Once the offender has completed his or her sentence, they return to the community, usually no better than when they left, and often worse. In order to break the cycle of abuse, some communities have opted to heal the victim, offender, their families and the surrounding community. Through this process, people are healed, the silence is broken and the cycle of sexual abuse is stopped. Dealing with sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities is difficult for many reasons. The pain many communities is experiencing because of the abuse they have suffered makes it very difficult to even talk about it.
Many people prefer to bury the pain and to try to forget.
In the mid 1980s, a few Canadian Aboriginal communities began the process of recovering and healing related to sexual abuse. Although almost all communities are struggling with this issue, and some communities are very open about their struggle, there are still many in which powerful people will not allow the issue of sexual abuse to come to the surface and be addressed head on. This manual is written for communities that are ready to address the issue of sexual abuse. The law requires that all suspected cases of child sexual abuse be reported and prosecuted. Canadian society tends to want to push sexual abusers into prisons as quickly as possible.