INCESTUOUS SEXUAL ABUSE

What Would I Say When I Don't Have The Words For It?
~ © Grace Poore, 2002 ~


Note: This is an abridged version of the article that appears in The Children We Sacrifice: A Resource Book, pp. 47-62, Silver Spring, MD: SHaKTI PRODUCTIONS, 2000.

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FACT: Many parents do not want to frighten their children unnecessarily. They feel that talking about sexual abuse to a young child will traumatize her, make her feel that she cannot trust anyone in her family.

Consider this: Most South Asian girl children experience sexual abuse by a family member or friend of the family before age 10. Wouldn't it be better for children to learn about sex and sexual abuse from you -- in a healthy and loving way instead of from the perpetrator in a distorted and shame-filled way? Giving children information about sexual abuse at a young age need not be frightening. You can incorporate the information in a children's story where, perhaps, the hero is a little girl who fights off someone who is trying to molest her. Use the opportunity to talk about sexual abuse. Frame the information as answers to a series of questions about the little girl in the story: Why was the bad person trying to molest the girl? What does molestation mean? What would have happened if the bad person had hurt the little girl? Who could have helped her if she got hurt?


FACT: A number of people oppose "corrupting a child's mind" with information that they believe children have no business knowing because they fear children "will lose their innocence," "grow up trusting no one," "start experimenting with sex."

Consider this: We cannot protect our children by protecting them from information. Information is not the problem. Sexual abuse is. Children learn from the adults around them that certain body parts should not be mentioned or only talked about in a whisper. They may have been scolded for touching "private parts" or asking questions about these parts. The message they internalize is: "That's a forbidden subject. I will get in trouble if I talk about it." Unfortunately, those who commit incestuous sexual abuse are from the same culture. They understand how the silencing mechanism works. They can count on children not telling their parents. They can count on adults wanting to keep things quiet. The community basically makes it easy for them to contemplate sexual abuse, carry it out, and, in most cases, get away with it so they can keep abusing the same child or other children. It's a perfect arrangement for sexual abuse perpetrators. They can take advantage of the cultural resistance to dealing with incest. If we argue against empowering children with information then we (as a society) have to accept responsibility for what happens when incestuous sexual abuse does take place.

I find it very hard to believe that nobody sensed it was happening to me. My mother was there, my father was there. There were older cousin sisters around but nobody seems to have intervened. They probably wanted me to do something about it so they wouldn't have to say anything. They probably wanted me to take action...I guess it was easier to blame the child (and) say, dress properly, sit properly, don't laugh too much, don't play with these people.

(Incest survivor from India who is in The Children We Sacrifice video)

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The rationale is that a woman has to bear everything that happens to her and the more she bears, the stronger she becomes. So if that's the rationale that you grow up with, then you just put up with it, you don't speak up because it's a part of being a woman. And you teach that to your daughter because it's a part of your upbringing and it's something you pass on...If the daughter were to ever insist that her mother do something about the abuse happening to her, the mother would be so scared that the daughter would disrupt the peace she has worked so hard to establish. She would be angry with the daughter and ask her to keep quiet about it.

(A mother of two who was abused as a child, India)


Anita Ratnam, Community Educator and Director of Samvada in Bangalore, India:

"I often have parents telling me, 'My daughters are asking me uncomfortable questions. It's so embarrassing. I wish the schools would do this.' Their embarrassment is because of the whole social silence around sex, sexuality, sexual abuse...(and) because they have not worked through their own feelings on sexuality. That's where the work needs to be done...I wouldn't like to judge the mothers or fathers because they were also children once and had to struggle with all the same silences, and they don't have the words. So it's easier to brush off their children's questions. But I think some of them feel afterwards that they have done an injustice by not talking to their children. Yet they don't know how to present sexuality as something normal and beautiful while, at the same time, warning their children of the possibilities of being sexually abused, and how to cope with that. So if you're stuck at issues like talking to your daughters about menstruation... I don't see how you can talk to her about an assault on her body and what emotions she is going through as a result of that assault."

