Lynne’s Blog

As a child, I survived ten different sexual abuse offenders of all stripes, from the public groper to three separate abductors and a broad gamut in between. It spanned my entire childhood, and in terms of self-protection, I wasn’t exactly “standing on the shoulders of giants” when I sprang into young adulthood. I had a few more offenders who would come into my life as well as a persistently untrustworthy world at my feet.

However, many years have gone by now, and day-to-day, I have safety and security, love and meaning, autonomy and agency. While I have those things externally, internally, I still have much I am working on.

I am grateful to have connected with KCSARC at various unenviable points in my journey. At 16, I was nearly mute, terrorized by fear that all the threats from a charged offender would come to pass. But I spoke my own words in public at his sentencing and a KCSARC Legal Advocate was there to witness. KCSARC advocates have helped me obtain legal documents, given me feedback on impact statements, answered the phone when I needed support, and answered my emails when I couldn’t bear to speak.

It’s hard to keep track of my thoughts at times. I keep a lot in my head, tumbling around with the logistics of school pick-ups, grocery lists, and hopes for the future. KCSARC advocates have helped me with this too. They helped me convey my frustration about a felony offender directly to those best equipped to address it. They invited me to speak before a Senate Law and Justice Committee that was considering potential early release for felony sex offenders, ensuring my message reached those who could make a difference for others like me.

And as an Empowered Voices participant, KCSARC has also invited me to share this blog post. I like double entendres and chose “Squall” to herald March’s BE LOUD Breakfast, while also addressing how, when we start to speak, we may be riling up quite a storm. The writing is two versions of a poem. The first is highly personal and something I wanted to share with people who know me, but it was too emotionally overwhelming to risk anything but a supportive reaction. The second version is transformed into punk-rock style lyrics and hits home for me when I think about how we as an American society don’t speak out about so many wrongs that we all experience and witness and how some others profit from those wrongs when we don’t understand how to stop them.

I never want a sexual assault survivor to feel blamed by my words. I struggled mightily because I was not “a perfect victim,” who called the police the first time a bad thing happened (as if an eleven-year-old could even do that). Through psychoeducation, I learned that was actually part of what made me a “perfect victim” or target for a predator intent on years of abuse that no one would notice. Offenders are the ones responsible for the victimization. Recovery is not solely the responsibility of the survivor. When the time is right, KCSARC can lend a hand and offer opportunities to lift and amplify survivor voices for those who are ready to be loud, and not so loud!