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Dylan Farrow and believing child victims of sexual abuse

By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

Having spent nearly a quarter of a century working in the field of child protection with a focus on sexual abuse, I am somewhat baffled by this:

We as a society have always, and evidently continue to be, aligned with the offenders and against the victims.

I know. When you read it in black and white, and in very simple language, it seems so hard to believe that we do this.

Let’s examine the recent events of Dylan Farrow coming out with a strong statement regarding her sexual abuse by Woody Allen. It seems that as a society we have turned our head and said that it is okay to sexually abuse a child if you are an entertainer or if you are famous. It becomes okay to sexually abuse a child if you have money. Even with the people who support Dylan, it is support that comes in the form of “if this is true…”

Why is that? We work so hard to disprove a child’s statement. We work so hard to convince ourselves that child sexual abuse only happens in the park at night. That these heinous offenses are perpetrated by people we don’t know. That these terrible acts are only perpetrated by the dirty old man in a trench coat offering candy to a child to lure them into his white unmarked windowless utility van.

I have seen it in the courtroom while trying to provide some sense of support to a young child testifying in an open courtroom about the most intimate, terrifying, and confusing sexual events that have happened to them.

Generally when you go into a courtroom during a trial there are two sides — the prosecution and the defense. It is much like a wedding. If you are supporting the offender, you sit on the side of the courtroom behind the defendant. If you are supporting the victim, you sit behind the prosecutor’s table. It is always heartbreaking to me. I position myself in the front row behind the prosecutor’s table so the child and I can make eye contact. But in the moments before the young child walks into the courtroom to testify, I always survey the room. There are always, without exception, people sitting behind the abuser in support of his actions. Most times the other side, the side where you sit to show support for the victim, is empty — with the exception of me.

In the community where I did most of my court support, the Deputy District Attorney would always request to talk to the jury after a not guilty verdict came in. Almost without exception they would be told, when asked about the not guilty finding, that the jury believed the victim but really wanted more evidence. There are no fingerprints left. There are no witnesses. And despite what you see on TV, there is no DNA evidence left. There are many reasons why that is and that might be a subject for another blog.

The evidence is the child’s statement, and if you believe it, then why is that not enough? It is enough that the perpetrator denies his offenses. We give him/her the benefit of the doubt.

I wonder what would happen if we all said enough is enough.

What would happen if we as a society got behind our child victims and stood strong with them? Research shows that not many victims lie when it comes to their abuse and if they do lie, it usually a lie to cover up that it happened — not to fabricate that it did happen.

So where do we go from here? I ask, when you weigh in on whether Woody Allen could have done this, that you consider carefully the message you are giving to the children in your life. That is right. If Dylan Farrow were your daughter how would you feel about what the public response has been? How would you want Barbara Walters to respond? How would you feel if Diane Keaton stood up and supported your daughter’s abuser? If your granddaughter reported sexual abuse, what is the response that you would want her to receive?

Examine the facts. What financial gain is Dylan Farrow receiving? Is she getting anything out of this?

Someone has to be the first to say that it is time to support our child victims. Someone has to tell the Woody Allens of the world that sexual behavior with a child is never okay. Someone has to say that enough is enough.

At some point we can no longer close our eyes and pretend that sexual abuse happens in some other place and to someone else’s children. At some point we must realize that it is no longer enough to say that we believe the child sexual abuse victim . . . but we just need more evidence.
The deafening silence surrounding abused children

By Tammi Pitzen

I am the newly hired Executive Director at the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County. I have spent the last twenty three years working to protect children from abuse. One can imagine the stories that I have heard in what I refer to as “the small little room”. The small little room is a special room set up with video and audio recording capabilities and I spent a large part of the last few years in one of these rooms talking with children about events that have happened in their lives. Most of these events are abusive in nature.

I have had many people over the years ask me how I could do such a depressing job. How could I sit in that room with a child telling me about terrible things that have happened to them and still be able to sleep at night?

I usually tell them it is the things that I don’t hear that keep me up at night. It is the silence that surrounds most abused children that I find deafening.

I know through research that approximately thirty percent of children who are abused never tell their story. This statistic has haunted me throughout my career. Why will they not tell? What can we do that will help them to tell? I have asked some children, “What made you not tell?” Their answer? “No one ever asked!”

Then the next question is, “Why not?” Adults tell me all the time, “I don’t know what to ask.” They tell me, “I don’t want to make my child paranoid or afraid.”

This is the part that I find puzzling. Children look to adults to protect them and to let them know what is right and what is wrong. What message are we giving them when we are still sending messages through our actions or lack of actions that it is not okay to talk about sexual abuse? Sexual abuse happens in secrecy. Sexual abuse is allowed to continue to happen through silence. I just don’t understand why we as adults want to give all the power to perpetrators and none of it to our children. After twenty three years of experience and training in the field of child abuse I still have no answers.

