Standing up and protecting children from abuse – published on ABC’s The Drum

View on The Drum website

I was sexually abused when I was three. Apparently I became a very difficult child – I was full of anger, rebellious, and determined to hurt or destroy myself, my family, and all that I loved.

My only peace came when I was with horses. I never told anyone; in fact, I blocked the memory completely and only uncovered it after over 15 years of soul searching and personal growth work as I endeavoured to recover from my addictions and self-destruction.

I have been addicted to alcohol, cigarettes, speed, cocaine and marijuana. I have played with ecstasy, cocaine and heroin.

I have attempted suicide many times. I have struggled with depression all my life. I have self-harmed. I have been anorexic for most of my life, bulimic for some, and I still have difficulty nurturing myself with nutritious food at healthy intervals.

I have core beliefs that I am bad, not worthy, not good enough, and unlovable. I am working hard to change these as my healing is still a work in progress over 40 years later.

The sexual abuse of children takes them, in a moment, from innocence and light into darkness. It is an instant descent into hell. Trust is shattered; all that is good and bright is destroyed. Their picture of the world is distorted in the most gruesome way, and whether they are threatened not to tell or not, their innate sense of shame at an act which they instinctively know is wrong locks the secret away deep in their souls. They believe themselves to be not only different from the rest of the world, but bad, wrong, untouchable, and unclean.

Rather than turn their justifiable rage at their abusers, they direct it at themselves and those they love. Families are torn asunder at the force of the rage and the darkness that descends on a previously peaceful home. Perpetrators seem to somehow inject their own feelings of self-loathing into the victim, so that afterwards the perpetrator feels lighter, ‘better’. This is why they seek always to reoffend, grooming the next candidate for their acts of depravity.

Childhood ends afterwards. Innocence is stolen and once gone, can never be retrieved. We now know that the psychological scars are the same regardless of the nature of the abuse, although clearly repeated acts or those of a more serious nature burn the scars deeper into the psyche.

Whether the memories are repressed or constantly alive for the victim, they change all the programming in the brain and the victim is forever changed. What sort of life would I have had if I hadn’t been abused? Who could I have been?

I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m a survivor. I survived the abuse and its wrecking ball aftermath. But it never goes away. I grieve for the lost child almost every day. I am finally learning to play with my young child and to experience what a normal childhood might have been like. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. But I made it through.

Many don’t. The self-disgust leads them down paths of destruction and darkness and into chasms and abysses of despair which take their lives, whether accidentally or on purpose.

Sexual abuse permeates every social strata, every race, country, creed. It knows no boundaries. Sexual predators prey on children and parents’ trust and willingness to make friends and to believe the very best in people. They groom both parents and children to ensure there are opportunities for abuse to occur. Don’t be afraid of strangers, be afraid of the very people you trust most. And what sort of a way is that to live your life?

We all have a responsibility to the children among us to out these paedophiles from the crevices and corners of society in which they lurk. Unfortunately, allegations of sexual abuse by children are hard to prove because they are never witnessed and the child may not tell until long after the fact, which means forensic evidence is unrecoverable.

Pitting a child’s account against an adult who may well ‘present as normal’ in a court of law is fraught with difficulty. The Australian legal system needs to be changed to the European model where children’s rights are more protected and honoured within the court structure and the victims of child abuse protected from the harrowing ordeal of facing their perpetrator in court and having their testimony ripped apart by lawyers. That’s just another level of abuse.

The Catholic Community need to vote with their feet en masse and refuse to participate in the activities of a church which protects paedophiles. People power works. We must stand up as a community united and say we will not tolerate paedophiles. Children will be believed. Action will be taken. These heinous crimes will be punished.

Children are suffering the pain of child abuse right now, near you. Learn about it, do something about it. Be prepared to stand up and stop it. It stops being a dirty, shameful secret when it is out in the open.

It takes enormous courage to stand up and say ‘this happened to me’ but I refuse to be ashamed of something that is not my fault. We must be the generation and society that breaks the code of silence around child abuse. If we talk honestly and openly about it, victims will feel able to come forward, that society will support and help to heal them.

No other child should have to suffer as I did –  the act itself, and the lifelong pain. Unfortunately, they will, and they are. One in five children will be sexually assaulted before they are 18 years old.

Let’s come together and stamp out child abuse from all sections of society. If paedophiles know that their dirty secrets will not be protected, they will think twice before acting. Please stand up and speak out.

For more information visit Bravehearts, Victorian CASA, and Child Wise.

If you are struggling with depression you can get help from Beyond Blue. Go to beyond.org.au or call 1300 22 4636.

If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

The Colditz of Core Beliefs

I have been seeing a psychologist.  Not before time.  And oh how I wish I had had the wisdom to heed my heart and see someone ten or twenty years ago.  Because my eyes have been opened, I have been listened to, I have been heard, and I have not been deemed or damned mad.  Instead my thoughts and rotational ramblings have been outed for the very normal products of a being whose programming was awry.

I have known for some time that we are all run (just like our computers) by an Operating System which is invisible to all but the most discerning but which dictates our every action, reaction and response.  I knew that our formative years and situations and surroundings dictated the programming.  I didn’t know that these are called Core Beliefs.  I didn’t know that many of mine are common in people with low self-esteem, even normal (yay!) and that seeking them out, shedding light on them and naming and shaming them for the ridiculously skewed scars they are, allows me to be free of them.  Or at least see them for what they are, get some perspective and refuse to buy into them or believe them any more.

