The Kony 2012 video proved
one incredible thing: there’s power in exposure. When we expose the grandiose
sin of the truly wicked, we crush the veneer power of evil and restore the
power where it belongs; within free individuals—those ordained as free by their
God. Lies cannot stand under the blowtorch of truth. But so often there’s
collateral damage, and, in the case of victims of abuse, rare is it that there
are easy ways back to the freedom which they deserve.
Predatory Adults And Victimised Children
The relevance of this principle,
herein, is this: almost every adult reading this had an adult (or adults,
plural), somewhere in their pasts, tell them when they were a child to ‘keep a
little secret’. Some of those children, today’s adults, parents and
grandparents, were asked to keep an atrocious secret—they were at the foot of
‘secret’ abuse.
One of the ploys that adult
predators of children use is guilt and shame—to perpetrate an act with a child
and get the child to own responsibility to the act or part of it. The predatory
adult then hooks onto the act and the child’s acknowledged link with it—that they were ‘part’ of it—and
manipulates the child, thereby, to ‘keep the secret’. The child becomes trapped
through fear and it’s no fault of their own. Trust has also become victimised.
The power game is complete when
the child must trust the sick adult, because, after all, the adult is keeping
the child from being exposed when they, too, ‘keep the secret’. The key fear is
exposure. These power games, therefore, continue on in secret.
Any child who’s asked by an adult
to keep a ‘little secret’, however small, is being abused. And any adult
perpetrating such an act is abusing a child. We should never underestimate the
negative power of lies.
And let’s get another thing
straight; it’s not just adults who are predators. Older children may be just as
lethal in manipulating younger children. And adults abuse adults too. Anywhere a power differential exists
there is the potential for abuse.
Exposing Secrets For What They Are
Somehow we must debunk the secret.
Sure, there’ll be the knockers and doubters; those sceptics that think most
victims cry ‘wolf’. On the other side of the ledger, there are the people who
are manipulated into claims that they’re abusing when there’s been no such
intent. But as long as children and the vulnerable are concerned, they must be
listened to, and what they say must be respected. We must respond to their
fear.
We must alert our children and
grandchildren to the presence of adults that might manipulate them or others
they see. It’s a stranger danger lesson, but one with a twist; most people who
would abuse a child’s trust are known to
them; many are close to the family or even in the family. That
lattermost reality is saddest.
We must teach children, early on,
that adults encouraging them to lie should be exposed, no matter what ‘secrets’
could be involved. That by courageously exposing such things they’d be
believed. The safety of the vulnerable is uppermost.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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