Silence

For years I was silent about my brother's abuse of my sister and I. To this day my mother still doesn't seem to understand the impact it had on us.
I think she just doesn't want to revisit the past and admit her responsibility to keep her two other children safe was overridden by her shame and fear of reprisals. The "what would the neighbors think?" mentality has driven this issue underground for too long. Often the victim,whether male or female, is punished along with the abuser, further compounding the shame and contributing to the conspiracy of silence. There's no telling how many male children are abused by siblings because they rarely come forward, parents are unwilling to be vulnerable enough to speak to someone about it and the cycle of shame and conspiracy of silence continues. My hope is that someday we can say these things happen, parents aren't afraid to take action and society is able to intervene when parents don't.