WASHINGTON
Seattle Times
By Mary Dispenza
Special to The Times
MY silence has been disturbing me. It’s a familiar reaction for survivors like me. But I can’t keep silent any longer. Silence keeps things in darkness and prevents us from seeing clearly in the light of day.
I don’t have the right to speak for or against Seattle Mayor Ed Murray or the man, Delvonn Heckard, who has accused the mayor of raping him as a teen. Nor do I want to. However, I do have the right and responsibility to speak for myself, as a survivor of sexual abuse, and possibly for other survivors who have been sexually violated.
I have to talk about this issue and write about it. I just can’t stuff it down. Sexual abuse, well, it’s been a big chunk of my life. I can tell victims and survivors it gets better, but it doesn’t go away. That’s how it is: We heal and we remember. Talking about it helps.
There is, and always has been, so much silence and secrecy around issues of sex, sexuality and sex abuse. It’s a taboo topic for most of us — especially around the dinner table with family and friends. And yet predatory sexual abuse has no boundaries. It doesn’t matter. It knows no religion, race, color, gender, socio-economic bracket. It can affect us regardless of our social conditioning or whether we are gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
It’s so much easier to talk about politics or other matters than to discuss sex or sexual abuse. What we keep hidden can fester and spread. It holds power over us.
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