Invisible Girls Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright 2018 by Patti Feuereisen

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  Seal Press

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  www.sealpress.com

  First Edition: March 2005

  Second Edition: September 2009

  Third Edition: December 2018

  Published by Seal Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Seal Press name and logo is a trademark of the Hachette Book Group.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  ISBN: 978-1-58005-860-5 (paperback), 978-1-58005-859-9 (ebook)

  E3-20181013-JV-NF

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Welcoming Pandora

  Introduction to the Third Edition: Healing After Your #MeToo Moment

  Preface: It’s Never the Survivor’s Fault

  Welcome, Readers

  PART ONE

  What Is in Pandora’s Box? Sexual Abuse and How It Affects Us

  1 Who We Are and How We Got Here: The Birth of Our Book

  2 Ask Dr. Patti: Answers to Girls’ Questions About Sexual Abuse

  3 Crossing Over: Girlhood to Womanhood

  4 Troubled Families: Daughters Betrayed

  5 Finding Your Truth: Facing the Emotional Aftershocks and the Beginning of Healing

  PART TWO

  Before We Open the Box

  6 Girls’ Genius: How Girls Get Through the Actual Abuse Experience (Zinnia’s Story, Lily’s Story)

  PART THREE

  Opening Pandora’s Box: Girls Tell Their Stories

  7 The Deepest Wound: Father-Daughter Incest (Coral’s Story, Garnet’s Story)

  8 Too Close for Comfort: Other Incest—Brothers, Cousins, Uncles, Stepfathers (Topaz’s Story, Sage’s Story)

  9 Trusting the Wrong Men: Abuse by Teachers, Coaches, Clergy, Doctors (Ivy’s Story)

  10 Pushed Too Far: Acquaintance Sexual Abuse (Amber’s Story, Jasmine’s Story)

  11 Rape Always Hurts: Stranger Rape/Date Rape/Gang Rape (Iris’s Story, Dahlia’s Story)

  12 Stop Calling Us Whores: Prostitution Is Sexual Abuse (Ruby Rose’s Story)

  PART FOUR

  The Road Back

  13 Different Paths to Healing

  14 Supportive Families Speak Out (Jannie’s Mother’s Story, Emily’s Mother’s Story, Pearl’s Story)

  15 Finding Your Support Posse

  16 Flowers Bloom: Updates on Zinnia, Lily, Coral, Garnet, Topaz, Sage, Ivy, Jasmine, Iris, Dahlia, Pearl, Ruby Rose

  17 Five Years of E-mails and Letters from Around the World: Girls Become More and More Visible Every Day

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Selected Chorus of Praise for Invisible Girls

  Afterword: Letter from an Incest Survivor: How I Found Love

  Resource Center

  Endnotes

  Index

  To my daughter, Aviva

  To my mother, Helene E. Feuereisen, who always loved me unconditionally, in loving memory

  And to all daughters everywhere

  WELCOMING PANDORA

  My Take on the Ancient Greek Myth

  According to Greek myth, Pandora was the first woman, like Eve of Hebrew myth. She is said to have received many, many gifts from the gods—hence her name, which means “all gifted” or “all gifts.” Aphrodite gave her beauty; Apollo gave her musical talent and a gift for healing; Hermes gave her a box and told her not to open it. Then he gave her curiosity!

  Here she was, holding this beautiful box she had been ordered not to open. A smart and energetic young woman, in defiance of the patriarchy, she opened the box. Out spilled all the great misfortunes of the world, including the pain of all girls and women who had ever been sexually abused.

  Others might have feared letting such troubles out of the box, but Pandora knew that when you keep a box closed you also close off hope. She knew that hope lies in opening the box, in revealing the truth, in releasing the trauma. She was not afraid. She knew that girls are healed every time girl’s and women’s sexual trauma is let out of its box and released into the world. I invite all of you to join me in opening Pandora’s box.

  INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION

  Healing After Your #MeToo Moment

  In January 2018, more than 160 brave, resolute girls and young women made history by testifying against Larry Nassar, who had sexually abused them for years in his role as head doctor for USA Gymnastics. Gold medal–winning Olympic gymnast Ally Riesman concluded her powerful testimony by saying, “There is no map that shows you the pathway of healing realizing that you are a survivor of sexual abuse.”

  My clients and I wrote this book to be that pathway. If you have experienced sexual abuse, we invite you to find your road map to healing here. The courageous voices who tell their stories in these pages will lead your way. Please join us and blossom, become visible and strong, righteous and vibrant. We know you can. You are important and vital, and you deserve to recover, thrive, flourish, and create a beautiful life filled with love, success, and happiness. Surviving sexual abuse never means you are damaged goods! Sexually abused teen girls and young women are the strongest, most sensitive, most vibrant and resilient people I know.

