Hope and Healing for Victims of Sexual Abuse

Q&A with Pastor Justin Holcomb

Justin Holcomb is a pastor at Mars Hill Church and executive director of the Resurgence. He is also an adjunct professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary and holds two master’s degrees from the Reformed Theological Seminary and a Ph.D from Emory University.
Justin and his wife, Lindsey, wrote Rid of My Disgrace, a book on gospel hope and healing for sexual assault victims.

How does the gospel of Jesus offer such a hope and healing for victims of sexual abuse?  
JH: God’s grace dismantles the beliefs that give disgrace life. Grace recreates what violence destroyed.
Victims of sexual assault experience many devastating physical, psychological, and emotional effects. The most prevalent responses include denial, distorted self-image, shame, guilt, anger, and despair. If this is you (or someone you love), you need to understand that the gospel of Jesus applies to each of these.
Denial — Sexual assault makes you feel alone, unimportant, and unworthy of sympathy. It tempts you to deny and minimize what happened to you to cope with the pain and trauma. It might initially help to create a buffer while you start dealing with the difficult emotions, but eventually denial and minimization will actually increase the pain, because it keeps you from dealing with the psychological destruction and trauma of the assault.
God does not deny, minimize, or ignore what happened to you. Through Jesus he identifies with you, and he has compassion. He knows your suffering. He does not want you to stay silent or deny, but to feel and express your emotions, to grieve the destruction you experienced. The cross shows that God understands pain and does not judge you for feeling grief. The resurrection shows that God conquered sin—that he is reversing sin’s destruction and restoring peace.
Because of Jesus, you have the privilege to confidently go to God and receive grace and mercy. Your need and your cries don’t make God shun you. He has compassion on you (Hebrew 4:14-16).
Identity — Sexual assault attacks your sense of identity and tells you that you are filthy, foolish, defiled, and worthless. It makes you feel that you are nothing.
The gospel gives you a new identity through the redemptive work of Jesus. Through faith in Christ, you are adopted into God’s family. You are given the most amazing identity: child of God (1 John 3:1–2). God adopted you and accepted you because he loves you. You didn’t do anything to deserve his love. He loved you when you were unlovable.
The gospel also tells you that through faith in Christ, his righteousness, blamelessness, and holiness is attributed to you (2 Cor. 5:21). If you are in Christ, your identity is deeper than any of your wounds. You can be secure in this new identity because it was achieved for you by God—you are his, and he cannot disown himself.
Shame — Sexual assault is shameful and burdens you with feelings of nakedness, rejection, and dirtiness. Shame is a painfully confusing experience—it makes you acutely aware of inadequacy, shortcoming, and failure.
Jesus reveals God’s love for his people by covering their nakedness, identifying with those who are rejected, cleansing their defilement, and conquering their enemy who shames them. God extends his compassion and his mighty, rescuing arm to take away your shame. Jesus both experienced shame and took your shame on himself. Jesus, of all people, did not deserve to be shamed. Yet he took on your shame, so it no longer defines you nor has power over you.
Because of the cross, we can be fully exposed, because God no longer identifies us by what we have done or by what has been done to us. In Jesus, you are made completely new.
Guilt — Sexual assault attacks you with guilt that leads to feelings of condemnation, judgment, and self-blame.
You are not guilty for the sin that was committed against you—and this realization alone can bring great freedom. Yet the reality is that your sense of guilt goes deeper than what was done to you. You know that you have sinned against God and others—both before your assault and in response to what happened to you.
The shocking message of grace is that Jesus was forsaken for us so we could be forgiven. God turned his wrath away from you and toward Christ on the cross. If you trust in Christ, all your sins—past, present, and future—are forgiven. All of them. All threat of punishment, or sense of judgment, is canceled. Through faith in Christ you are loved, accepted, and declared innocent.
Anger — Sexual assault creates anger at what has been done to you. While anger can be a natural and healthy response to the unquestionable evil of sexual assault, most victims express it poorly or feel they have to suppress it. You have probably been discouraged from expressing your anger, but suppressed anger holds you hostage and leaves you vindictive, addicted, embittered, immoral, and unbelieving.
God is angrier over the sin committed against you than you are. He is angry because what happened to you was evil and it harmed you. Godly anger is participating in God’s anger against injustice and sin, crying out to him to do what he promised: destroy evil and demolish everything that harms others and defames God’s name.
Anger expressed to God is the cry of the weak one who trusts the strong One, the hurting person who trusts the One who will make it all better. Because vengeance is God’s, you can be free from the exhaustive cycle of vindictive anger.
Despair — Sexual assault can fill you with despair. Feeling that you’ve lost something, whether it’s your innocence, youth, health, trust, confidence, or security, can deepen into hopelessness and despair. And then depression can add seemingly inescapable weight to the experience of despair.
The gospel gives you hope. Biblical hope is sure because God is behind his promise of a future for you. The hope you need right now is grounded in God’s faithfulness in the past and anticipation of it in the future.
Because of Jesus’ resurrection, all threats against you are tamed if you trust in Christ. Jesus conquered death and evil, so evil done to you is not the end of the story and you can have hope. Because Jesus rose from the dead, he ascended to heaven and is “making all things new.” Your God is strong, and he, not the evil done to you, will have the final say about you. That hope animates the “groanings” within ourselves that everything will someday be renewed. We will be delivered from all sin and misery. Every tear will be wiped away when evil is no more.