My wish for all children is that they have adults in their lives that will take the time to learn what the signs of abuse are and learn what to do when they see them.

My wish for all children is that they have adults in their lives who will take the initiative to learn what questions to ask their children so they can take steps to protect them.

We ask ourselves what has happened that the world have become so unsafe for our children. The answer is that we as adults have not done enough to empower children. We have not done enough to keep our children safe.

My question to you is what will you do today to reduce the risk of sexual abuse of a child in your life?

Sign up to take a class through the Children’s Advocacy Center to learn about child abuse prevention. We have a new class every month. Our next one is Monday, Jan. 27th, 4-7 pm at the CAC. To register, contact Shandi at ssmith@cacjc.org or call: 541-734-5437.

Tammi
Why it Matters

This is a post by Randy Ellison, author of the book — Boys Don’t Tell: Ending the Silence of Abuse. Randy is also Board President of Oregon Abuse Advocates & Survivors in Service (OAASIS)

Why does what happened to me matter? Why does telling my story matter? Why does your story matter? What difference does it really make?

Why does it matter forty years later that my minister sexually abused me? Well for starters it impacted everything I did or didn’t do. When we live in total denial of major trauma that happened to us in childhood, our entire reality is distorted.

Because I had never spoken of what happened to me, every decision I made in life was informed by the trauma I suffered as a child. Technically I was a survivor, but as long as I held on to the toxic stress of child abuse, I was giving victim reactions to a lot of the input that came my way. It was not a choice I made, it was programmed into my brain to respond to people and situations as though they might be a threat.

My quality of life suffered immeasurably, and over time I became just plain tired of trying to hold it all. I do not believe one can attempt to recover from child sex abuse to please or satisfy someone else. You have to want it or need it for yourself, more than the perceived safety of keeping the secret, with the pain locked inside.

So as I started my therapy I had to learn to put health ahead of secret keeping. It took effort and intensity to break through my mind’s defenses and the shame that guarded my secret. To be honest, in my case it probably took a year before I realized how much others really meant to me. After a life of keeping everyone at a distance, when I started showing up, I found a whole new world open to me. As I learned to be present with others I was finally able to give and receive love.

Reporting my abuser mattered. The places he had been a minister were notified so they could look for others that might have been victims and needed help. The faith community became aware of what had happened in their building and had the opportunity to discuss what they needed to do to protect children and work for prevention. In creating a safe environment for kids, everyone benefits.

Telling your story matters more than you could ever imagine. It gives people you have never met the strength to share their own story. And the more we share our stories, the more we heal, systems change and our communities heal. As survivors, telling our story first changes our lives, and then it gradually moves outward through our love ones in an ever widening circle.

Children’s Advocacy Center intervenes in this process for kids that have been abused and focuses on helping the child recover. What matters most is preventing abuse from happening at all. But until we are able to do that, we need CAC to help the healing begin as soon as possible. Help a child heal today.

Imagine a world without child abuse. Together we make it happen. It matters.

To find out more about Randy Ellison and his book, Boys Don’t Tell: Ending the Silence of Abuse, visit: http://www.boysdonttell.com/

Randy Ellison
You Matter!

CAC Board Member, Mark Huddleston

This is a guest post by Children’s Advocacy Center Board Member, Mark Huddleston.

You matter! In fact, if it weren’t for you, and people like you, our Children’s Advocacy Center would not exist today. Some people think that our CAC gets the majority of its funding from grants, foundations and government assistance. The reality is that we depend very much on the generosity of people and businesses from our own community.

As the recently retired district attorney for Jackson County, and a long-time board member of the CAC, I’d like to share a little bit about how our Center came to be.

The first CAC was started in Huntsville, Alabama in 1986 by then DA Bud Cramer. The philosophy behind CACs is to change how the system works so that it is designed with child abuse victims in mind.

In Jackson County, our CAC has been in existence for over 22 years. The process for looking at the creation of a CAC came about through the JC Child Abuse Task Force. That was a group of professionals who worked with kids, and which had largely been focused on training issues. In 1987, Josephine County had gotten a large grant to build the first CAC in Oregon. Thinking that we didn’t want Josephine County to get too far ahead of Jackson County, the Child Abuse Task Force began looking at the feasibility of creating a center of our own. However, at the time, no other large grants were available, so we started on a shoestring. The first step was to incorporate with the Sec. of State, and form a 501 C3 non-profit corporation with the IRS. We started with grants from what was then the Jackson County Junior Service League and the Ben B Cheney foundation that totaled just over $20,000.

