The people in communities like this in El Salvador gave me the courage and the context in which to begin to remember and heal from my own traumas of rape and childhood sexual abuse. In El Salvador, I began making the connections between the violence of war and of rape. In El Salvador, people were dehumanized by being labeled as communist or subversive. To sexually abuse a child or to rape an adult requires the same mental process-the perpetrator must find a way to dehumanize the victim. An essential component for war and incest is justification.
Presidents justify their wars.
Parents who abuse their children find ways to justify their acts to themselves, while denying the harm and often the reality to the rest of the world. Usually, the reality is denied even within the family. At the center of each lies an abuse of power. Part of the solidarity movement's work has been to expose the torture, the repression, and the slaughter of civilians in Central America that was paid for with U.S. tax dollars-to name and challenge our corporate abuse of power. In various ways we defend human rights and expose violations to the light of international publicity.