What are a few practical ways that family and friends can help care for their loved ones that have been victimized?
JH: If you are a loved one, friend, or pastor serving a victim of sexual assault, here are some suggestions on how to best care for that person:
1. Don’t minimize or deny what happened to the victim.
2. Listen. Don’t judge or blame the victim for the assault. Research has proven that victims tend to have an easier adjustment after abuse or an assault when they are believed and listened to by others.
3. Do not to ask probing questions about the assault. Questions like this can cause revictimization. Follow the victim’s lead and listen.
4. Let the victim know the assault(s) was not his or her fault.
5. Reassure the victim that he or she is cared for and loved.
6. Let the victim know that he or she does not have to manage this crisis alone.
7. Be patient. Remember, it takes time to deal with the crime.
8. Remember that each sexual assault victim has different needs. What may have been beneficial for one person might not work for another.
9. Empower the victim. Refrain from telling him or her what should be done and from making decisions on the victim’s behalf. Present the victim with options and help him or her think through them.
10. Encourage the sexual assault victim to seek medical attention.
11. Encourage the victim to talk about the assault(s) with an advocate, pastor, mental health professional, law enforcement officer, another victim, or a trusted friend.
12. Fight on behalf of the victim against the lies and challenge the myths and misconceptions about sexual assault.
13. Take care of yourself. As a support person, you need to be healthy in your caregiving role.
14. Learn what to say and what not to say.
15. Avoid placating statements as an attempt to make the victim feel better.
16. Take time to notice where the victim is in the healing process and do not rush him or her through it. Help the victim keep moving through it at a pace comfortable to him or her rather than trying to force progression to a different stage immediately.
17. If you are a husband or a wife who is supporting your spouse through the effects of sexual assault, here are two specific suggestions:
(a) Encourage him or her to tell a trusted friend or friends. It is a good idea for the victim to have a broad support base, as it can be exhausting if the supporting spouse is the only one involved. You won’t always be available to talk, and at times it can be easier for a victim to talk to someone of the same sex about certain dimensions of an assault.
(b) Don’t ever press or whine for sex or intimacy.
18. If you are a parent or guardian who is supporting a child through the effects of sexual assault, here are two specific suggestions:
(a) Advocate for your child. This means pursuing justice by calling the police and finding a good counselor who knows how to deal with the sexual abuse of children.
(b) If the assault occurred because of your negligence, apologize to your child and ask your child to forgive you.

Finally Speaking Out

I am discussing something, that I never thought I would. Something that happened a long time ago, but has affected my entire life. This isn't for sympathy, or a perverse need for attention. I'm speaking out for the many who may have their own story, swept under the rug, ignored, or invalidated.

I was 5 years old. My memory is shaky of that time spent with another family. I remember it in bursts. If I try to remember what that time was like, I will get flashes, and then blank spots.

