There comes a time in the life of every abuse survivor whose goal is to be free from irrational guilt, when they must find a symbolic but effective way to release the shame, or if you like, break the chains that have bound them. In the recently released “The Guilt Busters” one of the characters, John chooses to write a letter that he may or may not post, to his abuser, Father McKean. I have chosen to share some of that letter with you.
Purchase The Guilt Busters Here
“McKean, I cannot bring myself to call you Father, because I have come to believe that you were in fact the antithesis of all a man of God should be. I cannot even address you as Mr. because that is a term of respect that belongs to good men like my dad. My counsellor has challenged me to examine whether the guilt that I have assumed is mine for nearly 20 years, is indeed mine or in fact is projected guilt that really belongs to you. She has triggered a myriad of questions in me that I myself must answer.
Did you as you often said, love me and enjoy my company, or were you just grooming me for your own pleasure. For nearly twenty years I have convinced myself that it was love you felt for me not lust, but today I am daring to ask, ‘could I have been wrong?’ When I answer that question as a twelve-year-old boy, it is easy to answer it in the way I want the truth to be. Why else would you want to spend time with me when my own father seemingly ignored me? Why else would you choose me to be your camping partner? Why else were you so kind and gentle and understanding? Of course, you were concerned for a child you deemed to be neglected. You invested time and energy in me because you could see potential in me that others could not. I want everything you said about me to be true, because I ached then and still do, to be loved and valued by an adult. Such affirmation and kindness came to me from nobody else.
However, I am no longer a twelve-year-old boy. I am a thirty two year -old man, and although those kind and affirming things you said to me are still the only kind and affirming things that have ever been said to me until recently, I now have the courage to see them as lies.
As an adult I cannot equate your sexual abuse of me as love. I cannot see love in that angry face I see every night in my nightmares. I cannot hear love in that sneering, accusing voice I hear again and again in my head threatening me with the wrath of God should I ever tell anyone about our secret. Nor can I imagine why someone who loved me would reject me from that night on and pour their affections on another.
Not until today has it dawned on me that I am in fact one of those thousands of men and women who are so called survivors of institutional sexual abuse. That is what it comes down to. I am a statistic. The one out of five men who have been abused in their childhood. I am a recipient of those fine sounding apologies offered by politicians and bishops. I am the topic of all those radio talk-back shows, debating whether I deserve to be compensated. I am represented on those documentaries as a shattered shell of a man who will never recover, never be capable of sustaining a relationship, and never be able to make a worthwhile contribution to society. The ultimate victim.
Well, McKean, I want you to know that I have decided that I will no longer carry your miserable guilt. I will no longer blame myself for the evil you perpetuated against me. I will no longer fear the wrath of God for what has happened between us. With the help of my counsellor, I have taken hold of the blame I have borne for twenty years and placed it where it belongs. The shame I feel is no longer a result of your carefully and wickedly planned victimisation of me. The shame I feel now is that for so much of my life I have let the behaviours that have emanated from my painful emotions wound others who did not deserve to be hurt. But because that guilt is real, and not projected, I hope in time, I will be free of that shame also.
Hear me McKean I will be no longer defined by your intentionally victimising behaviour toward me. I refuse to be a statistic or a topic on talk-back radio. I am a person, and albeit years later than it should have been I choose to be a healthy adult. I no longer need protection as I did when a child, although I must admit that every step I take toward a healthy adulthood, is formidable. In the safety of my own space and on a good day I dream of unwrapping that potential and value through which maybe I might still bless the world in which I live.”
It is essential that in the pathway to recovery, sexual abuse survivors make this transfer of shame. It does not belong to us. It belongs to the perpetrator. If we choose not to move it to where it belongs it will continue to rob us of the joy and fulfilment we were meant to enjoy.
God Bless
Graeme