Silent No More: (cont.)
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Author Gail Wyatt, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA, observes that by the time Evelyn was a teenager, she had been conditioned to see herself as a sexual object and sex as a means to an end. Evelyn's case is extreme, Wyatt notes, but in all sexual relationships it's important to ask, "Is my body just being used to get me something?"

Evelyn quickly sank into a miserable routine of sex, violence and drugs that consumed two decades of her life and drained her self-worth. In crack houses she would often emerge from her haze naked and bruised, knowing she had been raped. "I was too afraid to go to the cops," she says. "Why would they believe me? I wanted to die. I asked God why I wasn't dying." She was too ashamed to tell her family she needed help: "I didn't want them to see me; I didn't want to disgrace them."

Indeed, her unwillingness to reveal to her family her earliest incidents of abuse--first by her brother's friend, then by the principal and later the store owner--may have led to Evelyn's pattern of abusive sexual encounters. As Wyatt observes, family dynamics are frequently at the root of our silence around issues of sex and sexuality. "An abuse victim's decision not to tell says a lot about whom they trust, their loneliness and isolation," she explains. "Sometimes there's an emotional distance in the family. It's difficult to talk about sex if you're not talking in general. And abusers will tell you they can sense vulnerable, needy kids."

Evelyn, still vulnerable and needy as an adult, eventually entered an upstate treatment program, where her pattern of abusive sexual encounters continued: She had sex for money with men on staff. She got caught and kicked out and headed back to the streets. Eventually she landed in Project Greenhope, a Manhattan rehabilitation and drug-treatment residence for women who've had trouble with the law. More than a year later, she's clean and fortunately AIDS-free, and through counseling she's coming to understand the roles sexual abuse and silence have played in her life. Soon she will be on her own, and with only $117 a month in welfare, she will need to find a job and a home. "I'm learning to love myself, but I'm scared to death," she admits. "I've never paid a bill in my life."

While Wyatt applauds Evelyn's efforts so far in turning her life around, she cautions that Evelyn will need long-term psychotherapy to help her reclaim her own power over her body: "This young woman was conditioned to give her power away," Wyatt says, adding that Evelyn needs to develop positive relationships with women, perhaps other graduates of her treatment center, and steer clear of the temptations of old friends and habits. She encourages Evelyn to avoid sexual relationships altogether until she gets in touch with her own sexuality. "This is not just about sex," Wyatt says. "This is her whole life."

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