Secret's out -- Sexual abuse may take minutes, but the betrayal lasts a lifetime, says Stone
The Commercial Appeal
By Michael Lollar
October 1, 2004
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"I knew that what had happened was wrong when he told me not to tell," says sex abuse victim Robin D. Stone.
An author, former newspaper editor and former Essence magazine editor, Stone, now a journalism professor in New York, was 9 when her favorite uncle led her by the hand to a back room during a sleepover with her sister and cousins at the uncle's home in Detroit.
Like 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men in America, she became a statistic. For her, what she now calls "the incident" took about five minutes, but it lasted a lifetime, finally taking the form of a book in which Stone explores sexual abuse from an African-American perspective. It is a point of view that crosses racial boundaries, but explores the role of close-knit families and, often, mistrust of police and the social-service agencies designed to aid victims.
Stone's experience and her book, "No Secrets No Lies: How Black Families Can Heal From Sexual Abuse," will be the focus when she speaks at Memphis Child Advocacy Center's annual Honors Day Luncheon Tuesday at the Holiday Inn, University of Memphis. The 11:30 a.m. luncheon is the center's annual chance to honor front-line investigators, therapists, prosecutors and others who respond to child sexual abuse incidents in Memphis on a daily basis.
Sexual abuse is one of the most under-reported crimes in the nation, says Child Advocacy Center executive director Nancy Williams. "We know that 9 out of 10 incidents do not get reported." Yet, 2,384 cases were investigated last year in Memphis and Shelby County. Most of those involved girls or young women (69 percent) and most involved black victims (79 percent). The average age was 8, and 80 to 90 percent of cases involve abusers "the children know and trust. That betrayal is the thing that is so psychologically devastating," says Williams.
Stone, who teaches journalism at New York University, devotes much of her book to that element of betrayal and to the lifelong "reverberations."
"Often when we think of being sexually attacked, we see the culprit as someone who pounces from the bushes, not someone who tucks us in," she writes.