Grief Beyond The Shadows In My Heart with Mary Havens

Not knowing what grief was, Mary Havens, author of The Shadows in My Heart, suffered a long history of silence from when she was sexually molested at the age of five. It was not until her mid-twenties that she found her voice and broke that silence. Triggered by the confession of her five-year-old sister and her daughter who were molested by her then husband, Mary’s story began and has since inspired many people to speak out. Recounting the hurdles she met along the way, from having people dismissing her experiences to the uneasiness she still feels about her children’s safety, she bravely pushed through and confronted her past. She also shares her visits at Oprah and the attempts that have been made at reconciling her family. Mary reveals her experiences beyond the pages of her book.

Listen to the podcast here:

Grief Beyond The Shadows In My Heart with Mary Havens

Mary and I met in the While We Were Silent Facebook group. Mary Havens joined the group and shared her story about living with sexual abuse in the home, suspecting it, and how she came to uncover that her children were being abused. She tells the journey that she went through with her family, including the discovery, the confronting, and all that went with that, as well as then getting into a program for rehabilitation to try to heal and restore the family relationships, and what all she went through with that. It’s got some different perspectives on it from the other stories in the While We Were Silent project. I felt this had some information that needed to be shared in terms of how to help people if you suspect that something’s going on in your home, whether or not rehabilitation is possible. Mary has a lot to share on this.

—

Our guest is Mary Havens. Welcome, Mary.

Thank you, Debra.

It’s wonderful to have you here.

It’s wonderful to be here.

Mary Havens, the oldest daughter of twelve, raised on a small dairy farm in the picturesque Southwestern Wisconsin Ocooch Mountains. Mary graduated high school in 1964 and married in 1965. She’s the mother of two daughters, a son and eight grandchildren. Mary’s story expands beyond the red barns and swaying fields of her childhood Midwest beginnings. She’s appeared on numerous TV talk shows including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Minneapolis’ Twin Cities Live, and the Mary Hanson Show.

She was a Twitter contributor for Dr. Phil and The Doctors TV shows. She has been a guest on radio talk shows across the country. Mary has traveled extensively while promoting her published memoir, The Shadows in My Heart. Mary moved to Alaska in 2004. Mary, you’ve got quite a story to tell, something that’s brought you on to all of these radio shows and TV shows. Can you share with our audience your story?

Thank you so much for inviting me to share my story, which is becoming easier as I tell it. It’s a hard story to tell. It’s a hard story to read. Thanks to the ghostwriter that I have, who is Lynn Wiese Sneyd. She was able to help me to weave the story so that it tells how I grew up, when I got married and the things that happened after that time. I grew up on this small, picturesque dairy farm, which is a double edge sword for me. I had some happy times, but I had a lot of not so happy times. Growing up, at the age of three, I lost a sibling, a three-month-old brother. I was molested by a farm hand. I lost another sibling, a seven-year-old sister.

At that time, I had one brother who still was in a death-like situation because each of the children had cystic fibrosis. By the time I was married, I had another brother who had cystic fibrosis. Between 1965 and 1967, I lost two more siblings. Growing up in that background where death was never discussed and where people were of the belief that children don’t have feelings, don’t have the emotions, and don’t know how to grieve. I was born in ‘46. Back then I don’t believe people knew what grief was as to talk about it. My parents remained silent. When I was sexually molested, I didn’t tell. I did not tell until I was in my mid-twenties and I was married.

I had two children of my own and was expecting my third child when my five-year-old sister came and told me that my husband had molested her. She told me in front of his parents and I believed her. I confronted him, and he ran and left the house. He said she was lying. I had been reading about sexual orientation and such things through Dr. Freud. I had some sense about that. Psychology Today talked about those issues. At that time, because I had read Psychology Today, I had some forethought to take my sister to the doctor and have her examined. The doctor said there was no evidence, which made my heart fall. I believed that she wasn’t telling a lie. He said to me, “Small children do not make these stories up. You should investigate further and take her home.”

