Paul A. Fried

Most children who are sexually molested fall victim not to strangers, but to relatives or friends of the family. The most obvious victim is the one molested, but because abusers are relatives or friends, the crime rends the social fabrics of family and friendship, and more people become peripheral victims of the act than the child who initially suffered the sexual abuse. Many families of victims keep the abuse secret from young siblings in an effort to deny, patch, or preserve what might be left of the rent fabric of relationships.

While still in my youth, I eventually learned that my sister had been molested by an uncle at a New Year's Eve celebration. The secret was kept from us for years, but when it finally came out, it made sense, as if we'd been dancing around it, but had felt on some level that things had been out of joint all along.

I never thought to write about it until I was in my late 30s in an MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Even then, I thought it would focus primarily on my sister and uncle; yet the poem tugged this way and that, and eventually focused on my father. Why? When I started, I spoke with my sister and parents and learned how my father had driven back to my grandparents' house that night to confront his brother, got out of the car, heard a gunshot, and assumed his brother had committed suicide—but it was just a neighbor kid shooting in the backyard to celebrate the New Year.

Hearing my father relate the gunshot, and my father's thought of losing his brother, made the gunshot seem inseparably connected to the larger fabric of the event. My imagination couldn't help but wander there to consider how the gunshot may have been a moment of grace, a gift of mercy, making him pause before confronting his brother, changing him in some small but important way, planting a seed. Besides being a peripheral victim, the gunshot offered a gift, and perhaps seeds of grace like that can lead to recovery and healing instead of vengeance and more victims.

The statute of limitations in Minnesota for victims of child sexual abuse says that "[i]f the victim is a minor, the 6-year limitations begins to run one year after the Plaintiff reaches majority (18), and would expire at age 25." This has passed by more than 15 years. The crime went unprosecuted. My father's family sought counseling, and eventually medical help and a supervised living arrangement for my uncle, who'd had a psychological discharge from the army and was found to be schizophrenic. Although they couldn't protect my sister, they wanted to protect my uncle from a prison system that was more punitive then rehabilitative.

My sister was the primary victim. And my uncle was certainly a victim of his own schizophrenia. But we were all hurt, not only by my uncle's act, but also, by some of the family's denial, which forever strained and complicated our approach to every major family gathering.

Yet inasmuch as my father had for years been closer to his brother than my sister ever was or would be, I think he felt the rending of the social fabric that came as a consequence of my uncle's actions in a deeper and more personal way than any of us.