Many survivors of childhood sexual abuse
may envision confronting their abusers — but even if they do get the
chance, it’s not likely to be before an audience of nearly 400,000
witnesses. That’s how many YouTube
viewers have watched so far as a young California woman telephones and
confronts her former middle-school teacher and basketball coach over
alleged sexual abuse that began when she was just 12 years old.
The
28-year-old mother of three, who is going under the name Jamie X to
protect her privacy, posted a video of her phone conversation with a
high school assistant principal on Friday. “Do you realize that you
brainwashed me and you manipulated me and that what you did was wrong?"
Jamie asks on the video. A woman identified as the alleged abuser
replies, “Yes, and I regret it.” A visibly upset Jamie continues, “You
sicken me, and every day when I think about what you did, you sicken me.
You should be so ashamed and so disgusted with yourself."
As of
Tuesday, the assistant principal had not been charged with a crime and
had not officially admitted to any criminal misconduct. Still, the
fallout has begun, according to school officials. They say in a
statement that, after learning about the video, they contacted local
police and met with the accused before she “tendered her resignation” on
Friday.
But for Jamie, the results of the now very public phone call remain to be seen.
The
mother of three said that her former basketball coach 16 years ago
manipulated her into a sexual relationship starting when she was 12 and
lasting until she graduated high school. “She told me that my family
didn’t love me — that nobody cared about me, that she was my only friend
and the only person who cared about me,” Jamie said
in a press conference she held with her fiancé on Monday as a way to
handle the growing number of media inquiries over the YouTube video, her
attorney, David Ring, tells Yahoo Shine.
Jamie tracked down her
former teacher online and made the call before Ring had ever met her or
taken her on as a client, he notes. “She did it on her own,” he says,
adding that he generally advises clients against such a move, since the
legality of it is questionable. Ring, who is still investigating the
various statutes of limitation to see if Jamie will be able to bring a
legal case against her former coach, adds that Jamie had “zero
expectation” that her video would become as big as it has. And the
massive public attention has no doubt been a lot to handle.
Still, the young woman’s motivations for making the call are understandable, experts tell Yahoo Shine.
“An
individual who has experienced sexual abuse can have a variety of
motives—revenge, simple justice, validation — which happened here — or
perhaps wanting to protect other children from being victimized,” Judith
Cohen, MD, director of the Center for Traumatic Stress in Children and
Adolescents at Allegheny General Hospital in Pennsylvania. “Obviously
this is a precarious route to take, but you can understand why she did
it, because with a more typical route, it’s unlikely that the teacher
would have acknowledged it. Not that this is psychologically or legally
the best approach, but the legal system often lets victims down.”
Cohen
adds that she is “far less concerned” about how all the public
attention over the abuse will affect Jamie’s children. “One of the most
protective things a parent can do is to talk, in detail, about sexual
abuse,” she notes. “So she has provided a very powerful message about
not letting people sexually abuse you. There’s nothing for her to be
ashamed about in having had this experience.”
Jamie’s children,
in fact, are largely why she says she was inspired to come forward now —
as one, at 11, is approaching the age she was when the abuse allegedly
began. That helped her to realize how young she was at the time, and how
she could not have been to blame, Ring notes.
“You see that all the time,” National Center for Victims of Crime
deputy executive director Jeff Diom tells Yahoo Shine about survivors
coming forward when they have children of their own. “At the time it
happens, victims might not recognize that it constitutes abuse, because
the perpetrator is someone the victim knows, trusts, and looks up to.
It’s really a mind game.”
Still, confrontation is not
necessarily the best path to healing, notes Dr. Patti Feuereisen, New
York psychologist and author of “Invisible Girls: The Truth About Sexual Abuse.”
After first stressing to Yahoo Shine the rarity of this particular
situation, as “Men are the perpetrators of most sexual abuse,” she notes
that she’s disturbed by some elements of Jamie’s confrontation. “At one
point she says her life was ruined by this. She’s a young woman, and
this gives the impression that your life will be ruined,” Feuereisen
says. She also fears that Jamie could be “putting herself in a
dangerous, vulnerable position.”
That, she explains, is because,
“Healing from sexual abuse comes from disclosing to someone who will
give you a supportive, loving response — and confronting your abuser is
not always a tool for healing. Sometimes it can make a person feel more
isolated because he or she is hoping for a certain response they might
not get.” VIDEO