It was in my home about 120 miles from my parents’ home. I took her home. I told my parents and they were like, “I can’t believe that he would do anything like that.” That is when I shared with them about my own sexual abuse years before. They were perplexed. They didn’t understand why I had never told them. I can’t be specific about why I didn’t tell. I knew that it was dirty, it was wrong. I felt dirty and shameful for this man doing this to me. I was about five years old when that happened. Without him telling me not to tell, it was the secretive moves and things in which he managed to manipulate me into that situation. That was the beginning of my story with how I grew up and how I got into this particular situation.

It’s natural for children when you feel that. You know something that it wasn’t right and you feel that visceral experience of, “There has been an invasion here, a violation.” That shame feeling sets in. It’s natural to want to hide that. That’s the body’s natural instinct to want to hide. It was brave of your sister to feel safe enough to speak that to you. That says a lot.

It was brave of her. That secret went on for a lot of years because my mother entered the picture. She made it like it didn’t happen. That’s another aspect of how you become victimized and re-victimized when you’re not believed. Although I always believed my sister, but when my mother said, “It was something else. She was playing with their cousins and it didn’t happen.” It left me then with even more guilt and shame because I believed her. I didn’t know what happened. My husband at the time ranted, raved, carried on, and denied. I was also pregnant, so you know how emotional you can be. People who have had pregnancies know that emotional stuff goes on. Lots of other things happened after that time. My own daughter came and said that he tickled her butt and I confronted him, and then more domestic violence.

I was getting shut down. There was basically no help. The only help I feel I had at that time was the doctor validating the fact that even though he saw no evidence, children do not make those stories up. It was important for me to at least have that validation. That was the beginning of my journey of finding out. I’m analytical. I come from a research background at a major chemical company in Minnesota, and a recorder. My job was to do testing, analyzing, and recording the data. I became a data recorder of events and things that went on throughout the many years that followed the beginning in 1969.

You have your own daughter. You’ve had your sister and your own daughter telling you things. What happened then as an investigative person and analytical person? What did you do with that information?

I went to his parents, who shut me down. I held onto the fact that I had been sexually molested. What I believed they were telling me was similar to what happened to me. I was vigilant about trying to keep an eye on my kids and keep an eye on him. He created all kinds of distractions. After I’ve written the book or during writing the book and after, I’m able to go back and put the pieces of the puzzle together about his behavior. One of the things that I know is that pedophiles move a lot. He did all kinds of things to distract from what he was doing.

As I’m trying to figure out how to live, how to have three children, how to have no more babies and to protect my family, he was in and out of my life. He had different affairs with other women, just total distractions. I never knew what was going to come up. I was close to his mom and dad. His mom was good to me. His dad adored my oldest daughter. There were not all bad things, but it was confusing. It was always chaos. If anything got too comfortable, he made sure that it wasn’t. He was, I believe, was looking to make sure that they wouldn’t get close enough to me to tell me what he was doing to them. I didn’t see or hear things during a number of years other than his distractions. At that time, I didn’t know to look and question my children. I didn’t even know how to question them.

When my oldest daughter was five, she was abducted off the street. She told similar things that the pervert did to her. We got the police involved. Guess who was the one that was taking her to the police station to help identify the person that had molested her, picked her up off the street? It was him. She was always close to me and I wanted to go. He insisted it be him. Looking back now, you can see why. His behavior was always off and on. I couldn’t trust him. I finally was able to get a good paying job. If he wasn’t there, I could support myself, support the kids. Each time he left, I prayed he would not come back. He would always come back. He used the kids because they would want their dad. I would feel sad and bad because having a father is important.

My own father is a good guy. I loved him very much. I always have the comfort in that. My dad was one of the greatest men I’ve ever known. He lived with my mother who was not as I would say, the greatest mother. My mother and my father suffered the loss of four children. That was very difficult because if you can imagine losing one child, much less four.

