Child Sex Abuse is Trending and that’s a Good Thing

People are finally talking about this “hard to talk about” topic

The term “child sex abuse” became a trending topic on social media recently. This was thanks in part to the release of Leaving Neverland, a documentary that featured two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who shared their child sex abuse experiences at the hands of Michael Jackson. There was a lot of response to the documentary, much of it disputing the abuse, which helped the term rise in popularity.

I didn’t care why the dialogue was open. I was just glad people were talking about it.

For many years, I’d tried to share stories about my experiences as a survivor of child sex abuse to a largely non receptive audience. It wasn’t because people didn’t see my articles. I had a lot of followers and viewers who’d responded to lighter stories I’d written. It was just that child sex abuse was an especially tough subject to read about, even for those who hadn’t experienced it. It left people feeling sad, angry, and helpless. Because of that, people tended to avoid it.

The subject matter was very important to me, so I persisted for years. Still, I felt a weight of anxiety every time I posted about child sex abuse. As a result, I began to veer toward easier to digest topics like fashion, dating, and parenting. Eventually, I took a hiatus from writing altogether as my voice began to feel inauthentic.

The darker stories about my abuse still lived loudly in my head, but I quieted my own voice because I knew no one wanted to hear it.

When I started writing again this year, I decided not to dance around the topic. The reason I felt empowered to do this was because I’d recently learned that my young teenage niece had also experienced sexual abuse. I wanted her to feel like she had a voice. In order to do that, I had to use mine. That didn’t mean that I felt less guilt or anxiety about posting and sharing my stories. I’d simply decided that the guilt was worth it.

A couple of months and several articles about child sex abuse later, Leaving Neverland was released, and I began to see people talking about it freely. It wasn’t all good, of course. A lot of people were angry that Wade Robson and James Safechuck waited so long to tell their stories. They were called liars, monsters, and even deserving of the abuse they’d received.

This became especially frenzied as radio stations stopped playing Michael Jackson’s songs. Debates blew up everywhere on the web, and while non survivors argued about it, those of us who had experience with child sex abuse were asked to chime in.

I never thought anyone would care about the subject enough to ask me to share my opinion based on my child sex abuse experiences.

It felt really good to have a receptive audience. Writing and posting about my child sex abuse experience became empowering and cathartic. As I shared more about my experiences, I heard from other survivors who also felt empowered. Those who didn’t write, shared in other ways. They talked to close friends and family, posted status messages on social networks, and created art forms of all kinds.

Silence is the child sex abusers’ strongest tool. It allows them the time to keep abusing, adding more victims to their collection. When we don’t talk about child sex abuse, we are giving power to abusers.

This trend will fade away as all trends do, but it will leave behind the floodgate it opened in the form of open dialogue and outspoken survivors. I plan to keep walking through that gate, inviting my niece, my sister, my brothers, and other child sex abuse survivors to come with me.

In time, hopefully child sex abuse will be eradicated. We will never know unless we talk about it.