© 2019 Christy K Robinson
Sexual assault, in whatever form it takes, is not about sex.[i]
It’s about
violence, power, and betrayal. Keeping the secret that one has been violated
can prevent healing and recovery.
It happened to me when I was learning
to walk, at the age I was coloring Noah’s animals in Sunday school and learning
to ride a tricycle.
I had to be mature far too quickly. I
didn’t learn to play or dance or be silly. Adults praised me for my maturity,
for having such polite manners, and for being a caregiver to my chronically ill
mother when my father was at work. When she was having an asthma attack and
struggling for air, I pushed a chair up to the five-foot-high oxygen tank,
climbed up and turned the valve, then put the mask on her face. I wasn’t yet 2
years old.
I was sexually molested by my mother’s
uncle from a time before I could remember. He lived in Los Angeles, and we
lived in Phoenix, but he’d come to visit for holidays and long weekends. He was
a veteran living on disability for his arthritis, so he came often.
He groomed
me with a Pixie doll and took me to the drugstore for decaf coffee at the soda
counter. (Yes, I drank Postum and Sanka as a preschooler because my parents,
and Uncle John, were from Minnesota, where coffee was the elixir of life.) For
years, I remembered only that he had touched my private areas, and that was
bad, and I hated it.
Reporting
the Molester
One day when I was in fifth grade, I
told my mother that Uncle John was touching me, had done every time he visited,
and I was very uncomfortable about it. I had been embarrassed to tell until I
wore my first flat bra and John invaded that space, too. Perhaps John
threatened me: I don’t remember. A lot of things have disappeared from memory.
My parents had a terse conversation
outside with John and banished him. They called the police, and we were sent a
female officer who was probably a secretary or dispatcher, since there were few
female police officers in the late 1960s. She asked a few dispassionate
questions of me, took a report, and that was it. Since I held back on how
intrusive Uncle John had been, saying merely that he’d touched me under my
panties, neither my parents nor the policewoman considered it a sexual assault.
Uncle John was a “sick” man with a dirty mind, and we didn’t discuss it again.
They probably thought I’d forget.
What John did to me is what the Stanford swimmer, Brock Turner, did to a
woman--and served only three months in jail. John molested me (technically, it was rape) on
every visit, until I was almost 11 and on the verge of puberty. Using his
superior authority as an adult, he used his adult power to overwhelm my own
self-worth and right to privacy and dignity and personal space.
Lingering
Consequences
My mother and father tried to protect me
from the fallout, not wanting to put guilt on me, but my experience affected
the whole family. When they reported my molestation to police, Uncle John’s
siblings (the aunts and uncles who had helped raise my mother) gave her the cold shoulder, and while the
police were half-heartedly looking for John, his siblings sent him to Hawaii to
live for a few years. This wounded my mom very deeply, and she wept about it. One of John's siblings was a law-enforcement officer.
My brother remembered that our family
had an anonymous bomb threat, and that Uncle John may have stalked our
neighborhood once or twice. He’d injured his back years before, and arthritis
had given him a deep hunch, so he was easy to spot. As an 11-year-old, I would
stand in the dark behind the sheer curtains of my bedroom window and watch the
street and sidewalks under the streetlight, fearful that one of those neighbors
walking their dog might be him.
My parents did the best they knew to do
in those days. Our denomination believed that psychologists and
psychiatrists could control your mind and implant in it ungodly things—or urged
false memories. Only recently have we learned that sexual abuse lies dormant or
festers for years or decades if not treated in therapy.
In school I was a serious child, not
one to play with the other kids much, because I wasn’t good at playing games and
was afraid of not being good enough. Several teen girls asked if I was
pregnant, because I was one size larger than they were. I heard them in the
restroom, saying I was stuck up. I changed for physical education in the
restroom stalls, from elementary school through college. And because these schools
were conservative Christian schools, I never learned to dance.
I didn’t understand it until I was
40-something, but I never learned to play. I mistook play for practicing the
piano and reading books. I wasn’t interested in making up stories about dolls
or toys, and I didn’t play sports or even enjoy board games.
Considered Easy Prey
My mother warned me to never tell
family secrets—not to friends, not to other relatives, and definitely not to
people at the school or church. But I’d already had a sense that knowledge was
power and that revealing my secrets would render me powerless. I kept a stoic
face when teased or criticized, and I never let a tear fall that might give
away my pain and let someone dig deeper. Telling sexual secrets would make me
appear to be damaged goods, or a slut, in the eyes of a potential husband.
