It’s funny how pedophiles do that, downplay what they did and its effects. Oh, it’s nothing, they say. You’re making too much of it. Just get over it. That’s what I used to hear too, not when I confronted family members who had abused me, because they’ve all since passed on, and I never did manage to confront them about it while they were alive.

When I bring it up with other people in my family now, it’s – But he was so nice to me. He always gave me money and gifts. I tell them he was so nice to me too, but I don’t tell them the word for it is grooming, and they should just be grateful that it didn’t go any furthur.

I never confronted the men who’d abused me, but I did confront someone in my family about what my best friend reported he’d done to her. Ah – it’s nothing, he said. She’s making it sound bigger than it actually was.

It’s a bit like someone kills your favourite pet, let’s say a puppy, cold-blooded, then tells you that it’s nothing. Your puppy would have died anyway You should just get over it. Don’t make it into such a big story. The policemen say, yes, he killed your puppy, but was there actually any blood. Did he use a gun or knife. If there wasn’t any blood, we don’t want to hear about it.

But the point is he took away the life of my puppy. Doesn’t that count for anything? Apparently not. So you go into derealization mode – for awhile. Or you get Kabbalah religious, not the true Kabbalah (a beautiful religion), but the new-age version, because the idea of parallel worlds starts to make sense, and you wonder if you just happened to wake up into some parallel darker version of the world you used to live in. A world where exploiting you sexually when you’re innocent, or killing your puppy without remorse or consequence, is ok.

A few people understand and care.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-82106617.html

Lay Catholics should demand more openness from the institutional Church. Dioceses should open their books to laymen as a matter of accountability and oversight. Doyle, who as counselor to many victims is privy to settlement details, says the people in the pews “would be absolutely shocked to discover how much of their money was being paid out on these settlements.”

Similarly, given how poorly the institutional Church has policed itself, there should be lay boards to review diocesan personnel files to make sure sex abusers aren’t being concealed. “I don’t want to hear about another new policy until someone says to me that someone other than the fox guarding the henhouse has examined the files,” says lawyer Steve Rubino, a leading victims’ attorney.

Restoring the Church’s credibility also depends on the bishops’ being less lawyerly and more Christian. Johnnie Cochrane didn’t come to save the world, Jesus Christ did. This means seeing those who have been raped or molested by priests as suffering souls in need of pastoral care, not moneygrubbing plaintiffs who deserve the brass-knuckles routine.

One parish priest says he will never forget the day he realized his former boss, an East Coast bishop (now retired), was a true man of God. “We had to meet with a family whose child had been abused by one of our priests. When we sat down face to face with them and the lawyers, we told them that the bishop had said his first priority was to do the right thing. We told them our investigation had found that the priest was guilty, but that he had never been in this kind of situation before. We had removed him from any further parish involvement. We told them that we didn’t believe we had been neglectful, but we wanted to help the family in any way we could, because we recognized lives had been damaged, and we were profoundly sorry. And that was the bishop’s position.

“I looked across the table, and the family was crying,” the priest recalled. “The father said, ‘Thank you. We never wanted to persecute anybody. That was all we wanted to hear.’”

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/070207/national/cda_child_porn

By Sue Bailey

OTTAWA (CP) – News of a Canadian link to a major international child-pornography ring is the latest in a growing number of horrific homegrown cases, says a top investigator.

“We’re up to our knees in evil,” said RCMP Supt. Earla-Kim McColl, officer in charge of the National Child Exploitation Co-ordination Centre.

“I think it’s important for Canadians to understand that we get a file like this about every two weeks now.”

I can’t for the life of me understand child sexual abuse. I can understand some other evils, not that I’d ever condone the behavior, but sexual abuse makes absolutely no sense to me. Think if it made some sense, it would have made it easier for me to understand the pedophiles who abused me as a child, and why they abused me. Although it’s very possible that those predators were themselves exploited and abused as children.

When you’re a child and you don’t understand, and especially if you’ve been raped or mistreated, you’re likely to take the abuse as  a comment on who you are and to blame yourself for it. And the abusers don’t generally help either. If they don’t tell you outright that you’re the dirty one, they treat you like you’re the dirty one. Like you’re the reason for their shameful act.

When you’re abused, you’re marked.  It’s not just a transgression of boundaries, it’s not just a violation of trust and abuse of authority, it’s not just underage sex when physically the body is too immature. It’s that these children, if they don’t get help, will believe that somehow they deserved to be abused and to have their bodies violated. That they just weren’t good enough as children to get the love, attention and nurturing they were seeking. Sexual abuse is what happens when adults tell you that they just can’t love you. I know, I’m still looking for that love, in all the wrong places.

That it’s becoming so prevalent is, I believe, a sign that we live in a very sick society. A society where women are prodded and shamed into getting mammographies, not for improved health, but because it’s a profit-driven technology. Where many children are forced to be on Ritalin, not for any health reasons, but for behavior control in classrooms. A society where capitalism and the pursuit of profit seems to be all that really matters, and where children are seen by some as nothing more than objects for sexual gratification. Considering the kind of selfish and narcissistic world we live in, is it any wonder?  

Found this by Dr. Sanity (Weblog awards finalist 2006) – Repression and the Mirror of Insight – about evil and the need to look in the mirror:

http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2006/04/repression-and-mirror-of-insight.html

There is an inner courage required to look at one’s self in the mirror of insight and truly know the person looking back. All of us are capable of the most horrible behavior; just as we are capable of finding ways to rationalize it and cover it up or blame others for it. Psychological health requires that we look into that mirror frequently and understand our own motivations and behaviors and not flinch in recognizing the truth about ourselves.

