The Price of Family Shame

This is probably the hardest post I will ever write. The problem is ingrained in almost every culture.

Even though statistics show our streets are as safe as they were back in the 1970s, we still keep our children close and don't them run about town because of "stranger danger."

I reject "stranger danger."

Why? Because they aren't a stranger to someone. Every person out there who has less than healthy designs on children and other people are KNOWN to someone. But we wait for human predators to mature and get caught instead of doing anything to stop them before they hurt someone.

There will never be an absence of predators out there. That is the way of things. Yet, overall, life is a whole lot less dangerous than it used to be. But we still keep our kids close and often to their detriment. Better overweight from lack of exercise than the remote possibility they will be kidnapped by a stranger while riding their bike.

I maintain that for every bully, sociopath, psychopath, molester, gynophile, pedophile, rapist, hater - for every predator - there is someone who knows, someone who knew, but chooses/chose not to tell. That choice 'not to tell' is the crux.

We aren't doing our kids a favor by keeping them close. Most children are molested by someone they know. More often than not a family member. The odds are EXTREMELY high it will not be a stranger. Same with being raped. Yet we focus on "stranger danger" over all else in spite of the evidence to the contrary. Evidence that is not new. This is the way it has always been.

I've been studying this for over 25 years. I have my own family nightmare that I wish I could talk about openly. I'm being a full on hypocrite, actually, by not talking about it. And why don't I talk about it openly? Why don't I name names? Because it will hurt a lot of people. It's not that I didn't tell people several times back when it was happening to me, I did. No, the blame for not stopping it early on does not fall on my shoulders at least (I was eight). But I am part of the problem none the less for keeping the secret well into my adulthood.

So why didn't the adults I told back when I was eight stop it? First off, they did try. But the biggest reason it wasn't taken to someone, a professional, outside of the family is because of "family shame".

I'm 44 now and, like I mentioned, I've been studying this for a very long time. I've been in group therapy sessions, talked with friends, read books, researched online and studied psychology and sociology in college. I took every psych and related class my university had to offer. I even did independent studies on pedophilia and recidivism, as well as childhood personality development. Because of my "side" obsession, I ended up going to school for over six years before I graduated.

Look at it this way, the adult predator in question who we all love to hate started out as someone's child, someone's sibling, someone's nephew/niece, someone's cousin. If you found out today that your little brother or older sister was a predator, what would you do? Would you really? What if they were 10? That's how old my abuser was when it started. I was five. I told my mother three years later.

Don't envision me as your five your old daughter, envision the 10 year old abuser as your child. What do you do? It's so much easier when the abuser is someone else's child isn't it? Easier to call social services on them. Call the police. Hate them.

What happens to this child you love if people find out they are an abuser? 

Now think of your reputation. Your spouse's reputation. What will people think of your other children? And if you do get the child help, many states require therapists report such things to social services regardless of doctor/patient confidentiality. What will your neighbors think? The people in  your children's school? The parents of your children's friends? Your fellow church goers? Your employer and fellow employees? Can you imagine such a family stigma?

Can you blame these families for burying such secrets?

As a mother myself now... well... I understand it, at least. But, yes, they are to blame.

Why? Because most predators are made, not born. I only found out recently that my abuser was molested in a public bathroom as a young child. If the adults I had told had gotten my abuser outside help, therapy, right away, things could have been so different. BOTH an abuser and a victim would have been saved. As well as any other current/potential victims. Not to mention the next generation of victims and so on. THINK of all those who would never have been victims if the molester who abused my abuser had gotten help early on.

Do you see! Don't you think that is worth any stigma?

No? Well, I understand, I do. But you must also know that keeping such secrets not only doesn't make it stop or go away, but puts a heavy burden on the victim, right? NOW think of me, the five year old victim as your child, too. Do you think getting outside help would make things worse for her? Unlikely. She already lives with a constant dread of accidentally being left alone with her abuser. Or the abuser finding her alone. Her outgoing personality has already changed to one of quiet submissiveness and fear. She blames herself. She hates her parents. The feelings of helplessness will linger long into her adulthood. Sex will be scary. And she will go through life always feeling as though she is tainted. People will judge her on a personality, emotions, reactions, character, that don't seem like her own, but were forced upon her by circumstance. And how does her history of being a victim at such a young age effect her as a mother?

So now is the stigma worth it?

To me, even after airing my own experience in this, it is still, really, all about the abuser. Those young boys and girls who start abusing other young people. Getting them help is the important thing. We have so many tools today to deal with abusers. And the younger they are when they get help, the better. SAVE THEM!