  And I know many. For the past thirty years, I have worked as a psychotherapist with sexual-abuse survivors in individual and group sessions, where I have listened to teen girls and young women talk about their sexual-abuse experiences and helped them on their journeys to heal from their abuse. I am never surprised at the elegance, stamina, resilience, strength, and love that survivors manifest. Invisible Girls: Speaking the Truth About Sexual Abuse came from what I learned from my beautiful clients; within these pages, I offer you encouragement to speak your truth and a healing path to overcoming the trauma so that you can thrive.

  As our book continues to reach teen girls and young women from all over the world, sharing their stories, telling their sexual-abuse experiences, we continue to be gratified and awestruck at the bravery of women everywhere. Sexual abuse takes place all over the world, and I knew the statistics were staggering: one in four girls is sexually abused before her sixteenth birthday in the United States alone.

  In our 2009 edition we expanded the book and added even more information about getting past what was done to you. We also acknowledged the experience of our sisters in the world of prostitution. We explained that prostitution is sex abuse and included those girls’ voices with the other sexual-abuse survivors. Finally, we added more resources for everyone.

  Now, with the stunning numbers of teen girls, young women, and women of all ages coming out with their #MeToo stories, almost ten years after that second edition of Invisible Girls was published, this third edition is here to help a whole new readership, a new group of survivors we haven’t reached yet and ever
yone who cares about them. In this third edition are updated and expanded resources including blogs, the latest statistics, more follow-up with the original girls in the book more voices speaking out in our chapters, as well as new e-mails from girls. Also intensely covered is a very important topic that’s not being talked about in today’s media coverage: incest. Incest is the most common form of sexual abuse—and the most unreported. We go deep into the topic to explore the wound of incest and how girls get through it and past it. We reach the full circle of healing with an amazing afterword: a letter from an incest survivor, called “How I Found Love.”

  Following the Trump election, there has been a cultural shift, starting with the Women’s March, the pussy hats, and the #TimesUp movement, with women in the film industry funding the legal defense of sex-abuse survivors. The Take Back the Night movement is still going strong, confronting sexual violence on college campuses. With this change in politics, the culture is shifting more than ever. In an open and empowered fight against misogyny, girls and women are going up against politicians, coaches, doctors, and priests. Brave teen girls and women are fighting back by coming forward to reclaim their voices, sharing their sexual-abuse experiences, and, in some cases, confronting their abusers.

  Tarana Burke, an activist focused on working with black and brown girls in marginalized communities for the past two decades realized that saying “me too” after a young girl shared her story of sexual abuse could have helped her not feel so alone. Tarana wanted to help survivors release some of the shame and isolation they felt and thus began the hashtag #MeToo more than a decade ago. Then when actress Alyssa Milano told her #MeToo story, the movement went viral, and teen girls and women of all ages are now coming forward by the thousands to speak about their sex-abuse experiences publicly. For many, this is the first time that they are telling anyone their stories. As one girl and one woman after another opens up about surviving sexual violation, sexual intimidation, and sexual abuse, more come forward with their stories, creating a culture in which there is greater safety in numbers. The dam has broken, and girls and women’s experiences of sexual abuse are flowing out.

  This has been a long time coming. For three decades, teen girls and young women have been reaching out to me privately, one by one, quietly, sharing intimate details about how they had been sexually abused by their fathers, stepfathers, uncles, brothers, coaches, rabbis, teachers, cousins, and dates. I knew it would be many years before these survivors would speak out about sex abuse openly, freely, and publicly. It has taken all these years of teen girls and women telling their truths, of feminists working through the court system to change the laws, of feminist politicians and their allies working for women’s rights to make a cultural change that allows girls and women to come forward and reclaim their voices.

  Yet, even before this public moment of disclosure, the feedback from readers and the experience of my young clients has been hopeful and righteous and filled with resilience. I receive countless e-mails and letters, the majority from teen girls and young women all over the world telling me how they are embracing their lives because they have a road map to healing: Invisible Girls: Speaking the Truth About Sexual Abuse. These girls and women had held their secrets, some for decades, and they are now releasing their pain and moving forward into strength. They tell me of their isolation, and how, through our book, they have a sense of belonging to a strong community of survivors and thrivers.

  Take note: you will not hear the term victim in this book. The teen girls and young women in this book are not victims, they are survivors. They have surpassed what someone else did to them. They are no one’s victim! If you have survived sexual abuse, neither are you!

  Now, with the shift that is allowing girls and women to let out the secrets of sexual abuse, we have inspiring examples: from the Olympic gymnasts testifying against their abuser Larry Nassar, resulting in a jail term of up to 175 years, to the outpouring of disclosure that followed actresses in Hollywood calling their abusers by name. Although we know some brave survivors have been telling their stories for years, these were public figures going up against public figures, and this brought the conversation to the forefront. We see that, with support and with more voices joining in to stand up to sexual violators, there may be justice and a change in the culture that enables, normalizes, and even encourages the sexual abuse of girls and women in record numbers. The serial abuser Harvey Weinstein’s career has ended; other directors, musicians, athletes, and actors have been outed as abusers. Meanwhile, girls and women in other industries have stepped up as well. Janitorial workers, hospitality staffs, students, models, photographers, and more have called for a change to workplace policies to build in protection against sexual aggression.

