Painful memories

Speaker outlines importance of sharing for abuse victims

Telling can be one of the most important -- and difficult -- steps for a survivor of sexual abuse.

Today, Suzanne Stutman will tell her story of remembering, telling and surviving at 7 p.m. in 101 Kern.

Stutman, a professor of English, American studies and women's studies at the Abington College, is the author of the book Broken Feather: A Journey to Healing. The book describes Stutman's experience as a victim of childhood sexual abuse.

For Stutman, in addition to telling, another important part of the journey was remembering and dealing with the backlash against the validity of repressed memories.

Although her memories were repressed for years, they came back to Stutman while she was in therapy, she said.

After bringing to therapy a book of poems she wrote when she was a 17-year-old freshman in college, Stutman said the final line of one poem was very graphic, and it triggered the first repressed memory of abuse.

And she is still remembering.

"It doesn't come back like a movie," she said. The memories are jagged, fragmented and agonizing, and still come back from time to time, she said -- that's all part of her journey.

Stutman said although she has gained support from her husband and children, other family members refuse to acknowledge that the abuse happened.

There is also a backlash against repressed memories from organizations such as the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, a group concerned with situations in which people have been falsely accused of abusing others.

"They have the right to believe whatever they want and so do I," Stutman said. "I know that this happens, and I know that this happened to me."

As people understand through reading Stutman's story, she hopes that survivors like herself will gain the courage to tell someone about their abuse.

Stutman said her most important goal for the book is for survivors to know it's not their fault. "And for others who don't understand -- that they understand and act, for the children," she said.