Breaking the Silence

One Atlanta Organization Wants Everyone to Discuss Childhood Sexual Abuse and Offers a Safe Haven for Survivors

[ Written By Lissa Poirot ]

When I first meet Erin, I am reminded of my younger sister, who ran away as a teen. My sister was 15 when she and a friend hitchhiked from Florida to Los Angeles, making it as far as Dallas before calling home. With no money in their pockets, my sister and her friend got rides from truck drivers in an unthinkable way. She only told me once what happened to her that week she was out there, and I try not to think about it. Now, it’s 15 years later when Erin walks through the door, and I know immediately it is her, for the resemblance to my sister the day we picked her up at the airport is undeniable. Dressed in black, she has her cap pulled down over her eyes and can barely make eye contact with me. She speaks in a whisper, if she speaks at all. Mostly she just nods her head “yes” or “no,” wishing she could be anywhere else but meeting with a journalist about her past.

Erin is 18. When she was 10, a 16-year-old cousin sexually abused her. It lasted a year before he finally stopped, on his own accord. She eventually told her mother, but her family never again spoke about the abuse. They tiptoe around the subject as if it never happened. But for Erin, it’s been 7 years and it feels like only yesterday. Now an adult, she took a step toward getting help, searching the Internet for solutions. She found Safe Girls, Strong Girls, an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization that provides a place for sexually abused children to heal.

Sexual abuse is not a light subject, by any means, but with one in every three girls and one in every four boys having been sexually abused before their 18th birthday, it is time to stop being silent, said Amy Barth, Safe Girls, Strong Girls’ founder and executive director.

Providing a Safe Haven

Barth is a spitfire of a woman, boisterous and strong, and you would never know that she was also sexually abused, twice. The first time occurred when she was 7 when a friend of the family abused her. Her parents found out and she never saw the man again, but they didn’t talk about what happened, which is why she feels she didn’t stop the abuse that came years later, when a 38-year-old man from her temple started following her around and invited the then-15-year-old to his house. Barth went and felt she was to blame for the abuse that went on for two years, because she willingly returned to him. “Sexual predators know their victims very well; they know who they will be able to get power over. I allowed him to talk me into going into his house and doing things I didn’t want to do. He convinced me that he loved me and I should be doing the things that I was doing out of love,” she said.

Barth’s life was a rollercoaster ride she attributes to the pain she tried to hide deep down inside. Many adults of sexual abuse have eating disorders, abuse alcohol and drugs, are suicidal or are incarcerated. While working toward a PhD, she realized that her own issues were directly related to her childhood sexual abuse. “I didn’t start talking about it until I was 43,” Barth said. “I decided I didn’t want other girls to wait until they were adults. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble had I gotten help when I was a teenager. I wanted girls to be girls again and I developed this program because kids won’t tell, or don’t always have the words to tell if they do tell.”

Safe Girls, Strong Girls is dedicated to working with girls ages 5 to 21 who have been sexually abused to help them heal and regain their sense of control. The organization has a volunteer team of counselors and therapists who work with girls using therapies that allow them to express themselves through creative endeavors, adventure courses to help girls rebuild trust and confidence, and counseling sessions, as well as a place for girls to experience the simple joys of an ordinary childhood through Camp CADI (which is Irish for “simple happiness”), an annual summer camp that mixes traditional camp experiences, fine arts and experiential learning programs — the first of its kind in the country.

“Trust is a big issue with children who have been sexually abused. It’s a violation and a huge betrayal of trust, so our camp works to teach kids how to trust again, that there are adults they can trust, that it is OK to trust. They need to learn to be children again, because it’s such an adult thing to happen to them. And the main mission of camp is to let them reclaim their childhood, to let the girls be girls again,” Barth said.

Camp CADI is what brought Erin here from Texas. “We had the first breakthrough at camp with Erin on the ropes course. When she first came to camp she wouldn’t talk to anybody and we weren’t sure we would be able to help her. But she did the ropes course and she had to communicate with her partner down on the ground and she had to use her voice. And she came down on the zip line and I told her ‘from here let’s get over being a victim and go to survivor mode,’ ” Barth said. Survivor mode, I ask? “You have to start feeling the pain. You have to go back and process what happened to you. You have to go through the hell to get to the healing. Acknowledge it happened, go through all of the emotions, the anger, the sadness, the grief, and then once you’ve gone through the really painful part, you can begin learning to trust people again, acknowledging your boundaries,” Barth explained, adding that, “You have to do it in order to lead a healthy, adult life. This was just a time in your life, it does not define who you are.”

