Secret's out -- Sexual abuse may take minutes, but the betrayal lasts a lifetime, says Stone (cont.)
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Stone, 39, describes her own "incident" as a one-time assault in which her uncle touched her inappropriately. As a 9-year-old, she was confused. Why was she chosen? Did the "short-shorts" she wore somehow invite the incident? Was her outgoing bubbly personality an invitation?
In an interview, she says abuse often becomes a personality-altering secret. When family members are told, it then is often a closely guarded family secret with the child left to cope alone.
"There's the guilt and the shame. Then there's the self-doubt as if maybe I had something to do with it. ... The longer I didn't tell the harder it was to tell. When I did tell at 21, this uncle denied it. Then, whenever I would go home to a family gathering that uncle simply wouldn't be there."
Eventually, she sought therapy, and writing her book was part of that therapy, says Stone, who learned that pedophilia or child sexual abuse is a "mental disorder, a psychiatric diagnosis. Many people have that urge, but don't act on it. In a lot of cases, alcohol or drugs are at play and lower inhibitions."
Nationally, family members and acquaintances are usually to blame (93 percent of cases), she says. Their access to a child allows them to "go through a grooming process. They can befriend the child, gain their trust and make them feel like they are complicit in the act."
Stone says statistics indicate black and white children are victimized at roughly the same rates, but "with different reactions. ... We must remember that in addition to the trauma of sexual violation, survivors must also deal with the trauma of being born and raised in a racist and sexist culture."
One study she cites says black women tend to withhold reports of attempted rape from authorities, that they blame their living situations for placing them at risk, that they tend to be victims of repeated assaults more often than whites and that they are significantly more accustomed to hearing sexual and racial stereotypes about the "kinds of women" likely to be raped.