That is the only way we can begin the process of change that leads to solving problems and personal growth. Recognizing the problem by looking at ourselves in the mirror is the first hurdle that must be overcome. Admittedly, it is not the only hurdle; but without it individuals and societies go off careening off in all the wrong directions–directions that will never lead to the recognition or acceptance of reality, and so can never lead to effective solutions. In psychiatry we refer to this abiiity to look in the mirror and see what and who is reflected back at us truly as “insight”. Ultimately, the development of self-awareness and psychological insight are the keys to solving most human dilemmas that lead to our own unhappiness and misery–both in individuals and societies.

It is likely that true evil never looks into that mirror; never questions their own motivations and always sinks to using the most immature and infantile coping mechanisms. That inability to acknowledge any degree of responsibility for their behavior; or to see clearly into their own souls–particularly on a societal level is responsible for much of the human misery, genocide, and brutal behavior we witness all around the world.

And that is the ultimate purpose of, and necessity for, Justice — to impose insight on the blind; force awareness of the consequences of behavior; and to reflect reality for those who refuse to look in the mirror.

She looked at me
And the emptiness in her eyes was cruel to see
Then she turned away and said,
Once I loved, but love is dead
And I whispered, sometimes love is only sleeping

She said, I cannot cry
And I cannot give or feel or even try
And her voice was hard and cold
Then her sweet young face looked old
And I whispered, sometimes love is only sleeping

Through the endless days and nights
Could not help but wrap herself in sorrow (sorrow)
Through the endless days and nights
She waited for a shiny new tomorrow
Love was sleeping, sleeping

She looked at me
And her smiling tears were warm and sweet and free
And the moonlight kissed her eyes
As it mingled with our sighs
And she whispered, sometimes love is only sleeping
And she whispered, sometimes love is only sleeping
Only sleeping…

The Monkees – “Love is only Sleeping” – lyrics

Oh my, do the songs ever bring back memories of my youth. Think I first heard the songs on the hit show ‘The Monkeys’ – 1968 or so. That would have made me about my daughter’s age at the time. She heard a musak version of ‘Last Train to Clarksville’ at Walmart today and asked if it was an old song and if I knew it, cause she liked it.

God yes! Also begged my parents to buy one of their albums at the time, and I spent many an evening painting, playing with my barbies, dancing like a dervish, and indulging some pre-adolescent fantasies while listening to the songs. Wonder, was the spinning detox. There was quite a bit going on in my life at the time that was toxic, and I think spinning relieved some of the pressure, the anxiety and frustration. It also made me quite high.

Just found some Monkee songs on iTunes – Daily Nightly, Star Collector, The Door into Summer, Pleasant Valley Sunday, and Love is only Sleeping. I used to be able to walk and run back then. It was nothing for me to step outside and run in the yard. To skip rope if I wanted to. To dance like a dervish. How I miss that!

Crow of all things made a reappearance. Who’s Crow you ask? He’s just a black bird who spreads his wings to eclipse any light coming to me, cause he likes the way the light glints off his black feathers. The vain, conceited fowl!

Crow tells me I don’t deserve to walk. Haven’t walked well for 7 years now, so it’s just not meant to be, and I best give up trying.

Have you seen the episode on Angel, where Cordelia is being told by an evil ghost that she doesn’t deserve to live and should tie a noose around her neck and hang herself? The ghost plays on her insecurities, and Cordelia almost does hang herself.  

Have you ever heard of Winston Churchill’s Black Dog? http://www.mhsource.com/exclusive/chanceth0196.html

I can relate.

So I say, ‘Crow!, heh, it’s you again. You’ve probably been there for some time, but it’s only now I’m noticing you.’ I only notice him when he gets really bad. The last time was when I had a bout with anorexia, some 20 years ago.

About that bout, at first Crow was telling me that men hated women and their curves. So better lose those curves. Learned to drink lots of water, to substitute for breakfast and lunches. Ate hardly anything for supper. And thrilled to seeing my weight drop on the scale. But when I got down to 108 pounds, which I felt pretty good about, Crow was telling me that I didn’t deserve to eat. Other people might, but not me. Wasn’t I still being despised? 108 lbs wasn’t good enough.

So I got down to 103, which is quite an accomplishment for someone who stands 5′6″, and would have gone furthur, because Crow was becoming very insistent then. The thinner and hungrier I got, the more insistent. Deprivation. It was something I was all too familiar with. And Crow was telling me that I had been deprived all along because I wasn’t worthy, I was never worthy. Other people were, but not me. I didn’t deserve to eat.   

Anorexia is most certainly not just a body-image problem. At least, not when it becomes serious. Or at least it wasn’t for me. It was a battle with internal demons.

What snapped me out of it? Stopped menstruating, and found out if it continued for too long, I might not ever be able to conceive. And Crow left me for a time. 

Found the following on how anorexia starts, and Wolf and the person commenting have it pretty well nailed, for those of us not in modelling or some other profession where being waif-like thin is expected. It did start out for me as a rebellion as well, but one which backfired. Don’t think I would be true to my experience if I didn’t add that I’d been sexually abused from a very young age – starting at age 3. Don’t think it’s possible to go through an experience like that without acquiring some demons.

http://ana.makeupyourmind.nu/

As Wolf explains in The Beauty Myth, the disease often starts as an attempt to take control over the ideology with which society is trying to control them- and what better way to do it than by rejecting food with its ties to femininity? Many women enter anorexia by vowing to wrest control of their own bodies- by any means necessary- away from the outside forces of their parents, the media, and society at large. They accept the challenge presented to them by the waif-like models and actresses and one-up them by becoming so thin they are no longer sexually attractive. This does, in a sense, free them from the demands that they be beautiful and that they be responsible for the care and nurturing of others because they have made themselves much too frail for either.