Tell Me Why...
Recently I was having a conversation in which the subject of Rolf Harris came up. Guy I was talking to launched into a rant about how he thought it was dodgy that nobody had mentioned problems at the time.
If it was for real surely, he said, somebody would have spoken up.
He didn't know me well enough to know that I was abused as a child, so he missed my first attempt to indicate distress.
It was hard to get my breath, let alone form words.
I held up a hand, barely, like an unconfident schoolchild who isn't sure of the answer, and the third time I said his name he stopped and looked at me and realised that something was wrong.
Again, words were troublesome, but I had enough space in his silence to put a few together "Give me a minute. Then I'll tell you why."
There are so many reasons.
1) I was ten. In the days before sex education I didn't have the words or the concept to actually describe or explain anything that was happening.
I get pretty angry about people saying that sex education 'destroys children's innocence'. That's entirely about adult discomfort, and not at all about children. Knowledge is power.
2) I wasn't aware that refusing an instruction given to me by an adult was an option.
Good children, and especially good girls, are supposed to do what they're told. In childhood there's a whole bunch of 'because I said so that's why' and 'it's for your own good'. Innoculations and the dentist hurt, so the mere fact of a thing being unpleasant doesn't offer any indication that a child has a right to complain.
I remember the first time there was a news report on the formation of (I think) Childline. I was 20. That was the first time I'd heard that anyone would regard what happened to me as something that was morally wrong. I remember the white hot fury that nobody had told me that.
Nobody had told me.
I went out for a walk, and freaked my flatmates out completely because it was way past 1am when I felt able to come back and they were on the point of calling the police.
3) Victims get the blame.
Look at what happens even now if somebody complains of abuse.
Even if there's supporting evidence somebody will claim that they're 'exaggerating' or that they must have consented really or done something to make it their own fault.
Even the current pope, who is about a million times less evil than his predecessor, is still claiming that tiny children provoked or invited the abuse they suffered at the hands of adult males in positions of power over them.
Abusers aren't stupid. They mostly don't do this stuff in front of independent witnesses. Almost all complaints of abuse will boil down to one person's word against another, and abusers have both power and a vested interest in personally discrediting anyone who reports any abuse.
4) Nothing would be done.
It's incredibly recent that the police now keep reports of abuse on file in case other reports on the same person come in.
They used to just be thrown away because they weren't sufficient on their own to justify a prosecution.
Nowadays it's still unlikely that an abuser will face justice. Even a decade ago it was practically impossible that they would.
If it was for real surely, he said, somebody would have spoken up.
He didn't know me well enough to know that I was abused as a child, so he missed my first attempt to indicate distress.
It was hard to get my breath, let alone form words.
I held up a hand, barely, like an unconfident schoolchild who isn't sure of the answer, and the third time I said his name he stopped and looked at me and realised that something was wrong.
Again, words were troublesome, but I had enough space in his silence to put a few together "Give me a minute. Then I'll tell you why."
There are so many reasons.
1) I was ten. In the days before sex education I didn't have the words or the concept to actually describe or explain anything that was happening.
I get pretty angry about people saying that sex education 'destroys children's innocence'. That's entirely about adult discomfort, and not at all about children. Knowledge is power.
2) I wasn't aware that refusing an instruction given to me by an adult was an option.
Good children, and especially good girls, are supposed to do what they're told. In childhood there's a whole bunch of 'because I said so that's why' and 'it's for your own good'. Innoculations and the dentist hurt, so the mere fact of a thing being unpleasant doesn't offer any indication that a child has a right to complain.
I remember the first time there was a news report on the formation of (I think) Childline. I was 20. That was the first time I'd heard that anyone would regard what happened to me as something that was morally wrong. I remember the white hot fury that nobody had told me that.
Nobody had told me.
I went out for a walk, and freaked my flatmates out completely because it was way past 1am when I felt able to come back and they were on the point of calling the police.
3) Victims get the blame.
Look at what happens even now if somebody complains of abuse.
Even if there's supporting evidence somebody will claim that they're 'exaggerating' or that they must have consented really or done something to make it their own fault.
Even the current pope, who is about a million times less evil than his predecessor, is still claiming that tiny children provoked or invited the abuse they suffered at the hands of adult males in positions of power over them.
Abusers aren't stupid. They mostly don't do this stuff in front of independent witnesses. Almost all complaints of abuse will boil down to one person's word against another, and abusers have both power and a vested interest in personally discrediting anyone who reports any abuse.
4) Nothing would be done.
It's incredibly recent that the police now keep reports of abuse on file in case other reports on the same person come in.
They used to just be thrown away because they weren't sufficient on their own to justify a prosecution.
Nowadays it's still unlikely that an abuser will face justice. Even a decade ago it was practically impossible that they would.