. To only focus on the physical injuries ignores the fact that incestuous sexual abuse is so insidious precisely because it inter-twines love, affection, trust and abuse, causing psychological and emotional injury. In addition, children who have said it did not hurt have had the abuse downplayed or their disclosure discredited.

Another major difference between those who go through domestic violence and those who have been incested is that incestuous sexual abuse leaves most victims feeling "dirty" even into adulthood. While it is true that batterers often claim that their victims caused the violence and "asked for it," incest perpetrators frequently couch their abuse in seemingly normal everyday (loving) interactions. As one South Asian childhood incest survivor describes: "He was my favorite uncle, my father's younger brother…He didn't abuse me in the usual way, he didn't rape me… He gave pleasure in a secret and dirty way" - consequently equating violation with consent and complicity, which helps those who perpetrate incestuous child sexual abuse rationalize their actions while creating guilt and self-blame in their victims for a very long time.

Like incest survivors from other cultures, many South Asian survivors grow up believing that they participated in their own abuse, could have prevented it, or asked for the abuse in the first place. These beliefs occur whether the abuse causes physical pain or physical stimulation. For instance, one study with high school students in India shows that the degree of self blame among girls sexually abused in childhood increases when there is penile-vaginal penetration. (Bangalore study conducted by Samvada in 1996, cited in "Statistics Sheet: Incestuous Sexual Abuse Of South Asian Girl Child," http://www.shaktiproductions.net, 2000.) The more significant point is that irrespective of how much self blame there is, most survivors do not feel that they can talk about the abuse for fear that other people will say that the abuse was not really abuse or that they let the abuse continue because they liked it.

What further complicates the struggle for South Asian women is the cultural messaging that links feminine propriety with naiveté and sexual ignorance (which translates a woman should be so unaware of sex that she does not even know what rape or sexual abuse is); sexual innocence (which translates a woman must have no knowledge about sexual desire or sexual activity except that which her husband shows her); and female shame (which translates a woman should always divert unwanted male sexual attention through her own modest behavior and strength of character or be prepared to accept responsibility for sexual "contact" outside marriage). Within this context, to be initiated into sexual "pleasure" by an incest perpetrator complicates speaking out, particularly if the abuse is interwoven with love and affection, and survivors were made to feel responsible for letting the abuse go on or initiated it.

Unlike child sexual abuse by strangers, the manner in which incestuous child sexual abuse is committed tends to defy the idea that child sexual abuse is always graphically violent, always physically injurious, and always painful. At the same time, many victims grow up in families that do not permit discussions about women's sexuality, sexual desire, sexual pleasure or the right to express these things openly. Their culture conveys a link between virginity and female virtue, chastity and female honor. Consequently, vast numbers of South Asian incest survivors who were physically stimulated during sexual abuse are left feeling that they do not even have the right to name what they went through as abuse because, in their minds, the moments of "pleasure" make them equally if not more guilty than the perpetrator. This self-indictment is further reinforced by the cultural and social notions that male sexual pleasure is tied to uncontrolled desire, unbridled energy and biological make-up.

Imagine then a South Asian woman who, for the reasons discussed above, cannot reveal her childhood sexual assaults to her husband. She cannot reveal to her husband that physical intimacy with him makes her feel like she is being abused, and/or that sexual intercourse with him is revolting because it is re-traumatizing. Imagine also this woman being afraid of ridicule or criticism by family members for not wanting sex with her husband. Now imagine if such a woman is battered psychologically, emotionally, verbally and physically by that husband. How easy it would be for this woman to view herself as an inadequate wife, an incomplete woman, a defective being -- particularly when her husband says these very things to her and other South Asians agree. In addition, how plausible for her to explain the battering she experiences from her partner and the sexual abuse she experienced as a child to be "her fate."

Who May Seek Assistance for Child Sexual Abuse?

