This is a comment by W.R.R. on the post “Why Forgiving Others Makes Life Better For You“.
Trigger warning: contains references to child sexual abuse and rape.
“This essay tells just one aspect of my many abusers, a “man of God”, who raped me almost every Saturday for years starting when I was five. He paid my father for the chance to rape me, like several other men: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-good-life-now-i-lay-me-down/2/
“Then there is this, proof to me that forgiveness of abusers can greatly harm the abused: http://m.psychologytoday.com/articles/199907/must-you-forgive
“If somebody stole your boyfriend, fine, forgive them if you feel you want to. For those people you cite, who chose to forgive her child rapist and the murderer of his family? If that is their choice, so be it. There choice does not negate or refute mine.
“You do not cite extreme horrors of your past; you give movie examples. With respect, I will only listen to forgiveness lectures when the lecturer has experienced personal horror themselves and chosen to forgive. Even then, they have no place to tell another person they should forgive. The last person who told me I ‘have to’ forgive, sent me into a suicidal spiral I barely lived through.
“My father and his clients believed they had the right to rape children. They enjoyed it. They made films of child rape to sell. They joked about the pedophiles who were too afraid of prison to rape a child. They called them weak. To them, the children were objects, inhumane. The things that were done to us would make most people wretch. These are not men who ‘didn’t mean it’ or didn’t know it was wrong. These are not men anybody should ever forgive.
“I often say that I will forgive when somebody asks me to only if that person can take away the damage of bipolar and cerebellar ataxia, PTSD, agoraphobia, anxiety, panic attacks, flashbacks, nightmares. Or, can that person give me back what the abusers took from me: the sight of my left eye, the scars deep inside my body, and covering my skin, missing fingers, wholeness of mind, a nearly severed and badly healed tongue and impaired speech, self worth, a face that is smooth and not twisted by hideous scars. Can that person give me back my childhood, before lies, rapes, and torture ruined my world view and left me bereft of the ability to easily trust? Can they erase eighteen years of daily fear and pain? Can they give me back my choice? My innocence?
“When the wrongs are made right, perhaps I could forgive. Yet even then, only if the abusers were sorry and admit that they did wrong. Only if they went to prison for their crimes.
“The person who can do all that, can lecture me on forgiveness. Child rape isn’t a crime that is over after the pedophile leaves the wounded child. The damage, for many of us, will never be over. With respect, no banal plea of ‘forgiveness is best’ will change that.”
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My attitude is “God forgives, I don’t”
As a comment this stands on it’s own – in fact it does not just stand it towers over so many!
So many think of Trauma as a scratch that just needs the right size BAND-AID®. If it was all just that simple!
Thanks for not being willing to crushed into the one size fits all pop psychology that gets peddled so widely to make reality easier for so many to dismiss!
Carl, thank you; I agree with that sentiment. I don’t even know what I believe spiritually, but the idea of forgiving people who have done evil and enjoyed doing it or refuse to see that they did harm, is repugnant to me. A couple of Christians among my adopted family have told me that the Bible states a person must be sorry and repent before forgiveness for them is even possible. The phrase “forgiveness is for you, not them” I reject. The admitting that one has done wrong and is sorry must come first, but without redress, forgiveness insults the abused. Either way, to forgive or not is a choice, not a requirement for our own healing. Nobody has the right to push it on anybody else.
MediaHound, thank you so much. Your words here and elsewhere are a gift and a balm. Your words can heal, while the words of some others only harm. Worse, they refuse to see that; married to their dogma, we all must conform. When we refuse, they insult with their false sour grapes pity.