The Awareness Center's Daily Newsletter - March 26, 2013
The
following article is the first part of Vicki Polin's presentation at
the United Nations Conference on the Status of Women that wasn't
recorded.
To watch the the rest of Vicki Polin's presentation that was recorded at the United Nations Conference on the Status of Women (UN-CSW) see below
To watch the the rest of Vicki Polin's presentation that was recorded at the United Nations Conference on the Status of Women (UN-CSW) see below
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| Vicki Polin, MA, LCPC |
In
any community where people do not trust the outside world they become
more vulnerable to predators from within their own communities. This is
true for people of all faiths, especially those who live within more
insulated communities, which includes those who come from a Christian,
Buddhist, Muslim or Jewish faith based community.
Being
a Jew, and after working within various movements within the Jewish
faith for the last 14 years, I feel most comfortable speaking about the
experiences of Jewish survivors of sex crimes.
To
understand the responses of Jewish communities dealing with sexual
abuse or assault, we all must be aware that for over 5700 years, the
ugly face of anti-semitism has always shined brightly when it came to be
known that a Jew committed a crime.
Needless
to say for many Jews, there became a distrust of outsiders. From my own
person observations I can say there seems to be more of a heightened
fear of the non-Jewish world from those who survived the holocaust,
including the following generations along with those who live within the
more observant Jewish world.
ecause
of past experiences of anti-semitism and the fear of retaliation from
the non-Jewish world -- the handling of allegations of cases of
emotional, physical and sexual abuse have mostly been handled by members
of the clergy and or various Jewish community leaders -- and NOT by
secular law enforcement agencies.
Just
like those from other faith based communities, these clergy members and
community leaders had little if any training in forensics, let alone
conducting victim sensitive interviewing. Needless to say, those who
were victimized by sex crimes are being revicitimized and are still
being shamed and blamed.
So
the question has been asked, how can we prevent a survivor of
emotional, physical or sexual abuse from being revictimized? The answer
is not so simple. I personally believe it’s a societal problem.
As
long as those in leadership positions blame those who have been
victimized for the crimes committed against them, it will make it
difficult for one to heal, let alone to hold their heads high and say “I
survived”.
For
those who were victimized as children, they often need to learn how to
replace the tapes playing in their heads that they were “bad, dump,
dirty little girls or boys”.
Adults
who were abused as children often carry an array of symptomologys which
can often lead them into patterns of being re-victimized.
It’s
widely known in the trauma field that there’s a correlation between
those who have been abused as children to those develop such things as
low self-esteem, post-traumatic stress disorders, depression, eating
disorders, various types addictions, and a whole array of other mental
health issues.
When
someone has been traumatized, the first 24 - 72 hours are critical for
the survivor to share with other’s what happened to them.
If someone was robbed on the street, they would share their story. Would not get blamed.
The
truth is, that I am a survivor of child abuse and have been
revictimized as an adult. For me, with hindsight I know the answer to
why these things happened. Even though my gut was warning me something
was wrong, I didn’t pay attention. I rationalized away that ah oh
feeling. This is something everyone does, even those who were not abused
as children -- but to a lessor degree.
Though
we all wish that we could control the universe and never be victimized
again, the truth is we can not. But what we can do is to learn how to
identify and process our thoughts and feelings, without blaming
ourselves if we do get revictimized and to ask for help as often as we
want or need to.
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| Panel members from the workshop at the United Nations Conference on the Status of Women, included Natsuko Utsumi, Gabriela Nava Campos, Vicki Polin, Jan Kraft, Judy Meikle and Dana Raphael, PhD |
