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Personal Testimony

The following is a testimony of a survivor of childhood sexual abuse:
“For a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, there are many different answers to the questions of “why did you disclose“ and “why now and not years ago.”
It’s complicated and it will look different for every single survivor.
I can attempt to explain what this looked like for me as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by a school teacher/coach.
It is very rare that a minor will disclose sexual abuse as it’s happening or soon after the abuse stops. Generally a survivor doesn’t disclose until well into adulthood. That was my experience. I was sexually abused when I was in 8th and 9th grades. When I graduated junior high and began high school, I desperately wanted to be and feel normal. I wanted to fit in. The last thing I wanted was for fellow students to know I had been sexually abused. High school was hard enough and there was no way I was going make it harder by disclosing. At that time in my life, I rarely thought about the dangers I was putting other students in by not saying anything about my abuser. I had one goal: get through high school and try to fit in. As I went through high school and the years after, I became well practiced at making sure that how others saw me was completely different than what I was on the inside. The shame was intense. I hated myself. But maybe if I just joked more and got more people to like me and think I was fun, I’d be ok. God brought an amazing guy into my life and we got engaged and married. I never told him. I wanted to be normal. I could carry this by myself, I didn’t need to burden him with it and I didn’t want to ruin the way he saw me. I didn’t want him to see me as I saw myself: ugly and dirty. Our children were growing up, and suddenly I had to send my daughter off to junior high. Send her off to sports practices. The memories of the abuse that I had worked so hard to shove down were now rearing their ugly head. Everyday I looked at my young daughter and saw myself-and the abuse was right there. I could hardly even give her a hug anymore because it felt so dirty. I was falling fast into a pit of unrelenting shame, despair, and now I was facing the guilt that because I had never disclosed what this teacher/coach had done to me, I had put countless other students in danger for decades. I didn’t know what to do. If I disclosed, the ugliness and shame that I had learned how to carry inside of me would now be public for the whole world to see. If I told, I could ruin the life of my abuser and her family. I didn’t want to do that. But what about the students she was still teaching...the athletes she was still coaching?
What do I do?
I was fighting an intense spiritual battle with the sinful idea that maybe just ending my life would fix the problem. Then my husband wouldn’t see me as disgusting, I wouldn’t have to fight this joy-sucking despair, I wouldn’t make my daughter feel sad when I couldn’t show her my love for her with a hug, and I wouldn’t have to ruin my abuser’s life. Life went on like this for quite awhile. Ups and downs, until the downs and the darkness threatened to take over. My pastor had asked me a couple times, is there anything from your past that you want to tell me, anything that happened to you when you were young. I said no. Yet, God was working His grace and mercies through this question, because it was starting to seem like a possibility that I could do this, I could disclose…but it was a very scary place to be.
God brought me to a very dark place and He plagued me with the conviction that I must disclose my abuse in order to protect others who could be in danger. In the safety of a hospital setting I disclosed to my pastor and then to a local detective who was called in by my pastor. I then had to tell my husband and family. There was nothing easy about it. Not one thing. Unlike a disclosure that you are fighting cancer or you have just lost a dear loved one in death, most people have no idea what to say or how to act around someone who discloses sexual abuse in the church community. That’s understandable, but the survivor needs you to face this with them instead of trying to ignore it. Even just a simple expression of “I’m so sorry. I will pray” helps immensely to fight the isolation the survivor feels.
It’s an awkward time for them as well…wondering how people see them now that they know about the abuse, wondering if some people will speak evil of them for disclosing, wondering constantly if this was the right thing to do for everyone involved. Although there may be this idea among people that sexual abuse survivors disclose out of hatred or vengeance, this is simply not true of Christian survivors. The survivor in the church of Christ has a deep desire to bring glory to God’s name, to bring safety in the churches, schools, and community, and this too~a hope and prayer that God will use the disclosure to bring the abuser to genuine confession and repentance.”

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