When I went to a new high school, I had
to have a physical exam. Because we didn’t have much money that year, Mom took
me to the county health clinic instead of our family doctor. I was only 13, but
the male doctor did a “breast cancer exam” and said something derogatory about
my areolas as he pinched my nipples.
In later years, health providers taking
my medical history would ask about physical or sexual abuse, which I denied
because I discounted, even to myself, Uncle John’s assaults as “molestation” since
he hadn’t raped me with his penis.
Imagine my shock when I learned
recently that Uncle John had not only finger-raped, but also penis-raped
several of his nieces and great-nieces and their friends, from 1947 until at
least 1969, when my mother blew the whistle among the family members. We don’t
know if he continued to prey on girls outside the family, because only one
woman will talk about it. She was 6 years old when John raped both her and her
friend. “He was inside my body,” she said. Her little, innocent, first-grader
body.
Her mother was one of the siblings who sent John to Hawaii to hide from
police. This cousin grew up to be promiscuous and had strained relationships
with the enablers. At age 78 now, she has no desire to forgive John, who has
been dead for 30 years.
Today, perhaps because of the #MeToo
movement, sexual abuse survivors have come forward by the millions, and there’s
power in numbers.
There’s also a lot more enlightened sympathy, for what it’s
worth. But misconceptions persist. In 2017 and 2018, the women who made
allegations of sexual assault by Judge Roy Moore and Judge Brett Kavanaugh were
ripped apart for not reporting their assaults decades ago. Yet at that time, in
the ’70s and ’80s, keeping secrets was the sensible thing to do because abusers
prey on the vulnerable—women and children who are already traumatized or
helpless. If the victims had reported the attacks back then, they’d have risked
further harm to themselves or their families; they would likely have been
shamed for leading a man on; and other abusers would have found them easy prey.
Telling the secret is why many assault victims are abused again.
A Self-Protection Tactic
A kept secret is like a thin blister of
skin over an abscess. Keeping the secret meant that I couldn’t heal and grow.
It meant that in order to protect myself, I gained weight. A lot of weight, despite constant dieting,
fasting, and using artificial sweeteners. When you live a temperate Christian
lifestyle, you don’t self-medicate with alcohol or drugs, you comfort with
food. It doesn’t have to be a lot of food or fattening food to gain weight.
I didn’t want to be fat. I prayed for
healing. I wanted to be beautiful and intelligent and desirable. I wanted to
marry a godly man and have children. But I gained anyway and, as a consequence,
was not asked on dates. I was told I had a pretty face (implying that the rest
of me was not pretty) and that men thought of me as a sister, but not a
girlfriend or wife. The jobs I might have been offered were given to others who
“fit in” with societal norms of beauty.
Peer-reviewed medical research has
shown that adult “women with documented histories of sexual abuse were more
than twice as likely to be obese as their non-abused peers.”[ii]
Based on a meta-analysis of 23 studies with a total of 112,000 participants, one
research team calculated that “the risk of obesity was 34 percent higher among
adults who had been subjected to abuse as children than among non-abused
adults.”[iii]
Medical research also shows that childhood
sexual abuse survivors often have lifelong sexuality issues (promiscuity,
celibacy, fear of intimacy), substance abuse problems, and eating disorders
(self-medicating with food is part of it). It’s not because we’re lazy and eat
a dozen donuts every day. It’s because some part of our brain packs on the
weight and refuses to let us lose it, despite our best efforts. Stress adds
pounds. Actress Rosie O’Donnell realized, after her heart attack, that she had
gained weight as a result of being raped by relatives. Over her vulva was a
fold of fat called an apron, which she felt protected her from later assaults.
Our Deepest Desires
Keeping family secrets repels love and
acceptance and makes abuse victims feel that we must please others at all
costs. I’ve spent most of my life trying to compensate for not being “enough”—whether
that meant being the popular girl in school, or a wife to be chosen and
cherished, or a high wage earner, or the best church musician, or the best
author—the best something.
I worked my way through university with
long hours and academic scholarships. After a serious injury, I began teaching
and freelancing from home. When my mother died and my father remarried, he
devoted himself to the new wife and put his and my mom’s estate into the new
wife’s name, disinheriting me and emotionally distancing himself from me
because I’m so much like my mother. I worked longer hours and earned less pay
than a man in my position, and the chairman of the board still wanted to know
which man I was related to so he could place me in a niche. Rejection and not
being accepted (or hired) because of physical appearance is part of the
experience of abuse survivors.
