Friday, September 24, 2010

Denial: A Memoir of Terror by Jessica Stern

What trauma have we experienced with family, students, friends, and/or ourselves (if we a comfortable bringing the stories to the table)? How has it affected our psyche? And what has been our coping/treatment methods?

After reading the book and coming to our Big Brain Book Group discussion, several traumatic experiences were shared. To honor the trust that we developed in the group, those stories won't be repeated, though we recognize that acknowledgment, naming the events, and speaking them aloud are another step to finding our voice, holding on to our dignity (and sanity), and moving forward.

Here is an interesting related article which is currently in the news.

De-stigmatizing assault

Indiana Daily Student

Plainly, the criminalization of sexual assault victims is an injustice of the first order. Stories like Reedy's make the need for us to examine what ...


Below are some quotes from the book, Denial, which stuck out for us. Do they resonate for you?

Jessica:

Any person who has experienced acts of extreme violence will have such fantasies, though they might forget them. I took sexual violence into my body, and it became a part of me. It is better to know one’s shadow side than to pretend it doesn’t exist. Fantasizing is very different from action. p. 153


From another rape victim:

“My sisters and I. We used to huddle together and cry under the covers at night. Whenever it was possible, I protected them. I was the oldest. They black it out. They’ve forgotten. I’m sort of jealous…” p. 158


Jessica:

“I’m an oldest sibling, too,” I tell him. “I don’t voice the thought that I, too, saw and remember more than my sisters do. I, too, saw and remember more than I wish.” p. 158


John, best friend of Brian Beat (Jessica’s rapist):

“I know that those kinds of experiences could lead me to be very violent. That is why I became a vegetarian and started meditating,” he says. He tells me that he started meditating as a teenager. p. 159


John, best friend of Brian Beat (Jessica’s rapist):

“I feel disloyal telling you all this. He could understand the beauty of a beautiful poem, but he couldn’t arrange his life so he could live that way. He could envision the beauty of life and the goodness of life but somehow wasn’t able to actualize what he knew was possible. It’s a shame. Like I said, Most of the time he was a nice guy. It’s just that one of the gears didn’t mesh…” p. 161


Jessica:

The room is now permeated with shame – his story of drugs and homelessness, my thoughts about running away, my unbecoming desire to hurt John. Even the dog is ashamed of her paltry bark. And now that I’ve divulged my rape, there is the presence here, too, of my violated vagina. As I type this word, I cross my legs, I cover my vagina with a thick metal shield. Titanium with spikes. I surround myself with armed guards. p. 162


John urges me again to talk to his sister. He gives me her number. As we are leaving, he says to me, “I have never told anyone that story about the hook. I’m glad I told you. I feel much better now.” p. 166

At that time, he hadn’t yet thought of threatening his victims with a gun, at least not with her. At last, I have found someone able to confirm that the sadistic rapist that I think I recall was real. At last, I have found someone who doesn’t feel the need to protect herself – and punish me- with denial. p. 166


Jack’s story, her research assistant (fight, flight, or sleep):

“What do you mean, gang-raped?” I gasp. I am not sure I want to hear this. A sleepiness washes over me. I consider leaving this part of Jack’s story out. It’s too much for me and too much for the reader. But it’s an important part of Jack’s life so I’ve left it here. p. 172


“Where was her mother?” I want to know.

She says her mother didn’t know. Her mother was in denial,” he says. I see from the look on his face that Jack is suddenly aware of what he’s been telling me.


“I didn’t want to tell you any of this,” he adds, apologetically. “Sometimes the job became traumatizing for me, but I was afraid to tell you.” He sighs.


I feel my shoulders tensing. I was afraid of this. I want to know, but also don’t want to know.


Jack, the research assistant:

“I didn’t want to tell my girlfriend about what I’ve been doing for you,” he says. “It seemed to me it was unprofessional to talk about it. And I didn’t want to bring it home. She comes from a world where rape is still the victim’s fault. It would annoy me if she blamed you. When I finally told her about his project, she reacted strongly. She started crying. It made me worry that she would tell me that she was raped, too. I didn’t want to hear that. This is awful, but I didn’t want to know. It would just wear me out. I was fully prepared to let her act as though she had gotten over it. Women who say they got raped can get killed in Turkey. Honor killing. Or forced into marriage to their rapist. So no one talks bout sexual violence there. She had never heard about rape or sexual violence, except in an abstract way.’ p. 173


A grandiose thought comes to me: This is why I have to write this book, to speak out for those who cannot speak. I push the thought away.


