My Stepfather Molested Me Growing Up, and Now as a Parent Myself, I Can’t Stop Wondering: What Is a Mother to Do?

Not long after Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro died this spring, the literary community was shaken by a Toronto Star story in which Munro’s adult daughter shared how, as a child, her stepfather sexually abused her in their home. Andrea Robin Skinner was just 9 years old, and she kept quiet because she believed, as her stepfather told her, the shock would kill her mother. When she was 25, Skinner finally told her mother, Munro, and even after Munro’s husband, the perpetrator, was convicted of “indecently assaulting” a child, Munro went on to live with him for 20-plus years until his death. While most online reactions I read skewed toward shock and criticism, my reaction was different. Me too, I thought. I’m a CSA survivor.

What is a mother to do?

That term CSA survivor stands for “child sexual abuse,” which is the catch-all term for any sex act or sexual harassment perpetrated by adults on anyone under the age of consent. It’s a topic that no one wants to talk about, because it’s shrouded in shame and evokes the ick at a cellular level. As pundit Dasha Nekresova quipped during a podcast discussion about Skinner: “it’s grossing us all out, I don’t like the way I feel when I read about your stepdad molesting you.” I get it: I’ve spent most of my life endeavoring to get as far away from and hide everything to do with this ugly secret. (Even now, though my stepfather is dead, I’m writing this anonymously as much to avoid exposing my vulnerability as to not embarrass my elderly mother.) As for recovering fully from CSA, I’ve come to believe it’s impossible. Being harmed like this is, in my experience and in the experience of so many girlfriends I’ve spoken to, the defining aspect of your personality. I’m writing today because Skinner’s story brought up a new question that I haven’t had in decades of grappling with my personal and familial reckoning with childhood rape: What is a mother to do?

As a CSA survivor (honestly, I kind of wish for the old clear-cut “incest victim” moniker, because I keep reading “CSA” and think of someone struggling with what to cook using a bad box of turnips), I’ve learned how to boil down my story to a few bare-bones facts:

When I was approximately 5, my divorced mom, D., met a divorced dad, S., whose kids lived in another state with their mother. My mom and I had no contact with my birth dad or his family, and when my mom married S., he legally adopted me. S. was inappropriately verbally graphic and physical with me as far back as I can remember, which I tried to downplay by wrestling away from his grip. When I was 12, he overpowered and raped me and I became afraid for my life—I was already getting stomach problems and insomnia living in a home where I was being stalked, and now I feared if I told anyone, I might be killed. So I made a calculation—it was better to try to ask my mom for help than to wind up buried under the patio—and one day I tearfully walked into my mom’s room and told her in vague terms what had happened, and we left that same day.

Immediately thereafter, the last thing I wanted to do was to detail what had happened. I felt like my whole life—my creepy stepdad championing my school accomplishments yet trying to get next to me; my mom’s apparent obliviousness; the entire world’s brutally transactional power dynamics—was corrupt, and if I could just quietly bide my time as an adolescent, presenting as an A student cheerleader, then I’d be able to get away from these people who had made me feel so bad by acting out their selfish broken irresponsibility on me. I just wanted it to go away—only to learn as I started adult life that we take our childhoods with us, and there would be long stretches of depression, addiction and trauma recovery on therapist couches and in self-help circles.

This story is a note in a bottle thrown back to that frightened girl in a rural bedroom who promised herself if she ever made it out of her crazy home, she’d do something to help other girls.

So then—what’s different today? First off, there’s a growing public acknowledgement that family child sexual abuse is much more common than was previously believed. A recent Atlantic article says that in 1975, incest was estimated to be a one in a million occurrence, whereas today, a geneticist found that one in 7,000 people have first-generation related parents (meaning a brother and a sister or a parent and a child). And that’s just the encounters that resulted in a child being born, so the number of first-generation assaults is probably much higher. Also, today as  a mom myself, I think back to what my mother later told me about what my pediatrician advised to help me: “She’ll talk about it when she’s ready.” And I think about my mom; years later she said about herself, “I was a victim too.”

In hindsight, I wish there had been some more clinical or pointed advice pushing my mom and me to actually talk about what had happened, how it made us feel and if we could ever feel safe again. I wonder: Does that happen, even today? I called an authority on the topic to ask what are best practices in the whole situation. This story is a note in a bottle thrown back to that frightened girl in a rural bedroom who promised herself if she ever made it out of her crazy home, she’d do something to help other girls. I hope this is a start.

Mara Noel White, LMSW, is Senior Manager of Consulting with RAINN Consulting Group. RAINN (The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network) is the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization and operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

The answers below from White have been edited for clarity and concision.

"This is so complex and emotionally painful because it involves people you are close to and whom you love—people you have deep personal relationships with. It is shocking to discover that someone in your family is abusing a child—it often contradicts what you believe about that person. However, if you suspect this is happening, there are two things you need to do first:

• Get the child to a safe place away from the person you suspect is abusing them
• File a report"

"Believe them. It sounds like an obvious piece of advice, but this tends to be the thing that parents/adults struggle with the most. It can be really difficult to reconcile, but if your child tells you this, you need to take it seriously. Let the child know you believe them, and get them safely away from the abuser. From this point forward, do not leave them alone with the abuser under any circumstances. How you talk with your child about what they disclosed will depend on their age, but in general, listen more than you talk. Let them share with you what has happened to them the way they’ve experienced it, and respond without judgment.

Children may be very confused about what’s happened to them and they may not use words like “abuse” or other terms associated with sexual abuse. It’s important to let them describe it the way that feels accurate for them and not put words in their mouths.

Children might feel conflicted because they have a relationship with the abuser. Most people who abuse children have established a seemingly loving relationship with the child, and gained the child’s trust. This is called grooming, and it is never the child’s fault. Grooming is a type of manipulation using tactics to form a bond with the child. They may subtly introduce inappropriate behaviors that escalate over time. This can make it even more difficult for a child to describe what happened to them, and can even be confusing for the adults responding to them."

"Many states have laws that obligate adults who suspect abuse of a child to file a report with law enforcement or child protective services. You do not need proof: Reasonable suspicion is all that is needed to file a report. Parents/adults should refrain from trying to investigate the situation themselves. While asking the child some questions might be necessary to understand what they’re disclosing, once a report is filed, investigators will ask the child questions. Try to limit the number of times the child has to repeat what’s happened to them."

"Most agencies that specialize in helping children who have been sexually abused will prioritize the physical and emotional safety of the child, and services will be rooted in a trauma-informed framework—meaning services take into account the varying ways trauma can impact a child survivor and their family. Child advocacy centers are set up to meet varying needs, including on-site exams for evidence collection, child-friendly spaces for investigative interviews, advocates who can offer support, legal services and therapy. Child advocacy centers often serve as the hub for services so that the child and their family can receive most of the services needed in one place, and the number of times the child has to tell their story is limited in an effort to avoid re-traumatization."

"It’s really important for those who are supporting a child who has been sexually abused to also prioritize their own wellbeing. It can have a deep emotional impact to find out a child you love has been abused. Child advocacy centers sometimes offer services/access to resources for non-offending family members. Likewise, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline is available with free, confidential 24/7 support in English and Spanish at 800.656.HOPE (4673) and hotline.RAINN.org and RAINN.org/es to anyone who’s been impacted."