By Kelly Clark
October 23rd, 2009
So I was in the middle of a mediation in
The thing I don’t understand,” she said, “is why these kids don’t say anything to anyone? What sort of power do these pedophiles have that causes otherwise intelligent children to keep silent about what is happening?”
It is one of the regular questions I get asked: Why don’t they tell?
What I told her was along these lines. I have had clients tell me that the abuser threatened them: one young man told about how his physician, who was regularly abusing him during medical checkups, took a scapel and laid it alongside the 12 year-old boy’s scrotum and said: “if you ever tell anyone what is going on in this room, I will slice you open just like this– do you understand me?” Often it is like this, a direct threat. Sometimes it is indirect: Bad things will happen to me if you tell; or bad things will happen to you. Something will happen to your family.
Many times, abusers play on the spiritual or religious beliefs of the child: this is between you, me and God. What you have told me, and what we have done, is all covered by the seal of the confessional, and if you ever tell anyone, you will commit a mortal sin.
Sometimes it is relatively subtle: this is our little secret. What we share is special, and so do not ruin it by telling anyone.
The most baffling of all was this: a man in his 40’s told me why he, as a 16 and 17 year old boy never told anyone about the fact that his priest, a highly popular figure in and around
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