UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Religion
Boz Tchividjian | Aug 14, 2015
He’s come forward after learning that there actually is a voice for the victims in this matter.
– Attorney representing 19 victims who have alleged being sexually abused as children by a mentor who was part of a United Airlines sponsored afterschool program at an inner-city elementary school in Chicago.
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The tragic reality is all too often victims of sexual abuse remain silent about the horrors they have endured. Many live their entire lives in silence. Studies have found that approximately sixty-three percent of adult sexual assaults and eighty-eight percent of child sexual abuse is never reported.
Why do so many victims remain silent? In over twenty years of confronting this evil, I have learned that there are many reasons that silence takes over the life of survivors. Like everyone else, abuse survivors are individuals with a unique life story and their own reasons for not telling anyone about the abuse. During the past twenty years, I have grieved as I have listened to some of the darkest chapters in the life stories of many amazing abuse survivors. Oftentimes, the gloomiest chapter is the silence.
A silence that holds victims hostage with little hope for release.
A silence that deceives victims day after day that they suffer alone.
A silence that extinguishes all remaining hopes and dreams.
A silence that is no different than a prison cell.
Though the reasons for silence may differ with each survivor, there are two that I have encountered time and time again when listening to survivors. I share them hoping that a greater understanding and empathy will propel us to do whatever we can to help survivors escape the cell of silence.
Disbelief. I cannot recount how often abuse survivors have shared with me that their silence was fueled by an incapacitating fear of not being believed. So often this fear is legitimized when survivors see how other victims are disbelieved and marginalized when they take the brave step forward out of their cell of silence. Case in point, how many women had to come forward before many people even began to acknowledge that Bill Cosby is a rapist? To date, almost 50 victims have stepped forward and there are still some that disbelieve their claims and have the audacity to label these courageous women as “opportunistic”. Please don’t think that the refusal to believe a sexual abuse victim is a rarity in 2015. Tragically, it happens every day to so many brave victims, old and young, who take a step out of their cell of silence. Oftentimes, these survivors are disbelieved by the very people they had hoped would believe and support them such as family members, friends, pastors, church members, teachers, and even police officers. The list goes on and on. Disbelief pushes many survivors back into their cells of silence. Disbelief also alerts other watching victims who are considering ending their silence that it may be safer to suffer in silence. What a tragedy.
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