If a survivor has no experience with mental health services, she may not want to talk about her childhood sexual abuse because it can seem like entering the abyss of something confusing and therefore terrifying. Furthermore, like most people in her community, she may believe that therapy and counseling are for "mad" and "mentally unstable" people. Even if she herself wants therapy, she may fear negative reactions from family and community. Going to counseling will be like admitting that she is "crazy," which will defeat her efforts to appear "normal." Under these conditions, some South Asian survivors have to secretly meet with a therapist or counselor, compounding the stress in their lives by adding another layer of silence. Even more harmful is when the counselor or therapist turns out to be untrained in incest issues, insensitive to the survivor's realities, is victim-blaming, and disinterested or dismissive of a survivor's value system. In this case, the therapy experience ends up being so disempowering that it closes off this avenue of support, perhaps permanently.

Being South Asian (or any woman of color, any immigrant of color) in North America also complicates the search for mental health services in another way. Survivors risk having their culture pathologized. An insensitive or uninformed service-provider who is not South Asian may place a survivor in the position of having to defend her culture. Consequently, she cannot trust her service-provider. Without trust, how does an incest survivor give herself permission to be open in counseling?

Many different kinds of survivors may seek for assistance for incestuous child sexual abuse:

The reasons for initially reaching out may vary from survivor to survivor. Some may be at a point when they are just beginning to remember the abuse. Others may feel that none of their coping mechanisms are working and their lives are falling apart. Another group may sense that something is not right in the relationship dynamics at home and may want advice, for instance, about signs they have noticed. They may want a "neutral" third party opinion to convince them that something like incestuous sexual abuse could indeed be happening (1) in their family (2) to their child (3) by a known perpetrator. On the other hand, they may be looking for the reverse - a third party to convince them that their instincts are wrong or that the child who disclosed abuse is making up stories, thereby reinforcing their need to believe that no abuse is taking place.

Reaching out for assistance could also be prompted by a need to expose perpetrator(s) for what they did in the past in order to find justice in the present - perhaps also to prevent others from going through the same kind of abuse. Survivors may come forward to get help for past abuse because of currently occurring sexual violence, such as acquaintance rape, marital rape, or battering. More often, however, the connections between past and current trauma may not be clear. In these instances women who were sexually abused in childhood and are trying to protect a child in the present may not see the connection between what happened to them and what is happening now to their child. They may not want to focus on their own experience because it happened "back then" and their priority is to protect the child who is at risk now. Or they may not reveal that they themselves were abused because they do not fully remember their own abuse.

While some South Asian survivors may avoid contacting a South Asian organization for fear that their story will travel through the South Asian grapevine, others may not know where else to turn and a South Asian women's organization or program for battered women may be the only resource they have heard or read about. On the other hand, some South Asian survivors may specifically reach out for assistance from a South Asian service provider because their experience with non-South Asians has been alienating and racist, or they want the cultural familiarity that going to a South Asian service provider offers

Whatever reasons incest survivors may present when going for outside help, and whether or not they realize the connection between their childhood sexual abuse and the current situation of violence they are in, or whether or not they want to talk about the past, the moment is critical. For many the ability to trust has been stolen. Difficulties with emotional, physical and sexual intimacy are some of the most painful and frustrating struggles that they face. To trust again takes a great deal of time and work. Careless or malicious criticism and guilt-tripping delays the work of re-building this trust. On the other hand, supportive advocacy by family members, friends, intimate partners, survivor groups, and therapists creates what American psychiatrist, Judith Herman, calls, a "healing influence." It is precisely such an influence that helped some South Asian women in Canada proudly declare that they sought counseling, disclosed abuse to family members, and confronted their perpetrators. Some also pressed charges against their perpetrators with the encouragement and support of husbands or intimate partners. They experienced their partners' consistent, positive love and support as encouragement. Theirs ceased to be a solitary struggle. They gained an added incentive to heal, to re-discover what it is to be in trusting and safe relationships.

South Asian service-providers could also be the very first allies to play a positive role in the important life-changing journeys of survivors of incestuous sexual abuse.

Why This Work?

Among the many questions for service-providers, advocates, and allies to consider are: (1) Will my work as an advocate help me more than the person relying on my advocacy? (2) Will the attitudes that I bring into my work with a survivor subvert, deter or, in some way, harm the person who is depending on my advocacy?

The following checklist is by no means a barometer for the effectiveness or integrity of service-providers. Instead, it is meant to be more of an informal self-assessment tool to gauge what you bring to the table when you meet with that woman, that survivor, that family member, seeking your support and assistance in dealing with family-based violence.

