(The following is the 7th in a series of posts related to my re-reading of Miss America by Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayal and Unconditional Love, by Marilyn Van Derbur.)

To add to my previous post about Chapter 1 of Miss America by Day :

It should be emphasized that the facade of perfection or, at least, thoroughgoing normalcy, behind which child sexual abuse occurring within a family is often concealed can be understood as involving a family-wide dynamic in which, if the facade is to attain its greatest possible vibrancy, all family members must participate—the dynamic being one of concealment to the outside world not only of any indication that child sexual abuse within the family may be occurring (something which family members often succeed in concealing even from each other; even from themselves), but, also, of concealment of any indication that there exist any problems of significance within the family at all.

An example, with respect to my own family, of this broader concealment, extending beyond behavior involving child sexual abuse by the perpetrating family member, involved the emotional-verbal abuse I recall my father not infrequently directing towards my mother, myself, and my siblings—abuse which involved quite elevated levels of anger that many people, I think, were they able to have observed such behavior, would agree crossed the boundary into what could be classified as rage; my father’s tantrums (for I think these instances in which my father would explosively direct his venom at his wife and / or one or more of his children could be readily characterized as such) regularly involving the hurling, on his part, of epithets such as “You jerk!”, “You jackass!”, “You stupid fool!” followed by “How in the name of heaven could you . . . ” followed by whatever action or inaction on our part had so riled him. His face would be literally quivering and flushed with, yes, rage, as he would hurl these epithets, with, as I recall, his fists clenched, though at his sides.

(I can recall only one instance of my father’s having been physically abusive towards me—outside, that is, of the physical abuse constituted by various aspects of his sexual abuse—and that instance was relatively, within the entire spectrum of domestic physical abuse, quite mild and transient.

It was evening and my father and mother were in a hurry to leave for some sort of social engagement, our babysitter having already arrived. I imagine they were, most probably, leaving to attend a party held by some other member of Vanderbilt University’s Economics Department’s faculty, for this was when we were still living in the house we inhabited until my father received tenure—the house on Central Avenue, featured in my ebook Preludes—and my impression is that at that time it was highly important, even absolutely vital, that my father and mother participate regularly in such department-related social functions in order to maximize the possibility of my father’s being approved for tenure.

In any case, my parents were just at the point of hurriedly leaving (perhaps they were running late) and as my father was about exit the living room to go out onto the front porch, I, wanting him to stay for some reason which I can’t now recollect, grabbed his arm or in some other way attempted to physically impede his departure, whereupon he, as I recall, grabbed my arm, forcefully wrenched it, and roughly pushed me away, eliciting from me an injured cry of, “You hurt me!”; my father angrily replying along the lines, as I recall, of You’re right I hurt you, for bothering me when we have to leave!

And that’s the sole instance of physical abuse, outside of his sexual abuse, that I can recall my father inflicting upon me, nor do I recall any instances of his having been physically abusive towards my siblings or my mother, though, of course, there may have been instances of which I’m not aware.

I think I should add here that I’m excluding from classification as physical abuse the spankings my father sometimes dealt me and my siblings when we were small for various misbehaviors which I don’t now recall; spankings of the sort that he administered—involving no more than one or two dozen moderately forceful applications of the flat of his palm or, perhaps, a rolled newspaper to our bared or underweared bottoms—not then being considered, by a great many people anyway, as being in any way abusive in nature.)

[Added After Initial Posting:]

Of course, the attempt to conceal significant problems within a family from the outside world is not exclusive to families in which child sexual abuse is occurring but extends to families generally. However, the distance between the outer facade of normalcy, if not outright perfection, which a family may so assiduously make efforts to maintain, and the problems the family is concealing can, in the case of a family in which child sexual abuse is occurring, be thought of as exceeding by orders of magnitude the distance involved in the case of families in which no such abuse is occurring and in which open discussion, within society, of the problems being concealed—such as alcohol addiction or verbally or even physically abusive behavior, depending on the degree of the physical abuse—is comparatively less taboo. The key point here is that a child being sexually abused within a family context may, on some level, begin to sense the vastness of this distance—between the family facade and the reality of the abuse it is suffering—from an early age, and that this awareness can multiply exponentially the child’s massive sense of isolation, which the child already feels (again, at some level) within the secrecy dynamics of the family itself. Thus, the child realizes that not only must it keep the abuse secret and distant, within the family’s private life, from family members other than the perpetrator, but that, also, the distance between the fact of the abuse and the world outside the family—society at large—is so great as make the abuse and this outside world seem as though they exist in separate universes.

