Prisons are for criminals

Glenda Simms, Contributor

More than four decades after sexually abusing his daughter, this man has been put behind bars. There are important lessons, writes Glenda Simms.

"Perhaps this case will help liberate the many whose traumatic experiences have been hidden from their active memory bank and filed within the deep, dark deep corners of their psyche.

... This painful story should encourage those who are still denying their childhood sexual abuse to face the perpetrators of this most monstrous crime."

The healing process for victims of child sexual abuse is often long and painful.

In 2009, my friend, Judith Scott, and her three sisters created history when they brought charges of rape against their stepfather, father and the adult who should have nurtured and protected them when they were young and dependent on him.

Two years later, on July 17, 2011, The Sunday Gleaner carried the headline "We won!"

The courts found the 'dirty dad', as The Gleaner captioned on its front page last Friday, guilty of sexual assault.

Judith Scott and her sisters undoubtedly experienced many personal, psychological and emotional challenges as they faced the world.

high achievers

According to their story, they were high achievers and fitted easily into a career path that made each of them independent and self-actualised on a number of levels. In spite of this, they had to find many ways to follow the path of healing their inner damaged self. The court victory reported in The Sunday Gleaner was a major step on this path to healing. In my discussion with Judith, she revealed that this court battle was necessary for her and her three sisters to find the space to grieve and to rejoice.

In court, Judith stared at a pathetic stepfather who has been blind for some time. While she would have had a certain sense of satisfaction if he could have seen her in the halls of justice, she was heartened by the fact that he could hear her testimony of his brutality and trauma which he would have clearly seen in her childhood fears and pain when he raped her from she was four years old and 15.

Apparently, his only response to the charges of rape brought against him by his stepdaughter and his three biological daughters was his denial in the phrase, "My children must be crazy."

Judith has told me that all her incidents of rape by her stepfather (the highly respected schoolteacher) took place in Jamaica. It is, therefore, fitting that the resolution of this sordid story happened in a Jamaican courtroom.

Forty-five years after she was raped by her stepfather, Judith Scott and her three sisters took the bold and courageous step and went public with their pain.

Perhaps other Jamaican women who are carrying the secret trauma of incest and rape within the family will find inspiration and courage in the story of the sisters who took a stance against their father and won their case.

In 1986, when Diana Russell, PhD, published her landmark titled The Secret Trauma, there was a widespread and vicious backlash against victims of incest, especially those who reported their experience at a later stage in life.

Scepticism

According to Russell, such disclosures of incest were still frequently greeted with scepticism by clinicians, law-enforcement officers, child-protection workers, courts and even by parents, teachers and social workers.

It is not unusual for women to be denied justice when they recall suppressed memories as victims of incest and other traumatic violent sexual experiences. The courtroom and the arena of public opinion sometimes have problems fathoming the phenomenon of repressed memory. However, it is well documented that many victims of incest vividly recall the trauma after periods of 20, 30 or even 40 years.

Perhaps this case will help liberate the many whose traumatic experiences have been hidden from their active memory bank and filed within the deep, dark deep corners of their psyche.

When these memories resurface, it might be tempting to dismiss them as false; however, it is the victims who know and feel their unique pain and grief.

It has been an established fact that child sexual abuse is very common and is the base of much of the serious problems that face societies. The reality is that incestuous acts are the most likely to be repressed by the victims of this horrendous crime. Children repress these experiences because they are perpetrated by those who are in positions of authority and trust. These are their fathers, stepfathers, brothers and uncles.

Let us hope that the pain and passion that contributed to the courage shown by Judith and her sisters will educate the public about the impact of child sexual abuse on individuals and their families. Furthermore, this painful story should encourage those who are still denying their childhood sexual abuse to face the perpetrators of this most monstrous crime.

This case of gross child sexual abuse within a family system, which is often envisaged as ideal (the nuclear family), is a very concrete example of the process of how women are expected to bury their grief.

During the more than forty-year period in which Judith Scott and her sisters endeavoured to build their lives and their careers, there must have been moments when they screamed in the dark or vomited after a good meal, or after they made passionate love to their husbands or lovers.

Severe responses

These are some of the severe responses that accompany the buried grief of incest, rape and other forms of childhood sexual trauma.

According to Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, who wrote The Courage to Heal, buried grief poisons and limits our capacity for spontaneous joy and for life itself. They argue that when you are young, you are unable to share your feelings about a traumatic sexual experience.

This is because children do not have the cognitive and emotional capacity to express their feelings about their abuse.

We can well imagine that the childhood persona is incapable of reliving the agony and terror without the most sensitive and understanding support system.

Judith recalls that when she and her sisters told their mother about the sexual abuse of their father, she dismissed them with the terse response, "A weh you want mi fi do? It nuh happen aready."

Like so many dysfunctional women who have been socialised to feel unwomanly without a man, this mother decided to sacrifice her daughters and keep her brute of a husband.

Against this background, Judith and her sisters waited more than 40 years to confront the rapist in a Jamaican courtroom. It took them that long to unearth their grief and seek justice in order to liberate their souls.

In this process, they had the love and support of their spouses, children, two brothers and a host of friends and well-wishers who will always be there for them.

At approximately 1 p.m. on July 21, Judith and her sister Joan found a moment of triumph in the Port Maria courthouse when their father was sentenced to 12 months and was shackled and escorted to his prison cell for the crimes he committed 45 years ago.

Indeed, prisons are for criminals!

Dr Glenda P. Simms is a gender expert and consultant. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.