Breaking power of shame key for healing
by Rodolpho Carrasco
Saturday, October 16, 1999 in San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group
[Rodolpho Carrasco is associate director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, Calif. Check out more articles by Rodolpho Carrasco here.)
Earlier this week, according to various news sources, four Laotian-American girls in Detroit escaped a horrifying circumstance. For a number of days these girls - ranging in age from 14 to 17 - were gang-raped by as many as 20 men. A girl described a steady stream of men coming and going from the house where the rapes took place. While three of the four girls were raped over a two-day period, the fourth was assaulted for two entire weeks.
This story caught my attention because last weekend I heard a similar story from a new friend whom I had just met. He said that when his wife was a high school senior, before he knew her, she was taken from school and gang-raped by five men. He described times his wife is reminded of the event. Once, in the supermarket, his wife saw one of the rapists. Another time she pleaded not to drive down a certain street, because on that street sat the house where she was abused.
Lord have mercy.
I got to wondering how anyone recovers from experiences like these. We know that some recover and some don't. Whether or not people recover seems to do with how they handle the shame associated with such violations. Some, through grieving, lots of love, and forgiveness, are able to put some distance between the event and themselves. They remain forever cautious to avoid similar circumstances in which they might again be victimized.
But the shame is strong, and often healing is hard to find.
For example, none of your contacts in the city you just moved to may know you were the victim of a heinous act, but the shame you feel may cause you to enact a self-fulfilling prophecy of rejection. They would treat you differently if they knew, you think, so you purposefully stay away from close friendships - even though the loving acceptance we find in close friendships is one of the keys to healing.
Shame has a particularly powerful hold on people who were sexually or physically abused as children. Children have almost no ability to cope with what's happening to them. Years later they carry rage, inordinate amounts of self-doubt, and are susceptible to addictions and recycling the behaviors perpetrated on them.
In order for people who have been violated in extreme ways to heal, the power of shame must be broken.
And it can be broken. There is an example of this in an encounter a prostitute has with Jesus. Jesus is dining with religious leaders when a prostitute named Mary shows up at the door. Given what we know about prostitution today, Mary was likely sexually assaulted in her early years, routinely mistreated all her life, looked down upon by society, and the bearer of great quantities of shame.
As she stands there, crying, she does not say a word. Her tears fall onto Jesus' feet, which was possible because the diners were lying down at the meal table. Bending down, she takes her hair and wipes his feet, then kisses them over and over.
Witnessing this unnerving spectacle, the religious leaders wonder aloud about why a lowly and shameful prostitute would treat Jesus in such an intimate way. Jesus could have told her to get lost quick. But instead he publicly sides with Mary, comparing out loud her loving actions to their religious legalism. Then he tells her, "Your sins are forgiven....Your faith has saved you. Go in peace."
Whatever opinion the religious leaders, you or I have about the meaning of what Jesus said to Mary, the result of the way he treated her was that the power of shame over her was broken. She indeed went in peace, because the next time we encounter her she is not a broken, vilified outcast, but a public figure surrounded by a community of people who love her and have come to her aid.
Mary's transformed life is an example of how shame can be redeemed. She is my prayer for my new friend and his wife, and for the Hmong girls.
For my new friend's wife, I pray that her scars will heal. I make a special prayer for her husband. The spouses of sexual abuse survivors are usually overlooked, but they suffer tremendously in private. How can they pipe up about their pain in the recovery process, when it was their spouse and not them who was abused? But when their spouse exhibits pain, they feel it, and when their spouse is too hurt to give love, they still need to receive love.
The four Hmong girls - with still-fresh physical, emotional, and psychological wounds - I pray for them. They are so young, but they must take courage and walk among the living, in order to find the loving affirmation through which they can be restored. If they remove themselves from our view, let it be only for a season of grieving and recovery, not to hide forever.
I have something to say to these four precious girls. I know they live in Wisconsin, far from this newspaper's geographical reach, but perhaps this article will somehow reach them: You were beautiful before your ordeal. Nothing men do can take your beauty away. You are beautiful like the sunrise.
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