(The following is the 6th in a series of posts related to my re-reading of Miss America by Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayal and Unconditional Love, by Marilyn Van Derbur.)

In Chapter 1, which is titled, in partial irony, “Blessed by Being Born Into a Perfect Family,” Ms. Van Derbur, in telling detail, skillfully describes the dichotomy between the image her family presented to society in her hometown of Denver, Colorado—of the archetypal “perfect” family—and the far less than perfect reality behind this societal facade.

Reading this chapter again, a number of things struck me in particular for their resonance with my own experience growing up in a middle class, high status family in Nashville, Tennessee, including the massive contrast between the image of Ms. Van Derbur’s father’s public persona and what he was doing in private to at least two of his daughters (Ms. Van Derbur and her oldest sister, who, as Ms. Van Derbur recounts in Miss America by Day and elsewhere, publicly disclosed her own childhood sexual abuse by their father after Ms. Van Derbur had disclosed hers).

Ms. Van Derbur describes her father as having been “successful, charitable, charming and gracious.” As a “Renaissance man” who could play the piano by ear (“the kind you would hear in a piano bar at 2 a.m., the kind of music Frank Sinatra sang”) and recite poetry from memory. Who built the business he bought from his father-in-law into the largest mortuary chain between Missouri and California. Who was one of Denver’s civic leaders—a “highly recognized and esteemed member of the community.” Who for several years had a weekly radio and television show featuring his inspirational readings. Who once a year played the male lead in Denver’s civic theater and became president of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Who, as an active alumni supporter of his college fraternity, was elected president of the National Inter-fraternity Council—the body governing all college fraternities in the US. Who was a major donor to the Boy Scouts of America, a 33rd degree Mason, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of a home for handicapped children, and a board member of the University of Denver and Colorado Women’s College. Whose obituary appeared on the front page of Denver’s local newspaper.

Similarly, my father, though not nearly as publicly prominent, active, and successful as Ms. Van Derbur’s, enjoyed, to a substantial degree, a favorable public persona—as a professor in the Economics Department at Vanderbilt University; a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church, which counted among its members some of Nashville’s leading citizens; the “head” of a family with a beautiful, intelligent wife (my mother) and three children; and as a man whose eloquence, wit, and gift for telling jokes others found quite attractive and entertaining (at least from what I perceived as a child and was later told to me by my mother) at parties and other social functions.

In my experience, to some people it’s nothing short of incredible that men with public personae as positive and “normal” as those of Ms. Van Derbur’s father and my own could sexually abuse their children. Whereas such people might readily accept, as a general proposition, that appearances often do not reflect—and sometimes to a massive degree—the total reality of a situation, and might just as readily accept the plausibility of imperfections on the part of such fathers—imperfections concealed behind a “perfect” or, at least, highly favorable facade—on the order of, say, an alcohol addiction or verbally or even physically abusive behavior towards their wives and / or children, such people seem to find it impossible to believe that the imperfect behavior of such men could in some cases extend to child sexual abuse.

Why such incredulity? My sense is that the reasons have to do, mainly, with the substantial degrees of shame and taboo that continue to surround child sexual abuse as a topic for intelligent, calmly considered public discussion. The very idea that men so “normal” and successful as my father and Ms. Van Derbur’s could engage in behavior whose mere discussion still suffers so from the depredations of shame and taboo is, to some people, simply unthinkable.

For survivors who’ve been abused by such highly successful men—or, in some cases, women—the possibility of such behavior is, of course, entirely plausible.

(The following is the 5th in a series of posts related to my re-reading of Miss America by Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayal and Unconditional Love, by Marilyn Van Derbur.)

Following on my previous post regarding the “Why?” section of Miss America by Day, in the case of child sexual abuse occurring within a family, we can find a correlate, of the “intimate details” criticism of public disclosure by survivors of their abuse in the “family matter” criticism. The “family matter” criticism involves the assertion that child sexual abuse occurring within a family is a private, family matter with the resolution of any problems arising from such abuse not being served by any public airing or discussion of the survivor’s abuse allegations.