Personal Checklist For Service-Providers:

How to be Supportive of Survivors: The Dont's

Do not pressure women to open up about their experience of childhood sexual abuse: Silence may have been and still may be a life-saving mechanism for many survivors. Do not assign negative attributes to personality, cultural difference, or religious upbringing if survivors are not willing to talk about their experiences. Do not assume that opening up will be a simple cathartic experience. Survivors may re-live their childhood abuse. They may become physically ill, go into deep depression, become suicidal. They may engage in self-injury (self-mutilation) to deal with the emotional trauma. To the untrained and unprepared person working with survivors, these scenarios can be overwhelming and, perhaps, frightening. Do not take on the role of a counselor or therapist if you are not trained to be one. You can end up causing serious harm without intending to.

Do not generalize: On the other hand, do not assume that all survivors of incestuous sexual abuse will go through these extreme reactions. Most may not. The key is to be extremely responsible in recognizing where survivors are in their process of dealing with the abuse.

Do not underestimate the usefulness of silence: For a survivor, unraveling the connection between childhood sexual abuse and why she is the way she is, why she does what she does, why she feels as she does -- can seem too overwhelming to take on. A key challenge for all advocates and service-providers is to confront beliefs that are integral to the cultural and gender identity of many survivors without disempowering and dis-affirming who they are.

Do not assume lack of agency or awareness: Survivors who contact your organization may not necessarily be less informed about their healing than you, as their advocate. Many survivors may have already done considerable work on dealing with the abuse. They may have read many more books on the issue, talked with many more survivors than you have. They may already be engaging in daring actions within their families and communities - breaking silences about incest, confronting the perpetrator, raising their daughters differently, perhaps, even raising their sons differently. Affirm and acknowledge these acts of resistance to the cultural and familial status quo.

How to be Supportive of Survivors: The Do's

Know your own limitations and be respectful of survivors' process: There are many ways to support adult survivors in their healing process just as there as many ways to subvert that healing. It is important to identify, not only your strengths and unique qualities, but also your limitations as advocate or counselor. See yourself as a partner in a survivor's recovery process. Work with her. Don't take over.

Help dismantle fears: If women seeking assistance are fearful of disrupting family relationships and feel they have to hide the incestuous sexual abuse in order to preserve family honor, harmony and reputation, then acknowledge their fears and the reasons for them. But work with them to remove the barriers that justify these fears. Ask them what they need and what they would like to do. Explain how silence and secrecy provide refuge to perpetrators, freeing them to abuse again and find new victims. Help them identify allies for incest intervention and recovery within their immediate and extended family or social circles. Show them how isolation prevents healing. If they wish to confront their perpetrators, work on establishing support systems before, during and after the confrontation. Keep reminding them that they are not "just" victims of incestuous sexual abuse; they are survivors connected to families and these families have a responsibility to prevent further abuse of unsuspecting children. They are also people who may need to become interventionists for those children who are presently at risk by the same or other perpetrator.

Encourage counseling and support groups: Peer counseling, support groups and advocacy services are immensely helpful to survivors who want to deal with their own childhood sexual trauma. They can also help survivors overcome old fears and take action to protect a child who is currently at risk. Many South Asian survivors of incestuous sexual abuse would be happy just to have a space where people will listen to them without blame or judgment. Sharing with others the betrayals they have suffered by the incest perpetrator and other family members, can be extremely validating. Talking about how silencing and isolation imposed a sense of powerlessness and guilt can be self-revealing. Speaking out while other South Asian women serve as witnesses can be empowering. However, support groups are only one avenue for dealing with the abuse, and they may not appeal to all survivors. One-on-one counseling or talk therapy may be more suitable. Interspersing talk therapy with yoga, self-defense classes, bodywork, art, writing, meditation, political organizing or activism - are all powerful ways to find solidarity in healing and strength for intervention. Survivors will try many different routes before they finally decide on something that feels most helpful. As advocates and counselors, your job may be to encourage survivors discover for themselves what can best help them.

