History is a set of lies agreed upon by the victor. Graffiti
Tell the truth and duck. Finnish proverb
Being a psychotherapist in a small town led to some revelations that, of course, I couldn't reveal or react to. I'd seen a prominent wife of a man who was well regarded and respected in his church and in the community. This wife was telling me the back story--- what she and her husband were attempting to hide. This woman was in her seventies and this was her second marriage, one she'd been in for almost forty years. She brought a daughter a preteen into that marriage. They then proceeded to have several additional children. The daughter, his step child, came to her mother when she was in her twenties and confessed that the step dad had been sexually abusing her for years. The shock was profound, but she had all these other children by this man, boys as it turns out. He was supposedly a very religious man, a pillar in his church. Now, many, many years later she was still so enraged, justifiably, and needed to make a decision about whether to divorce him or wait it out. She'd been diagnosed with cancer and her time was limited. Why did she not act years and years ago? "It was because of the children" she said. One of the decisions she was debating was whether to confide this awful truth to one of her sons. This son also lived in the community and always had contempt for her. The son regarded her as cold and uncaring, especially to his father. What a decision. She was literally eating herself up over the latest diagnosis and her desire to let go of the rage. Now at least she'd confided to another living person outside of the family. Me. So I knew, the daughter knew, and my client knew what he'd done--- the community would remain clueless. The son?
This was not the only case I've had like that. I still hold these secrets. Have to. My client's daughter was grown and I couldn't press charges to the authorities. I had to let go of the disgust I felt towards this man. I'd see him in the grocery store, the library and around town and basically did my best to avoid him. Ironically he died before his wife and I don't know if she chose to tell her son of the abuse. My client died shortly thereafter. I contend that the abuse her daughter suffered had made her suffer too, year after year.
In the fundamentalist churches, not just the Catholic church, there's plenty of abuse: verbal, mental, sexual and emotional of girls and boys too. Until very recently the Mormon church was actually sponsoring and supporting abusers who had multiple wives and scads of children who were subjected to all kinds of abuse. Recently. These cases were reported to the higher ups in the Mormon church to no avail. The higher ups chose to only "counsel" the abusive fathers. Fat lot of good that did. The abuse didn't stop until the police got involved thanks to one of the brave daughters.
One excellent film, "Spotlight" a movie presented in 2015, illustrates the facts of abuse in churches. Although not a documentary, Spotlight is based on fact. It's about the investigative reporters who uncovered rampant pedophilia in the Catholic church in Boston by priests. In fact the church hierarchy knew this, they had many accusations from parents. Sadly, their method of "stopping" the abuse was to transfer these offending priests to another parish. You can guess what happened in these other parishes, how many many children were the victims of the abusive priests.
Abuse doesn't stop if the abuser is informed of repercussions for his actions. There is a stunning lack of empathy the abuser has for the child victim. This is true for the male abusers, as it is resoundingly the men doing the abuse. In the almost 40 years of my work in my field of counseling, only once did I have a female perpetrator of sexual abuse of her child. Once. According to several articles I read, sadly this abuse by a female perpetrator is becoming more common. Now, 14 to 25 % of sexual abuse cases were caused by women. Is it because I couldn't see it all those years ago? I'm not sure.
These were the most difficult secrets that I held but only a small sampling. The number of people having affairs was astonishing to me when I was starting out my counseling practice in the eighties. When I started counseling, I took a married person as a client and she dropped the bomb that she was having an affair. She innocently asked if she could bring her partner in for couples counseling. Naively I said sure, as I loved doing marriage counseling. More naively I assumed she'd inform her mate of the affair and was coming for reparation. No so! Uncomfortably I was in the untenable position of knowing about the affair that the mate knew nothing about. That happened exactly once. Then I established the rule upon first seeing a client that if they were married and wanted to do couple's counseling I wouldn't withhold secrets from the marital partner. I'd gladly keep them on if they confessed to an affair but hustle them off to couple counseling elsewhere if they were unwilling to confess. This clarification made things so much easier for me, many clients chose not to tell. So be it. I'd see them as an individual.
I also learned that people must make up their own minds about divulging their secrets. Several couples that I see around the town, who I know have had affairs---with no true confessions--- have sustained long marriages. You never know who can keep secrets and ultimately be fine with them. Also, there are some who did confess and the partner was forgiving. Not my decision. I had to let go of the dictum, "secrets will make you sick" because bless their hearts, for some individuals it's not always true.
susansmagicfeather 2022 Susan R. Grout
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