The Castaway

This is a publication highlighting a true story of child abuse, released in solidarity with the #MeToo movement (https://twitter.com/hashtag/metoo). The child is an adult now; yet, she cannot escape her abusers entirely, because they are family. Her abusers have lived proudly in decent society--among you, among us--acclaimed and applauded, while she has hung her head in shame and silence.No longer. Silence is an option no longer.For, she has seen that her abusers have not reformed with...
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This is a publication highlighting a true story of child abuse, released in solidarity with the #MeToo movement (https://twitter.com/hashtag/metoo). The child is an adult now; yet, she cannot escape her abusers entirely, because they are family. Her abusers have lived proudly in decent society--among you, among us--acclaimed and applauded, while she has hung her head in shame and silence.No longer. Silence is an option no longer.For, she has seen that her abusers have not reformed with age, nor have they faced any consequences for their abuse. More chilling is the realization that they continue to seek potential victims to satisfy their perversions. If she does not open her lips and speak, she risks putting more children in the way of their abuse.She cannot have that. We--as a community--cannot have that.We--as humans--must have zero tolerance for child abuse in any form.We must educate ourselves about the forms that abuse can take, because when children undergo abuse within the walls of their family, they do not realize their experience as abuse; they suffer horribly in silence, because that is all they know as life.We must show our children that life is better than that.We must stop abusers, no matter their status in our community, no matter our relations with them, because if we let them hide behind irrelevant labels, behind false respectability, behind insincere connections, behind empty words of denials, we risk losing sight of the monsters they truly are. We must not blind ourselves to their menace--for, their abuse can destroy the very fabric of our community. With their insidious, cruel perversions, they leave broken lives in the wake of their abuses.Cycles of abuse can be stopped only if each of us stands up and speaks and listens and acts.