Research and recommend additional options: Acquaint survivors with culturally-appropriate, racially-sensitive and ethically-delivered services that are available from practitioners who bring different perspectives to healing from childhood sexual abuse, such as: talk therapists, psychologists, shamans, acupuncturists, sacral massage therapists, or those who specialize in the EMDR technique (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) for incestuous sexual abuse survivors. Also placing personal healing within the context of larger social change can be a powerful experience. For instance, community organizing among peers can serve as catalysts for various forms of activism, consciousness-raising, and social-change work. Politicizing the experience of incestuous sexual abuse and becoming violence interventionists enables survivors to do for others what no one would do for them. Suggest to survivors that they could become a valuable resource for an organization working with South Asian women because they have firsthand experience of sexual abuse, silencing, isolation, and resistance. But encouraging survivors to speak out is not enough. They need support networks after they have spoken out. Similarly, encouraging survivors to become activists is commendable although it is important that this activism be premised on the understanding that incestuous sexual abuse is a personal, social and political issue. It helps to frame incestuous sexual abuse, like domestic violence, marital rape, child abuse, acquaintance rape, and abuse of household workers as fundamental abuse of power that is nurtured by societal collusion through silence.

Investigate alternative methods of disclosure: Sometimes speech may not be the appropriate form for breaking silence. Talking to a counselor about what a family member did can be just as intimidating as sharing personal testimony in front of a crowd. Not only does telling secrets feel like an act of disloyalty to the perpetrator who may have certain status in the family but the survivor may have good reason to fear virulent retaliation. By suggesting alternative forms of disclosure, the process can feel less frightening. For instance, disclosures can come in the form of painting a collective mural with other survivors, creating a collective quilt, or sewing a story onto fabric. These are all legitimate ways to convey experience. Alternatively, making masks or puppets to represent different phases of survival or different faces of being a victim-survivor can serve as an entry point for dialogue about the abuse. If a technology grant or donations from appliance centers can be obtained, teaching women how to use cassette-recorders to record their stories at their own pace may give them a better sense of control over the process of presenting their narratives to outsiders. If literacy is not a problem, showing women how to journal and having them read out loud from each other's journals can help give collective voice to the personal trauma by allowing individual survivors hear their experiences voiced back to them by other survivors.

Investigate use of theater: Theater is also a powerful mechanism for dealing with issues like domestic violence and incestuous sexual abuse. Instead of support groups, survivors can work on a play together, where the script can keep evolving to reflect the changes in survivors' perspectives as they begin to address the abuse. Discussing characters, plots and development of "the play" can be an opportunity for psychodynamic counseling. The play can become the support-group activity where support-group facilitators play the role of directors of the play -- guiding each survivor through "scene changes" and "script development" in her real-life process of dealing with the abuse. Using theater can help survivors feel more involved in their recovery process, more open to receiving and utilizing mental health recommendations.

Facilitate survivor' naming and finding of voice: The primary goal of using some or a combination of these alternative approaches to advocacy and support is to facilitate the creation of voice and naming of experiences that for so long were defined by silence, shame and secrecy. Finding voice, contributes to how survivors reshape the legacy of childhood sexual abuse.

Form bridges inside and outside the culture of survivors: Attempts to deal with childhood trauma, particularly incestuous sexual abuse, often look like a montage rather than a single photograph. Advocates may be entering this picture at the beginning or the middle of a survivor's journey. To meet the range of needs for this journey, advocates can strengthen their role by forming bridges with other sexual assault service providers and professionals within the mental health field. They can also form bridges with community activists and organizers to widen the network of services for incest survivors from a particular community.

Demystifying Intervention

Most people rarely think about what to do in a situation of incestuous sexual abuse. However, a positive alliance between non-perpetrating guardians and their children will go a long way towards reducing the impact of the violation. Such an alliance can be a powerful counteracting force against the perpetrator's betrayal.

Unfortunately, society and the law tend to place greater responsibility for child protection on mothers. At the same time, the System unfairly penalizes mothers even when they take actions to protect their children from incestuous sexual abuse - for instance, removing their children from the home or denying fathers unsupervised access to children who are at risk for abuse.

