Thanks guys. It's a funny thing, because I find it surprisingly easy to talk about, mainly because I feel no shame for what happened to me and refuse to dwell in victimhood.
I find the MJ child abuse cases very interesting, saddening and conflicting in equal measures. I would rather slit my wrists than tell someone else who has been through it how to feel, or to deny the validity of someone elses experiences, but the fact is, people are falsely accused, it happens everyday. And I personally feel very strongly that victims of child sexual abuse have a duty not to do anything that casts other victims in a poor light, and the way I see Wade carry on just makes me sick. People like him make it HARDER for victims to come forward. When your story is ever-changing, when you make ludicrous claims like you didn't realise anal rape wasn't normal behaviour, when you say that your alleged abuser taught you to believe in the goodness of mankind... the list goes on and on and it is simply not the way somebody who is truly hurting from childhood sexual abuse behaves.
I know it's not unheard of for victims to defend their abusers, but I am forming my opinion on Wade based on the way he has conducted himself since making his allegations, and he has done so appaulingly. And what troubles me greatly is when people start making connections between failures in their professional and personal life and the abuse they encountered. I think this is treading on very shakey ground.
The fact is, nobody knows the extent of the effects child abuse has on somebody into adulthood. I appreciate that everybody is different, and some people never truly come to terms with what has happened to them. I guess in that respect I am lucky. But this whole mentality that you can blame everything you don't like in your life on your sexual abuse just pisses me off. Going around saying that you can't work, that you dropped out of uni, that you coulda/shoulda/woulda been this, that or the other but it was your sexual abuse that stopped you from fulfilling these things does nothing to empower other victims. And there is no proof that it was the abuse that stopped you from doing these things.
I have experienced many of the textbook symptoms that victims of child abuse often go through as adults, I have struggled with crippling social anxiety, depression and all sorts. It could be a result of my abuse, but it is more likely down to my family history of mental illness. To be honest, I don't really think it matters what caused it, it can never be proven and I choose not to spend a lot of time dwelling on what happened to me in the past. Bad things happen to good people all the time and we are all shaped by the experiences we've had both good and bad. But it's impossible to say "I am like this because of what you did to me, therefore I am entitled to x amount of money". It doesn't work like that, if only life was that simple.
All you can do as a victim of any kind of abuse is to try and not be defined by it and to try to seek justice to stop this happening to more people. And seeking justice isn't just about seeing your abuser locked up. It's also about helping other victims by sticking to the truth, being credible and not using your experience as a card to be played in the pursuit of money/pity/attention/blame.
