Dear Nadine Dorries,
I had an epiphany last year. After fifteen years of self-hate, guilt and shame, something in my brain finally switched and I realised that I was not to blame for what was done to me by an uncle when I was a teenager. Imagine for a moment fifteen years of living with the thought that something you did or didn’t do caused the horrific abuse you had to endure. Did you dress wrong? Did you say something wrong? Should you have said “no” more forcefully, perhaps slapped him or kicked him? What should you have done differently so that this person whom you had trusted almost like a parent for all your life up to that point didn’t commit this horrendous crime against you? You’ve read all the literature, you’ve been told to just say no, you were old enough to look after yourself, so why didn’t you?
Fifteen years. For the first five I didn’t tell anyone. When I eventually did speak up, the only expectation I had of people around me was to ask me why I had let it happen; to challenge me and tell me that clearly I didn’t find the right way of saying no, or else it wouldn’t have happened; to tell me I must have wanted it in some way, brought it on myself. Mercifully, my friends are better people than you.
To this day, the abuse I suffered is affecting my relationships – with my family, with my partner, with others. It left me damaged, with a view of human relationships and intimacy that is warped, unhealthy, hurtful to me and those around me. I still get flashbacks. Pianos, random gestures, words, the way someone approaches me – all of these can trigger them. Even last year, when I first considered telling my parents about this, I had to sit down and mentally go through all the possible ways in which they could react – and make my peace with the possibility that they might not believe me, might blame me. Mercifully, my parents are better people than you.
One in every six children is sexually abused. My heart aches for every single one of them – boy or girl – and for every woman or man who has been through this horror, and who had to read or hear your comments.
If young girls were taught abstinence, there would be less sex abuse.
Ultimately, even if we’ve been fortunate enough to have epiphanies, most of us still walk around with a tiny bit of our brain constantly telling us that it was all our fault. We have good days and bad days. Some of the worst are the days when our elected representatives stand up, point the finger and say, in as many words, “It was all your fault”; or, for the boys and men who have survived abuse, when said elected representatives refuse to even acknowledge your experience.
There is enough victim-blaming going on in our society, without prominent politicians such as yourself having to reinforce it. Victims of sexual violence and rape who speak out – from those who accuse people like Dominique Strauss-Kahn or Julian Assange, to those who speak out against abuses they suffered at the hands of Catholic priests, and those abused by family members, friends or strangers – are constantly questioned, smeared, intimidated. Most do not come forward, precisely because they fear this kind of treatment. You have just given your stamp of approval to this attitude.
Not only will your proposed abstinence education for girls not decrease child sexual abuse; your victim-blaming comments are likely to lead to less abuse being reported and stopped. More children will suffer in silence, wondering what they are doing wrong. More survivors will be traumatised by having that nagging suspicion that they are to blame confirmed by people in power who are supposed to act as role models and opinion leaders. Boys and adult male survivors in particular will continue to suffer because their experiences are not addressed, not even acknowledged.
You have done a lot of damage, Ms. Dorries. And yet it is not too late to remedy at least some of it. You should stand up and apologise for your comments, publicly, sincerely. You should make it clear that you do not believe that children are to blame for being abused, that you do not believe it is children’s responsibility to prevent or stop sexual abuse. You should make it clear that you believe that the only person at fault in a sexual attack – regardless of whether it’s against a child, an adult, a man or a woman – is the attacker, and that any measures to prevent or stop such attacks should be focused on perpetrators, not victims.
Only if our political and cultural elites – which you belong to, Ms. Dorries – present a united front against child sexual abuse will we have the slightest hope of tackling the issue. Your victim blaming is not helping, and those of us who have been victims, as well as those of us who care about the welfare of our children will thank you for not causing any further damage on this front.
Sincerely yours,
Milena Popova
You can contact Nadine Dorries at
dorriesn@parliament.uk
or
Nadine Dorries MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
As someone still struggling to hold on to my own epiphany I’d like to say thank you for this brave and articulate post. Sending you solidarity for the struggle to come to terms with what your uncle did. I hope the hard days get easier as you continue to build your life.
