The latest exposure of
sex abuse by high profile men now in their eighties requires that Christians
who have suffered abuse engage in some honest thinking, a way of thinking which
will help both the victim and the perpetrator come to terms with the past,
because this is the only way that healing can be effected. It is not just a
matter of forgiving and forgetting. For the victim, and in some cases, for the
perpetrator, the past does not go away that easily. We do not forget, and nor
should we. The challenge therefore lies in remembering aright.
When a serial abuser cannot even remember a victim’s
name, or denies abusing someone they know well, their feigned amnesia reveals
the core of the sin itself, a callous indifference to another human being’s
dignity and independence, something which consigns their very personhood, their
existence even, to oblivion. This is the poison which is at the heart of abuse
and which infects both abuser and victim alike. The abuser forfeits his own
humanity as he denies the victim theirs.
How are Christians who have experienced abuse in
childhood or in early adulthood to think of these men? What are they to do when
seeing them in the news returns them as victims of abuse to their own ‘sheol’?
‘Sheol’ is a word used in scripture as a depiction of hell. It is a place of
darkness, a place where personhood holds no meaning. Where personhood has been
denied, our memories of abuse are hidden in a kind of suffocating darkness, the
darkness of Sheol and for victims, as well as abusers, it can be tempting to
leave them there.
But burying memories, or denying them, does nothing
to restore those of us who have experienced abuse to the persons we once were
before the abuse happened. Nor does it enable the abuser to face his own self
and the truth about his actions. Both victim and perpetrator need to be
restored to themselves, to the dignity of their own personhood if remorse, reparation
and healing are to be effected. Nothing good can emerge and grow in the
darkness of Sheol. Being consigned to Sheol does not allow the abuser to begin
to take responsibility for his actions and for their long term effect on the
lives of others, because in this place of darkness he cannot see those victims
as persons, anymore than he can really see himself. Nor can he be made to face
himself through the vicarious revenge many of us unconsciously enjoy at the
sight of yet another high profile abuser being ‘outed’, even when ‘outing’ him is
presented as long overdue justice. The public disgracing of old men has no
power to heal, either them or their victims.
For those of us who experienced abuse at the hands
of others, facing these particular abusive men with the fact that it is their
victims’ humanity, their deepest selves, which was violated helps us to move a
little further on from revenge, even when revenge comes in the guise of justice,
after so many years of justice not having been done. Real justice happens when
victims are finally believed and truth is admitted. It is when the victim is not
believed or taken seriously that he or she suffers the greatest pain.
Not being believed about abuse makes it convenient,
even obligatory, for the victim to be thought of as a liar in all other
respects. Once a liar, always a liar. While being thought of as a liar, the
victim also lives with the memory of being relegated to the status of plaything,
of not being fully a person, and this will affect the way they think of
themselves for the rest of their lives. So those who have experienced abuse in
childhood and adolescence have been sinned against twice over, first by the
abuser, and then by those who chose not to believe, or not to notice what was
going on.
On the other hand, there are some who are being unfairly
blamed for ‘hiding’ or ‘protecting’ abusers when, in fact, they were known to
have informed their superiors, or those in authority, to the extent that was
required and possible at the time. They too are being judged and condemned as
liars. They are being judged in accordance with today’s expectations, as if the
legislation relating to abuse and child protection, along with the more open
channels for appeal and victim support which exist today, were in force and available
to them then, which they were not.
So
what is the Christian who has suffered abuse in early life to make of this web
of untruth and half truth and of their own enduring pain? It begs the question
of how forgiveness and healing might work in these memories. We have to take it
one day at a time. I think the best most of us can do at present is to allow
ourselves to see the perpetrators of these acts, and all those who wittingly or
unwittingly were connected with them, as persons who belong to a just, truthful
and loving God as much as we, the victims, do. If, as Christians, prayer plays
a part in our lives, we can begin by placing all these people, the guilty and
those guilty by association, under his merciful regard, as we ourselves are
under his merciful regard, especially when we are conscious of this during
times of prayer.
Placing those who have sinned against us under the
merciful regard of God is helpful in at least two ways; firstly, it prevents
our own inclination to vindictiveness from getting a hold on us and so
poisoning us from within. Secondly, it stops the inevitable burying of the pain
(only for it to return later) because we are ‘outing’ the pain itself by bringing
it to God, along with the abuser and those who may have colluded with him. We
bring all of it to the foot of the cross, again and again, and leave it there,
again and again. Then we accept ourselves as honoured and loved from that place
and know ourselves not as liars, but truthful, and we carry on living.
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