Nicest is the term given to sexual abuse in which the perpetrator is a significantly older sibling or parentalfigure and the victim is a child. Little girls make up 95 percent o f all incest victims. Incest ethnic and social backgrounds. It’s been called an epidemic, affecting upto 10 percent o f allfemale children. The victims, often too young to realize the meaning of the abuse, don’t have a language to explain what they’re experiencing. And if thefather or a parentalfigure is the perpetrator, they often don’t know where to turn. The result is that the abuse often lasts years before it is discovered, reported, or the child escapes the situation. A Lifelong Reality /■ s horrible a picture as the statis- tics paint, being a victim becomes, for the individual, a lifelong reality. I am 38 years old. When I was 32 I started going to a therapist. It wasn’t the first one — I had been in counseling off and on since I was 13 and tried to kill myself at summer camp. But it was the first time I said, “I have this little boy and everytime I get mad, I’m afraid I’ll kill him. I love him but when I get angry and can’t seem to control him I want to beat him and scream and yell and cry. Hey, I’m supposed to be an adult; I’m in charge here; what’s wrong with me?” She asked me how I had been treated as a child. I said, “Oh, like other children; I got beat a lot and my parents drank a lot” She said all children weren’t treated like that and asked for more specifics. It was then I began to open some doors to my past. I stopped being a child sometime between 2 and 6 years old — I’m not yet clear exactly what all happened to me or exactly when it all started. And it seems irrelevant now. But each time my mom went to the hospital to have another baby, I had to sleep with my dad. He slept in only his undershorts and I had to rub his body under the guise of a “backrub.” It made me sick to my stomach but what could I say? My mom was gone, I was the oldest child and at least it made him like me and be nice. I wanted him to be nice because when he wasn’t nice it meant beatings. I remember waking up one night when I was 6 or 7 and hearing my mom crying and falling down the basement stairs. My dad was yelling and hitting her. I pretended I was asleep and nothing was ever said about it. I know it happened because I saw her bruised and beaten the next day. I also remember going to elementary school and edging down the hall with my back to the wall so no one would see the welts on the occurs among families o f all economic, ate and the battle for escape escalated. Simultaneously my dad’s need for power over me escalated. He made lewd and suggestive comments about my developing body and the clothes I wore. He put his hands on my ass and pinched me in front of my friends and family, male and female. The only affection I ever got from him was sexual — but it wasn’t really sex, it was his expression of ownership. At the end of the eighth grade I went on a church hayride. Church was the only social life I was allowed to have. After my boyfriend brought me home from the hayride, my dad looked at me and saw that I had straw in my hair. He called me a whore and made me pray on my knees in front of the mirror all night long. I then began coping in a different way. I had been well trained to believe that my only power to gain affection was my sexuality, and I began to use it. I hung out with older boys — my parents called them “hoods.” In actuality, they were only lost children like me looking for a better situation. We drank, necked and shoplifted. When I started sneaking out of the house at night and screaming back at my drunken mother, they sent me away to an all girls-’ high school. There I spent a lot of time stealing from wealthy girls and stores, drinking and sneaking out at night to be with boys.' I wasn’t being physically or sexually abused there, but I also wasn’t getting any kind of love. And when I would go home the situation was still terrible. One summer night when I was back at my parents’ home I was talking on the phone to a boy after 11 p.m. When my father discovered me on the phone that late, he dragged me by my hair and kicked me all the way from the rec room to my bedroom. I was 16. I went to a small religious women’s college, where I spent most of my time doing speed, drinking, listening to music, playing bridge and sneaking off with high school boys. They looked up to us; they thought we had the situation under control. I don’t know if it was the speed, my mental state or the religious environment, but I had hallucinations, visions and wondered if I was falling apart again. I knew I had to escape. I took a train to New York City. I spent the days in cheap movies. At night I earned a living as an acid go-go dancer in East Village clubs. It was sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll for the next 10 years. The rock ’n’ roll was the scene, drugs got me through it and sex was my powerhold. Sex and manipulation were ly and terrified childhood — and the resulting adult. I was afraid of incarceration in prison or a mental hospital. Killing myself seemed more and more like the only viable alternative. One night after too many quaa- ludes and beers, I almost did die. The next day I got up, threw my lover and his friends out and decided to start over. I stayed alone in the country for almost a year trying to figure out how to fix up my life. I couldn’t, and didn’t, do it alone. Most of my revelations have come from talking to women who have had similar