Tavis Smiley/NPR Interview (cont.)
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SMILEY: Why, if there's an answer to this, have you discovered
that people are most often or too often, certainly, not believed? Why is
that?
Ms. STONE: A lot of times, parents
are dealing with their own issues. If you look at the
statistics, you know, research shows that one in four
women and one in six men have been sexually abused by
the time they were 18. So if you're in your office,
you look among your colleagues, you're in church, you
look, you know, across the pews and you just think about
what that means. When you think one in four women, one
in six men, this has touched a lot of people. And all
too often, parents are dealing with their own drama
and trauma, and they don't know how to deal with this
when it happens to their kids. So their first response
may be to not want to believe because they don't know
what to do to respond to it.
SMILEY: Talk to me about how sexual abuse affects families.
Ms. STONE: Sexual abuse is more
prevalent among people we know. So we often think
it's the, you know, stranger lurking at the playground...
SMILEY: Right.
Ms. STONE: ...in the trench coat.
But it's more often people you know, like, love
or live with. But what we tend to do is we close
ranks, especially in the African-American community.
You know, we circle the wagons, this is our business,
we're not putting our business in the streets.
We have a distrust of social services, authority
figures, if you will, the cops and, all too often,
for good reason. But in these particular instances,
it is so important to open those ranks and speak
out about this, let someone know what's happening
in the family. You know, we try to take care of
this ourselves. We may turn to a minister or sister
circle, but these folks aren't trained to deal
with this. We really need to turn to people who
can address this issue from a criminal perspective
and from a mental health perspective, because this
has enormous psychological, emotional impact.
SMILEY: I'm not sure you did it by design, Robin, but I noticed
in your statement just now you mentioned criminal before mental health.
Was that deliberate? Was that by design or is that just happenstance?
Ms. STONE: Well, sexual abuse
is a crime. It is a violation. And, again, often
when this happens in our families, you know, we
tend to try to deal with this ourselves. We don't
want to look at a perpetrator or offender within
the family as just that. Experts will tell you
that the way you deal with sexual abusers is through
treatment and supervision. Well, they can't be
supervised unless they get into the system. Abusers
are conniving, they're sneaky, they prey on children,
they groom them, if you will, they get them to
feel as if they can trust that person. And it's
really hard for lay people to be able to supervise
an offender, and so that's why they need to get
in the system so they can be supervised and they
can get treatment. It is a mental disorder that
needs to be treated as such.