But this family matter line of criticism, as I see it, fails entirely to appreciate the point of view held by the publicly disclosing survivor with respect to their family of origin: for the publicly disclosing survivor (as is also the case for many survivors who never publicly disclose), the family is already completely broken, at least with respect to the survivor’s allegations of abuse. Barring an admission on the part of the abusing family member of the abuse perpetrated on the survivor, and a plea by this abusing family member, made to the survivor, for forgiveness—developments which have little but the remotest possibility of occurring—there is zero chance of resolution and healing within the family.

This is why comments regarding Dylan Farrow’s allegations of child sexual abuse against her adoptive father, Woody Allen, that have expressed hope for a healing that would occur among the members of the Allen-Farrow family (the by now decades-long break-up of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, due in substantial part to this very issue, notwithstanding) would, I think, tend to have as absurdist a ring to many other child sexual abuse survivors as they do to me. Woody Allen’s admission to Dylan Farrow’s allegations of his sexually abusive acts would be a necessary, though by no means sufficient, component of any possible route to the realization of such a family-wide healing, but, given Woody Allen’s absolute assertion and apparent belief belief that he committed no abuse, the possibility of a family-wide healing is as about nil as nil can be, making any hope that the Dylan Farrow’s abuse allegations could somehow find a successful resolution if treated strictly as a private, family matter, forlorn indeed. This would seem to be pretty self-evident whether one believes Dylan Farrow’s allegations of abuse are true (as I do), believes Woody Allen’s denial, or is undecided, but to some commenters it apparently isn’t. (You can read Dylan Farrow’s response to Woody Allen’s New York Times Op-Ed piece denying any abuse here—her response succinctly making a number of the points asserted by commenters who’ve supported her, including various commenters on Woody Allen’s piece.)

An especially off-putting aspect of such “family matter” comments is that they seem to be looking completely over the head of Dylan Farrow, now an adult woman in her late 20s, and her public statement regarding her adoptive father’s abuse, as though Dylan Farrow and her statement were invisible.

The “family matter” line of criticism also misses the societal dimension of public disclosures by survivors of their abuse. One of the major benefits to be derived from such public disclosures is a substantial raising of public awareness of the reality of the occurrence of such abuse, even—in cases such as that of Dylan Farrow—within “respectable,” affluent, high status families. It is to be hoped that such raising of public awareness will result in the creation and strengthening of laws, policies, and public and private initiatives which help protect children from such abuse and assist survivors in their healing. Even if a survivor feels strongly supported by their non-abusing parent and/or one or more other family members, they may still want to publicly disclose for such worthy reasons.

Both the “intimate details” criticism and the “family matters” criticism of public disclosure by child sexual abuse survivors of their abuse appear to be both born out of and to reinforce the continuing virulence of toxic shame and taboo with regard to such disclosure. But it is precisely the suppressive effects of such shame and taboo that we must strive, above all else, to overcome if child sexual abuse is to be dealt with in an enlightened fashion.

(The following is the 4th in a series of posts related to my re-reading of Miss America by Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayal and Unconditional Love, by Marilyn Van Derbur.)

Between Miss America by Day‘s “Introduction” and its first chapter is a very brief, two-paragraph section titled, simply, “Why?”

In the first paragraph, Ms. Van Derbur recounts an anecdote—of an encounter with an acquaintance who, “with obvious disapproval, asked, ‘Why would you choose to disclose the most intimate details of your life?'”

In the second paragraph, Ms. Van Derbur answers this question:

I would rather face hundreds who condemn me than even one child or adult who, when  I say, ‘I’m so very, very sorry for your pain,’ responds, ‘But you never tried to help.’

A desire to help other survivors of child sexual abuse has been central, as well, to my motivation for my writing and publishing Preludes. As I state in the book’s “Prologue”:

Why should child sexual abuse survivors write about their abuse for publication? A number of reasons present themselves, including the validation and support survivors can receive for their efforts at healing from their own abuse experiences through acquainting themselves with those of others; the understanding that people who have never experienced such abuse can gain of the severity of the damage it can inflict, during childhood and beyond; and the vital role essays, memoirs, stories, and other writing by survivors can have in motivating people to work steadfastly towards the realization of whatever improvements might be made in human societies—however gradually, in the years, decades, and centuries ahead—to lessen the occurrence of child sexual abuse and to better assist its victims.

