Abstract
What sets this book apart from other memoirs on incest is its unstinting approach to breaking the silence surrounding the abuse by understanding and exposing the perpetrator and those who inadvertently contribute to the continuance of abuse through silence and inaction. Author Joyce Allan had the misfortune of having a pedophile as her father—a man who perpetrated incestuous abuse on his own children and grandchildren and molested numerous other children. As the title, Because I Love You: The Silent Shadow of Child Sexual Abuse implies, Allan had to struggle with the legacy not only of the abuse but of what he told her when he abused her, that he loved her. She had to struggle in order to gain perspective on how he could simultaneously love and exploit her. Allan has done an admirable job of understanding and communicating this seeming contradiction. She also shows how, in the larger society, what appear to be loving attempts to protect the perpetrator and his/her victims and to deny the occurrence of abuse can instead aid and abet its continuance.
With this book, Allan offers leadership in breaking the silence and in speaking of the travesty that is child sexual abuse. Despite having had a mother who believed her and who immediately moved her away from the perpetrator who was subsequently incarcerated, she suffered what we now know as the classic aftereffects of incest/child sexual abuse. Yet, despite believing and protecting her daughter, Allan's mother was stymied by shame and unable to talk to her about the abuse. Nor could she seek help for her. Allan had to do what abused children do—fend for herself in the silence and puzzle as the myriad effects and symptoms ebbed and flowed in her life. She did not have an easy life and yet, like so many other survivors, she managed to excel at a professional career, first as a nurse, then as a psychiatric nurse practitioner who came to specialize in treating those who had been abused as children. Along the way, she had to face her own history, her father's abuse of her own children and others in the family, and the death of her cherished brother (who she believes died of the long-term consequences of a heart broken in childhood), while she struggled to work on her own recovery.
This book obviously testifies to the success of that recovery. A major strength is that it is written from the dual viewpoints of victim-survivor and professional. Ms. Allan has not only lived through the experience of abuse and its aftermath but she has studied it extensively, as an area of academic interest and in terms of her clinical pursuits. What she has learned personally and professionally, she presents factually and even-handedly. She describes what other people recoil from and try to hide. Through numerous interviews with family members, friends, and colleagues of her father that she conducted over the course of many years, she came to intimately understand her father and how his upbringing contributed to his pedophilic behavior. Furthermore, she documents how she came to the realization that his perpetration was allowed to continue when family and friends refused to truly see his behavior for what it was or to intervene.
Because I Love You: The Silent Shadow of Child Sexual Abuse is sobering and not an easy read. It forces the reader to ponder how we are all responsible for the welfare of children and how mightily we, as a society, have failed at this task. Published against the backdrop of the priest abuse scandal and cover-ups that have come to light recently, the book offers no easy answers about treating perpetrators and stopping their predations. Yet it puts all of us on notice that as long as we as a society, individual and collectively, collude in denying the reality of abuse and in covering it up, abuse will continue to the detriment of the involved children and of the society as a whole.