That changed the dynamics of our family. It changed everything about who we were. I was the oldest daughter. I had two older brothers, but I became a mother to everyone else and had way more responsibilities than I should have had. I had met my husband because we were in high school together. I started dating him in December. His little four-year-old brother drowned in February. That was a pivotal point in how we joined together. I was the rescuer and he was the little boy. He’s still alive today and he’s still that little boy. He’s never growing up.

You related through your grief and that rescuer relationship?

Yes, so that was another portion of how the story is woven together. How we managed to survive and the kids have survived. I moved. I had gotten a divorce from him, but Wisconsin law made you wait six months to make it final. He did everything he could to get us back together and I succumbed to that.

It sounds like you went on with suspecting. At some point, did you have confirmation before you got the divorce?

No. What happened was that he created all kinds of diversions. I did not understand what the diversions were about. I had kicked him out. I’d been tired of his game playing and so on. I said I was getting a divorce. He came back into the house and he attacked my sister. I went through with the divorce. There was that confirmation. My mother was involved in how all of that fell apart. I don’t want to give away everything in my book, but there were extenuating circumstances. In hindsight, I can honestly say I was afraid of him. He was a Vietnam vet. When he came back from Vietnam, he had bad behavior. When I put it all together, he had it before he went to Vietnam. I will say Vietnam probably had some effect on him, but that’s not where it started with him.

We went on, I had a good job and I moved to the Twin Cities and worked. I tried to raise the family and bought a house. He was never settled. If there was a time when we had good times, he couldn’t be comfortable with that. He had to create some discontent. He would pick on the kids. One thing he did was kids and him against me. He had that camaraderie with them and I was the disciplinarian. I was the mother. He was the child, so I was raising four children basically. Things got bad after I had my ovaries removed. If you can imagine a volcano that erupts, all this stuff over the years kept building that volcano until it exploded.

Having that oophorectomy, I lost all control of my emotions. Everything exploded. I went into some counseling, eventually. We had family counseling. In the family counseling, I always told the stories about what happened to me, what happened to my sister, what happened to my daughter. We had a good counselor who knew about child sexual abuse. He was helping to uncover that story. It was 1984. I was mad because I wanted my oldest daughter to talk about what had happened to her being abducted on the street. She’s like, “I never talk about it. I don’t think about it.” We were going to have a final meeting and I was furious. I knew that what had happened to her was even more traumatic than what had happened to me, if you’re going to measure.

Looking at it, she probably did push it all down inside. She still does that. I thought, “My sister who told me in 1969 is an adult now.” I called her. She was living here in Alaska. I asked her and she said, “Yes, it did happen.” Not only him, but his brother had molested her as well. It adds a little more devastation. That is not in the book. We can only deal with so many characters. There are a lot of characters in my book. I asked my oldest daughter and she said, “No.” She couldn’t remember anything. She’s almost nineteen at this point. I figured out how to approach my youngest daughter.

If anything, she was the one that was being abused. He treated her badly. They would engage in battles, arguments, and things that seemed over the top for me. I never grew up in a family like that. I never grew up with this raging, fighting, screaming and swearing. He did. I finally got my daughter in the car. I asked her a number of questions. Finally, she said yes, he had abused her. That is when I called the counselor, who was a mandated reporter. He contacted the authorities, we went through the system, and he was convicted of only her abuse. The statutes of limitations had run out on everything else he had done.

We went with that. He was convicted first and second degree intra-familial sexual abuse. He served less than six months in jail, on a work release. He basically had a job where he could go there at 7:00 AM and reported to the jail at midnight. He had a place to sleep and breakfast. He didn’t serve much. During that time, we were introduced to the Wilder Incest Treatment Program, Family Incest Treatment. We went through that program and it was helpful. In hindsight, I believe what it did for him was help him to become wiser and smarter about how to abuse and get off the hook.