Saving them will be what really changes the future for many would be victims. And by changing the future for them, we change the future for us all.

My main intent here is to get people to realize that there is a remedy, a bitter pill certainly, but a remedy for those we consider human predators. And the whole stranger danger thing is more harmful than good. Now I'm not saying every weird uncle, overly friendly grandma or ham fisted cousin is a predator, but if you were warned as a child to stay away from them, then they probably were.

So please, stop over protecting your children from every stranger they see. Some day they may find themselves in a situation where a stranger will be needed to help them, or possibly even save them. Teach them to simply be observant and smart. And teach them to realize that every kid they see on the brink of violence is probably just trying to survive. Encourage them to speak up and speak out. Regardless of a bully's past, the bullying still needs to stop. For everyone that speaks up and speaks out, whether about a peer or a family member, many will be saved. I truly believe there are many more good people in the world than bad. For every one predator there are 100s more who are caring. All some of them need is a nudge in the right direction.

As for me and my skeleton, well, it still lives with me; although, it barely bothers me anymore except to remind me that it is still in the basement. I would love to bring it out and give it a proper burial (and pronoun), but, then, that would be telling now wouldn't it?

When You Have to Tell Them

Some of you have been there. It starts with the moment you learn something that you KNOW will adversely effect someone you care about. What do you do? Ignore it? If it is bad enough do you contact the "authorities"? Do you tell them knowing they'll probably hate you forever?

Back in late December I found out something that no one wants to find out about. It is hard to talk about this without naming names which means it is hard to write this without worrying people I know and care about. So let me qualify this post early on with saying that I did tell them. They know. So if I haven't talked to you about something earth shattering concerning your family (and that is glib compared to how serious this situation really is), then all is well with you and yours.

But not for one family I know.

So, yes, it took five months to tell this person the heart rending information that had fallen into my lap. I was determined to tell them right away, but things got in the way. Some news you have to tell in person. So how do you encourage someone to come visit without getting all alarmist about it? Well, that is what I tried to do at first. I made social invitations and such, but our schedules didn't line up. Then that big client I picked up totally took over my life. So time past.

Last week I saw this person online and was smacked with the reality of the situation all over again. I talked to my husband and he said I had to tell them. Period. So I had good intentions of sending out an email/personal message to get them over to our house... and forgot. Or put it off, more to the truth. Then the small bearer of the bad news in the first place reminded me yet again. But now things had changed a bit. The person I needed to tell was experiencing a sudden, extremely tough, personal family tragedy. How could I possibly tell them now?

My husband said it doesn't matter. The more time that was allowed to flow by, the worse the situation could get. I had to tell them.

So I sent the private message that said it was imperative we see them as soon as possible. And within the day they arrived at our house. I, with Brian as emotional support for us all, told this friend straight out. Ok, I may have prefaced it with, "You are going to hate me, but..."

Is it a War on Women?

Yeah, I'm doing it. I know I am not the first and I won't be the last to blog about this. But I feel like we need a bit of a record of all the things being debated about at the government level that has to do with women right now. Seeing as how Legislating/controlling women is so in vogue these days and all. As the photo I borrowed illustrates... WTF?! We, the last three generations that is, thought we had made a permanent foothold into equal rights. That we had forged a path that could not be easily done away with. We let down our guard I guess.

Current legal abortion as a hot women's topic is too easy, so I'll let that pass. And going after Planned Parenthood is nothing new, really, so I won't even go on and on about that. But... the bills coming up about uterus police for miscarriages, no abortion even when pregnant as a result of rape or incest, and no abortion even to save the life of the mother EVEN if the fate of the fetus is also death, make no sense. There are laws passed to criminalize doctors for doing any abortion; even life saving ones. Then there are states forcing women to pay for additional ultrasounds (some by wand) and receive a lecture (that goes against freedom of religion) before they can lawfully terminate a pregnancy . Oh, and there was that bill requiring women get permission of the father in writing before they are allowed to have an abortion (a little awkward, no? if the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest?). How about redefining rape to make abortions harder to get? The whole growing bias that women are not smart enough or, as they say, can't make an informed choice when it comes to their own health care, their own bodies or the decision to have, or not to have, an abortion, I find repulsive.

