In the bad old days, it was a woman's fault if a man lusted after her.
Even if she was only 15 years old.
Even if she was 6 years old.
If he attacked her and she fought him off, the shame was on her and her family. She usually didn't dare to report it to her father and mother, much less to the police.
(And the bad old days are still happening in some parts of the world around us.)
I'm happy that a friend of mine, Lucille Sider, has had the courage to report about the bad old days of 1952, the rest of the 1950s, and the 1960s before second-wave feminism hit the USA and we declared that sexual abuse was not okay.
Her life story, Light Shines in the Darkness: My Healing Journey Through Sexual Abuse and Depression, is now available through Amazon and your local bookstore.
Light Shines would be a good choice for a women's book club or a church study group. It comes with a study guide at the back, and Lucille is available to present a short talk and Q & A session by Zoom.
See my review of her book on the website of EEWC-Christian Feminism Today.
I met Lucille in 1975 in the early days of the Christian feminist movement, when she was editor of a feminist journal in Chicago called Daughters of Sarah. She earned a doctorate in religion and psychology, becoming a therapist and later an ordained pastor.
Lucille describes how at age 6, she tried to get her parents to fire the farmhand who was bothering her. She finally speaks up when he throws a bucket of cow manure over her.
"My mother, though quiet, is very angry. I've never before seen her like this. When my father comes in the house, she begs him to fire the hired man--but he will not," writes Lucille.
Her sense of being a good child is stolen, and she spends the next fifty years of her life trying to recover her self-esteem. She doesn't tell a therapist about this childhood event until 2005.
Another event of sexual abuse occurs when she is 15; her brother-in-law attacks her. This time she immediately tells her parents, devout members of a small denomination called the Brethren in Christ.
They pray about it but drop the subject forever. This serial molester goes on to abuse his own daughter and many other young women before he is finally arrested and jailed at age 72 in 2010.
Lucille's story reminds me of Virginia Woolf's account of an experience of sexual abuse at age 3 or 4, similar to what happened to six-year-old Lucille.
In her brief memoir, A Sketch of the Past, Virginia begins with three very early memories; one is of her older half-brother lifting her to a table in a hallway next to the dining room and touching her private parts under her little dress. The year is maybe 1885 or 1886 but these personal stories are not published until 35 years after her death.
Virginia suffered major depressive episodes and took her own life in 1941 at age 59, yet she also became one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century.
I'm grateful that some survivors of sexual harassment and child sexual abuse are now able to speak out. It wasn't possible in 1885 or 1955, but movements like #metoo and #churchtoo and #whyIdidntreport are helping women to find their voices.
For example, women in the Southern Baptist Convention spoke out and got Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Seminary, ousted from his position in June 2018 for counseling victims of abuse to keep silent.
Women in the bad old days didn't even have the language needed to refer to these experiences. Now we have terms like "sexual harassment" (from the Clarence Thomas hearings) and "sexual abuse" and "post traumatic-stress disorder." We have more laws.
Lucille also cites important resources:
RAINN - Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (the national largest anti sexual-violence organization).
NAMI - National Alliance on Mental Illness.
I will add:
The Enough Abuse Campaign for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
Survivors Standing Tall - Barbara Graber's resources on sexual abuse in Christian homes and churches.
SNAP Network - Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
Please pass along the link to this blog post and to my book review on the EEWC-Christian Feminism Today website.
Speak up for yourself and other women.
