Our very own Clinical Director, Val Macri-Lind was featured by the Coloradoan in an opinion article on all of the recent headlines regarding sexual abuse.
It feels as if a dam has broken. The daily barrage of headlines and breaking news with the same story of sexual victimization comes across our televisions and computers on an almost daily basis. The names change, but the themes remain the same.
The powerlessness of the victims, the abuse of power by the offenders, the shame, fear and resulting secrecy carried by the survivors, it’s all the same. We sit, transfixed, because the names are those of famous people. The offenders are people we’ve heard of, and may even be people we’ve admired. It’s so hard to make sense of so many stories at once that we may even want to look away, or doubt them and minimize their pain. We may think that the media is making too much out of what appears to be a very common occurrence. We may even secretly wish that the stories could stay in the shadows and the secrets remain buried.
But I think we’re better than that. My hope is that we are ready to actually confront this epidemic with the same resolve we’ve used to battle cancer or help rebuild cities after natural disasters. Because for every famous case you hear about, there are thousands of nameless people — girls and boys, women and men — who are carrying these secrets like albatrosses.