I was in prison and I have been freed.  And like the nightingale I want to sing songs of joy that I am no longer locked in a cage of core beliefs like: I am a bad mother, I am a bad person, nobody likes me, I am unlovable, I am not good enough, I am a failure, life is not fair, I am ugly, I am unworthy, I am different, I am bound to be alone.

Phew!  That’s pretty scary.  Just imagine, for most of my 46 years I have been operating under that programming.  That is really sad.  Because it’s not true.  I can see that now.

‘Low self esteem is having a generally negative overall opinion of oneself, judging or evaluating oneself negatively, and placing a general negative value on oneself as a person.’

‘People with low self esteem usually have deep-seated, basic, negative beliefs about themselves and the kind of person they are.  These beliefs are often taken as facts or truths about their identity, rather than being recognised as opinions they hold about themselves’

The crazy thing about Core Beliefs is that once initiated (and even a chance remark or throwaway line at a vulnerable or traumatic time can spark a rewiring of the circuitry) ‘they are maintained by the tendency to focus on information that supports the belief and ignoring evidence that contradicts it’.  It’s like life through rose tinted glasses in reverse.  Like a house of mirrors, each image uglier than the last, and all distorted, warped and bent out of shape.

I was raised in a house where nothing we ever did (or is still!) good enough, where criticism was the currency of conversation and there I learned to criticise myself.  I guess I was a sensitive soul and I have taken words spoken in anger, jest and jealousy like spears into my heart where they have wounded, festered and finally exploded out in a shower of truth under the laser like beam of professional psychotherapy.

I have beaten myself up over the last 40 odd years – submitting myself to a program of torture, finding ever more creative and cruel ways to hurt and punish myself and make life in my own mind a misery.  Abuse of food, drugs, alcohol, punishing my body, my friends, my colleagues with alternately undisciplined or overly controlling behaviour, mood swings etc.  Living listening to the mean old voices in the mind rather than seeing any sense in day to day reality.

The doors of the prison are swung open with the light streaming in and I see that I am loved and loveable, I am a good person, I am trying to be a good mother, I am kind, I am attractive, I have a good heart . . .  I’m normal, with both strengths and weaknesses.

I have been trapped for so long in the torturous turnings of my warped wiring that to let go of the fear and negativity in my brain is like a longed for holiday.  I want to sing, dance, play, write and love.  I am so glad and grateful to be free at last.  I can’t wait to see what life without them looks like, feels like.  I’m like a baby taking those first toddling steps.  I’m sure I will stumble and fall and bang back into those old core walls but I’m on my way into a future free of them.  I can make and shape my own core beliefs from here on in.  Chuck out the old OS and download a new one.

I’ve challenged my core beliefs – what are yours?

Midwinter in my Soul

I have struggled with depression all my life.  Great times when it seems that the beast upon my back has left me and I can bask in ordinary, happy living things like normal human beings.  And then with no warning that dark, dense, weight is upon me once more and I am bowed down, struggling, wading as if through earth rather than air such is the impossibility and intensity of every move, every moment.

So many times I have thought I have beaten it once and for all.  Each time I am wrong.  I have had long dark nights, and sometimes even days, when suicide has beckoned me, called me, wooed me, whispered to me and seduced me with her siren song of peace.

Still I am here.  This bout, whether it is menopausal, hormonal, mid life or a spiritual crossroads, the crux upon which the rest of my life will spin, is very bad.  The good news is that deep down in my hole I seem to have some clarity.  We know that I have seen myself as I truly am in all my horror and am still reeling from that.  I can’t seem to see anything about myself to like or to redeem me.  That has been pretty painful.  For weeks.

Yesterday I decided I was a good cook.  Today that I can sing.  All very nice but these are neither moral highpoints or gifts to those around me or the world.

Right now the thread anchoring me to the planet is that Ben asked the other day when I was singing ‘When I wish upon a star’ for him, if he could wish.  I said, of course.  ‘For anything?’  ‘For anything, my darling boy, what would you wish for?’  ‘You’ he said.

In my tears this afternoon I realised that my heart and soul right now are at midwinter.  I may not be able to see anything but the bleak desolation of a sleeping earth (and feel its weight pressing upon me) but just as I can see the potential when I plant a seed or clear the land, so too can someone, somewhere (call him or her what you will – I call it God) see beyond this darkness of mine into a spring when some little seed will germinate and grow and one day there will be a blossoming and one day I will flower fully into myself – all the brighter, more beautiful and more precious because of the struggle through the darkness into the light.

And I heard a song I haven’t heard for a long, long time:

Some say love it is a river
that drowns the tender reed
Some say love it is a razer
that leaves your soul to blead

Some say love it is a hunger
an endless aching need
I say love it is a flower
and you it’s only seed

It’s the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance
It’s the dream afraid of waking

that never takes the chance

It’s the one who won’t be taken
who cannot seem to give
and the soul afraid of dyingthat never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely
and the road has been too long
and you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winterfar beneath the bitter snows
lies the seed
that with the sun’s love
in the spring
becomes the rose