  Although I have been processing abuse with survivors and helping them to rise above and beyond their abuse with vitality for decades, today these public conversations are changing with the power of disclosure, and we find ourselves at a new beginning, where talking about sexual abuse is more possible. Credit must be given to the survivors who are speaking out. But there are still survivors of sexual abuse who are struggling to tell someone what happened to them. What about the girls who are still living under the roof of their molesting fathers? What about the girl on a college campus whose boyfriend rapes her, and she is an incest survivor whose experience of incest taught her not to feel worthy of more? And what about the survivors who are still in danger every day and are being triggered over and over again by social media and news coverage? What about all the survivors who have not yet told their stories? Where are they now in their healing? Have they found a path to healing? We are here for you too.

  If you are a survivor, remember this: It is never the survivor’s fault. You never asked to be abused, and you never asked for abuse to continue. Invisible Girls can help you to stop blaming yourself and to let go of shame, responsibility, and guilt. Our book has given thousands of teen girls, young women, and women of all ages comfort, guidance, strength, resolve, and healing. Your job as a survivor is to heal yourself and get past the abuse that happened to you, and to live a life filled with love. Your job is to know how precious you are, to know you deserve love and respect. And we can help.

  This book is not only filled with heartfelt stories of girls’ abuse and healing. You’ll also find essential information, options, tools, and a totally updated Resource Center. But, most important, these pages are filled with support, hope, resilience, and love.

  One reader, an eighteen-year-old rape survivor, wrote to me:

  Dear Dr. Patti,

  My name is Ariel and I want to tell you that Invisible Girls honored me for what I went through and taught me that I was not alone. Now I want other girls to know they are not alone. Invisible Girls is my healing, my friend, my road map. My destinations from here are endless.

  We know your destinations are endless too. Invisible Girls brings girls out of the shadows into the light of healing and thriving. Invisible girls are becoming visible every day. We know you can too.

  With love,

  Dr. Patti

  PREFACE

  It’s Never the Survivor’s Fault

  Invisible Girls taught me that my mother was wrong, that I did not ask for my stepfather to rape me. It is not my fault. Thank you, Dr. Patti, thank you, Invisible Girls. I am ready to heal now.

  —a seventeen-year-old from Texas

  I receive e-mails like this every day from teen girls all over the world, girls who found my book and are awakening to the fact that the sexual abuse they have experienced is not their fault—and that they can heal.

  Before we published the first edition of Invisible Girls in 2005, girls who had survived sexual abuse found me and my psychotherapy work through an underground network, with one girl telling another and then another. What this book has done is expand that network, enabling me to provide a lifeline to girls in every corner of every state and continent. The book has made its way around the world, touching and empowering girls a
nd women from Australia to Indiana, from Kansas City and Seattle and Louisville, to China, Mexico, Italy, and France—even Saudi Arabia. I know because I hear from them every day.

  Every day, girls who have found our book reach out to me. They are building networks and making extraordinary connections. Girls and women—and their mothers, sisters, boyfriends, girlfriends—find Invisible Girls at their college or neighborhood bookstore or online; they are given copies to read at residential treatment centers and by therapists, teachers, friends, lovers, parents. They’ve found the book at the school library, from my website, a cousin, pediatrician, rape crisis center, aunt. Our intent was to reach girls in our urban centers, where books are easier to come by, and way beyond, where they are not, and we did it. Every day invisible girls, girls who were scared and alone and thought they were to blame or going crazy are becoming visible. They are finding the help and hope they so deserve, and they are healing—and thriving.

  Sometimes their first contact is simply reaching out. A girl wants to know whether what she experienced is really abuse, or she wants to tell someone how guilty she feels for what happened to her. She thinks it must somehow have been her fault. Most of my e-mails are from girls and women who have never told anyone about their abuse. Some of these girls are as young as twelve years old. And some of the women are in their sixties. The e-mail to me is the first telling. She somehow got her hands on the book, and now she wants to tell me what happened. She feels she can trust me. And because I make myself available to my readers, I become a kind of springboard for these girls and their healing. They make that first contact, and their whole world begins to shift and change. Some of the girls who have written to me have kept in contact for years now.

  One eighteen-year-old from Minnesota e-mailed me: “ ‘It is never a survivor’s fault.’ I have carried these words with me for the past six months until they finally sank in. This saying along with one that I tell myself every morning when I wake up and when someone ridicules me, ‘Being the abused one isn’t the crime, but not telling is’—I believe this to be very true. I have soaked up every word that is in this book, and I have become a strong survivor!”