Why didn't he tell his parents?

 

This Jewish year is a leap year, so we get a full extra month, "Adar 1".  Adar is known as a happy month and month of good luck.  Most notably, Purim happened in Adar and that was a story of catastrophe turned celebration.  The Talmud advises to squeeze court hearings and property purchases into this month as things seem to turn out right in this month.

Now, to continue from last week's story about the rabbi who was sexually abused from age 8-18.  

Two more things that stuck out at me, were his guilt/shame/confused childish feelings, even at an older age, and also his parent's reaction. 

It seems odd that an otherwise intelligent and mature boy could think of himself as satan, Saddam Hussein, and live in fear of being stoned by a rabbinical court, even at an older age (the first time that he even considered the possibility of not being evil was at age 20).  Coupled with his double life and perversion of sexuality, the guilt and shame unquestionably took a huge toll on him.

The Rebbe would liken children to trees, saplings, and seeds.  If you scratch a grown tree, the impact is marginal.  The same scratch on a sapling defects the tree long term, and the same scratch on a seed will most likely ruin it from growing at all. 

The impact of sexual abuse on children (which interestingly is very similar to the effect of porn exposure at a young age) has long-term repercussions.  The warped and skewed views on sexuality are an unfortunate casualty of abuse and even with "re-education" is hard to shake. 

Hopefully this will serve as a wake up call for parents to talk about what was once never spoken about, not just as "the big talk," but as an ongoing open dialogue to narrate life, especially the holy and beautiful dynamic between a husband and wife according to the maturity and curiosity of the child.

Now to his parent's reaction.  At first, they didn't believe him.  His father was especially dumbfounded because he felt so close to his son.  How do you process that? 

Natanya and I have been blessed with some hard times in the past couple years, which brought about a tremendous blessing.  We too thought of ourselves as close to our children and each other.  With some help from people who cared though, we learned to become more sensitive, and with that heightened sensitivity, our lack of closeness became painful.  Now, we feel that pain every time we hear a parent talk transactionally to their children or each other, lose their patience, or simply create a distance between them.

All parents have deep, dark secrets.  We naively fool ourselves that our children don't have those same secrets, and fool ourselves about how close we are.  The only chance we have at truly being close is by tirelessly working to make them feel comfortable to share their fears, hurt, and vulnerability.  And how rewarding that journey is.