Arguments used to discredit survivors

There are a number of standard arguments used by predators and their lawyers to discredit those who accuse them sexual abuse. This is my response to them.

He (the accuser) is troubled/emotionally unstable. You cannot take him seriously.

There are two responses to this, both of which are often true for any specific survivor.

First, it is well known that predators often target troubled children. The quite boys, the outsiders and the misfits are simply more susceptible to grooming and easier to isolate from their peers. The lonely child is much more likely to respond to perceived kindness and acceptance from the predator. How many survivors have echoed the statement that "he made me feel special"?

Why tell my story?

Today is exactly one year since I started writing down my story. And what a year it has been!

I started off very motivated. I wrote in blog-format, completing at least one post a day, some days more than one. I dissected all the horrors of my childhood in the minutest detail, recalling sights, sounds and smells, going back to old journals to verify dates, reliving everything as I sought to inject the appropriate emotions into my writing.

It all proved to be too much. By January of this year, I was sinking into a deep depression. Continuing to write through the pain, I eventually crashed back onto the bathroom floor with a paring knife, my tears mixing with the blood dripping from my arm.

The next day, frightened into action by my self-inflicted wound, I made two decisions:
1. I needed to stop the recall, to stop writing.
2. I needed to go back to therapy.

Alone

The purpose of this blog was not to share my personal struggles. It was meant to be an educational blog. It was meant to be a place full of information and full of hope. But today the loneliness is too much to carry. I'm not sure if anyone will be able to learn anything from this post, but I need to talk to someone and this is the only place I have left.

I need to bleed.

Now, it would be a simple thing to take a blade and draw blood from any convenient vein. But I'm not yet far enough gone to loose sight of the fact that doing this would only compound the weight that I'm carrying today. It would create another secret. More shame. More to hide.

It would isolate me further.

Survivors have an obligation to speak up

Standing up and saying to the world "I was abused' is hard. It is even harder if you are a man and even harder than that if you were sexually abused. No one knows that quite as well as those of us who have been there.

I reached the point of being able to say "I was abused" in my early twenties. Being able to talk about it was liberating, and very helpful in helping me process what had happened. But I have never been comfortable with telling people "I was sexually abused". There is always that little voice in my head that says what will people think? Will they suspect me of being a sexual predator? Will they still trust me around their kids?

About a year or more ago I realised that in refusing to be specific about the type of abuse I suffered, I am guilty of fuelling that stigma. By refusing to be completely honest, I am re-affirming to others that being a sexual abuse survivor is something to be ashamed of, something to hide, something that should not be spoken about. And by affirming this stigma, I am failing to use an opportunity to encourage boys and men to speak up and get the help they so desperately need.

With this in mind, I am starting to believe that as a survivor who have arguably progressed further than many others in my healing journey, I have an obligation to stand up and say "I am a survivor of sexual abuse". I should be offering myself as living proof that the stigmas are unfounded, just as I have been testifying for years that there is life after addiction.

Even as I am typing this, I am thinking about the effort I made to keep this blog anonymous. Isn't preaching about speaking up while staying anonymous a bit hypocritical? And yet, I shiver at the thought of having everyone in my life know my history...

I don't know if I could do it.