From: sonia@joliet.berkeley.edu (Sonia Marx)
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery
Subject: Re: Confrontations (brief spoilers)
Date: 22 Dec 92 16:45:26 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley

In article <BzMA62.95y@twwells.com>
anon-1498@twwells.com (Sierra) writes:
 
First of all, let me say CONGRATULATIONS for even planning it!!!  Just
thinking about telling them to go to hell means a lot of their brainwashing
has been for naught.  YAY!!!

>be a major step, but how much will it really do?  One of the things which
>made the first time I confronted them so traumatic was that I expected my
>mother to believe me, and it really shocked and upset me when I didn't.
>I don't want to go into this confrontation with overblown expectations,
>too.

I didn't get any satisfaction from my parents, but my main purpose was to
make them stop trying to contact me, which I did eventually achieve after
a couple of months of insistence.  (My mom is saying it's "inconceivable",
which it wasn't, literally, I'll have you know!  And my father wrote this
letter saying he deplored the way children blame their problems on their
parents.  Isn't that a laugh!

One of the things that I did get out of it (and apparently Erin did too)
is being able to post directly without using an anonymous alias.  It also
led me to tell a family that has been friends with my family for a long
time, because I was concerned about their seven-year-old daughter.  They
were incredibly supportive, and the woman in the family is telling my
mom to get her head out of the sand!!  :-)!!  And just recently, I wrote
a letter to my aunt in Israel (my favorite relative) and *she* was
incredibly supportive too!  So while I didn't get anything from
my parents, it did let me start talking to people that I couldn't talk
to before because I was afraid it would get back to my parents.

>And now I've been starting to wonder if it's fair to them to plan on
>cutting them out of my life ("divorcing" myself from them).  Shouldn't
>I give them a chance?  What if they react positively to what I have to
>say?  Maybe my father will admit what he's done, given enough time... A
>therapist told me that 90% of all abusers deny it, and I really don't think
>they'll react positively, but shouldn't I give them a chance?
 
FAIR????  FAIR?!?!?!  Were they FAIR to you???  Sorry.  Lost my cool for
a second there.  While we shouldn't sink to the perp's level, I also
think that they have lost some basic privileges of being human through
acting less than human.  Privileges like contact with their children
and grandchildren.  Privileges like respect.  ARRGGGHHH!!  (No, I'm not
angry at you Sierra!  I'm angry at society for programming all of us to
be "nice" long after we should start clawing their eyes out!)

>If any of you all have confronted your perps, how did it go?  What is it
>really like to formally cut off ties with your family?  Do you have any
>suggestions for how I should handle this?  I could certainly use advice.
> 

I terribly miss having a "mommy" and a "daddy," but I never had those in
the first place.  I do NOT miss having to lie to them over the phone, or
receiving their inane letters where they pretend they're a perfectly
normal family, or being judged and found wanting every time I communicate
with them.  All in all, it's been great!

I wish you well, and offer a hug!

Sonia