Just as mothers' voices are often lost when the System intervenes, children's voice also get stifled in the rush to decide what is best for them. To help prevent conflicts of interest between children's rights advocates and women's rights advocates it is best to clarify goals and strategies for intervention, keeping in mind that different interventionists have to negotiate different interlocking barriers based on the level of privilege or lack of privilege they have in their family, community and society in general.

The following observation by a South Asian psychotherapist in Canada, Dr. Smita Vir Tyagi, highlights what to consider when helping guardians decide how to proceed in the best interest of child victims, and how to provide support to adult survivors of incest in the best interest of the survivor.

"I think it's very important to remember what outcome you're looking for in the intervention. We can't think of intervention in an abstract way. For example, who will do the intervening and when will the intervening happen? How will the intervention start? Who asked for the intervention? What is the mechanism by which this intervention is going to happen? What is going to be the role of the people who undertake to do this? What is going to be the role of the victim and the victim's voice in this whole process? So, yes, I think it's very important to talk about intervention in a family setting, particularly for victims. At the same time, I would be very cautious about how it should happen and under what circumstances and when? And who should do it. Many [incest] victims will say, 'Yes, I want someone to intervene, I want the abuse to stop. I do not want the perpetrator to do this to me or to anyone else again but I don't want the perpetrator to go to jail.' Others will say, 'I want this to be dealt with quietly. I don't want to go to court, I don't want to make a fuss. I just want to make sure that I'm protected.' When you have outside agencies, whether it's the legal system or the criminal justice system, it sometimes takes away that choice from the victim. So in terms of caseworkers or social workers or lawyers, we have to ask what their role in the intervention process is. Where is the victim's voice in all this? We also need to ask: (1) Am I seeking to advocate for the victim who has been affected by the abuse? (2) Am I seeking to make sure that justice has been served? (3) Am I seeking to ensure that the perpetrator has been brought to book so that he's never able to do this again? (4) Do I want to reconcile the victim and perpetrator since it's a relative? (5) Do I want to make everyone happy, to make peace? (6) Is my intention that the child should never tell anyone else, now that she's told me?"
(Interviewed by author, May 23, 1999).

Dr. Judith L. Herman, professor of psychiatry in Boston describes other elements of intervention that also apply to many South Asian survivors:

"Society gives women little permission either to withdraw or to express their feelings. In an effort to be protective, family, lovers, or friends may disregard a survivor's need to reestablish a sense of autonomy. Family members may decide on their own course of action in the aftermath of a traumatic event and may ignore or override the survivor's wishes, thereby once again disempowering her. They may show little tolerance for her anger or may swallow up her anger in their own quest for revenge. … The survivor's relationships with other people tend to oscillate between extremes as she attempts to establish a sense of safety. She may seek to surround herself with people at all times, or she may isolate herself completely. In general, she should be encouraged to turn to others for support, but considerable care must be taken to ensure that she chooses people whom she can trust. Family members, lovers, and close friends may be of immeasurable help; they may also interfere with recovery or may themselves be dangerous… In the aftermath of the trauma, the survivor must assess the degree of continued threat and decide what sort of precautions are necessary…This is an area where the cardinal principle of empowering the survivor is frequently violated as other people attempt to dictate the survivor's choices or take action without her consent."
(J.L. Herman, Trauma And Recovery, New York: Basic Books, 1997.)

There are many reasons for South Asian families and community members to look the other way when it comes to incestuous sexual abuse. But we can change this. We can find ways to stop being silent, in denial, and in collusion with perpetrators. Finding out what intervention involves will identify what steps are needed, what resources are available, what still needs to be developed, what form the intervention will take at various stages, and who will be involved in what capacity. Demystifying the process of intervention is a way for more people to take compassionate, thoughtful, decisive, and effective actions that will make a significant difference to victims of child sexual abuse for the rest of their lives. It also opens the door to perpetrators of child sexual abuse within our families who want assistance so they can stop abusing.

1.  What To Do Before Intervention

2.  What To Do During Intervention

3.  What To Do After Intervention

Working with Survivors: A Recap

This final checklist recaps what service providers in South Asian women's organizations might wish to keep in mind when they are preparing to work with survivors of incestuous sexual abuse.


For more information about incestuous sexual abuse, please refer to Resources (Publications and Agencies) or contact us.

 

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Modified on Mar 18, 2005