He owned up to it and saying, and I believe he was coerced and coached into how to say he was sorry to the girls for what he had done and that it was his responsibility. They made it sound like, “He’s done. He stopped,” but how would you trust somebody after this? They started having children and I still wanted out of the marriage. Looking back, I realize that I had a lot of fear. They said if they ever got married, they didn’t want their children to know what he had done. I agreed to that. They should never know what he did to them, but they should know that he is a pedophile, a child molester. They did not want to do any of that.

In driving me towards writing the story, there had to be a lot of years of people coming out and talking about this. We’re beginning to share this part of our lives where we can begin to talk, share and tell people, “This happened to me,” and they come, share and say, “Me too.” The need to open up is a very good thing. There are countless thousands of people who have been able to talk about it. You can’t just talk about it, you have to be able to change who you are. Find that way of forgiveness. Bring to light for others to help, let their light shine through. Going on Oprah, if you read my book and you wonder why it’s such good dialogue, it’s because it’s transcribed from the actual shows.

Your whole family went on Oprah?

No, we were on Oprah three times. My son would not go. My two daughters went with me once the first time. It was my two daughters, him, and me the second time. It was our oldest daughter and he and I the third time, because my youngest daughter was pregnant with twins. The show would not allow liability or take liability in case she went into labor on the plane. We had three shows.

Was your husband admitting to things? Was that about rehabilitation? About reforming families?

It tagged onto the Wilder Incest Family Treatment Program because they believed that you could restore families after something like this happened. It was a project, I’m not sure that it was a program that was completely in place. They had a couple different places in the Twin Cities. We went through the program for a couple of years. It wasn’t until 1992. I had written a letter to Oprah’s show and one day got a phone call. They wanted him on the show. I hadn’t told him I wrote the letter, so he was furious. Both my daughters and I went. Oprah was talking about restoring family relationships. We were invited back yet again in the fall, and then he wanted to come on the show. I’ve learned so much from writing the book, going back, looking at everything and learning what his whole motive was then and so is today.

He gets a high from that attention that he gets, even when he’s talking about this. He may put on that little boy, shameful character. If you keep him talking about it, he begins to sit up straighter and talk more proudly. When I went back to look at the show, which I hadn’t done until I started writing the book, then I began to see other things. At the time I was writing the book, I had suppressed many things, many other things, a lot of which are not in the book. How he manipulated me all of the time, I knew it, I didn’t know how to get out. There still was that stigma about how do you safely get out of a relationship? Now I have grandchildren. Who’s going to help protect those grandchildren?

You stayed as a way to protect your children, as a way to protect your grandchildren, thinking you could keep them safe from his actions, if you were there.

Don’t ever do that because you can’t protect them enough. If they’re around him, they will take that opportunity if they get it. My granddaughters for sure were protected, but I have six. My three granddaughters and five grandsons and they seem to think it was okay to allow him to be around them.

Do you mean your daughters and your son? Does your son have children too?

Yes. My son has a daughter who was murdered. She was a Jamaican. She’s not his biological daughter. He was definitely supporting her, trying to get her into college. She was living in Jamaica. That is his only child. In the end, this whole thing was devastating. Right before my book was published that happened. One daughter has three sons and the other has two sons and two daughters. They all believe that the kids are safe around him. When the girls were little, there was no way my daughter would leave him around them. Now I questioned about the boys as well.

I’m seeing a pattern in your family of the grief and loss, also the molestation and the incest. What insights have you gleaned about how these patterns play out through the generations?

Having had some experience back then and knowing some things were wrong, there were some things that didn’t fall into place. We were silent. Today, we don’t have to be silent. We need to make sure that we talk to our children openly and honestly and call body parts what body parts are appropriately. You know a two-year-old with this. When they start asking questions stop, listen and hear what they’re saying. A child may make a statement, question them and resolve it. I had all of this in my head. I had two sets of parents that shot me down when I tried to talk about this. My family is still trying to shut me down. They do not want to address this issue. In my case, I went from my incestuous family to his incestuous family. It’s our dynamics. It’s our character. I didn’t know better.