Bringing Light to a Delicate Subject

With so many children being sexually abused, it surprises Barth that it is not discussed more openly, which is why public awareness is another aspect of Safe Girls, Strong Girls. “We don’t want to talk about childhood sexual abuse because we don’t like to think about it; we don’t like to think about a little girl or boy losing their innocence,” she said. “But I get letters from girls around the country who say they feel ashamed and they feel guilty. We, as a society, perpetuate these feelings because we don’t talk about it. The children think if we won’t talk about it, there must be a reason they should feel ashamed and guilty. We have to start talking about it and break the taboo just like we did for domestic violence or AIDS.”

In April, in support of National Child Abuse Awareness Month, Safe Girls, Strong Girls will have a Talk Fest with strength and awareness exercises. The campaign, “Count Me In, I Want to Talk About Childhood Sexual Abuse,” will also offer workshops and community events to bring awareness to the subject we all don’t like to think about. “We’re starting in Atlanta and will hopefully spread into other communities and we’ll have a model that they can start dialoguing in their communities so that children – not only girls but all children who are sexually abused – can feel they can talk about it and get help and understand that it isn’t their fault. It’s never a kid’s fault,” Barth said.

Following the example of AIDS awareness, Safe Girls, Strong Girls has also developed a “Break the Silence” quilt project and will bring their quilt to Washington, D.C., during Child Abuse Awareness Month. “We have a campaign where people from all over the country have sent in blocks. One day it will be bigger than the AIDS Quilt because there are more survivors of childhood sexual abuse than there are AIDS,” Barth said.

Ending the Horror

Consider the numbers: one in four and one in three. In a 1990 study on childhood sexual abuse, 42 percent of women and 33 percent of men never before disclosed their abuse. Researchers in 1988 discovered the median age for child abuse to occur was 9.9 for boys and 9.6 for girls, and most sexual abuse occurs by offenders 10 or more years older than their victims.

Perhaps the most important aspects of Safe Girls, Strong Girls is its school and community outreach programs that try to stop sexual abuse from occurring. As I mother, I ask what I can do to protect my children, and Barth startles me by saying there isn’t much I can do. “Pedophiles can be anybody — a coach, a teacher, a babysitter, Sunday School teacher, your pediatrician. There’s no typical pedophile, and it’s the ones you don’t suspect that are the most dangerous,” she said. “The only thing you can do is keep talking to your children about appropriate touches and how to talk about inappropriate touches if anybody does touch them, and that they have a right not allow anybody to touch them.”

Barth’s concern is that the Internet brings even more danger to children, where in chat rooms they can meet pedophiles that pretend to be other teens. “Make chat rooms off limits to your children and know what your children are doing when they are on the computer,” she said.

But most importantly, she added, make sure your children know now that they can come to you and tell you anything. “Tell children you’ll never think it’s their fault and that they can come to you and you’ll never blame them,” Barth said.

For Erin, the worst is over and she is working hard to trust people again. She will barely speak to describe her experience at Camp CADI or in Safe Girls, Strong Girls counseling sessions, only saying that it made her feel safe knowing she wasn’t the only person out there who has been sexually abused. When Barth shows me pictures of Erin on a rope course, I see that she is smiling and I comment on it, as she has kept her hands in front of her mouth the entire interview. I tell her maybe next year she’ll smile when I meet her again, and this makes her smile, even though it’s hidden behind her hands. She looks forward to getting to that point. PN

Camp CADI

If you know a young girl who has been sexually abused, Camp CADI will return to Camp Twin Lakes this summer to provide a one-week, free camping and counseling program to let girls be girls again. Applications are available online at www.safegirlsstronggirls.org, or call 678-313-6963 to have one mailed to you. All applications must be received by April 15.

For More Information

Safe Girls, Strong Girls needs volunteers and donations to support its mission, as most of its programs are offered to girls free of charge. To get involved, visit www.safegirlsstronggirls.org.

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