Of the women who call Vancouver Rape Relief for being victims of sexual assault or rape, 27% were sexually abused in their childhood.
Of these 27 %, 47% were victims of incest, meaning that the abuser was an adult family member.
When large numbers of girls are targeted for sexual abuse
by men who are supposed to love and care for them, and who are in positions of both trust and
authority, this forms a key component of the male violence against women and girls that creates
and sustains the intersecting inequalities of sex and age. In other words, the patriarchal family
structure facilitates and shields from view fathers who sexually abuse their daughters
โThe spring I am nine years old I learn I am a thing, I learn girls cannot act. Somebody might save me. If I am lucky. I know I canโt save myself.โ
Time to focus on the offenders In reality, prevention can only be achieved by an insistence on naming, by keeping the focus on who is doing what and to whom and why.
To heal from the trauma of incest or early sexual abuse, we need to tell our stories to people who understand what we have experienced. Talking with others in counseling or in special support groups for women with a history of incest breaks the silence, helps us to gain perspective and know we are not alone, eases the pain and helps us feel healthier and stronger.
Incest, the sexualization of children cast in Procrustean form, has been transmogrifiedโhijacked. From a political issue framed by feminists as one of male violence against women and childrenโa sexual offense on the part of men, for which we demanded accountability, and censureโincest has, in these years, been coopted and re-formulated by the therapeutic ideology, as an illness in women, to be treated. In children, it is a prediction of illness to be treated.
We correctly identified the permission for men to molest their own
children as a method by which girl children learned, at a very tender
age, their sexual vulnerability, their status as sexual objects for male
gratification.
Child sexual assault in the family is a widespread phenomenon that appears from most indications to be perpetrated primarily against young girls by their fathers or male guardians.
By Claudia Wayne and Laureen France, Feminist Alliance Against Rape