With that money in hand, we found a small house at 816 West 10^th street that was available for sale for $43,000. Since we didn’t look like a good bet for financing at that time, we needed assistance to secure a mortgage. That help came from the City of Medford, and from Jackson County, each of which agreed to guarantee the balance on the loan if we were unable to pay it off. The purchase was made in December of 1990. For the next year, we spent every weekend, and many weekdays working on the remodel of that old home. It was stripped to the studs, and slowly was turned into a modern children’s advocacy center. The work was done by volunteers mostly: from Kiwanis, St Mark’s Church, the Moose, Elks, boy scouts and many others. Donations of materials and supplies came from Kogap Lumber, Hughes Plywood, and many other local businesses. We opened our doors for business in April of 1991. We could not have pulled it off without yeoman’s work from Bruce Abeloe, a Medford architect, who acted as our general contractor, and who spent most of his Saturdays for a year helping to direct activities at the site.

I really think the fact that we didn’t have a big grant to simply build ourselves a new center, turned out to be a good thing in the long run – because it meant that we had to come to the community for support. And we have had great support from our community ever since!

That’s what I mean when I say you matter. In fact, everyone matters when it comes to kids!

The Children’s Advocacy Center is proud to be a participant in #GivingTuesday on December 3rd. #GivingTuesday is a movement to create a national day of giving to kick off the giving season on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

You can make a donation to the Children’s Advocacy Center this holiday season at: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/youmatter/
On the Cusp of Change

This is a guest post by Jennifer Wolfe, a writer, middle school teacher and mother of two teens. Here she reflects upon the challenges of growth and metamorphosis for both children and their parents.

“Her life now hovered on the cusp of change…at this precise intersection in time, contemplating both distant memories and the uncertainty of the future, she knew she was standing on the lip between past and future. she had not yet taken a step forward into her new unwritten life.” Lee Woodruff

She stands on the cusp of womanhood, her body and mind blossoming in unison. Only seventeen, the future spills before her with temptation. Choices abound, crashing through her day as she contemplates which class to take, which test to cram for and scrolls through glossy promises of college after college, holding her future in their hands. On her bedroom floor, littered with hastily scribbled to-do lists, fading birthday streamers and balloons nearly deflated, neat piles of laundry await, compromises about what to carry away to six weeks of summer ski camp in one not-so-gigantic bag. I can still see her childhood smiling back at me as she packs.

He bounds into the room, red faced and sweaty, backpack full of treasures discovered in a neighbors’ ‘free’ pile down the street. Deserted childhood bowling trophies, a half-filled helium tank, a roll of unopened masking tape and someone’s discarded Sacramento Rivercats handkerchief now strewn across the baby blue carpet of his bedroom. He is thirteen, teetering between that round-faced little boy I toted on my hip and that suave seventh-grader gently holding hands with his girl after school. He towers above me now. It’s his time to sample life, taking n taste after taste of all the world has before him. One class after another, new sports, new friends. A decision about a ski academy, the move-in date etched in our minds. Moving away before I’m ready. I grin as he gulps down his favorite dinner, and push myself back into his childhood.

I’m riding the line, straddling the fast lane. Since when did the teeter-totter weigh less on my end? Motherhood, once so physically exhausting, has now shifted its pressure. My mind tethers me to the past and drags me into the future. I write, I teach, I parent, I love, forever remembering who I am first and wondering how long that will last. We push ourselves to travel, to meet new people and speak their language. I strain for their hands, hoping to catch a finger before they soar off in another direction.

We hover on the cusp of change, dipping our toes into the unknown waters and in that precise moment, contemplate our next step. We ride the ebb and flow of life, sometimes skittering to the safety of shore, occasionally squeezing our eyes shut and diving into the wave. The future lies before us like a foggy horizon, and we, cautiously, carefully, often blindly, scan the horizon, searching for the lighthouse.

You can read more by Jennifer Wolfe on her blog, Mamawolfe: Life lessons from a mom, teacher and citizen of the world
The Power of Mattering

This is a guest post by Ashland, Oregon teacher/facilitator, Marla Estes, M.A. of the School of the Examined Life.

Some of us have a problem with the word “love.” First of all, it has many meanings and connotations. The Greeks have four words for love. Eskimos are said to have 100 words for snow; there’s an argument that we should develop as many for love. And because the word love is overused, it’s become diluted. For some, it has been tainted by past experiences. Further, the word love can become confused with other things, like needing something from someone.

A few years ago, one of my students shared that she felt she needed to know she mattered. I had a “aha” moment; I could feel the visceral effect that the words “You matter” had on me, much different than “I love you.” It felt clearer and cleaner, more direct, less nebulous.

Sometimes loving includes ambivalence. We often have mixed feelings towards our loved ones, the result of the natural, very human, occurrence of friction in our relationships. But, at least to me, “you matter” doesn’t fluctuate.

The dictionary says that mattering is “To be of consequence, significance, importance, of substance.”

