Healing Victims Of Sexual Abuse: How to Counsel and Minister to Hearts Wounded by Abuse

By Paula Sandford

This books gives love, acceptance, and healing to the victims of sexual abuse the abused, the abuser, and their families. It is an invaluable tool for those who counsel and minister to lives fractured by sexual abuse. As a professional counselor, Paula Sandford has helped hundreds of sexual abuse victims successfully deal with their fears, guilt, confusion, and depression. In her personal life, she has seen beloved family members victimized by this cruel enemy of childhood and family life. She knows the pain that all the victims share, but she also knows the way to healing. Through the many various stories of tragedy to triumph and practical tools for healing, this book leads the reader into new dimensions of hope, healing, and wholeness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charisma House
• Release date: Nov 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781599799032

Book preview

NIV).

Chapter 1

EYES TO SEE AND

EARS TO HEAR

Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember?

MARK 8:18

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

ROMANS 8:1

We … shall assure our heart before Him, in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.

1 JOHN 3:19–20

I CAN’T BELIEVE IT! HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO BLIND? How can I ever forgive myself for letting such a thing go on? I left my child so vulnerable! Where was I? How could I have failed to see?"

Questions such as these have arisen from the bleeding and bewildered hearts of thousands of parents who have just discovered that their child, who they felt had been so safe in their love, nurture, and protection, has been sexually molested by one they trusted. There are no simple answers that can instantly take away the pain.

DEALING WITH SELF-CONDEMNATION

As parents or loved ones of an abused child, we must begin by dealing with our own self-condemnation for our failure to be what we so desperately wanted to be and overcome the need to punish ourselves by wallowing in the misery of what-ifs and if-onlys. It is a fact that Jesus bears our grief and carries our sorrows (Isa. 53:4), but we have to release to Him the burden of our woundedness, anger, and hate. The first step is to choose to forgive ourselves. With the support and, if needed, the coaching of a prayer partner or prayer minister, we should pray, confessing both our feelings and our faith:

Lord, I am overwhelmed by my grief. My heart condemns me for my failure to protect my child. I don’t know what to do; it seems like the whole world is crashing in on me, and I’m spinning in confusion. O God, I need some answers! I know that in You there is no condemnation at all. I don’t know how to forgive myself, but by an act of my will I make that choice. And I choose to trust You to deal with my heart and set me free from condemning self-accusation or any other way in which I might punish myself.

The prayer minister or prayer partner needs to respond, strongly affirming:

Thank You, Lord, that You weep with and for Your children. You have heard this prayer, and Your heart is full of compassion. Thank You for Your forgiveness, love, and healing balm that You are pouring into this wounded and repentant heart right now. (Person’s name), in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. Receive that forgiveness. Lord, lift off the weight of guilt. Bring all thoughts and feelings of condemnation to death on Your cross. Quiet the inner storms, and comfort (person’s name) in this time of fear. Lord, we stand together in the strength of Your Spirit and choose to put our trust in You. We invite You to take charge of us and every aspect of this difficult situation we face. Let us do all things in Your wisdom, according to Your grace, love, and power.

Following the prayer, we need to walk in a continual discipline of reckoning self-accusation and condemnation as dead on the cross each time we recognize that we are beginning to entertain such thoughts and feelings. If we do not, the process of healing stops. Each time we can say to the Lord, Here I go again, putting myself under guilt. In Your name, Jesus, I renounce that and choose to walk in Your forgiveness. And then go on with whatever tasks we have to do.

UNDERSTANDING WHY WE

HAD NO EYES TO SEE

Beyond choosing to forgive ourselves, we need answers to the question, How could I have been so blind?

By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. A wise man is strong, and a man of knowledge increases power.

—Proverbs 24:3–5

The first answer is that we did not want to believe it possible that a trusted friend or loved one, especially a father or stepfather, could have abused our child. If we suspected at all, we probably resisted the idea, feeling guilty that such a thing would even cross our mind. If suspicion persisted, fear of possible consequences of discovering truth overcame our ability to confront the issue. And so we suppressed our thoughts and feelings to the point of total denial. Unwittingly we became literally blind, deaf, and insensitive to reality.

Linda was a lovely, gentle woman whom John and I had known well for many years. Her marriage to Bill was written in tension, dictated by his frequent explosions of violent, unexplainable temper and punctuated by her tearful but persistent and often placating attempts to gather the broken but still workable pieces of their home life together for the sake of their children. Though Bill professed to be a born-again, Spiritfilled Christian, he had fallen into adultery numerous times. He had begged for forgiveness and had declared vehemently on each occasion that he was truly repentant, had learned his lesson, and would never fall again.