And so we move on to no insurance coverage for female contraceptives of any kind. Even when prescribed for a medical condition other than to keep from getting pregnant. Um, why aren't contraceptives considered medical? What's with no women experts allowed to speak about contraceptives? What's up with that? More of that, "women can't make an informed choice" crap? We are too stupid? Yet no debate on whether insurance should cover Viagra or penile implants. How about the bill that would make it legal to fire a woman for having contraceptives? And now there are religious leaders saying oral contraceptives cause homosexuality. WTF? the latest state bills signed into law allow pharmacists to refuse to fill out any prescription they feel could be used to induce an abortion and physicians are not allowed to legally withhold information from patients if they think that medical information may result in an abortion or other thing against their personal morals. These "Conscious Measures" are so broad and vague it can be applied to anything. So even if the birth control is prescribed for medical reasons, a pharmacist can block a woman from medicine her doctor has prescribed; medicine she may need for a medical condition. And what if that information the doctor decides to keep from their patient costs them their life? Will the law save them in a court of law? This is not how medical care should be practiced in a civilized country! The religious beliefs of a medical practitioner should not trump the religious and cultural beliefs of a patient, especially if it may result in the suffering and/or death of the patient.


Beyond contraceptives or abortion are bills redefining when life starts. I don't know when life started, but I do know that pregnancy is a continuation of life, not the start. The stupidest bill of them all is the one that passed saying conception or life starts two weeks before fertilization. Besides it being against most faiths (including those who follow the teachings of the bible), it negates contraceptives of ALL kinds, makes abortion illegal at any stage, makes every woman a murderer who has a period or a miscarriage, and makes every man a killer who masturbates. Complete idiocy.

And yet women are being punished for choosing to have their children, too. Another state legislature drafted a bill that would make single parenthood tantamount to child abuse (to try and keep poor, single women from keeping their babies).

Recently the money put into preventative healthcare, especially for women, has been given the label "slush" fund and is targeted to be cut. Their rational is that putting money into cancer screenings, child immunizations and quit smoking programs is a waste of money. I believe it has been proven, without a doubt, that such preventative healthcare GREATLY reduces the cost of healthcare overall for everyone. So this goes into the War on Women category because the preventative measures being funded and the target of cuts are mostly for women.

The Supreme Court said, just last year, women employees couldn't sue Walmart for low wages, low raises, low bonuses and little to no advancement in comparison to male employees because Walmart employs mostly women. ie, a majority aren't allowed to sue. Um, Walmart, like a lot of businesses these days, hire women to lower their bottom line because it is permissible to pay women less then men. You'd think men would be pissed about that. Several states have bills up for vote that would lower the minimum wage of tipped employees. Positions mostly held by women (over 80%). The coup de gras, Scott Walker, the much loved (sarcasm) governor or Wisconsin has repealed the state's Equal Pay law stating that men needed the money more than women.

And here I add yet another bill introduced to make all divorce illegal. Which, even though I think people often get married with little intent to stay the minute things get rough, is wrong on many levels including separation of church and state, freedom of religion, and personal freedoms of course. But the main problem is the lawmaker introducing the bill has it as ALL divorce illegal regardless of abuse. He literally said Women need to remember why they got married in the first place. That takes it to the war on women level. But let's take it even further. Yet another state has DECRIMINALIZED Domestic Violence altogether. Why? Because the police have better things to do than keep husbands from raping and killing their wives or live in girl friends. Even though men abuse much more so than women, this law also does a disservice to men who are abused. What next? Decriminalize child abuse?

A friend of mine hypothesized that Republican lawmakers ARE working on creating jobs... they are trying to get women out of the work place so there will be more jobs for men. I'm starting to believe that is true; certainly the new proposed laws seem to support it.

I found out the other day that in all areas of power, from our state and federal legislators to corporate CEOs to governors to boards of directors to mayors to ambassadors and world leaders, et al, the one area where women, by the numbers, are the closest in equality to men is in our own United States Supreme Court. And they are not equal, just the closest. Women make up just over 50% of the population, but even though we are equal in numbers here, we are not anywhere close to equal numbers in positions of power, and therefore, representation.
 
I also was made aware that Obamacare would require all persons pay the same amount for healthcare regardless of gender or adult age. Did you know that, right now, women pay, on average, 20% more than men for healthcare, sometimes as much as 70% depending on which state they live in?

ALL of that mentioned above has happened in the LAST THREE-PLUS YEARS. I'm not even talking about how historically women are treated... just the last three-plus years and only at the U.S. state and federal government level. Sorry, but that really is a war on women at the top levels. I can't see excusing most or any of that. You can't go, "Oh, you can't pay attention to the extremists." We are talking about representatives here. Lawmakers. People voted in by us!


Seems obvious what we need to do to stop this idiocy and work towards a better representative government... VOTE.