Where love can be ambivalent, mattering is clear. I feel it or not. Where anger, hurt, or disappointment may eclipse feelings of love, I can still feel the “mattering.” I can know that someone matters to me, is important and significant, no matter what ebb and flow might be occurring between us. They have substance, and that they matter to me is validation that their essential existence has a place with me.

It seems, too, that mattering can be felt in a more global way, less personal. In some of my large classes, I don’t know every student personally or even by name. But I know that they matter to me, and I know that I matter to them. Whether I say it out loud or not, I feel it and I believe it’s felt by them too. I wouldn’t say that I love them, though mattering seems like a nuance of love.

But don’t take my word for it. I invite you to experiment in your own life: say it to others when you genuinely mean it, feel it (even if you don’t say it), and let yourself take in, really take in, that you matter to others. Let me know what happens.

You can find out more about Marla Estes and the School of the Examined Life at: www.marlaestes.com.
My dream for all girls

This is a guest post by Ginger Gough, a teacher and writer living in Medford, Oregon.

It wasn’t so much the climb up the ancient oak, as the upright walk across its thick parallel branch that gave me the jitters. I wasn’t, however, about to show it. The boys on the ground looked puny, and very far away. They threw the rope with one hand, slinging it as hard as they could in my direction. I grabbed for it and missed, which caused me to totter forward and rise up on my toes. After that, I couldn’t hear their yells, only the pounding of my own heart. On the second toss, I caught the top knot and jumped onto the bottom knot as I had been instructed. The rapid drop and subsequent shot skyward was a stomach dropper: it was the summer I found my power and I was loving the flight.

These were the rough-and-tumble Bennett Boys who lived in my dad’s neighborhood. I quickly learned their activities were a lot more fun than curling my hair in plastic rollers. When I proved I could handle the rope swing and run barefoot across the gravel, they gradually allowed me to start playing street ball with them. It wasn’t long before I was fielding most of their grounders and smacking fly balls over their heads long out of their reach.

Playing ball of course, required a mitt and I discovered I could get one with S&H Green Stamps. I diligently and methodically collected ten books of stamps from my mother and her friends and the day I walked out of the Green Stamp store with my new glove, was one of the happiest days in my life. At night, I oiled it with a petroleum-based grease borrowed from my step-dad’s sawmill, shaped it to fit my hand, slapped a softball into the sweet spot, and wrapped a thick rubber band around the whole thing so it would stay that way all night. I would have slept with it, but Mom didn’t like getting smelly oil stains on her pillow cases.

At Mom’s house, I read and dreamed of traveling. I scoured maps and envisioned myself exploring the world, being interviewed by reporters who were eager to hear about my adventures. Next door, there was an oak tree in Grandad’s front yard, perfect for climbing. Mornings meant hopping into ragged cut-off jeans, throwing the latest book into a grocery sack and running over to his house for breakfast. Daily he presented me with a feast of hot buckwheat pancakes, ruby-red grapefruit and stove-top percolated coffee. He sliced the grapefruit in half with a special knife and cut around the inside, so all I had to do was scoop out each juicy triangle. He let me sweeten my grapefruit and mix my own coffee with cream and sugar. I didn’t have the courage to tell him I didn’t like the canned evaporated milk he offered me each morning, because he treated me like a grownup.

After pancakes, I would climb the tree, barefoot again, because this was the summer I didn’t wear shoes. The easiest branch to climb was the one that veered to the right. It fanned out over Granddad’s front yard, and faced the street. After two wide steps up, there was a sturdy forked limb that created a perfect saddle seat. I could hang my plastic bag on one of the twigs, lean back in the arms of this beloved tree, and read The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck, one more time. It was the story of a Chinese man who had a family and a concubine, and suffered through a debilitating famine. I cried for his poor wife who delivered her babies in the rice fields, and then had to kill them if they were girls. Sometimes I would quickly and quietly say “Hi” to the people walking down the street below, then laugh to myself as they spun around, wondering where the voice came from. Most of the time, I would take my worn out paper-back atlas up the tree with me and from that wooden perch, penned the name that would make me famous, “Sally Rand-McNally, Travel Writer.”

Now I wear shoes. I haven’t played baseball in years nor has a reporter phoned to ask me about my travels. The baseball glove has been replaced by a make-up case, and my cut-offs by practical work pants. Thoughts of Sally though, give me strength. During down times when I’m checking off my weaknesses like an accountant a penny short of a roll, I think of her. She was tough, adventurous, and undeterred by the opinions of others. She was genuine, and she was me.

My wish for every girl is that at some time in her life, she gets to run barefoot without barriers, hit a softball like a champion, and feel the joy of a new leather glove that fits only her hand. My hope is that she will be treated as a grown-up by at least one person, and will get to fly as high as a rope swing will take her. My dream for all girls is that they get to be a “Sally,” so when they become women, they will know who they are.