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Please be aware that Child Victim's Voice is not a crisis center, and if you are in need of immediate help please call your local crisis center, dial 911, or present to the nearest emergency room. 1. Acknowledge your courage. It takes courage to acknowledge that we've been abused and it is not easy to even admit it to ourselves. Just looking at this Web site is a big step. 2. Know that you are not alone. There are many more survivors of abuse than any of us wants to believe. According to a study cited on www.darkness2light.org, an estimated 39 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse exist in America today.1 Most of us believed that we were the only victim of the person who abused us. Over time we have learned that there is rarely, if ever, only one victim of a sexual predator. While we were being abused we were isolated and felt extremely alone. Now it is possible to join with other survivors to find healing. We do not have to be alone anymore. SURVIVOR RESOURCES IN DELAWARE: Survivors of Abuse in Recovery, Inc. (SOAR) is a statewide recovery program which provides counseling, referral, and education services to adult, adolescent and child survivors of sexual abuse and assault, their non-offending partners, and non-offending family members. www.soarinc.com Northern New Castle County, Pennsylvania and New Jersey 405 Foulk Road Wilmington, DE 19803 (302) 655-3953 Central and southern Delaware, and Eastern Shore of Maryland 1001 S. Bradford St., Suite 8 Dover, DE 19904 (302) 422-3811 *** SNAP Delaware An informal support group for survivors of childhood sexual abuse and their supporters is held in Wilmington on the second Tuesday of every month at 7 p.m. SNAP is a confidential, non-religious group of men and women who were sexually victimized as children in any religious setting. The SNAP support group provides a safe and sympathetic place for victims of childhood sexual abuse to be heard. Date: Held second Tuesday of each month. Time: 7 p.m. For location, e-mail: snapdelaware@yahoo.com *** If you are not in Delaware, but are looking for a survivor support group in your area please contact us at info@childvictimsvoice.com. *** ContactLifeline Delaware's 24-hour confidential helpline services In Delaware: 1-800-262-9800 www.contactlifeline.org/ Please be aware that Child Victim's Voice is not a crisis center, and if you are in need of immediate help please call your local crisis center, dial 911, or present to the nearest emergency room. *** TO REPORT CHILD ABUSE IN DELAWARE: Call Delaware's 24-hour Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline Report child abuse or neglect by calling 1-800-292-9582 http://kids.delaware.gov/services/crisis.shtml Or contact the Office of the Attorney General of Delaware Call the Criminal Division at (302) 577-8500 or visit: http://attorneygeneral.delaware.gov/office/contact.shtml 3. Don't go to the administrators who employed the perpetrator. Many survivors have gone to officials at the institution that employed the perpetrator to look for help, guidance and/or healing. Many of us went to these leaders, after building up loads of courage and strength to face them, because we wanted to make sure that our perpetrators didn't abuse anyone else. We mistakenly thought that the leaders would want to ensure others' safety too and that the perpetrators would be removed from access to children. So many of us did this without ever telling anyone else. Then we found out we were wrong. The administrators did not care about protecting others and they did not care about us. Most of us found the experience of going to the perpetrators' employer just awful. They were insensitive and acted like they did not know how to respond to us. We were looking for healing and consolation but found further victimization. Most of us left feeling devastated and the entire experience of talking to the institutional leaders left us hurting more than ever. 4. Don't go alone! If you still decide to go to administrator or employer of the perpetrator, don't go alone. Taking someone with you provides a witness to the event and gives you someone to "debrief" with when it's over. Write down what is said. Don't believe what you hear just because they said it. Check it out with other sources before relying on what they tell you. Have a prepared time limit on how long you will meet with them and stick to it. Prepare ahead of time what you will and won't tell and stick to your prepared plan. Protect yourself. Take time after any meeting with administrators to "debrief" and go over what occurred. Keep track of all info you give them and exact details of what you tell. They are keeping track so you should too. Again, it is not advisable to meet with the administration that employed or managed the professional or volunteer who abused you without experienced legal representation. 5. Seek alternative help. We recommend that you go to a trusted family member or friend, or seek professional help from a counselor. Many others have gone through a process of healing from sexual abuse. We do not have to "reinvent the wheel." We may as well learn from others and for many survivors a professional counselor is very helpful. In Delaware, survivors of sexual abuse can contact professional counselors, regardless of ability to pay, at www.soarinc.com. 6. Learn your legal rights. The leaders of institutions that have a history of employing and retaining sexual predators have lots more information about our abuse than we do. They know our legal rights, but most of us don't know. We can choose to exercise our legal rights or not but it is empowering to make the choice. Without knowing we don't make the choice. Many survivors of childhood sexual abuse have ignored learning about our legal rights because we assumed we didn't need to learn them because we thought the leaders we trusted would do the right thing. By the time we figured out that these institutions were not automatically going to do the right thing it was too late for many of us to exercise our legal rights to expose wrongdoing and to seek accountability and justice. We have noticed that in the past institutional leaders have strung victims along until the statute of limitations has run, or in layman's terms, the opportunity we had to file a claim was over before we knew it. By the time many of us realized it was too late to do anything. That experience was so painful to many survivors because it was another moment of helplessness and powerlessness at the hands of our perpetrator or his or her supervisors. Some things for survivors considering legal action to think about: Child Victims Voice (www.childvictimsvoice.com) Darkness to Light(www.darkness2light.org) MaleSurvivor (www.malesurvivor.org) National Association to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Children (NAPSAC) (www.napsac.us) Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) (www.rainn.org) Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) (www.snapnetwork.org) and your certified, professional therapist. Continue to Next Page >> *Survivors' Wisdom is a compilation of things that other survivors have learned and shared with each other at support group meetings. The above information is what we have learned from each other. If any of the above does not fit for you for, don't use it. If you have questions about how any of this applies to your situation seek help from professionals. We are not professionals in this area of sexual abuse but know about it because we were sexually molested. So the information presented is based upon our own experiences and advice we learned along the way that helped us. Mostly, we believe each survivor knows what is best for him or herself. The survivor is responsible for his or her path to healing. Printable version 1. Abel, G., Becker, J., Mittelman , M., Cunningham- Rathner, J., Rouleau, J., & Murphy, W. (1987). Self reported sex crimes on non-incarcerated paraphiliacs. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2(1), 3-25. |
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