The following thoughtful (and thought-provoking) comment was posted following Sunday’s Portland, Oregonian opinion piece by Jeannette Pai-Espinosa called “Too Man Girls, Young Women Keep Terrible Secret.” We repost it here on our blog because it speaks to the ongoing trauma of child sexual abuse victims who are silenced and ignored by society.
We’d like to thank this commenter for speaking up–and out–about changing intergenerational patterns of abuse.
Thank you Jeannette, for speaking on behalf of many of us who carry this secret behind the veil of functional, middle class lives. We are both men and women – girls and boys – rich and poor – who live next door to you. We sit across the table from you in meetings or serve you your meals — we are attorneys and plumbers and bar tenders and businesspeople, and yes, some of us are on welfare. I believe the reported statistics that have been quoted here are under counts. No one ever counted me because my grandfather was a doctor and my father a prominent businessman. They didn’t fit the common idea of who might do such awful things to a little girl. And I’m not asking for anyone’s sympathy or handouts — just your acknowledgement and your promise to help make sure that what happened to me doesn’t happen to any girl or woman you know.