Jessica:

I’m trying to get this right, to explain my embarrassing position. Let me try this one again. I cannot bear to be around victims who see themselves as victims. I’m more comfortable talking to victims who are numb, or who have learned how to harness their unfelt rage and fear to do productive work. I’m most at ease with the sort of victim who ends up doing work that involves exposing himself to risk or violence – soldiers or human rights workers who work in danger zones, whose love for humanity is expressed without a display of feeling. p. 186


Jessica (thinking about clergy when talking to Skip):

I know all about this – the difficulty that abusers of children have dealing with the impact of their abuse, how they try to brainwash their victims into thinking that the abuse doesn’t hurt, that it is actually good for them. If the abuse is sustained overtime, the victim learns not to feel. But I don’t tell Skip this. I listen. p. 187


Jessica (thinking about the Catholic Church):

But there is a new energy in the room. Rage. This part of Skip’s story is still undigested, a bitter potion. The state has taken Billing off the street. The church has forbidden him from preaching. But the church apparently does not view the sexual abuse of children as a sin sufficiently serious to warrant excommunication. These are the crimes that the church considers to be the most serious sins: Attempting to absolve a person who has committed adultery. Acquiring an abortion. Violating the confidentiality of confession. Physically harming the Pope. But not repeatedly persuading a child that allowing himself to be sodomized by a priest is an act of love. p. 188


Jessica (victim or survivor):

What is the difference between a victim and a survivor? Survivors, we are told, emphasize their own agency, and are thus different from victims, who cringe under fate’s blows, passively accepting fate’s amoral and senseless punishments. p. 189


Jessica (fight or flight):

Freeze, fight, flight. Freezing is the first reaction. But a person can get stuck, frozen forever. Flight is not an option for a low-moving animal facing a gun, slow-moving animals such as girls. And flight is not really an option for boys who believe themselves to be serving God by servicing sick priests. Victims, unless they are trained, do not get to choose the way they will react when they are “scared to death,” the phrase we use to describe the altered state that is evoked when someone or something threatens, credibly, to annihilate us, body or soul. Body or soul or both. Skip and I have this in common: we both froze, and we are both still immobilized, at least some of the time, by shame. p. 190


Skip:

“Pedophiles go after victims who have just suffered a major trauma. The priest comes in to help the family, and then abuses a child. They also go after families with a lot of faith – faith itself can be a kind of weakness in their eyes. They exploit individuals who have suffered severe trauma or who have strong faith,: he summarizes. p. 193


Skip

“I know I’m under stress when I see the shadow. These shadows come to me when I feel unbearable anxiety.”


Jessica:

Feeling terrorized is humiliating. Having been raped is humiliating. To be treated “like a woman” is humiliating. Thus, the lament of one of the victims of sexual torture at Abu Ghraib, “They were treating us like women.” Rape is a perfect way to discharge one’s shame. But, like fear, shame is contagious. The shame and fear of the rapist now infect the victim, who, depending on his psychological and moral resilience, may discharge his fear and shame into a new victim, not necessarily through rape. I do not mean to assert that all terrorizes have been humiliated, or that all people who are severely shamed will ultimately terrorize others. My hypothesis is that shame is an important risk factor for savagery. p. 195


Scared them half to death, but then let them live. In the moment a person is broken by terror, she is more easily seduced into “muffling” others. You will move up in the world if you only follow order, if you sell out your sister, if you muzzle her. p. 201


Be quiet, the first girl said, so that we can both survive. p. 203


Physical death was imminent, but the Nazis did not kill these victims with gas. They killed them with terror. p. 203


I ordered t he most expensive bottle of win I’ve ever bought, in the spirit of the Titanic. p. 207


Jessica (upon receiving Lucy’s thank you notes for finding the identity of her rapist):

All this softness, at a time like this, is almost hard for me to take. I feel held, even loved. But I am afraid to express to Lucy and her sisters how much their reaction means to me. p.211


Lucy:

“So my dad leaves. My mother falls apart. I start eighth grade, and then in March I get raped. My mother dies. And now, many years later, my marriage was falling apart. It brought back all these earlier wounds,” she says, the many causes of the pain in her abdomen all jumbling out at once. p. 14


I wonder if that is true. Is rape really the worst sort of violation? I’m not sure. I often wonder why it matters whether we’re penetrated or not. There is the pain, but the pain doesn’t last – the shame does. p. 217