My dear friend and clergy colleague, the Rev. Christy Thomas, is a brave and superb writer. She recently shared with the world that she was a rape victim who, as is so typical, remained silent about the traumatic event.
In my book The View From Down in Poordom, I have an entire chapter that was my response to a newspaper column my dear friend the Rev. Christy Thomas had written when she was an active church pastor.
Like me, Christy is a now-retired minister in the United Methodist faith tradition. She’s also an excellent writer. That’s why the aforementioned newspaper column she wrote years ago, which was about her turning down a jobless mother’s request for church charity, stimulated an idea for that chapter in my book.
Today, I’m sharing another column Christy wrote for The Denton-Record Chronicle in Denton, Texas, in which she revealed to the world that she is a rape victim.
She writes in part:
-
I don’t remember where. I don’t remember when except I was 19. There were no witnesses. No one can support my account. I do remember being raped. And I am 100 percent sure who did it.
I never said a word. As a perceptive columnist in The Washington Post noted, one reason was that I didn’t want to hurt my father, who knew the young man in question. I didn’t want to see his anguish or experience his anger. I didn’t want him to go out in a murderous rage and bring disgrace on our family.
I buried it. It stayed buried for 20 years, my hidden trauma, my hidden shame.
Now. I hope you’ll take the time to read the entire column, at the link below, about Pastor’s Christy’s traumatic life event. It of course was written in response to the recent reactions to the Senate testimony of a woman whom I have precious little doubt was a victim of the new Supreme Court Justice.
That woman, the studious professor Christine Blakey Ford, is still being raked over hot coals for daring to share her story with the world.
Which of course is the reason victims of all kinds of sexual abuse suffer, and suffer deeply, in silence. Some for their entire, long lives.
I know, because I know rape and harassment victims who confide their stories of quiet suffering with trusted friends and family only. (One woman I know lives with the double pain of having told her husband years after they were married, only for him to tell her it was a long time ago and she just needed to get over. She’s never brought it up again. She never told her parents but confided in a sister and a couple of friends after the rape. She told me after we became close. She, by the way, is also a pastor.)
Repeat after me: men are not being targeted by hysterical, radical women.
If you’re a man or boy and don’t want to be accused of sexual abuse or harassment, treat women and girls with the kind of respect you treat your moms and aunts and your own daughters–or daughters-to-be.
It’s not hard.
Please go here and read Pastor Christy’s powerful story.
Repeat after me: men are not being victimized by hysterical women who make up stories of harassment and rape. Why would they want to make it up, knowing they’ll be crushed by bad guys and the women who empower them?
Leave a Reply