New resource
At least it’s new to me. I was reading this article about a little boy who will be walking in DC for child abuse victims and noticed a mention of darknesstolight.org. Looks like a very wealth of information on childhood sexual abuse.
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When You Don’t Know What to Say
As many of you probably know since I’ve mentioned being away from the online community for a bit, last week, my wife’s dad passed away, just 5 weeks after her mom had. The grieving process for us is still very much ongoing and will be for quite some time.. However, one thing that has seemed…
Shame and Guilt – For Telling the Truth
I discovered a relatively new site yesterday and while I don’t know much about the author, I thought this particular part of what it’s like to finally tell someone about your abuse was really insightful. However, I also felt extremely guilty. This was a “forever secret” and I broke it. A year later, and I…
When it Comes to Abuse, Trafficking, and Violence, Do We Have a Race and Gender Problem?
What I want to address, however, is how our society defines victims and how it leaves far too many people behind. The article above is a great example. How many people, if asked about sex trafficking, picture little white girls or women abducted from Target? Probably a lot. For many, the only information they’ve ever gotten about trafficking are warnings about Target or shopping mall parking lots from their Facebook friends. They don’t know how many teenage boys from broken homes, living in poverty, are pulled into being trafficked. How many gay youths, rejected by their families, fall victim to it? How many immigrant children here, with no parental supervision, are sold off by the people who should be protecting them from sexual slavery?
Those stories, even if they’re told, are not going to grab national headlines. They are not going to evoke world-wide outrage and sympathy. Those are things that happen to “other people”. We might even be tempted to start looking for reason why it’s their own fault, or at least the parents fault, right?
From a media perspective, we also have to keep this in mind. An abduction of a young white girl from her home, is a rare event. It’s actually newsworthy because it happens so rarely. When it happens, it’s shocking. A trans, minority, teen being coerced into selling themselves, with no one to turn to for protection, isn’t any of those things. A gay male teen being kicked out of their parents house and trying to make it through homelessness, is also not something that happens so rarely that there would be major news coverage of it. These things happen all of the time. So often, that they aren’t really news.
So, which group should we have support and services for? I’d like to vote for ALL OF THEM. But that will take educating people about the reality of who gets abused, who gets trafficked, and for us all to accept that it happens everywhere. Until we get there, and are willing to see all different types of people as victims, we will continue to fail one group or another. That’s not acceptable.
Do You Not Feel Whole?
The title of this post is an actual question posed to me yesterday. In the wake of the settlement of a lawsuit by victims of sexual abuse against Michigan State University, my wife was listening to public radio, and the reporter plainly stated that despite the settlement and the financial penalty, the women involved would…
