Amazing:
I've come across on other threads how you've articulated the word 'forgiveness' and it has helped me immensely. I wish I'd saved it. You provided the etiology of the word "forgive" and how it relates to 'letting go of'.
I was still attending meetings last summer, and one fine day a particular event blew my mind. The CO was giving his end-of the week climactic sunday public talk. He started out by describing a sister who had been raped, and who just couldn't "get over it".
The gist of the talk, at least to my ears, was that the sister was letting her response to the trauma interfere with her spirituality, her relationships with others, and life in general. There seemed to be an implication that she was imposing on the elders with her inability to manage her difficulties. He suggested a solution to the problem: forgive the guy. (What I heard: 'Get over it. Get a life. Stop imposing your pathos onto others. If you still have difficulties with what happened after all this time (for the sister used in the example, a year) then you obviously lack character, will, faith, spirituality, etc.etc.etc.')
I felt like I'd been shot. I stood up and somehow got myself out of the kingdom hall. I was never able to attend another meeting without serious anxiety after that, and gradually stopped attending altogether. Kind elders discussed the situation with me and concurred with scripturally-based reasoning that we are not required to "forgive" an unrepentant person who would repeat the offense again without hesitating. That was not the issue for me......... the issue was that this imperious, arrogant TOAD representative whose word was taken as though it was straight from Jehovah's mouth had just fed TOTAL BULLSHIT to about 150 people, giving them tacit approval to disallow victims of crime/abuse of their natural responses and opportunities to heal and recover.
Discussions about how to deal with pedophiles are completely relevant and important. The lack of witnesses, lack of forensic evidence, power-plays, theatrics, etc. that usually fog up any investigation into such matters will probably ensure that these discussions will go on forever.
I'm wishing, so much, as all of this dialogue plays out in all of these posts regarding child abuse, that more emphasis would be placed how to PROVIDING THE SURVIVOR with therapeutic support. The victim of a murder is, well, dead. The victim of a violence has to contend for weeks, months, years, perhaps their entire life with the afteraffects of the abuse. Ask any survivor of abuse, whether it was a single, isolated act, or a nightmarish continuum of on-going anguish if they are generally "allowed" to have their "normal" responses to such hideous experiences. If they are fortunate, there are perhaps one or maybe even two individuals with whom they can safely confide and find support, who listen and accept them, and who do NOT try and tell them how they "should" be feeling.
For the most part, knowledge that evil DOES in fact exist and materializes frequently in our immediate environment is not welcome, and our culture is expertly conditioned to pull out the magic "denial" wand and remain blinded. It is extremely difficult for a survivor of trauma or violence to retain self-respect, credibility, esteem, all of those good things that help us feel like living.
How often have you overheard some random parent tell a child who's just fallen and gotten hurt: "Oh, you're alright. Stand up and stop acting like a......."
So, yes, we can capture all of the abusing pedophiles and twisted parents and all of the other screwed up people who lie about what's true, and send them all off somewhere. But there still remains a vast population of hurting, scared, bewildered individuals who are phenomenally unprepared and completely inequipped to deal with life after their minds have been torn to shreds.
One time after confiding in some gloriously-spiritual wtf-ever wife of some prominent person in the society about my difficulties with depression and PTSD, she told me to basically just stay busy and stop thinking about it so much. I managed to suppress the reflex to burst out laughing... but I did say "WOW!!!!! Thank you!!!!! I'll do that TODAY!!!!!! WOW i'LL DO THAT RIGHT THIS SECOND I'M OVER IT WOWWWWWWW!!!!!! Then I got out of the car and walked away from there.
