Silence can be deafening.
When you talk about sex in general terms, many people do get uncomfortable and want to change the subject.
When you talk about sexual abuse by pastors and priests, to many it seems as if you have blasphemed the Holy Spirit!
One must understand what things like rape, molestation and other types of abuse can do to a psyche. You are not only raped physically, but you are raped of your
dignity. You are forcibly demeaned in such a way that you feel small, powerless, and with very little to feel good about in any way.
When you couple that with a weak, female figure as a mother, someone you can't really confide in because she herself is a basket case, there is no role model. I didn't understand the importance of that until I almost lost all of my children and had to re-learn what really
IS normal and healthy versus the programming I had grown up with.
My mother was mentally fragile and abused by my father. To say that she could ever stand up for herself and get out of that style of living is beyond realism. She couldn't drive. She was very dependent on her husband and she really had no outside support that I can remember.
Our family kept secrets. My mother's indiscretions, her inability to 'take-charge' and her Jewish background were only at times whispered about. At other times, snatches of history would be volleyed and caught by my curious ears during shouting matches between my mother, my father and, at many times, by my paternal grandmother. These were words or phrases that were angrily spewed out about some ancient incident that must have been earth-shattering at the time.
As a child, I learned never to ask too many personal questions. I was taught that somehow my mother was sub-standard. She just didn't rate as a wife, a mother nor, later on, as a sexual partner to my father.
When I was 6 years old, they began living apart in the same house. My mother on one end, my father on the other.
This was my first role model of what a family was like. Deep down, I knew it wasn't right. I grew up feeling scared. Insecure. I knew only that my parents would fight again. I grew to fear my father and had no true respect for my mother. I was taught to be quiet and dependent.
I was always trying to find that 'happy family' life portrayed on T.V. It only served to make me feel betrayed. Why me? Why did I have the weird family? Was that why I took the chances I did when I was a teen? I was trying so hard to feel like I was a part of something. Participation in the drug culture numbed me and drew me in like a moth to a flame. I was now a part of a group.
What does this have to do with the subject of rape and clergy who sexually hurt children and women? In my case, quite a bit! I was never taught boundaries. We never talked about normal sexual behavior as I grew-what was allowable and part of growing up and what was wrong and perverted. I learned from medical books and older kids on the street. I learned by watching how people in my 'group' behaved .
I was never taught about the perverts who molest young girls or about men who degrade women because wives were subservient and weak. I later learned the hard way. I lived it.
The saddest part of all this is when a victim tries to recover, to become a survivor. Yet the congregants you were once close to respond by hiding those who have hurt you. The males jump on the bandwagon and either turn a deaf ear or blame the victim, ("she was asking for it....she must have not been very Godly if he treated her that way...it takes two to tangle") the women try to 'comfort' the poor pastor because he has already spread his side of the story, (lies) and has defamed you. The victim is left to dry in the cold wind of one-sided opinions.
In my case, I was always quite insecure. I felt that if I was sweet enough, agreeable enough, tried hard to be 'pretty' enough, I would fit somewhere and as if by magic, feel transformed. That never happened. Yet I always tried to believe it would .
Those men (and in some cases,women) who had their antennae tuned to finding people like myself, knew just what to say to get me to take the bait. The damage done by such who abuse you when you are a teen is extreme enough, yet to a small child, it forever unbalances them and much work has to be done to give them the confidence needed to overcome the trauma.
How do you tell a child churches are friendly places when the ones she grew up in were shelters for the lowest forms of mankind? The molesters, the crooked preachers, the wolves who prowl for fresh meat to tear into. How do you trust those that believed the liar and those who upon hearing the truth, stayed silent and turned their backs because the whole incident is too shameful? I won't. I can't.
My 'church' is where two or more are gathered in the Lord's name and we study God's word and we pray.
I cannot force my children into a relationship with Jesus Christ. The Spirit of God must work on it's own, drawing them in. I can only pray for them.
For now, the support of a good, loving husband and my children is what helps me to heal. God's love
is in the house.
