“I stayed silent on child abuse. And I blame religion for that”, The Guardian
Katie Edwards, Opinion, London, 21 March 2018
After Rotherham and Weinstein, it seems we’ve finally understood the power of speaking out. But there’s so far to go.
As a child I was taught that silence was golden. On our way to assembly the teachers would make us press our fingers over our lips so only the sound of us padding to the hall could be heard. The local vicar stood at the front of the class every year at Lent to tell us that Jesus was silent in the face of his accusers. He would tell us that silence “can be more eloquent than a speech and louder than a shout”.
He would draw on the passage from St Matthew’s Gospel in which, after his betrayal and arrest in Gethsemane, Jesus is brought before Pilate, and refuses to answer his questions. I was confused by the silence of Jesus – why didn’t he speak out? Of course, various interpretations have read this silence as a way of wresting power back from Pilate. But as a child the message was clear to me: silence was strength; and in the face of adversity or abuse, it was dignified.
I wasn’t the only one among the pupils of that school in South Yorkshire for whom silence became a kind of default behaviour.
When I was 10 I went shopping in town with three of my aunts. They took me to a bookstore, waiting outside while I searched for what I wanted. As I leafed through the paperbacks a man approached me. He looked me up and down, and I remember feeling suddenly awkward and foolish in my own body. He came closer. He kept touching the front of his trousers. Then he grabbed my hand and asked me to do something to him.
I shook my hand free and rushed out of the shop. Shaking with fear and relief at finding my aunts, I told them that this man had said and done rude things. But they didn’t seem at all concerned. They told me I was being mardy. And then, when I continued to cry, they told me to be quiet. And although it felt odd, it also kind of made sense. The vicar’s words were confirmed: silence is the correct response.
In the early 90s, when I reached comprehensive school in Rotherham, I quickly learned that girls’ bodies didn’t belong to them. Boys could touch, prod and grab. Having a hand up your skirt or a painful pinch to the chest was an everyday occurrence. It was annoying, embarrassing, and often humiliating and painful, but nothing could be said that would prevent it.So we just accepted it as part of school life, like getting homework. In fact, the girls who showed they were upset were the ones who were despised (even by other girls). In a context where stoic silence is promoted as a virtue and girls’ bodies are open for comment, discussion and assault, it’s not difficult to see how towns such as Rotherham could become places where the sexual abuse of girls and women became systematic. We didn’t realise it was abuse – no one ever referred to it as such. Already, at the age of 12, a good number of girls at school had adult “boyfriends” in their 20s. They would often discuss them in class, even in front of teachers.
I got no sense that there was anything criminal about a grown man having sex with a 12-year-old; any disapproval was directed more at the girls themselves than at the men. So I became as accustomed to the silence of adults in authority as I was to the silence of children. We now know, of course, that many girls and women who experienced sexual abuse in Rotherham, Rochdale and all the other now infamous towns across the country did report their abusers. But the authorities at the time didn’t listen. Many girls were vocal – but no one cared to hear them. Some of those who gave voice to their abuse were arrested themselves and punished. Silence was often safer than speaking out.
During my early teens, a number of my friends were abused by men in their 20s. The gang of white local men would hang around at ice rinks to meet and groom girls for sex. And to me – and no doubt to my friends – they were the loveliest, funniest people I had ever met. They weren’t like the immature spotty lads at school, grabbing at our bodies and spitting insults. The men complimented us, stroked our hair and held our hands. After a couple of meetings at the ice rink they invited us to a party, and we all went.
But as soon as we turned up, I could tell that the party had a very different feel to our earlier meetings. A couple of lads who were about 15 or 16 ran in, laughing about how they had just punched an old man in the face on their way to the party. I felt a sense of dread. My friends and I were given drinks, and the men watched us while we downed them. I couldn’t drink mine, but my friends were quickly out of it. And so I escaped the worst of that party – I was really lucky. While some of the girls there were being sexually assaulted, I was held down while one of the men rubbed newspaper in my face with one hand and broke my arm with the other.
And I kept silent. My injury was easily explained away as the result of an accident on the ice rink. My friends and I never talked about it again. But the fear, sickness and humiliation I felt that night wedged in my throat and remained there for years.
It didn’t even occur to us to tell an adult what had happened. We knew we would be blamed (“What did you think would happen if you hang around with men?”) Silence felt safe. In the end, I think, it turns out my instincts were spot on. How many girls and women did speak out about their abuse and weren’t believed – or were (half) believed, and then blamed and punished?
I thought of the vicar’s words a lot in that time. I found it comforting because even Jesus, my childhood model of virtue, had no words in the face of impending violence. But disquieting too – what kind of model is a silent Jesus for those experiencing abuse and receiving scant support from authority figures?
In our post-Rotherham, post-Weinstein, #MeToo era it seems we have finally understood the dangers of silence and the power of speaking out. Yet victims of sexual violence are still being condemned for their silence. During the Weinstein scandal, women who had spoken up about their abuse were heavily criticised, as if their earlier silence made them complicit in their own or others’ abuse. We still have so far to go.
The vicar never told us about the other Jesus in the Gospel of St John – the one who speaks out, who speaks up about speaking out. Arrested and questioned by the high priest, he says: “I have always spoken openly to the world.” Likewise before Pilate, Jesus engages in feisty debate. He questions, he answers: “I came into the world to testify to the truth.”As Holy Week approaches, many Christians are reflecting on Christ’s Passion. Of course, speaking out didn’t stop the authorities torturing and killing him. But what if I’d been told that there’s strength and dignity in not staying silent? What if I had been taught to be confident in my own voice? It might have changed things for me – and some of the other kids in my old school.
This is an edited extract from The Silence of the Lamb, Katie Edwards’ Radio 4 Lent Talk, which is being broadcast on 21 March at 8.45pm