The kids were a little older than me and my brother. The daughter was 7 years old (I'll call her "T" from here on out). I looked up to her. She was fun and wild. I don't remember a lot about the mother. I remember her being around, but not as much as the father. He was very different from my dad. He was very affectionate. He liked to hug a lot. Especially T.

I remember going to the grocery store with their family and their mom went inside while we stayed in the car. He got out and got us gum from the gum machine outside the store. We were trying to blow bubbles, and they were playing a game I had never played before. We were suppose to pass the gum back and forth to each other, with our mouths. I watched them, T, her dad and her brother, play this game with a sort of uncomfortable fascination. Then, her father asked me if I wanted to play too. I felt weird, and embarrassed and said no. T kept wanting me to play, even grabbing my face and pressing her lips against mine to try and get me to play and I pulled away. Her father laughed and said, that I was missing out. Then he and T put their mouths together and I now know what was happening was french kissing, until he pulled away with her gum and showed us by sticking his tongue out at us with the gum perched on the end.

I remember one of the nights she spent the night. We played a game where, I would pose and she would take my picture. Like we were models. Then, she would tell me to pull up my night dress, so she could take pictures of my underwear. She taught me how to pose "sexy". Which at age 5, is kind of a mystery. It involved putting my hand on my hip, sticking my hip out, and opening my mouth, "So I can see your tongue." she would say. She would then pose for me pretending to take her picture. Some of the poses she made, were embarrassing, but I played along. Then, it was time for bed, and things would get very confusing.

She would tell me that her father told her to take her underwear off and put it under her pillow and "wait for him". So, she would do that, and tell me to do the same. Then she would proceed to do things to me. Stuff her father did to her. I remember her being surprised that my dad didn't do that to me too. This sort of ritual was repeated at a slumber party where we stayed with a mutual friend and two other girls. Only, some of the things done, I remember now, were more disturbing.

My parents didn't know. How could they? It was a different time then, and it wasn't done in the open. She nor her father were careless. I know, if my parents had known, they would have swiftly protected me and done everything to save T and any future victims from her father. But at 5 years old, I didn't know how to say what happened. I didn't know I needed to tell. T tried at one point, but her mother didn't react well and she was forever silenced.

How did all this affect my life? Well, I struggled with nightmares, that I sometimes still have today. Not very often, but when I am struggling spiritually, they come. I look back and realize how provocative I was at a young age. I acted out once on another child when I was 7 years old. Something I'm ashamed of still. As I got older, I put myself in dangerous situations with older men. I would do things for their attention that I am ashamed of. I don't think some of the things I did, would have happened, if I hadn't been sexualized at a young age. Any time the news reports, yet another repeat offending pedophile, adding another victim to the list of children they raped/molested, I feel sick. I want to kill anyone who has violated a child. Not all victims become perpetrators, but acting out is very common. So I struggle with being suspicious of the intent of children. I am overly protective sometimes of my kids, I'm sure. But if anyone were to harm my kids like that, I can promise you that they would pay dearly and I am willing to do time for getting them justice.

It doesn't matter how old the perpetrator is. It doesn't matter what gender they were. We have no right to quantify the extent of trauma based on some predetermined guidelines. When you are sexually exploited, it IS abuse! Do NOT ever discount, rationalize or diminish a child's claim of abuse. This holds true, for the countless adults who are living with memories of abuse. The extent of the abuse is not what makes it valid. If it happened at all, IT MATTERS.

 
Now, I have to recognize, that while I am not "better", a lot of the bad feelings have lightened and that is because of my relationship with Jesus Christ. It's a process. When the nightmares come, or I feel panicky over a memory or trigger, I pray for His protection. For healing and grace. I am a work in progress and I have bad days. However, when I sing hymns and talk to Him, I feel at peace again and for a time, I find freedom. If you struggle with memories of abuse, you are not alone and there is freedom from the pain and heartache. Call on Jesus. Ask Him to come into your heart and take away the darkness. You will begin a healing that no doctor, fling, pill or drink can cure.

For More Information:
What Is Child On Child Sexual Abuse?
"... more than one-third of the sexual abuse of America's children is committed by other minors."
-- 2012 crime statistics