Yet there was something in you that did because you kept pursuing. How do you know when to say, “I need to keep pursuing this,” versus believing that, “I’m making too much out of this.” I can see how that would be a struggle. You don’t want to make something out of something that’s not there for the sake of the children in the family. At the same time, how do you know when to when to believe or when to push? Especially in hindsight, what were your signs?

My signs were the cruelty that he exuded on the kids, and at times me. He had that battle going on between them and me. We could sit down, have a family meeting and agree on all the discipline and rewards. He would be the first one to break that. The dynamics between them, me, and him, he would always make comments. There was that. I was suspicious of him, especially in the first part of our marriage. He would just disappear. I wouldn’t know where he was. He wouldn’t come home. I would be on my own. I would have no food, no money. I had to get on my own.

Once I did that, then he became jealous of me. It’s hard to say for someone else where to look. If you’re being abused, domestic violence covers all kinds of things. Until recently, I didn’t even think of myself as being a domestic violence victim. There’s the financial, psychological, emotional, the sexual, the drug and alcohol addiction, physical. There are many parts of it. If you’re not happy and you’re not meshing together in your relationship, it’s important to seek some outside help. The families, they were all saying that I was insane. He was reinforcing that, “She’s crazy.” When my own family and his family wouldn’t believe the things, and my kids never told me. I had asked them several times. He had groomed them, trained them not to tell.

Looking back, I know that he came into my life as a child molester. He didn’t start with our kids. He owns up to what he did to our kids on Oprah. If you read the book, there’ll be parts there that make you want to throw up by the way he has said it. If you saw the video, then you would want to throw up. If things are going awry in your marriage, your kids are talking to you, please stop and listen to your kids. Find out what they’re talking about. It’s not like I didn’t go and tell anyone. I went to a number of counselors, went to a couple of Catholic priests, one of which got us drunk at his house. That’s not in the book. There were many things that I tried to do because I had been abused. For a person acting like him, I knew there was something. I could not uncover it. He was very careful in the training and grooming. Unfortunately, he is still training, grooming, and keeping our kids silent.

Do you feel that it’s gone beyond your daughters?

Yes. He’s a pedophile. My daughters want to believe that they were his only victims and that he stopped going outside of the house. I don’t know anything specific. He’s not been caught again, which was one of the criteria he was under. If he got caught again, he’d go to prison. He got his record expunged.

He got his record expunged?

Yes, because back then they didn’t have sex offenders being registered. If he was a good boy and didn’t get caught again, he could have his record expunged. Eventually he did.

It’s six months in semi-prison and then expunged.

They watched him for ten years. I’m learning and reading more about pedophiles, child molesters, and rapists. They are good at what they do and they’re good at not getting caught. Oftentimes when they get caught and incarcerated they get out, they never get caught again. That doesn’t mean they haven’t violated another person. My gut has been right on for many years. In my gut, if he gets the chance, he’ll do it again. He’s got people protecting him. My daughters do not want their children to know this about him until after he’s dead. He’s still alive.

I don’t think a single one of them have read the book because their parents have made them afraid to read it. There’s been a lot of controversy with me even being anywhere near him. They think he’s this wonderful guy, the grandchildren. They’ve set that up to be that way. I’m much better now. If you saw me a few months ago, even the terror I’ve gone through because they’re trying to protect him. I’m fearful of other children, even adults. I wouldn’t trust him around some adults either. That’s me, that’s how I feel about it. I know him. The books that I have been reading on the subject, he’s textbook. In hindsight, I can look at that and see what things he was doing, how he was doing, and when certain things happened. Knowing that, “When that happened, then he left. That’s because he had abused one of the kids.”

Can you give an example of that?

When I first confronted him with my sister, my daughter, he walked out the door and didn’t come back. I didn’t have any money whatsoever. That was also instilling on the kids that when something happened and he left, they wouldn’t want to tell me.

That instinctual, that innate fear that we have that if we tell and that splits up the family, there goes our support structure.

