Second Opinion: Why does it take so long for victims to speak out? Olive Travers blames family and community dynamics
We have witnessed in recent weeks how the refusal of a few individuals to be intimidated has in turn given a voice to other victims who had been silenced.
This disrupting of a process of silencing which had become the norm happens in a smaller but no less dramatic way in all communities when a victim discloses hitherto unknown abuse which has occurred within a family.
While there is predictable horror when a community becomes aware that children in a "normal" family have been abused, often for years, there is also puzzlement and confusion.
The big question is often why it took so long for the victim to tell someone what was happening. In fact, similar dynamics operate in the silencing of a victim in a family and the silencing of a community.
To understand this we have to take a systemic approach in understanding the role of the offending behaviour and the part it plays in stabilising family life.
This does not mean that abusive behaviour is not the sole responsibility of the abuser. However, issues which involve the individual also extend to the family and the wider social context.
The nature of the relationships within these families often reflects the abusive experiences of the parents in their own families - "the apple does not fall far from the tree". What is most striking in abusive families is how overt and covert systems operate simultaneously but independent of each other.
The overt system is made up of the normal everyday family activities, watching TV, doing housework, mealtimes and family celebrations. The family bond to each other at this level. They care for each other and they have an image of their family as normal.
The covert system contains the abuses, the secrets, the shames, the weakness and the deepest emotional forces that sweep through the family. This is the level of family life that no one talks about but everyone senses.
Everyone knows when to disappear, what not to question, when to look away. The greater the discrepancy between the overt and the covert systems, the greater the likelihood that victims will keep their abuse hidden. The victim often has difficulty in reconciling the parent who is good to them at other times and is bad only when being abusive. When the parent is also viewed as good by the wider community, the pressure to keep the abuse hidden is even greater.
Other characteristics of abusive families which contribute to the inability of the victims to speak out are also paralleled in some communities. There is often a high level of isolation of the family from the wider community.
The family may turn inwards and become more dependant on each other, and there is persuasive denial about the abuse. The situation is not how the individual family members perceive it but how the family defines the situation. There is little acceptance of conflict and deviations from what is considered the norm in the family. There may also be a rigid adherence to religious beliefs and a persuasive threat of violence which is sometimes carried out.
Abuse within a family is evidence of family dysfunction. But families do not exist in isolation. Abuse in a family and the silencing of victims has therefore to be understood not only through what happens between an offender, a victim, and their interactions with the rest of the family, but also through the interactions of the family through its own specific context.
In the larger family of isolated communities, the context is one in which communities have turned inwards in response to their alienation from those who hold the power in the wider society. They become tight-knit and self-reliant and turn to their own to protect them.
Power, however, once experienced, is very difficult to relinquish and history has taught us that there is a sad inevitability that those vested with the power of defending and protecting the vulnerable can become, in turn, the new oppressors.
In the same way as children in a family are dependant on the adults in their lives and how they use the power they have over them, some communities become dependant on those who are in a parental role. As in families, the abuse that comes from within is much more difficult to stand up to and condemn than the abuse perpetrated by the clearly identified outsider.
In families, the victim may experience secondary abuse as a result of their decision to lift the lid off the secrets. Family members, including other victims, may close ranks to protect their "good name" and the victim may be shunned and isolated.
Silence is often the price to be paid for remaining within the family or any community that confers a sense of identity and belonging on the individual.
Those who do break ranks, however, give the possibility of a voice to others and confirm that, as Eric Fromm observed, "truth is one of the strongest weapons of those who have no power."
Olive Travers is a clinical psychologist living in the north west.