Speaking Out - Robin Stone
Posted Courtesy of The Charleston
City Paper
Published on March 13, 2002
By BILL DAVIS- Photo by NANCY SANTOS
"I was working on a novel that had a lot of personal references dealing with sexuality issues when I realized I had some issues I needed to address. I went to see a therapist and ended up talking about what happened."
What happened?
"What happened was I was abused by an uncle when I was 9. It happened once, but its effects have lasted a lifetime. Once and for only five to ten minutes. I started to understand that so much stemmed from that incident. And I kept it to myself until I was 21 years old."
How old are you now?
"I’m 37 now, I shared what happened to me with my family at 21, and I didn’t address what happened until I got help five years ago when I started working through its lasting effects."
Robin Stone knows it’s important to share her story publicly so that other survivors of childhood sexual abuse, young and old, realize they’re not alone and there is a way out.
She also knows that it’s important for her to share her story as a successful black woman, like she did Monday evening at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center in front of the 300-person Confronting the Darkness conference put on by local childhood sexual abuse awareness organization, From Darkness to Light (FDTL).
Stone left her job in December as the executive editor in charge of Essence magazine’s website. Her goal was to start writing a book of her experiences, No Secret, No Lies, which will be released by Broadway/Doubleday in 2004. The former executive editor at the one million-circulation magazine and Michigan State grad had also been a deputy section editor at the venerable New York Times.
The black community, she says, does a great job of taking care of its own, of handling problems from within. For example, black churches may offer Sunday service, but many also provide social services throughout the week – day care, health care, meals on wheels, education and etc.
"We need to address issues like the African American community’s issue of distrusting authority, of not wanting to get the police involved, of not wanting social services involved. Most poor families don’t want social services poking around in their business. But it’s not enough to ‘just take care of our own.’ Even though that feeling, that sentiment, has allowed us to survive, prosper, and move forward.
"But that insularity is like a double-edged sword, also," she says. Because of the tendency to take care of its own, sometimes the black community isn’t quick enough to call in the authorities.
"There is still a level of distrust in the black community against white health care after the Tuskegee experiments and the sterilization of some retarded black women around here up until the ‘70s," says Cookie Washington, FDTL’s black community liaison who would like to see the fledging organization focus on more than the obvious success stories of its membership.
FDTL Executive Director Anne Lee is frustrated with her organization’s lack of success in reaching out to the black community.
"Honestly, we’ve been looking at our audience, and mainly, it’s white," says Lee from FDTL’s new offices at 247 Meeting St. [Darkness to Light has since moved to 7 Radcliffe Street since the publishing of this article.] "We want to know what we need to do, and bringing in Robin (Stone) from New York is a significant move on our part to make sure we do appear in all communities."
Lee is further frustrated that despite overtures made to area black churches, she hasn’t received any calls back. To reach a wider audience than that of the Confronting the Darkness conference, which is free to members of black churches, Stone will be leading a frank discussion on sexual issues, "Silent No More," taped Sunday at WCSC-TV Channel 5 for future broadcast.
To reach the black community, Stone says it’s vital to come to the table devoid of preconceptions, and to not reinvent the wheel. In other words, it’s important to tap into the black social services network that’s already functioning.
"So many black single women who’ve been abused are dealing with primary survival needs; food, shelter, clothing, the bare necessities. It’s about getting me and three kids up and out to school and work as a single mom and dealing with child care. Then if one of them gets sick, you have to stay home and end up getting docked a day’s wage. At that level, it’s important for groups like From Darkness to Light to meet them where they are."
Both Stone and Washington agree that the black community tends to be reluctant to report sexual abuse, afraid it will ultimately be twisted and turned into a racial stereotype or epithet.
"It’s a difficult topic in general for people to talk about," says Stone. "Sexual abuse is considered by the criminal justice system to be the least reported crime in the country. Only 28 percent of these crimes are ever reported, according to (U.S. Department of Justice) statistics."
According to FDTL’s Anne Lee, only 87 percent of all cases then make it to trial.
"This is what’s happening and no one is talking about it," laments Stone from her New York home. "Then you factor in issues like stereotypes about black people’s sexuality, like we’re ‘oversexed,’ and it’s another layer that keeps people from reaching out."
"People feel comfortable talking to folks who look like them, we know that. It’s important for African Americans to see other people who look like them talking about this subject. It’s easy to do, to say (childhood sexual abuse) is what white people do, just like anorexia or bulimia. I have black friends who say that’s a ‘white’ disease, but the reality is that black people do suffer from it too."
And once those hurdles are crossed, victims can still suffer enormous implications after telling their stories. Stone references the story of writer Maya Angelou’s abuse when she was a child. In the book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou tells her uncle about her molestation, and her attacker is ‘taken care of.’ Fearing the power of her words, Angelou doesn’t speak again for several years.
Cookie Washington personally knows how silence can become deafening. An FDTL member and a survivor of childhood sexual abuse herself, Washington has struggled with weight issues all her life in the same way, she says other survivors have turned to prostitution, porn, and substance abuse.
Washington, who also serves as a board member of the South Caroline Advocacy for Pregnant Women, says she saw firsthand how silence about abuse affects women when she helped the poor pregnant women who were arrested several years ago at MUSC after being tested for drugs under a program led by S.C. Attorney General Charlie Condon.
Sitting around in the hotel the night before the women’s case went before the U.S. Supreme Court (they won – the court ruled testing the pregnant women constituted an illegal search and seizure) Washington shared her story with ten of the women.
"I said, ‘This is what happened to me and how it messed me up, how about you all?" All but one said that they too had been so abused, she says. The lone exception said "maybe," but she couldn’t’ remember. Washington says it was God allowing her to not have to remember.
Even though it can be tough to do, and sometimes even tougher to deal with afterward, Stone says the only real solution is for more victims to come forward.
"Silence is the shadow that allows perpetrators to operate."
|