Finally, when he was caught seducing a teenage babysitter, Linda recognized that he could never change until he dealt with deep issues in his heart. But he stubbornly avoided taking the initiative to submit himself to a prayer minister, even though friends and family strongly encouraged him to do so. It was not until Linda obtained a legal separation that he relented by agreeing to receive extensive prayer ministry, that being the prerequisite for any thought of reconciliation. John and I had ministered to the two of them from time to time as much as Bill had been able to allow. But we had seen that he was always more interested in patching a quarrel than in truly healing his marriage or transforming his life. Knowing that we were too close to Linda to minister to them with sufficient objectivity, we recommended that they go to a couple we knew who are among the finest counselors available in either the Christian or secular community.

During the ensuing seven months, Bill faced many of the root causes for his insecurities and for his need to defile women. He dealt with a number of basic sources for his anger. His counselors determined that he had progressed far enough to return to his family. For a period of time he was able to manifest the effects of his healing, and Linda for the first time began to celebrate real hope for a stable marriage. It was at this point that Bill decided he could sustain his new life on his own—without counseling or a support group—and the healing process was aborted. He continued to play the role of the new man, making all the right sounds, but allowed no one to relate closely enough to know him or to haul him to account when he began to fall back periodically into former patterns of irritability and temper.

Bill’s and Linda’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Karen, who had always been a responsible, sensitive, loving child and good student, began to exhibit rebellious, irresponsible behavior. Truancy and unexplained absences from home grew in frequency. Often Linda would arrive home from work to discover that Karen was nowhere to be found. Attempts to enforce discipline elicited angry, defensive outbursts. When anyone invited Karen to talk about her problems, she defiantly rejected every attempt to reach her and retreated into sullen moodiness.

Finally and with great difficulty she came to her mother with a horrible story of sexual abuse. Her father had been molesting her since the time of her parents’ separation, which meant that she was being abused all during the time of their counseling and reconciliation!

Shattered, torn, fearful, and confused, Linda confronted her husband. Bill adamantly denied all accusations, claiming that Karen’s imagination was running away with her, that she had been unduly influenced by the stories of friends who had been abused. He went on, dramatically playing the role of the injured party. Linda didn’t know whom or what to believe. Finally, after repeated questioning, he confessed to having touched her once or twice. As Karen’s behavior progressed more and more to the extreme, however, it became evident that he was guilty of much more than he had been willing to confess.

Realization of what had been taking place for years within her home overwhelmed Linda with the force of a tidal wave. She had wanted so desperately to believe that Bill was changing and had so set herself to celebrate every little sign of his improvement that she had shut out the little signals that might otherwise have alerted her to the presence of trouble. Now she had no alternative but to put him out of the home in an effort to protect Karen. If she had not, the state would likely have taken her children from her. She and the children proceeded with family counseling throughout most of the next year and received a great deal of healing from that source as well as through support groups within her church.

Bill received counseling for sexual rehabilitation while serving a term in prison. He and Linda are divorced. She and the children have rebonded, and the Lord is blessing and redeeming their lives as only He can.

EQUIPPING OUR EYES TO RECOGNIZE

SYMPTOMS OF SEXUAL ABUSE

A second answer to parental blindness may lie in the simple fact that few people have either the experience or the knowledge that would equip them to identify (in the behavior of their children) the symptoms that commonly result from sexual abuse.

Educating oneself to recognize sexual abuse symptoms after the fact might seem to some to be too late and somewhat useless. This is not the case at all. An important part of healing begins as we are enabled to identify in right perspective the painfully mystifying behaviors of our children. As we realize clearly and specifically that their strange, out-of-control, and often hurtful responses proceed from woundedness and fear, we can begin to relate to them easily with tenderness and compassion rather than with frustration and anger. We can seek their forgiveness not only for our failure to protect them but also for many wounds and unbearable pressures we inflicted on them in the blindness of our desperation to rescue them from self-destructive patterns.

Most victims of sexual abuse have worried about themselves and have struggled with feelings of guilt they haven’t known how to handle. Children have felt they were bad; teenagers have seen the bewilderment and hurt in their mother’s eyes and have felt responsible for injury to younger siblings; they may have wanted to stop running, cease punishing, and ask for help but couldn’t. An enlightened and empathetic parent can help them to know that their feelings and behavior were normal reactions to the abuse they experienced, that they were not terrible or crazy. A prayer minister can help victims to see these things, but a parent who is an affirming part of the process can lay an effective foundation for reconciliation and