“... the sense that it was something that happened elsewhere to other people—was precisely the type of social context that enabled and allowed such widespread child sexual abuse to take place for decades”
, created by the Truth Project as a testament to the power of victims and survivors to narrate their own experiences. In her story, Victoria says that finally sharing her story of child sexual abuse with a supportive friend helped her cope after thoughts of suicide. To help prevent what happened to her from happening to other children, she recommends compulsory chaperoning for children within church settings, and questioning the taken for granted role of the church as society’s moral center.
Now an adult, Gerard suffers considerable mental health impacts and was homeless at the time of attending the Truth Project. He still feels haunted by the cruelty and punishment in the home. He decided to tell his story to the Truth Project because, he said, “I have to do my bit for other kids by doing this.”of the IICSA is a time for somber and angry reflection on institutional failures to protect children like Victoria and Gerard from sexual abuse.
This ability to think more systematically about how abuse gets perpetrated is necessary for real social change. If we continue to think of child sexual abuse as a problem that can be solved by punishing individual perpetrators, we fail to see how all members of a society may be complicit to some extent in allowing institutional abuses to continue through staying silent or looking away from painful realities.
Deeply listening to victims and survivors also means recognizing their agency. In spite of the shame and stigma attached to child sexual abuse, many victims and survivors develop means of not only surviving, but also thriving. Truth Project participants emphasized repeatedly that an important component of their coping and recovery was being heard on their own terms.
One participant, a 20-year-old woman, put it this way: “It’s really only in the last few years that I’ve been able to say [to] myself, well, this isn’t about, you know, blaming mum or blaming myself. It’s about an adult, any adult almost, saying to me, ‘What happened to you shouldn’t have happened, and we take what you’re saying seriously, and we care about what you’re saying’ because that’s where the healing’s going to come about.
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