Patriarchy: A social system in which the father is the head of the family and men have authority over women and children.
I support Brigitte Harris, the 26-year-old New York woman charged with strangling and castrating her pig of a father for what he did to her because he could.
What he did to his daughter (almost every type of sexual act possible from the time she was 3 years old through her young adulthood) is not remarkable.
One in five girls grows up raped by a family member, night after night year in and year out. Our society condones this, if you find that hard to believe, listen to a victim. As if.
Our society likes to believe that incest is taboo. Wrong, incest is ordinary. Revealing the truth of incest is what’s taboo. Victims who do tell are not believed. None of which is remarkable or in the least even slightly bearable.
“Tonight is about helping women speak out about abuse. Brigitte tried to speak out but nobody heard,’ said Dr. Nicoletta Pallotta, founder of the Brooklyn-based Women Against Violence, and one of the dozens who attended the two hour service. “Somehow or another, that kind of abuse gets you,” she added.
It gets you thrown in psych wards, stigmatized as a suicidal borderline cutter and psycho-bitch entertainment, all of which is barely tolerated by the larger society, and tolerated only because the p0rn industry depends on us to fill the ranks of the sex class, to be tied up, pissed on, and double-penetrated by father’s successors. None of this is remarkable. Girls who grow up abused are expected to do the right thing and turn their rage against themselves.
What’s remarkable is for a victim to put her anger where it belongs.
I saw Brigitte’s sister Carleen on Montel Williams Thursday where she wept, blamed herself and disclosed the extent of her father’s depravity. Their mother abandoned the baby girls and they spent their first years in foster homes. The day their father Eric picked them up to live with him he pulled over on the side of the road and forced 4 year old Carleen to give him oral sex. That was their reality from that day forward.
From Brigitte’s pre-murder myspace profile, under “Who I would like to meet”:
ANYONE WHO CAN SAVE ME
Carleen set up a website where supporters can donate to her sister’s defense fund: Save Brigitte Harris.
She also has her own myspace page, here,
which reflects her courageous and tentative steps on her journey toward healing and activism:
I’ve decided to start a page after seeing all the support my sister has received from this community. My name is Carleen Goodridge, & like my sister Brigitte, am a survivor of chilhood Sexual Abuse (CSA). My goal right now is to keep you all informed with any events her friends & family may have in her honor. I would also like this page to serve as an opportunity to bring awareness to this tragic epidemic happening across our nations. If you or someone you know is or has shared this “SECRET”, seek out help, speak out to help. We are not alone.
This is the brutal cost of being forced to live silently in fear and degradation for a lifetime. Brigitte’s silence has been broken…Somewhere right now there are other girls going through what Brigitte went through, hoping that someone will save them…when will they be given a voice? Brigitte has spoken loud and clear. Child abuse maims and kills. It cannot be tolerated.
Her father is the one who got off the hook easily.
I hope Brigitte can get therapy now and begin to heal, but I also cringe thinking about her being sent to a psychiatric facility, locked-down by authoritarian figures who will once again control her every move and impose their own will. Her battle is far from over. It will never be over.
Robin,
I posted some of your recent writing on basil.CA. While I do not understand what seems to be your simplistic representation of cognitive therapy, I do certainly respect your frequent periods of GREAT writing.
All the best,
Bob
“FORMER?” Former ally Robin Plan?! If this is how CBT works through unresolved baggage, I’ll stick with Gestalt, my friend.
“Former” just means you stopped liking me, hon. *smiles* (“Unresolved baggage” is a phrase unworthy of your talents, by the way!)
I am happy you are writing, very often beautifully, and that you have the following you deserve. I send you all of my best wishes.
Re CBT, to my mind, and in my experience, it doesn’t require putting good names on unacceptable things. It means looking reasonably at where you are, what you can expect. THAT said, your descriptions of the way it has been used have made me reconsider the whole thing.
Thank you for writing and still reaching out. You will always be a magnificent talent.
Bob
That myspace page wasn’t at all what I was expecting. Thanks for pointing it out.
On a side note, I am curious about that 1 in 5 statistic, which I’ve seen before. I’m always ready to believe the worst about humanity, but that still strikes me as impossible. Where does it come from? Do you believe it?
What exactly were you “expecting”?
As for the 1 in 5 stat, I don’t know that it applies strictly to girls who are incest victims Chuckling, but 1 in 5 is the official stat on girls who are sexually abused before the age of 18 – some have said the number is one in four, and most agree that these numbers are UNDERestimated due to lack of reporting. Personally, I believe the numbers are underestimated, particularly with respect to incest which carries an even greater social taboo.
I wonder about that too, the under-reporting. I worked on a helpline called Parents Anonymous for two years and counseled fathers who were molesting their daughters, and only one of about fifty perpetrators reported his crime to social services. I’ve met with dozens of victims in support groups and counseling and none of us told anyone, much less the police. Most are trying to forget and minimize, and only come in contact with the Department of Justice when they’re in the criminal justice/mental health system for acting out “deviant” behavior.
I haven’t got time to post on this story, I have work to do, but I’ll just say again CBT sucks. It’s the most harmful bag of shit to come down the pike in a long time. I’m still spittin’ out the simplistic disguised venom it wanted me to use as blood.
I never swallowed it.
Yuck.
Let’s tell it like it is, it wants fucking robots. They can go fuck themselves.
Sorry to divert from this subject. I just couldn’t let that go.
Hey, I was wondering if anyone has had a seretonin syndrome experience? Can it develop over time or is it an instant type reaction?
The above situation–the murder and mutilation–I will be following this so closely.
Has there been any suggestion of serotonin syndrome in this case? Because really, a life-time of horrific abuse is what is responsible for this act of rage.
Click the links people. That’s why they’re there.