Regarding Ms. Van Derbur’s acquaintance’s question, its implied assertion that no reason could justify a choice to disclose one’s life’s most intimate details is an assertion with which publicly disclosing survivors would readily disagree. Rather, a publicly disclosing survivor may find substantial usefulness in revealing details of gross injustice and atrocity which happen, by their very nature, to be located at the center of the survivor’s sphere of intimacy. That is to say, the core motivation would be to expose the gross injustice and atrocity of the abuse for various worthy purposes such as those cited above, and this motivation would provide ample justification for disclosure.

The acquaintance’s question seems to miss this point entirely and underscores a major challenge facing any child sexual abuse survivor who wishes to, at one and the same time, overcome whatever substantial reluctance they may have to reveal details so painful and intimate about their lives while also dealing with whatever apprehensions they may have concerning the possibility that any worthy motives they possess for disclosure will be discounted or dismissed entirely in favor of suspicions or open accusations that the survivor is peddling the “lurid” details of their abuse in a crass effort to gain some measure, however fleeting, of notoriety.

(The following is the 3rd in a series of posts related to my re-reading of Miss America by Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayal and Unconditional Love, by Marilyn Van Derbur.)

Ms. Van Derbur begins Miss America by Day‘s “Introduction” with a single word—”tikkun”— explaining that “tikkun” is a belief from a mystical tradition that each individual human being has a unique mission or purpose. (A quick check shows that the concept of tikkun comes from mystical aspects of the Judaism.) For Ms. Van Derbur, an epiphany regarding her own tikkun occurred when she saw her picture on the cover of the June 10, 1991 issue of People magazine, for the article (titled “Miss America’s Triumph Over Shame”; subtitled “The Darkest Secret”) in which she first revealed the story of her sexual abuse, from the age of five until the age of eighteen, by her millionaire father, to a nationwide audience. (Her story had already come out, in front-page articles and otherwise, through various local media outlets of her hometown of Denver, Colorado.)

Her tikkun? To devote herself to “addressing the epidemic of child sexual abuse, helping survivors on their journey from victim to survivor,” and to helping people in “learning how to support a loved one,” presumably a survivor, and “learning specific ways to keep children safe.” Ms. Van Derbur has fulfilled this mission in a number of ways over the years, including through making numerous appearances, as a highly skilled speaker, before key groups such as judges, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, therapists, parents, and adult survivors; talking personally with thousands of adult survivors after her presentations; responding to large numbers of letters and emails from survivors (eight thousand and counting at the time of Miss America by Day‘s publication and thousands more since), and by writing Miss America by Day.

Regarding Ms. Van Derbur’s use of the word “epidemic,” my sense is that this word can be taken, in its context, as referring, not to any rapid increase in the actual incidence of child sexual abuse in the United States (or elsewhere for that matter) at the time of the People magazine article’s and/or Miss America by Day‘s publication, but, rather, to the rapid and substantial increase in public awareness, knowledge, and discussion of child sexual abuse that was occurring at the time of the article’s publication and that has continued at such substantially increased levels ever since. The rate of incidence of child sexual abuse was, in other words, already substantial prior to this rapid increase in public awareness, knowledge, and discussion, which increase can be credited with markedly weakening the taboo against its public acknowledgement.

Following this line of thinking leads to broader questions—however unanswerable, in some respects, they may be—including:
– whether or not the incidence of behavior now recognized in the United States and many other societies as clearly involving child sexual abuse has always existed more or less to the same degree throughout human history;
– whether the incidence of such behavior exists, in our present day, more or less to the same degree worldwide, across cultures;
– the extent to which some customs and behavior now recognized in the United States and many other societies as clearly involving or facilitating child sexual abuse were, or still are, viewed as acceptable in other societies (child marriage comes to mind);
– the degree to which what constitutes child sexual abuse is a socially determined construct.

I will leave these questions, for the most part, for possible later examination.

Suffice it to say, for now, that I do not believe cultural or temporal relativism should be employed to undermine one’s own society’s standards for what does or does not constitute child sexual abuse. Rather, each society bears a responsibility for carefully formulating the criteria of what constitutes such abuse, for clearly articulating these criteria, for thoroughly and steadfastly educating its citizenry as to the existence and content of these criteria as well as the penalties for transgressions which meet any one or more of them, and for providing, to whatever degree possible, justifiable rationales for the criteria’s existence. To the degree that a society fails in various aspects of this responsibility, it runs the risks of contributing to the occurrence of substantially higher rates of child sexual abuse within its domain than would otherwise be the case, and of relegating the context of social dialogue concerning the subject of child sexual abuse to the realms of taboo and superstition. To this degree, as well, a society’s various institutions fail its citizenry (or, viewed from another perspective, its citizens fail themselves), and fail its children most of all, as well as those of its members who, for whatever reason or combination of reasons, genetic or environmental, might be most likely to commit acts of sexual abuse (as articulated by the criteria of the society in which they live) against children.