It would be their fault. He’s setting them up and grooming them to make it look like he does this terrible thing to him. The next thing you know, he’s gone. I’m frantic with trying to figure out how I’m going to put food on the table, and then he waltzes back in. I’m broke. I don’t have a good job or whatever. Even after I got a good job, that was more threatening. He became more deviant in his behavior.

It reinforces that he’s the savior, and they need to do whatever it takes to keep him around.

Yes, and I don’t know what he did to them as far as how we put that in their minds. I do know some of what he did to them. I would highly recommend that if you suspect this or you even find out that it’s true, don’t find out the details. Let the kids talk to somebody else and tell them what was done to them. I have nightmares about what he did to them. It’s real hard to get that vision, especially if you’re a visual person like I am. Not only visual, but I have this recording in my brain that doesn’t let me let go of things. Writing the book has helped a lot for that. I’m forgetting a lot as I have written the book. I put it on paper and people believe me. People know that I’m not making up stories.

You were a part of that Family Incest Program, a rehabilitation program. Do you believe that it is possible to reconcile, to rehabilitate? Do you believe it’s a sickness that cannot be healed?

I believe that I could be healed, my daughters could be healed, but not with him in the picture. All that I’ve read, he’s incapable of stopping. He may minimize it now that he’s in his 70s, but maybe not. There’s so much internet porn. That was one of the things that he went to. He even tried to make it look like he wasn’t interested in the computer. He was always putting me down about things. If I was successful, he was making sure that I get put down. He didn’t want me to look better than him. I finally caught him in 2003. My mom was dying or she had died. I caught him on the internet porn. I was done. He knew that when my mother died that he was going to be out of my life. There were some other things that happened too, but that was the end.

That was mostly because your mother encouraged you to stay with him?

My mother always went for the underdog. She always thought he was an underdog, numerous times.

She’s probably identifying with her own, having had twelve children and four deaths. Back in her day also, she must’ve been in that position of feeling like you don’t leave. That is your stability and your financial support. A different day, a different mindset, and totally projecting that onto your life. Holding her own fears in terms of what she felt was right for you.

If you use osmosis as an example as what she carried to me and I’ve carried on. My daughter told me that my oldest daughter said, “My light is just like mom’s. I married a fork truck driver and I’ve got a real successful job,” and it’s funny. I didn’t think of it that way. They don’t have happy marriages either. Their lives aren’t happy. They believe that I want to destroy him, when in fact I want to save them. They are not going to allow that to happen because their common theme, and I agree totally with them, is they don’t want other people to know what he did because it’s embarrassing. They feel guilty and ashamed. What they miss in that is it is what he did to them.

They were innocent children. Looking back, he started molesting them as infants. My youngest daughter was twelve, thirteen somewhere when she said that’s when he stopped. He stopped when I uncovered it. That was terrifying. I had to trust that there were people out there that we’re going to pick me up when I fell. That was the beginning. If you know anything about the Catholic priest. In 1985 in the Twin Cities, lots of stuff was coming out about that. It was on the news. That was the only safe thing that I had. The only thing that validated me was somebody on the news was talking about it. Oprah was talking about it as well. That was where it began for me.

There are many kids that are being abused. It starts as youngsters. The sex trafficking, it starts back where they are being trafficked, groomed and trained at early ages. Parents are busy that they don’t recognize that. It’s probably somebody in their own home, and that’s the scary part. It isn’t that dirty, dark man or woman on the street. It’s somebody in your home. Somebody in your social community is doing this. They’re not only doing it to them, they’re doing it to you.

I would say the hardest thing, which I’m working through this stuff. The hardest thing for me is realizing how much he used me as his reason to molest our daughters. Read my book. You’ll read that in there. That is a hard thing for me because I feel like I failed my children. Now I’m failing my grandchildren because he’s still in control of what’s happening there.

