Disclosing the abuse to Mum

Extract from one of the draft versions of Resolve, 2022. Some of this was cut from Chapter 3 The Problem with Disclosure. Whilst it did not make the final manuscript, I flagged it as content to share as a blog. The cited information from the Center of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse report was valuable to me for my understanding of where things went wrong for Mum and me.

I vividly recall summoning up the courage to tell Mum as I walked in the same front door I used to dread walking through on all those school day afternoons for years.

This was not a happy mother-and-daughter conversation we were about to have. I said summoned because I knew this would be a tough opener about what had happened in Mum’s house for us as children.

I remember we were both standing in the kitchen as we had many times before.

Mum was leaning against one end of the kitchen bench. I was standing beside the sink a few feet away. I felt the heat of my nervousness rise through my body. The words came out in a few quick sentences. Done!

I’m not sure what reaction I expected, a hug at minimum, but the mixture of anger, doubt, cross-questioning and accusation I got shocked me. Mum, standing with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, began with:

‘You’re lying!’

‘No, he would never do that!’

‘How could he have at that age!’

I tried sharing some details, to make her see it was true, how old we were, where it happened, and that didn’t do me much good. Mum was in denial:

‘What exactly did he do to you?’

‘He did not. Stop lying!’

‘What are you trying to do?’

I had nothing left to say.

On shaky, empty legs, I pushed myself away from the bench. I slipped past her to leave the kitchen without touching her, given no hug or love was coming my way. Quietly and without looking back at her, I picked up my car keys and purse off the dining table and walked back out the front door to head home to sanctuary and safety.

That one short conversation with Mum left the feeling and sound of shattered crystal between us for a very long while. The most natural bond between mother and daughter, of trust, was irreparably broken into a thousand weapon-sharp pieces.

The kindest words I didn’t hear might have been, ‘I’m so sorry that happened. I believe you. What Darryl did was wrong. What can I do to help you?’ Those words, and a loving hug, would have been enough.

There was only that one conversation until some years later. There was no follow-up nor request to talk more about it from Mum once the anger, doubt and accusation settled. For me, I felt shut down, shut out, unworthy of love and unsafe.

I told Dad, and Troy was there beside me for that disclosure.

Dad and Mum had been separated for a few years by then. Dad listened and teared up, shaking his head. It was probably the most emotional conversation I’d had with Dad. Dad didn’t question me; he said, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. How dare he do that to you. Leave it with me. It wasn’t like we had a much more detailed conversation; what was shared was enough for me. I knew he had my back.

I cleared myself of the feeling that if I’d continued to say nothing, Darryl was being let off the hook for what he’d done.

There were no guidelines for a family conversation on such a damaging subject. This was likely the most uncomfortable subject anyone had thrown at Mum and Dad in all their previous years.

Why do we tell our mother first?

Interestingly, I found in reading multiple case studies, that disclosing to the mother first is more common. Why don’t we go to our father first? Possibly, the feminine, the maternal, nurturing mother feels like it would be a safer conversation than talking to a dad about sex.

It was indeed the dad who, once told, would be mortified that his son had done this to his daughter. He’d either act or resolve to be there for her, in whatever form that might take. The mums, more often, were less resolved to act. This was about her son, not some stranger who sexually abused her daughter.

The more I immersed myself in the topic, I had new doors open, allowing me to speak with researchers directly. That was pure gold to me! It let me see more than I could find by searching the web as a member of the public!

It was in a report by the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse that I read the following. Reading the list I am sharing below, was a moment where I found compassion for Mum that I’d no longer been sure was in me. I wished Mum and I could have understood this. We may have used it in our mutual reckoning of what I’d shared with her. We could have moved forward together towards recovery from what had happened between the children she’d raised: 

Sibling sexual abuse is commonly experienced as a crisis within the family when it becomes known.

Tener et al 2018

Parents can feel that they are in an impossible situation, torn between the needs of the child who has harmed and the child who has been harmed.

Tener, Newman et al 2020

Common responses displayed by parents and caregivers include:

Initial shock and denial

Fear, anger and anxiety

Guilt and shame

Feeling like a failure as a parent

Feelings of loss and grief

Isolation and stigma

Feeling totally overwhelmed

Feeling out of control and powerless, especially with professionals

Being unconcerned about the behaviour (believing it to be normal or just not serious)

Ongoing denial, struggling to accept this could have happened

Ejecting the child who has harmed

Being supportive of the child who has harmed

Being supportive of the child who has been harmed

Blaming the child who has been harmed

Having different responses from each other

Blaming the other parent

Confusion and uncertainty about sex

Archer et al, 2020; Hackett, 2001; Hackett et al, 2014; Tener et al, 2018

Reading over all those dot points of responses made it easier to see how difficult it is for a parent to contemplate where to begin.

I looked at that list from three perspectives: being a survivor, trying to see it from my Mum’s perspective and as a parent of three children myself. How helpful would it be to know of this list of dot points that would educate parents, guardians, and abuse survivors to manage the path forward proactively together?

The shame, self-blame, secrecy and stigma experienced by parents may be particularly acute. They may feel that some wrongdoing on their part has resulted in sexual abuse having taken place between their children.

Parents need support and emotional containment in order to be able to offer appropriate support to all the children within the family.

Yates, P. and Allardyce, S. 2022

Mum was shocked into silence and inaction.

I could only imagine how much professional support would have helped both Mum and I find a path to walk forward together. Do so in solidarity. Instead we walked on two separate pathways, where we could not reach across to hold each other’s hand in support.

I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on that family-held silence as a mature adult. I have wondered what would have changed for us all if we’d had safe communication skills in our family toolkit. Imagine if we had all agreed to have the professional support of a family counsellor to work through the reality of the abuse. I don’t know what the outcome of that might have been. However, I imagine it could have been a smidge better than the silence we maintained. Silence only honours the abuser.

Silence kept the power where it always was in Darryl’s hands.

Shared with love,

Alice Perle

Resolve: A Story of Courage, Healthy Inquiry and Recovery from Sibling Sexual Abuse is now available globally on Amazon, and all online bookstores. Libraries and bookstores can order copies. Please follow me on Instagram and Facebook. The audiobook is now also available via over 50 audiobook sites.