Another example, in addition to child marriage, of cultural relativism with respect to what constitutes child sexual abuse—and one directly pertinent to parental abuse such as Ms. Van Derbur and I suffered—would derive from the belief, which still seems to be prevalent in some societies (ones that, for example, allow child marriage), that a parent, or other legal guardian, basically owns their children as human chattel, even to such a degree that a parent is perceived as having the right—short, perhaps, of little else but murder—to do with, and to, their children whatever they wish. Based on such a belief, what a parent does to their children in the middle of the night—including the infliction of sexual abuse—could be viewed as being beyond society’s proper sphere of interest. The United States? One can, I believe, make a strong argument that this often unexpressed perception of children as more or less their parents’ chattel still exerts a strong influence in American society, and that a lack of concerted effort to overtly combat this perception contributes to conditions in which child sexual abuse may more readily occur. Could such a perception, held, to whatever degree conscious or subliminal, by Ms. Van Derbur’s and my fathers, have contributed to the specific conditions facilitating our fathers’ abuse? I believe it well could have.

Further with regard to cultural relativism, I believe that international pressure and persuasion can and should be brought to bear upon societies in which practices such as child marriage continue to exist and attitudes such as the perception of children as being little more than their parents’ chattel continue to prevail—pressure and persuasion aimed at eliminating such practices and changing any such attitudes which serve to facilitate the sexual exploitation of children under the guise of social sanction. Activities of various NGOs concerned with children’s rights and international accords such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child can be very useful in this regard.

*

Other passages of the Introduction that particularly stood out for me include:

“As I began addressing medical conferences, doctors and nurses began to better understand the connection between childhood sexual abuse and adult physical pain and disease.”
This sentence brought to mind the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, which I learned about only late last year when I came upon an article about it while browsing the Internet. The study, which is a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente’s Health Appraisal Clinic in San Diego shows a very strong connection between the degree of highly adverse experiences, including sexual abuse, that a person suffers during childhood and a person’s chances of developing various serious diseases as an adult, quite independently of other risk factors for these diseases.

And:
When Ms. Van Derbur began addressing professional audiences about child sexual abuse, she “felt compelled to be more specific about what my father actually did to me. It’s too easy to casually dismiss trauma when vanilla words like ‘molest’ and ‘abuse’ are used.” This resonates quite strongly with my desire to write and publish Preludes which includes graphic descriptions of child sexual abuse, based largely on my own experiences of sexual abuse by my father, in order to fully illuminate the horror of such abuse from a child’s perspective.

And from the Introduction’s conclusion:
“One of my goals is that, no matter what your age or stage in life, whether you are a survivor of sexual abuse or one who has been spared, . . . hopefully you will take action, such as writing a letter to a television reporter or newspaper editor . . . “—action, in other words, that can serve worthy ends such as raising awareness of and educating people about child sexual abuse, supporting survivors in their recovery, and reducing the possibility of such abuse’s occurrence. For me such action has taken several forms over the years, including supporting organizations such as RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network) and, more recently, publishing Preludes and opening this blog-site.

On a final note, as I read the Introduction I find myself asking: if the same levels of public awareness, knowledge, and discussion of child sexual abuse had existed in the 1960s as exist today, might at least some significant portion of my abuse by my father have been prevented? In particular, might my mother, or one or more teachers at my kindergarten or elementary school, or our family pediatrician have been more capable of clearly recognizing various signs of such possible abuse, and, if they had recognized any such signs, more likely to have had the courage to openly confront this possibility, including the possibility that my father could have been its perpetrator, and to have made every possible effort to stop whatever abuse was occurring?

Answers to these questions are, I believe, not at all certain, for even with the far higher levels of public awareness, knowledge, and discussion that exist today, clear detection of child sexual abuse is often extremely difficult or impossible to achieve, as is, consequently, winning, through the legal process, protection of the abused child from the abuser. Nonetheless, today’s substantially increased levels of public awareness, knowledge, and discussion can, I believe, in many instances, provide significant benefits for preventing child sexual abuse, stopping ongoing abuse, and supporting the healing of child sexual abuse survivors, children and adults alike.