The Awareness Center is mentioned on Oprah's web page

The Awareness Center is mentioned on Oprah's web page

The Awareness Center's Daily Newsletter - November 15, 2010

A volunteer sent us an e-mail to day letting me know That The Awareness Center appears on Oprah.com as a resource for survivors of sexual abuse.

Do Girls Matter? Sexism and Sexual Abuse

Do Girls Matter? Sexism and Sexual Abuse

© (2010) by Vicki Polin, MA, LCPC

First published on the Huntington Post

Over the last ten years there's been so much emphasis and media attention on cases of clergy sexual abuse - with the perpetrators being priests, pastors, monks and rabbis - that we seem to be forgetting that forty-six percent of cases of child sexual abuse are perpetrated by family members. We also cannot forget that according to statistics girls get molested two to three times more often then boys -- or that the effects and long-term ramifications are just as horrendous as their male counterparts.

Over the last twenty-six years of my involvement in the Anti-Rape movement I have to admit that I have been amazed at seeing so many male survivors coming forward with their disclosures of child molestation. Even Oprah's on to the male survivor bandwagon, producing two shows on the topic of male survivors of sexual abuse; which will air on November 5th and 12th.

My concern is that girls and adult women who are survivors of child sexual abuse seem to be getting lost in this new shuffle. I have also noticed an altering of history from some survivor groups in which they are forgetting the roots of the Anti-Rape movement. Advocating for survivors of sex crimes did not get it's start in 2002, with the Boston Globe's exposé on the Catholic Church. We cannot forget that if it wasn't for several brave women joining together in consciousness raising groups back in the early 1970's, we would have no idea about how many people were being molested as children, or how many adult men and women were being assaulted.

Why is it that even in 2010 we want to forget the value of the feminist movement? If it wasn't for the brave heroes of the 1970's getting together and sharing personal details of their lives we would never have been able to offer hope and support to those who had been sexually victimized. We would not have begun to educate the public on the issues and ramifications of rape nor would research that effects more then a quarter of the population of the world have been started.

How quickly we want to forget that back on January 24, 1971 the New York Radical Feminists sponsored the very first gathering to discuss sexual violence as a social issue. April 12, 1971 was the historic moment in which for the first time in history there was a gathering of survivors -- all women, who created the very first "speak-out" -- where they shared their personal stories publicly; and over 300 people attended.

I personally got my start in the Anti-Rape Movement back in 1985 working for one of the first incest survivor organizations. During the early years it was mostly only women who came forward sharing stories of child molestation. For the last 12 years of my work has been focusing in Jewish communities on an international basis. I have been amazed to see this same phenomenon happening within the orthodox world. Female survivors of sexual abuse have been taking a back seat to their male counter part. For every 10 males who come forward, there is only one woman willing to share her story, come forward and begin the healing process..

I have also encountered some discrimination at workshops and or with other organizations that have been popping up in the Jewish world; the leaders are all male. I have been told that they believe women are too emotional to be a part of the movement, let alone to speak out publicly. I understand the cultural differences of the Orthodox world in which it is frowned upon for a woman to speak or educate men in public for reasons of modesty, yet why are they not coming out speaking to each other? Will they really loose value as a person if it's known that they were victims of a sex crime? Do we really have to put the shame and blame on them for the actions of a sexual predator?

--
Vicki Polin authored this article. Polin is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor and the founder and director of The Awareness Center, Inc., which is the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault

Oprah's Conversation with Child Molesters

Part 1 of Oprah's frank, graphic conversation with admitted child molesters. Learn how to identify sex offenders and prevent more children from becoming vitcims of abuse. This video is for adults only.


Oprah's Conversation with Child Molesters, Part 1

Interview about Vicki Polin's appearance on Oprah

Interview about Vicki Polin's appearance on Oprah

By Luke

The Awareness Center's Daily Newsletter - May 12, 2005

I speak Thursday afternoon, May 12, 2005, with a woman who was in the audience of Vicki's appearance on the May 1, 1989 Oprah show.

Woman: "I had already heard everything before from Vicki so that wasn't shocking to me. Oprah was the one who mentioned that Vicki came from a Jewish family. I know that that was not something that Vicki wanted to put forward on the show. I knew that that would blow up."

Luke: "What do you think about the veracity of what Vicki said? Most people would find it hard to believe."

Woman: "In 1984, I learned that my little girl, who was four-years-old, was being sexually abused at a Jewish preschool in Chicago [Rogers Park JCC]. I was the whistleblower on that case. They interviewed over 80 children and found that as many as 20 had been sexually abused.

"Once I found out what had happened to my child, we took her out of school and got her into therapy. My daughter and several other children began making allegations against their teachers and widespread pervasive abuse involving child pornography and bizarre ritualistic activity.

"When I met Vicki, we met through her connection with VOICES in Action (Victims Of Incest Can Emerge Survivors). I was getting involved with the organization Believe The Children, which had been founded by some parents in California who were involved in similar cases, in daycare center, even though they were not Jewish preschools.

"I was hearing bizarre accusations from my child and Vicki was recalling similar events from her childhood. I had no reason to doubt [Vicki]."

Luke: "You have no doubts there was definitely this type of ritual abuse at the school?"

Woman: "There was definitely sexual abuse and physical abuse of the children. As far as the ritual abuse, it's hard to say. Did they really kill babies? I don't know. I do know that the children were convinced that they were killing babies. It may be that they were acting something out with dolls or maybe the children were drugged and led to believe things were happening. There was costuming and special effects involved. I can't say for a fact that they killed a baby. I can say for a fact that my daughter believed that they did."

Luke: "Do you find Vicki's reports about her childhood ritual abuse credible?"

Woman: "I do because they are not inconsistent with what I heard from my own daughter and what I also heard from a lot of other survivors."

Luke: "Isn't there a whole movement against this type of testimony? Something about repressed memory?"

Woman: "Definitely. During the eighties, when my case and similar cases came to light, the cases got a lot of publicity, people were arrested, and then they couldn't convict the people because the children were too young to testify or too traumatized. So, from that, developed this huge backlash against those who were making the allegations. The people who were accused got organized. They banded against the idea that anybody could repress a memory of something and concluded that the children were fantasizing and the parents were hysterical. I can only speak from my own experience. I can't say what may have happened in other cases. I can say that the last thing I wanted to believe was that my child had been abused. I tried to talk her out of it and to find other explanations for what I was hearing. But there wasn't any other explanation.

"I heard horrible things from the mouth of my own four-year-old, bizarre things that I had never heard of doing to a child or an adult. My child had a sheltered life aside from going to that preschool. We didn't even have a VCR at the time or cable TV. Where did she get this information if it didn't happen? She didn't get it from me because I didn't have any abuse in my background."

Luke: "The stuff about killing babies is so hard to put your mind around."

Woman: "There are several theories about that. You can say it was a satanic cult and it was part of their belief system to do this. I know that Vicki's case is especially inflammatory because of her coming from a Jewish family.

"In my child's case, it is possible that all these satanic trappings were part of the effort to terrorize the children, intimidate them, keep them from telling. If you take a small child and kill an animal in front of them, or kill a baby or pretend to kill a baby in front of the child, and then say to the child, if you tell, this is what will happen to you, that's an effective threat. It works to keep the kids shut down.

"With the pornography they were making, perhaps this was part of the pornographic script?"

The woman says her daughter retains few of these shocking memories and has gone on to a normal life.