One in Three Women

Toward Healing: A struggle to survive sexual abuse and hope for a better future, January 2009

Jackie Shaw

Many people ask me how I ended up going seminary with some of the thoughts I express about God. I am often very angry with God and refuse to believe the easy platitudes I have heard in church. My experience has shown me that very little is ever easy. And yet, I have known God’s grace and I want to share that experience. To get to my experience of grace, I have to recount my experience of brokenness and God.

I started going to church when I was seven years old. My mother decided I needed to go. So, I would be dropped off at church for Sunday School and picked up when it was over. Things went smoothly with me going to Sunday School for about two years. Then my experience of church and life in general changed drastically.

At that time, my mother got a job at a local grocery store to pay for my sister’s preschool. This meant that my father had to watch my sister and me before it was time to go to church.

Shortly after mom started her job, the three of us remaining at home started a new ritual. Dad would tell my sister to go downstairs to watch cartoons and when she was gone, he would call me into his room. Then he would molest me until it was time to get ready for church. Every week when he was done, he’d say, "You better go get ready for church." Sometimes he would threaten me with what would happen if I said anything to anyone about what he did. He made threats, but never really had to because the way life was in that household was like walking a tightrope over a field of land mines. The slightest slip or turn would have been a catastrophe.

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I also felt ashamed and like what was happening was my fault. Even if I could have mustered the strength to tell, I didn't think anyone would believe that he was the one doing something wrong. I thought everyone would point their fingers at me.

My prayer every day was that God would help me to stop sinning so I would stop being punished through my father.

I felt like my life was ruined. In the Psalmists’ words, I felt I was poured out like water and my heart was like wax. My body was visibly whole, but inside, it felt like everything in me was being eaten away. I felt like the dementors from the Harry Potter books had sucked out my soul, except instead of being faceless floating entities, my father’s face was the one I saw when it felt like my soul was leaving my body. I felt completely ruined and thought my life was over.

Finally, after several years of this ritual and with it getting increasingly worse and more pervasive in my life than just Sunday mornings, I got the nerve to tell someone. I didn’t tell for myself because I felt so poured out. I told to protect my sister and the other young girls in my life, like my aunt, the girl that lived down the street and the foster children my grandparents cared for. I hoped that someone else might be spared this horror if I could get my father to stop. There were far too many other potential victims for me to be quiet. I already saw myself as a casualty so I felt I had nothing else to lose.

The first person I told was my mother. She said she would talk to my father. She must have talked to him because it did stop, for a while. He started again and I told her again. This time, nothing changed.

The next person I approached was someone that came to my Girl Scout troop. She had just given a presentation about what to do if you were being abused. Her husband was a police officer and I told her, but out of fear or not wanting to really get involved, she did nothing.

I finally told the minister of my church. She confronted my parents. Mom said she knew, but didn’t know what to do and dad said he was sorry but he didn’t really know what he was sorry for. The minister started counseling mom and dad on their marital issues, which was not appropriate or helpful because that wasn’t the issue. The problem was that my father was and is a pedophile, not that my parents were fighting or that they weren’t having enough sex.

Almost eight months later when I told my minister the abuse hadn’t stopped, she finally called the police and my father was removed from our house. He later molested my adopted aunt and for that, he finally went to prison. He also molested four other girls and a boy, that I know about.

My life felt totally dried up. I was waiting and wishing for death - either at the hands of my father for telling the truth or at my own hands from the overwhelming despair. Even though I was heavily involved in church, I felt like God was gone. How could God stay with me when I was so ruined and my soul felt like it was dead? Was God really paying attention to my plight at all?

For reasons that I could not explain at the time, I never gave in to the despair. I got up everyday and lived, but it always felt like a pointless existence. I was very involved in the local and wider church and through those experiences, I met some wonderful people. These strong and wonderful people shared stories of their lives with me. Some of the stories were similar to mine. They also lived their faith and showed me that God might still be around. Perhaps even more important than sharing their stories with me, they let me into their lives and showed me that somehow, I was still important and valuable.

They were also able to hold on to different pieces of life until I was able to at least look at a piece, if not hold onto it myself. I was barely able to hold on to anything at all, but some dear friends held on to faith, hope and dreams of life for me. My friend, Jane, held onto faith and called me once a month to check on me and let me know she was still holding onto her piece. Another friend, Jean always had hope for her own life and she carried some of that for me.

Since I was about twelve years old, I knew I wanted to go to seminary. This was not necessarily something I dreamed about, but it was a nagging thing I couldn’t avoid. There were questions I wanted to think about in the presence of those who seemed to know more about God than me.

This was a dream I never thought would be realized because it was a dream and a waking nightmare all at once. To face my questions about God, I had to face the horror of my abuse.

My friend Keran held the dream of seminary for me. She also held the nightmare of my abuse because I could talk about it with her and she didn’t turn away.