I don't know why I didn't tell. I just knew that it's something that I couldn't talk about to anybody. I think it was the nature of the abuse itself, the whole secrecy, the whole furtiveness of the act itself...  And you know, as a child, you pick up these vibes very quickly. The abuser doesn't even have to tell you not to talk about it. You just don't. Because (for me) every time it happened we were in a closed room, every time it happened we were alone, every time it happened I was aware that nobody else was around.

(A South Asian activist and incest survivor)

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In India, sex is only supposed to occur between husband and wife, only in marital relationships. When I was growing up, no one was supposed to hold hands even on a date. The concept of intimacy is reserved for husband and wife. And that too in private. It's treated as sacred. How could I tell what my brother was doing to me? What would I say? I did not have the words for it. I did not even know the Bengali word for kiss. It's true that if my brother had slapped me I would have told my mother. But sex, that's not something we could talk about...  After I had grown up, we would discuss men pressing against women on buses. We'd talk about this kind of thing openly but no one ever spoke of anything sexual in the family.

(South Asian immigrant living in the US)


SO WHAT DO WE DO? WHEN?

Gain Self-Awareness:

Improve Communication:

Challenge Myths and Harmful Practices:

I resisted one time. And what I did was I bit him as he was trying to penetrate me...  The following day he told my mother that I bit him and he said, "We were playing and look what she did to me!" And my mother reprimanded me for that. She told me that I shouldn't bite my uncle and that's not a nice way to play and had me apologize to him. When my mother reprimanded me, it sent a couple of messages -- one that my uncle was always right and what the adult said passed...and two that what I had done was wrong. I felt like I wasn't supposed to resist on some level.

(The child of South Asian immigrant parents, abused from age 6 onwards, USA)

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There is an assumption that the strength of the individual is the family, the strength of the family is the community, and the strength of the community is the country. The family is held up as an inviolable institution. And often in protecting the structure of the family, decisions and judgments are based on this concept rather than on the needs and the trauma experienced by the individual...  hierarchical differences in the family structure further create a problem. The child is not responded to as a person but merely as an extension of the family. And even in non-abusive families, the legitimacy of the child (as a person) with boundaries is quite diffused and obscure. It's not as if this diffusion is only in abusive families.

(Dr. Shekhar Seshadri, child psychiatrist, India)


Recognize Children's Right To Boundaries:

Uphold Children's Rights:

Build Trust:


INTERVENING AFTER IT HAS HAPPENED

Even after all you have done to encourage your children to come and tell, keep in mind that some children may want to protect their parents from "bad news." They may be afraid that "telling about the abuse and who committed the abuse" may hurt their parents too much. In some instances, the perpetrator may have planted this fear. In other cases, children may have picked up from how parents react to other situations to decide if they should tell. Whatever the reasons, if you have done everything you can to make it possible for your child to tell, do not blame yourself if the child does not confide in you. And do not scold your child for not telling. Focus on what you now know and figure out how to deal with it with your child.

If my parents had at any time asked me, is somebody doing something to you, is abuse happening? I would have said yes. I would have been relieved to say yes.

(South Asian woman who was sexually abused by her brother, USA)


Be Clear What You Want From Intervention:

Preventing children from ever having to experience sexual abuse is an important goal. An equally important goal is to know what to do when and if your child has been abused. Most children do heal from sexual abuse, like any other kind of abuse. In order for them to do this, the key is how soon intervention occurs, what kind of intervention is carried out, and how the child is made to feel during and after the process of intervention. If the child's needs and feelings are ignored, intervention can be ineffective and even harmful to the long-term well-being of the victim and hinder healing.

American professor of psychiatry, Judith Lewis Herman says:

"The abused child's existential task is quite formidable ...  She must find a way to develop a sense of basic trust and safety with caretakers who are untrustworthy and unsafe. She must develop a sense of self in relation to others who are helpless, uncaring, or cruel ...  To accomplish this purpose, the child resorts to a wide array of psychological defenses ... the abuse is walled off from conscious awareness and memory." (Judith Herman, Trauma And Recovery, pp. 101-102, New York: Basic Books, 1997)

Intervention does not always have to involve grand or complicated actions. It may not even involve law enforcement personnel. The outcome should focus on protecting the victim from further abuse and stopping the perpetrator from re-offending. Equally important is for the victim to feel nurtured and comforted, not blamed, disbelieved or put down in any way. Be prepared to keep monitoring the situation to ensure that the abuse does not start up again with your child or any other.

According to Dr. Smita Vir Tyagi, psychotherapist in Toronto, Canada:

"Many victims would say, yes, they want someone to intervene, they want the abuse to stop. They don't want the perpetrator to do this to them or to anyone else again. Some victims will say, they don't want the perpetrator to go to jail but they want the abuse to stop. 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 from this.' 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 case workers or social workers or lawyers, we have to ask what is their role in the intervention process? Where is the victim's voice in all this? I think these are questions that people need to ask themselves. They also need to ask: 'Am I seeking to advocate for the victim who has been affected by the abuse? Am I seeking to make sure that justice has been served? Am I seeking to ensure that the perpetrator has been brought to book so that he's never able to do this again? Do I want to reconcile the perpetrator and the victim since it's a relative and I want to make everyone happy, to make peace? Or is the outcome that the child should never tell anyone else and now that she's told me, I want her to move on? Is that the outcome I want from intervention?' These are all very real issues... 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."

Sheelu, an activist and women's advocate in Madras, India cites this example of intervention by an aunt:

"This woman told me that her niece came and told her that she was being molested by one of the brothers-in-law in the family - this was a joint family living under the same roof. The niece made the woman promise not to tell anyone because she was afraid of getting into trouble. So she kept the niece's request. But the next day, when everyone was at home, she said in a loud voice, "I know that someone in this house is doing something he is not supposed to. If I find out that he is bothering any of the children in this family again, I will catch him and beat him up." She made this proclamation to no one in particular but whoever was the abuser heard it loud and clear, and the abuse stopped. This aunt intervened on behalf of her niece, and she did it in such a way that sent a message to the perpetrator that his secret activity would be exposed and something bad would happen to him if he continued doing what he was doing. She was a very fierce woman and maybe that's why she did what she did. But it worked."

Vancouver attorney, Palbinder K. Shergill, who works with South Asian women in Canada says:

"I have seen cases where women who were abused as youngsters come forward as adult women. They often have gotten married and have children of their own, and usually that's the point at which they suddenly feel the strong urge to report the abuse. They feel a strong obligation to protect their children, to ensure that the person who victimized them does not victimize their children ...  There's also a very big fear because as children they were not protected by their own mothers or grandparents. So now there's a real risk that no one will ever step forward to protect their own children if they themselves don't come forward ...  I've seen an enormous strength in these women, not only battling their extended families but also battling a larger society that still does not feel comfortable talking about incest ...  I've seen women who have been forced to choose between reporting the abuse and being able to maintain a consistent relationship with their mothers or siblings. And they have chosen the former. They have chosen to report and they have lost their families and they have still maintained their courage to move forward. That's a large part to do with their partners. They are usually women who have strong relationships with their husbands - who have been very supportive of their wives being able to come forward and report the abuse."

When I was pregnant I dreaded having a daughter because I thought she would go through the same kind of experience which I have gone through in life. But I also badly wanted a daughter because I wanted her to have the kind of childhood which I did not have. So the only thing I can do is to make her safe is to make her strong enough to protect herself...And I tell my cousins who have daughters to keep their daughters away from the men in the family who I know are abusers. There are tricky situations, like one guy who I know as an abuser, his younger brother has two daughters and they are very close, obviously, to their elder brother's family. And I realized that it was not safe for those two girls to go out with him for outings and picnics and all that. So I spoke to the mother. I told her about the situation. I told her that I was abused by this uncle and by this cousin, and keep her daughters away from these two men. She did that.

(Survivor of incestuous sexual abuse from India who appears in
The Children We Sacrifice video)

 

 

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Modified on Oct 19, 2003