I’m in Alaska. They’re all back in the Midwest. I don’t know if there’ll ever be reconciliation between me and them. I hope so. I hope that someday that I can go back and be a part of their lives. I just want them to be safe and happy. I don’t see that right now. I’ve been through a lot of years. My recommendation to anyone who is reading this is to please stop. Take a breath when you think something’s wrong. If your gut says, “This doesn’t look right,” don’t be afraid to question your children. If something doesn’t seem right, take them to somebody who is an expert. Not always is it a good place to go, but sometimes you got to get the ball rolling. Teenagers might be a little harder. I know of a couple of men who’ve gone to prison because the teenage girl’s cell phone got taken away from her. She knew if she said he molested her, some of the systems don’t think twice. They put them in prison.

There are innocent people in prison that have been accused of this. I don’t think our system works well. I went out to the correctional facility out here. I got an invitation and went out last week. They had an alcohol and drug recovery program that they’re working through. It was rewarding for me to go there and be locked up in prison with these men and other community members and hear their stories. Oprah has said something that goes to my heart on her 60 Minutes she did a few months ago. She said that, “Take your finger at somebody and say, ‘What’s wrong with you?’” Ask what happened to you. Write it down. Talk to somebody about what happened to you. I don’t have any proof of this, but I would guess 90% of the people who are in prison is a result of root cause of what happened to them.

A pedophile, his high is from power, control and manipulation. It isn’t even about sex. The destruction that comes from that personal, intimate invasion hurts our hearts and our souls. It breaks the spirit. I’m restoring. If you’ve ever seen me posting on Facebook, I’m restoring my heart and soul in Alaska. This is the place I come to. It is my residence. I will be looking for somewhere else to move to because it’s time. This is my refuge and I want to keep it sacred for that reason.

Mary, thank you so much for sharing your story. You mentioned, “If you suspect.” I have to say this one straight out because if you suspect and you don’t know, you’ve got that gut feeling and you don’t know, you’re saying have the children talk to someone else. Can you give some resources for people? I know you’re involved in a couple of different organizations. You’re involved with one in Alaska and then the organization online. Can you mention those?

I’m involved in a program called AWAIC, which is Abused Women’s Aid in Crisis. I am also involved with NAASCA, which is the National Association of Adult Survivors Of Child Abuse. That is for adults. You have to be eighteen to go there and talk. Tell your story, be a part of the organization, which is very helpful if you need to tell somebody your story. It can be anyone from who’s starting out realizing what’s happened and it’s surfaced. When it comes to children, if you have that gut sense that something has happened to them, stop, sit down with them and talk to them. Your local community will have resources.

Is it the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence?

There’s a hotline and they will plug you into your community to find these persons.

For the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, their hotline is 800-799-7233 or 799-SAFE.

You want to build rapport with the school counselors. Always keep talking to your children. I hope that we will continue in our education system to bring classes, to teach children what things are safe, what’s not safe, to talk about it. What happens is they are silenced by being violated. They need to be able to have the courage and talk to someone.

If that child comes to you and says that they have been touched where they don’t want to be touched. They’ve been touched on their vagina. They’ve been touched on their penis. You say, “I believe you. Can you tell me more about what happened? Maybe it was an accidental touch or was it an intentional one?” Your child should be allowed to tell you what he can convey, especially the smaller children. As they get older, it may even get a little more difficult for someone in the teenage years. We do separate from them. Never doubt what they’re telling you until you get complete clarification on what has happened and what they believe has happened.

When a child or if a child should approach you, or you have a conversation with a child and the child begins to tell you, it’s important that the adult or the person being told will keep their emotions in check in the moment. One of the things that I know and believe is that if you start to go into your rage, your disgust, or your freak out in whatever way that may come about, that’s a natural reaction for you. However, that’s probably going to likely shut that child down. They’re thinking, “I’m causing a problem here.” They immediately take that on as, “I’m causing the problem. I’m the bad person. I better clam it up and shut it down.” That’s not the thing that we want to do either. We need to remain open, receptive, that there’s nothing wrong with you and this is okay for you to speak about.

