Do you want to know what incest is? What it really is? No ...

child, I learned that strength was the denial of feeling. Now I see that feeling is the key
to self-honesty. Within feeling is found the passion for change."
Recovery procedure—which for many may include gaining that ability to feel—requires
an almost heartbreaking commitment to truths nobody wants to hear, to things nobody
wants to say, to memories nobody wants to have. Victims of incest have lost their
innocence, their memories, their parents, their families, their trust, the opportunity to
grow up and develop in the ways and in the time allowed to children who were not
abused. They are consumed with self-hate and doubt: "Why did it happen to me?
What's wrong with me? What's wrong with my family? What's wrong with God? Why
didn't I stop it? Why didn't God stop it? What kind of life can I have now? Am I doomed?
Am I crazy? Delusional? Vindictive? Psychotic? Evil?"
The initial results of an ongoing study being conducted by Cheryl Lanktree, Ph.D., a
psychologist with Stuart House, to evaluate how children respond to long-term
treatment reveal that after three months, anxiety and depression ease, and that after six
months, the symptoms of post-traumatic stress decrease—the children are no longer
phobic in situations or places and are free of nightmares and flashbacks. However, says
Lanktree, it takes much longer for the children's concerns and preoccupation with sex,
and sexual acting out, to diminish. How long depends on the child, the abuse, the
therapy. Under stress, child and adult victims may reexperience trauma symptoms and
may need to go back to therapy for additional help.
Recovery for adults may take longer and be more complex than for children, but it, too,
has predictable stages. Confronted by memories and their implications, the victim can
swing wildly between denial that the abuse ever happened and acceptance of the fact
that it did. With acceptance comes grief. Then rage. And, finally, self-forgiveness followed
by resolution.
The hazard is that one can get mired in rage—rage at society, rage at the family
structure that has institutionalized the victimization of children, rage at reruns of The
Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best, at family members (who are in
turn enraged at the survivor for talking). There may be rage about the fact that laws
seem to support the offender over the victim, that the statute of limitations may have run
out, that the person who did it can't be tried or can be tried only in civil court. There may
be rage when an offender is either acquitted or given a frivolous sentence. And there
may be self-rage for having been a victim. For having lived such a problematic life. For
having felt pleasure. For not having told. For not having told in such a way as to be
believed. For having told at all.
Anger feels so good, so powerful, that it can be mistaken for health. Victims, who have
often long denied their feelings, need to have their anger and to move through it into
healing. From anger springs the energy that propels survivors out of their victimization
and into life. But the anger needs to be focused on the offender in an appropriate way.
Fury at everyone who is of the offender's age, gender, or profession is too amorphous
to be helpful. It is all-consuming, all-encompassing. You can drown in it. Anger isn't the
last stop, it isn't the goal.
To recover from incest, victims must place responsibility for the act where it belongs—
Page 42 of 56