Keeping secrets also makes survivors of
abuse try to prove ourselves useful and lovable in human eyes—and in God’s
eyes. As a single woman, I was lectured again and again on the verses in Psalm
34 about delighting in God and then
being given the desires of one’s heart, as if God is holding out on me until I
attain some benchmark of faith.
Dutch professor and theologian Henri
Nouwen wrote in Life of the Beloved: “Aren’t you, like
me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that
final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don’t you often hope: ‘May this
book, idea, course, trip, job, country, or relationship fulfill my deepest
desire.’”
My deepest desire has been to be
cherished. To be loved for every reason and no reason.
Finding
Health and Healing
Donald Trump’s tape boasting about his grabbing
women’s genitals and trying to “f---” a married woman gave me waking
nightmares. Comments by those who affirmed his speech and actions filled me
with anxiety, fear, hatred, and physical pain. I suspect it was a form of
post-traumatic stress. This brought back memories I’d banished for 45 years.
Then, as I was making my low-calorie
breakfast one morning, I had a momentary vision of a grizzly bear standing on
her hind legs. God spoke to me in that flash: I’m a grown woman now, strong and
fierce, and I can fight back attacks. I can protect my tender, wounded inner
child. I no longer need the body armor I’ve put on since my teen years.
I began to tell my secret to a few
close friends, then a few who were also #MeToo survivors. There are millions of
us, men and women.
Although I didn’t realize it then, I
began to lose weight. I wasn’t trying any harder than I had already. I didn’t
weigh myself for two months, by which time I’d lost 20 pounds. After
age-related medical tests and some serious oral surgeries that required a
high-protein liquid diet for several weeks, I lost another 20 pounds. With most
of my medical issues resolved, my meds were reduced or eliminated, which let me
lose more weight.
I continued to tell my secret, and
friends have congratulated and validated my weight loss progress and improved
health status. Although I keep hitting plateaus, my doctor is pleased with my
overall progress. I’ve lost the equivalent of an adult person’s weight, and I still
need to lose a child’s body weight.
Empowered
to Help Others
One of the many debilitating effects of
childhood sexual abuse was my perceived disconnect with God. I didn’t know how
to love him or other people. I vowed that I would obey God and honor him the
best I could, though my emotions were drained. He slowly healed that problem,
however, as I volunteered with an interfaith group that helps Hispanic
refugees, and as I donated plasma and platelets to strangers, and as I got
involved in other outward-focused activities. I’ve cultivated gratitude for the
many ways my friends and my God have blessed me, and that has brought me to a
place where I can add passion to being a blessing to others.
The
following scripture contains a powerful promise from God:
You survivors in
Israel,
listen to me, the Lord.
Since the day you were born,
I have carried you along.
I will still be the same
when you are old and gray,
and I will take care of you.
I created you. I will carry you
and always keep you safe. Isaiah 46:3-4 CEV
listen to me, the Lord.
Since the day you were born,
I have carried you along.
I will still be the same
when you are old and gray,
and I will take care of you.
I created you. I will carry you
and always keep you safe. Isaiah 46:3-4 CEV
I’m a cherished daughter of God who can think and act for
myself, and can be fierce as a bear. My God-given talents and intelligence are “enough.”
I can, by telling my secret, help others heal and learn to protect themselves.
That, in turn, strengthens my own recovery.
[i] Lyn
Yonack, “Sexual Assault Is About Power,” Psychology
Today (Nov. 14, 2017). Online at www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psychoanalysis-unplugged/201711/sexual-assault-is-about-power
[ii] Aaron
Levin, “Obesity, Childhood Sex Abuse Show Strong Link,” Psychiatric News (Aug. 3, 2007). Online at
psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/pn.42.15.0023.
[iii]
Erik Hemmingsson, “Childhood Trauma Could Lead to Adult Obesity,” Karolinska
Institutet (Sept. 2, 2014). Online at
ki.se/en/news/childhood-trauma-could-lead-to-adult-obesity.
This article appeared in the May 2019 issue of Adventist Today magazine.
* A few of dozens of peer-reviewed articles on childhood
sexual abuse and obesity:
COMMENT MADE THROUGH MY WEBSITE CONTACT FORM:
"What power you possess, Christy. You deserve every good thing God has for you. Live well. H.A."
*********
Christy K Robinson is author of
these books (click the colored title):
And of these sites:
Discovering
Love (inspiration and service)
Rooting
for Ancestors (history and genealogy)
William and Mary Barrett Dyer
(17th century culture and history of England and New England)
Editornado
[ed•i•tohr•NAY•doh] (Words. Communications. Book reviews.
Cartoons.)