Much to Keran’s surprise and mine, I started seminary in 2005. I talked about my experience every chance I got and tried to show my colleagues a better way for the church to handle abuse. I read every book I could get my hands on about evil, abuse, the church’s response and where we go from here. I talked to professors with whom I felt safe being vulnerable and tried to struggle through these issues with my learned friends.

I graduated in May, 2008 and I would love to tell you that I have all my struggles resolved and that I don’t have any more problems with the church or with God. It isn’t true, but I’d love to tell you that. I would also love to tell you that the abuse I suffered is no longer an issue. It is less of an issue, but I am not fully healed. Healing is a process, which is been painful and slow.

I have now done three pretty public presentations about my abuse. Each time, I am unsure if I am ready to tell my story, but I don’t think this something anyone is ever fully ready to tell. I will probably never feel safe enough or distanced enough from my pain to share any of this easily, but I am still compelled to share it.

You may be asking yourself, "So if this is so hard and she’s admitted she’s not ready, why is she doing this?" I'm doing this because there isn't enough time in life for me to continue to be silent. There isn't time for me to wait and see if the deep anguish I feel every time I have a flashback will ever go away. I could wait and say, "next year will be better for me to try to talk about this," but it might not be and while I wait to be completely healed, kids are still being abused.

I could not keep silent and hope that someone else would talk to the 17 year old who was struggling to decide whether or not she should prosecute her father for molesting her. I could not keep silent when Jan Goodwin, the human rights reporter, called from “Oprah” Magazine and said she wanted to hear personal stories of abuse because she wanted to try and change the national child sexual abuse laws.

I cannot sit idly by and let someone else do all the hard work because I am too scarred and scared to speak. Much of the time, sitting idly by is exactly what I want to do and what I have done from time to time when I needed a rest from the abuse work. I want to cling to silence because I don't have to do anything or risk being hurt. In order to do that, I also have to let go of the hope that God is doing a new thing. That would be the ultimate step of giving up. The world doesn't have to be like this! God is doing a new thing and imploring us to be part of it.

Seminary was a joy, and a tremendous struggle and I was challenged at every turn. I also tried to offer challenges to my professors and my colleagues because I don’t believe the church’s response to abuse has to be what it has always been. I also believe that there is more fullness of life available to victims, survivors and thrivers.

The church has often failed victims, survivors and people in general. Abuse does not have to happen. The church can and should have education programs in place to help people learn to value themselves and be aware when they are in a dangerous situation. It could be argued that the church is not the place for this, but the Psalmist wrote, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” What better place to teach each person how wonderful they are in the eyes of God?

A dear friend of mine in seminary told me, "Don’t let anything take away who you are and are called to be by God." The church could teach people this lesson. It could preach and live the vision that all people actually matter and have a place in the church and the world. Each person could truly have value and not be just another discard of society.

The church can also learn to be different and can be a source of strength for victims and survivors and a source healing for all those involved.

Imagine if people suffering from abuse could really find solace in the church. For each person who can gather the strength to break the deafening silence, the possibility of healing becomes real. With healing, comes the possibility that abuse can be stopped. When one woman is able to say, “This chain of violence stops with me,” God’s presence is harkened back into our hurting world.

The church can be such a place of healing, or it can be a place where people are further silenced. The church can refuse to continue being complacent and silent in the face of abuse.

I truly believe that the world doesn’t have to be like this. I also believe that the world won’t be completely changed in my lifetime. However, much work can be done toward changing it and the church has a hugely important role to play in changing our world.

The church could lend space and resources to the healing of abused women, children and men. A first step would be to train pastors about what to do and who to contact when someone reveals that they are being abused right at that time. It isn’t in the past, but a very real and present danger. The pastor should know the local legal and counseling resources available.

As a part of being a place of healing, they could offer space where people could be heard, in private and in public. The church could hear victims into speech. Victims and survivors could be encouraged to voice their pain through rituals and worship in the church. The victims and survivors should always be given the option to write their own material, but they sometimes need a place to start and pastors sometimes need resources to offer their parishioners. There are some resources for this and I’m working to write more. I hope to collaborate with survivors in order to meet their own needs.

Many survivors want the opportunity to speak. Many are dying (sometimes literally) to speak about the horrors they have suffered and the church could be a place that hears both male and female survivors instead of being a place of silence.

Abuse is the unspeakable silence that must be spoken about if we ever hope to end its horror. The church has many things to offer the world and to survivors. This is certainly one more way the church can be a vehicle to bring God’s peace and love into the world.

Here is a prayer for survivors.

Prayer

God, it is hard to pray when we feel so broken. Our souls feel dried up and we feel lost. Our bodies have been raped and abused, used for the pleasure of another. We are dying, God, and you don’t seem to care. We have called out to you to save us, but there is no response. We need you now, O God, in strong and powerful ways. Please draw close and hold us while we rest and figure out a way to carry on.

(I didn’t include an “Amen” because sometimes that is too much to say.)