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Blaming Ourselves
"It was my fault. I wanted it." Our abusers are especially good at making us believe it was "our fault."
The blaming may or may not be subtle and laced with threats and bribes. Chances are, it will cement their carefully engineered isolation of us from all other support systems or use a sense of isolation we may already have felt. Whatever way it comes about, being sexually and emotionally abused is the result of coercion, manipulation, or other actions by the abuser and not the legitimate outcome of our needs and desires. We are the objects, not the subjects, of that abuse.
When confronted with their behavior, our abusers most often claim that we were seductive, acting out, needy, and that we lured and manipulated them. Those who, in the face of overwhelming evidence cannot deny what took place might say that they finally gave in to our needs or our demands. They were our hapless victims. They only wanted to help. They gave in only to save us from ourselves or from the cruel world.
In his classic book, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's Humbert threatens the young Lolita, whose mother has recently died, and blames her for his exploitation of her. Says Humbert, "...let us see what happens if you, a minor, accused of having impaired the morals of an adult....what happens if you complain to the police of my having kidnapped and raped you? Let us suppose they believe you. A minor female, who allows a person over twenty-one to know her carnally, involves her victim into statutory rape, or second degree sodomy,....So I go to jail. Okay, I go to jail. But what happens to you my orphan?" (p. 159) Humbert unequivocally places blame on the very vulnerable person he is charged to protect and warns her of the dire consequences she will suffer from the isolation he has imposed upon her.
In "Reading Lolita in Tehran," author Azar Nafisi observes "Like the best defense attorneys, who dazzle with their rhetoric and appeal to our highest sense of morality, Humbert exonerates himself by implicating his victim....'I am going to tell you something very strange: it was she who seduced me....Not a trace of modesty...did I perceive in this beautiful badly formed young girl whom modern education...had utterly and hopelessly depraved.'" (p. 42)
Despite Humbert's attempts to place the blame on the innocent, it is clearly he who had the power and responsibility to keep Lolita safe. The same is true of abuse by professionals. Boston attorney Linda Jorgenson and I offer slightly different scenarios to describe where responsibility lies in abusive relationships such as that of Humbert and Lolita or that of therapist and patient or that of counselor and counselee or that of clergy and parishioner, no matter what we perceive to be our desires. I suggest "You could be a masochist begging to be beaten, but it would always be unacceptable for the person in authority to beat you." Says Linda, "You could be a prostitute naked and begging for it, but it is always the responsibility of the professional (or adult or person with authority) to set and maintain safe boundaries."
Whatever the scenario, the responsibility to set and maintain safe boundaries in a therapeutic or power imbalanced setting was not, is not, and never will be yours.
Jan Wohlberg
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