You absolutely weren’t to blame. In no other crime is the victim treated this way. I hope you can find the support you need and deserve.
Wishing you the best.
Dorries is frankly a moron, & there’s no way on earth your abuse is your fault. When you’re a kid there’s fuck all you could do about it & it’s unreasonable to expect anyone to be able to fight off a determined larger attacker with no training or weapons – and even if you could have, bottom line, it’s the abuser’s fault. You were just monumentally unlucky.
I was shocked at the idea that nearly a third of children are abused and followed up on the links. The statistic comes from “Cross Government Action Plan on Sexual Violence and Abuse” published by HMSO, 2007.
To quote “Around 21% of girls and 11% of boys experience some form of child sexual abuse”
Now, I don’t want to belittle this but this is not 32% of children as then misinterpreted by the White Ribbon Campaign. If 100% of children were girls, then 21% of girls would be 21% of children. If 50% of children are girls, 21% of girls is 10.5% of children. If we assume (napkin math) that we have 50/50 boys girls, then the 32% is actually 16%.
This is still a shocking statistic, don’t get me wrong. I am amazed at this number. However, it is NOT 32% and people using the original report to suggest it need to be accurate about their numbers.
I must admit I hadn’t looked at the original numbers, just the White Ribbon Campaign. Thanks for pointing this out.
This might prove to be a controversial idea but, I truly believe that Dorries’ comments have been taken out of context and hysteria has been created out of a misunderstanding. I’m open to debate though and I really want to be proved wrong!
I’ve written about this misunderstanding in a little more detail here (it’s too long for a comment):
http://shreenayob.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/nadine-dorries-internet-hysteria-and-the-power-of-context/
I can’t find the quote anymore, but she said something about girls not knowing that what they were doing was wrong – that doesn’t strike me as meaning young sexually aware teenagers. Child abuse (which can also happen to young, sexually aware teenagers – like I was) is one thing, teenagers pressuring other teenagers into sex is another. I do not believe I’m taking Dorries’ comments out of context – what she said was cruel, damaging, and deeply wrong.
I totally agree that abuse can happen to anyone at any point in their life. I am not trying to say that abuse cannot happen between two teenagers.
Clearly we have both taken away very different impressions from her words – a sure sign she isn’t communicating as effectively as she could be.
I got the impression Nadine’s comments were never meant to be applied to actual abusive situations, but rather about a situation where better sex education would have had an impact.
I think her wording was incredibly clumsy though, and she needs to take responsibility for it. I am not impressed by her latest blog post where she is effectively making fun of anyone who doesn’t understand her statements yet at the same time refuses to clarify them. I find that bizarre, frustrating and uneccessarily defensive.
She is just alienating everyone with that response.
Anyway I don’t think it was wrong or cruel to suggest that in some cases, it might be useful to have a more defiant attitude. Obviously those cases do NOT include aggressive situations, or situations where the victim is too young to even comprehend what is happening to them, or situations where the victim has had their resistance lowered by drugs, intimation etc. I thought she was referring to teenagers taking sex ed classes and wondering whether or not to have sex with their new boyfriend/girlfriend, which is a totally different context.
Again, I hope she just comes out and clarifies because clearly her language has confused, hurt and upset people, especially people who have suffered from abuse.
I hope I am not trivilising your experiences by my words. I am not defending Nadine herself (I think her sex education bill is illogical and ill thought out) but I am trying to push past the hysteria and emotional element here. I fight against victim blaming when I see it, nothing angers me more: I wanted to puke when I read that a journalist suggested Strauss-Kahn’s accusor was silly to do her job on her own. 🙁
Oh and if you check my blog link again you’ll find a link on the very final comment which leads to someone who managed to explain this a lot better than I did, and in a slightly less angry way.
🙂
I understand what you mean. However, Nadine Dorries does not have enough credibility with me, given her history, for me to give her the benefit of the doubt. Her subsequent blog post on the subject was particularly offensive and again gives me no incentive to view her as anything other than malicious.