Abused as a child? Should you tell?

We can all learn something from Stacy Lannert. She killed her father after he raped her repeatedly from the time she was 8 until she turned 18. She didn’t kill him for that, though. She killed him because he told her that her younger sister would take her place, and indeed was preparing to do follow through. She was unable, for legal reasons I can’t fathom, to raise the issue of abuse in her trial, and since she wasn’t a spouse the legal avenues open to spouses were closed to her. So she spent 18 years in prison before being released by the Governor of Mississippi.
There is some contention about the facts in the case. I heard Stacy and I believe her.
What we can learn is not that it is a good thing to kill someone. Not that. What she is doing is far more heroic in my mind. She is going public with her story with the hope of helping other sexually abused people realize that the shame and guilt they may feel is not their fault. That hiding what happened to them helps no one, and maybe by telling their story they can maybe help someone else or themselves.
So this essay is a way of introducing the idea that “going public” with a story of sexual abuse doesn’t have to be an “Oh woe is me. Oh pity poor me” kind of moment. It may just be the push that someone else needs to get help or to begin to understand that an eight year old child is NEVER responsible for being abused. End of story.
More on this in a future essay.
News Summary:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=7168291&page=4
Image: http://ncmbts.blogspot.com/2010/04/secrecy-law-scandal-john-aster-exposed.html