I am just seeing this post now, and it saddens me.
@JustDave spoke his truth. I can understand that others do not agree. But instead getting respectful statements of disagreement from fellow survivors, he got clobbered and shown the door. He disagreed but was not disagreeable. He never attacked anyone personally yet himself endured enough personal attack that he felt unsafe and closed his posts. And that is simply not right.
I spent my preteen-teen years defending my abuser, and continued to defend him in so many different ways, so I can understand Dave's words on that level. Some of us continue to do that. It's simply how we survived psychically. For some of us, we still cannot internalize what we have been through and perhaps we project that questioning disbelief into other arenas. When I shared my story for the first time aloud, I could hardly endure the words that left my lips and hit my own ears - as if hearing it all for the first time. I lived with those secrets for years - but hearing them escape my own lips stopped me in my tracks - I tried to keep talking - but choked on my own words. I didn't see that coming. It was the first time in my life I cried over it. So many of us are at different places in our healing. Everyone should enjoy the safety of this place to share their thoughts, even if they fall short of finding validation.
Apologizing for rapists is not the same as questioning if someone is a rapist. I was an invited guest to the first screening of
Leaving Neverland and the taping of the Oprah Winfrey interview with survivors Wade Robson and James Safechuck and filmmaker Dan Reed. No-one could be more convinced than me that Michael Jackson was guilty of sexual abuse with these boys (now grown men). But Dave was fully within the bounds of appropriate sharing to question it and to state that he remains unconvinced. I disagree with him as vigorously as I would fight for his right to be heard.
And while no-one apologized for rapists in this thread, the fact is that hating the abuser is not a litmus test for sharing in the forums. Nor is it a barometer for measuring how bad one's abuse was. We each come here having survived our own traumas. We have navigated the best we knew how - often on our own with little more than the toolbox of the kids we were. We walked the healing paths that have made the most sense for us. And those paths are often so very different. For some it is a path of anger. For others, a path of deference. Still others skirt a path of denial. And others find a path of forgiveness. There is no right or wrong. Every path that respects others and honors consent and decency and site guidelines should be supported if possible, respected in any case, and never flamed. I am not just saying that as a moderator. I am saying it as another survivor standing shoulder to shoulder here with all of you.
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