Sometimes it’s a silent one, not because they are unafraid, but because they are confused, unaware, and simply just don’t know any better. Image Credit: Huffington Post

orphan_account Fandoms: Father/Daughter - Fandom, Daddy/Daughter - Fandom, Incest - Fandom, Taboo - Fandom, rape - Fandom, Young - Fandom, Younger And Older, Family Sex - Fandom sing her to sleep, and I bask in the glory that at this point in her life, she still thinks I can sing like Adele. Sophie, the abuse survivor who is now a counselling psychologist, says that public attitudes, inflamed by traditional and social media, have hurt her.

Amy Bonnaffons

The following is from Amy Bonnaffons' collection, The Wrong Heaven . The characters in The Wrong Heaven seek to solve their conflicts and dilemmas, both spiritual and sexual, in all the wrong places. Amy Bonnaffons' work has appeared in The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , and The Kenyon Review , among others, and has been read on This American Life . She lives in Athens, GA, where she is working on a PhD.

I sometimes wish that my parents did make a big deal out of it. I wish my relatives knew what a creep grandfather was. It was years before I realised that what happened (or didn't happen) wasn't my fault, and stopped describing Roger as this cool, older guy who'd been the best boss I'd ever had. She was said to have scolded and beaten her previously, before resorting to dialogue, in the process of which the teenager opened up. READ ALSO: 47-year-old man rapes, impregnates 17-year-old daughter in Imo

I was 12, and he was my 20-year-old camp counselor. For years, I thought I was asking for it -- but not anymore

appeared overwhelmed. The kid ran the show, and he got what he wanted by throwing fits, stomping his feet and pouting. The mother doted on her son, and spoke to him in a syrupy baby talk that made my skin crawl.

But Sophie also believes that we need to provide therapy to abusers before they abuse, therapy that might stop them from hurting children like her in the first place. This means trying to see beyond our disgust at such crimes against children and to understand the factors that lead a person to commit them. Her views are echoed by others working in the field. Bill’s story That's how I saw it. That's how I wanted to see it. I just wanted to be normal like other kids. I just wanted to have a normal life. It took James many years to deal with the abuse. He first reported it to his older sister just before he started secondary school. “She agreed not to tell Mum. She said, ‘I want you to know that I believe you, and I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to.’ That is so important for a child. She found the right words to put me at ease and kept me alive with her support and love.”I can’t remember when I realised the disturbing intentions of his action. Maybe it was when I discovered porn by accident. Maybe it was when I studied Chapter 4 of Science in Form 3. Maybe it was during “girl talk” with my guy friends in school.

Abusers can appear to be highly functional. They can groom not only families but, sometimes, whole groups of people, gaining a child, family or community’s trust and making the child feel valued and special before sexually assaulting them. These are the people who contribute to girls' feelings of worthlessness and dehumanisation. It is these people who make girls feel like they are worth hating. The imbalance of power between men and women means that it is overwhelmingly men who commit rape, whose uncontrolled expression of sexual urges is expected, forgiven or condoned to an extent that could never occur in a world where women and men shared equal rights. And women are expected to comply or prove to a jury their wish to refuse by physically resisting their assailant. A simple ‘no’ is not considered sufficient resistance precisely because women’s position in society is defined in terms of them meeting the needs of men.In case you can’t believe your eyes, I’ll repeat that statistic: one in four. Everywhere studies have been done the evidence is the same. And in the overwhelming majority of cases (80 - 90 per cent) it is girl-children that are the victims: sexually abused by fathers, uncles, grandfathers, brothers, fathers-in-law, neighbours, family friends.* In Cairo a survey in 1973 found between 33 and 45 per cent of families contained daughters who had been raped, molested, ‘interfered with’ by a relative or close family friend. Kinsey’s 1953 study in the US found incest in 24 per cent of families. And the figures are similar in the UK and Australia. When he said it, I didn't quite know what to think. I knew he meant it as a compliment because he said it so often and with such pointed intensity. But my 8-year-old brain simply could not grasp that this 33-year-old man saw me as his mate. I was just a little girl. He was with my mother. That made us a family. He was my father, and I was his child. Right? This set a tone for the following decades – but the existence of abuse could not be completely suppressed. Newspapers reported on court cases involving “indecent assault” or “unlawful carnal knowledge” of children. I understand why people want to wipe abusers off the face of the planet. ‘Cut their balls off,’ they declare. But this wouldn’t stop child abusers who are driven by power. They are not something out there: they are our brothers, father, uncles, sons and friends.