Why Most of us stayed silent

Why Most of us stayed silent
Hauser

Hauser

Registrant
In my time at the board here, I've come to notice that perps use two primary means of convincing victims to stay silent about the abuse.

Both are insideous in their nature and one is not necessarily worse than the other as far as effects in the victims life after it stops. Please feel free to correct me if you're so inclined.

One is force, threats, and violence, against the victim and those he loves and cares about.

The other is shame. This is what my perp specialized in. He manipulated my cravings for attention like I was a lump of clay to be molded to his desires. He was able to make me come back and say "I'm sorry" for saying "no" to what he would "ask" me to do. I followed him around like a little puppy. When I would try to say "no", he would say "Nobody has to know". "It's just between you and me".

Whenever I tried to say "no", he would withhold attention from me.

He got ME to say "I'm sorry"!

geez
 
I think my perp (my brother) used my lack of knowledge about sex and my trust and admiration towards him. As I remember it I looked up to him alot.
 
Hauser,

The man who abused me changed his tactics to keep me silent as things progressed. At first he played on my confusion and fear, and then moved on to threats and shaming tactics as he wanted more and more from me.

I think the common thread through all this is the fact that a child simply does not have the resources to respond to such a danger. Lacking a clear sense of who he can tell and what he can say, as well as any conviction that he will be believed, he feels isolated. His silence expresses that feeling - What is there to say if you are totally alone?

The silence is a day-to-day thing. It never occurred to me that the abuse would continue for years; it was just one day after another, each one in silence. After a time, however, I was convinced it would never stop. But even then I remained silent. The reasons then were different - What is there to say if you are convinced you are worthless and unlovable?

Much love,
Larry
 
The pervert that abused me just pretended he was my best friend ever & his timing was immaculate.

He was a pure ****!

This time next month we will both know what the courts think!!

Best wishes...Rik
 
All honesty, I just didn't realize what was going on was wrong. They made it seem like it was no big thing.

I didn't think nothing much about, what actually happened, until recently.
 
Hauser,

I know that for me when it started I did'nt have a clue that it was wrong - I was only 4 - but as I came to realize that it was wrong he had already laid all of the groundwork for the shame and guilt to keep me from ever telling - when I finaly got him to stop at age 9 (after a lot of failed attempts) he made a bunch of threats which really cemented the secret into me...

Took me till I was almost 30 to tell another living soul

TJ jeff
 
i hate to add this one but the one that keeps them quiet forever they kill them ,we are the lucky ones if you can believe that!my perp tried his best to keep me quiet forever.
 
"Its our secret, its only a dream, this is your fantasy," These words to a child completely confuse reality and make silence the only option, so I guess my perpetrator used confusion to keep me silent, which is still with me today.
 
I was lonely and needy, and he was my only friend. He knew it, and he used it against me with threats and withdrawing from me. I had to say I was sorry too, Hauser. He threatened to beat me up, and he hit me. Then, he used shame and convinced me it was my fault. When he was done, he shamed me publicly to his new druggie friends. What a treat. No wonder we didn't tell, but I wish I had when I was young. It would have saved me a lot of grief.
 
Hauser
that's all classic perp tactics, and it's abuse of power.

Mine did the same, starting with very low level stuff, and when I said "no more" they used violence, and it worked.
From then on it was the 'secret shame' thing, and that worked as well.
Within months I was asking them for sex, because that's what they'd taught me to do.

Nobody should ever underestimate the 'skills' of perps.

Dave
 
My perpetrators didn't exactly use shame or violence. It was fear I suppose, but not for myself. At the time I thought they were cool people, and I didn't want them to get in trouble. Perhaps "misguided sympathy" would better describe it.
 
My perp stated "I will get you alone, I will find a way and I'll beat you". With that threat I felt a veil of darkness fall upon me. Only years later would I learn of the term depression and I realized that was the darkness that desended upon me that day.
 
I only found out this year, that my abuse was never reported, it was a massive shock. Why?
I went to the police station, but must not have told them so much to nail the b*stard.

Why the police did not follow it up is beyond my imagination because I know that I was absolutely terrified at the time, and the cops would have known that.

41years down the line, and now I can put pieces back into the jigsaw, he must have terrified me into not telling.

It explains the massive guilt that possessed me for all those years, and the worry that this perp would kill my family as he said he would.

Anyone who says that to an innocent kid needs to be locked up for a very long time, who knows how many more kids he got, and little me worrying about them also.

ste
 
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