Looking back, and something that I learned way back when, which also helped me to uncover things was look at the reaction of the perpetrator. When it was coming out on TV, what was he doing? He was screaming, swearing and saying all these horrible things of what they should do to that person who had been caught that was on the news. Someone in the room was talking about, “Did you hear about so and so? They said so and so touched them,” and then that reaction by a perpetrator can also be like what you described. I saw that going on with him in The Psychology Today magazine and some of the things that I had been learning along the way, which was one of the important things to know, too, is that I kept looking, understanding why things were happening.

When we went to counseling, I wanted to understand why my family life was like this. I didn’t grow up like this, but I married into it. I married into what I would say is a monster who got his high. The more things he could do to put me down, the higher it put him. The more he did it to me, the more he tried to diminish who I was. I don’t know why I’m strong. I don’t feel strong, brave, and courageous. People tell me that, so I’m going to accept that. I am talking about it.

That takes an enormous amount of courage, strength, and bravery. It does. Please do take that in.

Maybe if I were around my family, I wouldn’t have that courage. I feel so much sadness around them that maybe this is why I’m separated. Maybe this is the spiritual thing for me, is I’m like, “Why don’t they want to be around me? I only want happiness and good for them,” but it’s probably not time. I have to allow them the time to get used to the idea that I published this book. Their names are real. I had asked them if they want me to change it. There was some communication, but not much. I gave them the manuscript ahead of time. They didn’t read it. There’s a part of them that they know but haven’t been able to express that either.

There’s a lifetime, it sounds like, from hearing your story from early on in their developmental years of their psyche, of their conscious and subconscious mind. Those developmental years where they were being, as you say, groomed but also programmed. They were being programmed and imprinted with information. When we’re experiencing these kinds of things in those developmental years, there’s a lot of confusion about what’s right, what’s not right, what’s okay, what’s not okay. What it means to be in a relationship with a parent, a caretaker, a loved one, all of that gets twisted and intertwined that it takes a long time of a healing journey.

Once you decide that you want to step onto a healing journey, it takes a long time to unravel all of those pieces, and to get clarity about what is right and what is okay. For instance, who’s keeping you safe? Who’s protecting you? They’ve been manipulated into thinking that that safety and protection is coming in a twisted way.

If they have not even come to the point of saying, “Yes, I want to step onto a healing path, unravel the pieces of myself, find out, and discover the deep inner truths,” even once you do that, it takes years to get that clarity. I cannot imagine the pain that you would be experiencing when you’re the one that is truly trying to keep them safe, trying to protect them and trying to care about their health and their healing. They are where they are. Your book, it’s called The Shadows in My Heart by Mary A. Havens. It’s available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and IndieBooks. For more information, they can go to, MaryHavens.com.

I want to say that Mary and I met through my Facebook group for the While We Were Silent project. Mary shared her story, her book and an interview she had done on another radio station. I thought, “This is a story that needed to be told because of the information about the perpetrator.” What came to light through the journey that you went through with him? A lot of people tell their stories from their own point of view, but you had some additional information to impart for us there on what to look for, how to understand whether or not it’s possible to rehabilitate. I wanted to hear those parts of the story from you. I thank you very much for sharing that with us.

You’re welcome, Debra. I’m grateful that you invited me to share.

Thank you so much. For everyone reading, thank you so much for reading. Feel free to reach out to Mary and to any of her organizations that she’s mentioned and also to our While We Were Silent group. Thank you so much.

About Mary Havens

Important Links:

• While We Were Silent Facebook group
• Mary Havens
• The Shadows in My Heart
• Lynn Wiese Sneyd
• AWAIC
• NAASCA
• National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• The Shadows in My Heart Barnes and Noble
• MaryHavens.com

• Here’s How »

• www.joyfullylivingwellness.com
• Self-Care for the Soul Facebook
• Self-Care for the Soul Twitter
• Self-Care for the Soul YouTube

Please follow and like us: