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"Some of them don’t tell because they love them,” I said.
Her face turned bright red. Her brown eyes bore into mine. “What?”
she snapped.
“They love them,” I repeated softly.
“They love them? How
could they love them?”
I wasn’t surprised by her question. I wasn’t shocked by her anger.
She is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and she couldn’t imagine how any
survivor could love their abuser. But her abuser wasn’t someone whom she loved.
Ninety to ninety-five percent of
survivors of childhood sexual abuse are violated by someone they know and
trust, and, yes, sometimes, by someone they love.
Consider this quote by a survivor friend of mine: "I was
abused by a close relative. He was absolutely trusted. And he took advantage of
me. And I went along with it because I didn't know any better. Because I
trusted him." Many of the reasons children don’t tell lay within
these five sentences. (You can read her story, Scars of Abuse, at (http://lightmeetsdarkness.blogspot.com/2010/12/scars-of-abuse.html).
The first reason kids don't tell is in the first
sentence. Notice she wrote “close relative”. Children generally love their
close relatives (fathers and mothers, grandfathers and
grandmothers, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, and cousins). I know
my friend did and does.
Over the next several weeks, we’ll explore why children don’t tell
as we dissect this quote. And together we’ll learn more, and we’ll protect our
children better.
Children don’t tell because they love. They love deeply.
And they know instinctively that if they tell, they might hurt the one
they love. They can’t understand it—they don’t have the reasoning skills for it;
they can’t explain it—they don’t have the words for it. But they can feel it.
And those feelings are powerful. And those feelings hold them captive and keep
them quiet.
And that is why it is an adult’s job to protect children
from childhood sexual abuse.