experiences. I have seen myself reflected in their lives. There are millions of women like me. Some of us will spend most of our lives sorting out the pieces. Others who are luckier have the opportunity to do so sooner. The young women whose comments are included here are also victims of sexual abuse, mostly incest. They are currently participating in a counseling group for sexually abused teenagers in the Seattle area. “No One Will Believe Me” “ I admitted to quite a few people that something was wrong but I thought it was all passes and that’s how I explained it to them, my dad’s making passes at me. Until one day I opened my mouth and too much stuff came out and I got my dad in trouble for it.” Patty, 16 Incest is a situation in which JL there is a power imbalance — manipulation, coercion, taking advantage of people who don’t understand their whole sexuality,” says Vickie Sears, family therapist for Central Seattle Community Health Centers. “It doesn’t have to be penetration ... it may be excessive fondling, inappropriate verbal stuff.” A male therapist, an expert in treating male sexual offenders, says offenders are “generally much more into issues of power and control. They see themselves as not having a lot of power in their lives.” (99 percent of all offenders are male, and usually in their mid-30s when discovered.) He says that they have a tendency toward alcohol and drug abuse and their personalities are addictive. Generally, they are selfish, egocentric, and tend to have a narrow range of interests outside of their jobs and families. As adolescents, they were shy or with- something about it.* But I didn’t. What was so strange was that my father told my mom what was going on. I came home and she told me and I just sat there and cried for two hours. It was such a relief to get it off my shoulders. I had to go to the police station and make a tape of what had happened. My mom’s friend who was with me just sat there and cried. She said, ‘That’s what’s been going on all these years, since you were 5 years old.’” Denise, 17 Since a child is often physically and/or emotionally dependent on the offender, she finds it difficult to believe that he would make her do something wrong. Karen MacQuivey, therapist with the Highline Youth Service Bureau, points out that “it’s an exploitation of trust, authority and of the power that’s inherent in the parenting role.” Because of the complex relationship between the offender and the victim, considerable time often passes before the situation is discovered. The child often fears, “Will anyone believe me? Will daddy have to go to jail? Who will support us? Is it my fault?” The discovery may finally occur when the victim has achieved some independence or can no longer tolerate the situation. If a child becomes rebellious and gets into trouble, sensitive counselors or medical and law officials may discover the abuse. However it happens, the disclosure of incest is the start of resolving the problem. Reporting the abuse to authorities is a difficult but important step. For the victim, it means the beginning of a process in which she will get some badly needed support. She is believed, she will be protected. For the offender, it will hopefully mean an end to incredibly destructive behavior. MacQuivey states, “Statistics show that offenders don’t stop on their own accord. And the most powerful persuader for a person to get treatment is the arm of the law.” “For the child who is still in the home, the issue is whether they are at risk of being abused again,” says MacQuivey. Often the issue of safety means that either the offender or the victim leaves the home. “First and foremost is assuring the safety of the victim, so you may have a whole legal procedure that comes in. At disclosure, there is going to be a crisis for the victim and the family.” “I ended up going to court for a year and the hardest part was sitting up there time after time in that chair and telling everything that happened. The judge said I’d only have to say it once and I said okay. I ended up sayThere are of Women Like Me Looking at Incest By Stella Dean Cummins I stopped being a child sometime, between 2 and 6 years old. Each time my mom went to the hospital to have another baby, I had to sleep with my dad. Drawing by Dana Hoyle backs of my legs. I was from a nice family — those things didn’t happen in nice families. And nice girls certainly didn't get beaten naked with belts and hairbrushes. I retreated to a fantasy world of romantic novels and dreams of being rescued. But when my own sexuality began to develop and no shining knights appeared, I became desper- synonymous with love for me — flower power, free love and all that. If you fucked a guy maybe he would give you the respect, love and protection that you needed. And if he didn’t give it, fuck him and move on to the next one. I’m not sure what turned it around for me. A series of events over the last 10 years have revealed to me my lone- drawn, particularly with females. “I didn’t know until I was in the eighth grade that it was wrong. I was in a health class and the teacher was telling the class about sexual abuse and I go, ‘Wow, this stuff is happening to me. It’s time I should do ing it five times in front of all those people, half of them I didn’t even know.” Justina, 12 While it is required by law that these cases be reported to child protective and legal authorities, it is often difficult to get charges filed Clinton St. Quarterly 5
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