In my middle-American hometown, there remains a notorious high school teacher. Every decade or so, he ends up with another former-student girlfriend. The first of the young women taken in by his authoritative charm later married, had a child with, and divorced him before he started luring my generation with a seemingly cool babysitting gig that found more than a few underage girls sleeping over. Last I heard, he had become involved with a girl roughly thirty years his junior. Where I’m from, it is the town’s worst kept secret.
In a revised second edition of her groundbreaking book Invisible Girls: The Truth About Sexual Abuse, Dr. Patti Feuereisen explains the intricacies of mentor abuse among the other variants of sexual abuse and assault that many young women face. In the United States alone, at least one in four young women will survive some sort of abuse before she turns eighteen. Because sex crimes remain so underreported, it is easy to assume that these numbers may in reality be much higher. While many books written for young women exist, Dr. Feuereisen’s book is intentionally mostly comprised of girls’ personal stories and letters. Critical to this dialogue, she believes, is encouraging young women to tell their own stories of abuse, from their own perspectives. Dr. Patti – using her preferred semi-formal name in an effort to remain accessible to the women and girls for whom she advocates – has been working with young survivors in group counseling and private therapy for the past twenty-five years.
For Feuereisen, the message is simple: in a sexually permissive culture that does not honor women and children – and often equates women’s physical maturity with readiness to have sex – women’s sexuality remains a commodity. While it may not always be bought and sold with money and gifts, it is often used as barter among families and predatory partners. We all know that young women are incredibly vulnerable to incest, date rape, acquaintance rape, and mentor abuse. While we decry priests who abuse young boys – a horrific crime – it is nevertheless telling that we ignore the hundreds of thousands of young women who are regularly abused by teachers, coaches, and pastors. It is easy to act horrified every time we hear that one of our daughters was violated, but as a society, it is our duty to listen to and support them.
Among her primary convictions, Feuereisen believes that telling one’s own story as early as possible will lead to greater healing over a lifetime. Young women are routinely violated and just as routinely silenced, which Feuereisen believes can lead to personally destructive behavior later in life. Feeling isolated in your experience can further exacerbate the pain of sexual abuse and assault for many young women, who may later act out or shut down. Without using scare tactics, Dr. Feuereisen's urgent message is to seek trusted assistance as soon as possible. There is no time like the present, especially when you know you are not alone.
Many girls’ individual stories fill the fairly depressing book, but then, reality is often dismal. Many young women, for example, escape their abuse in fantasy worlds. While many therapists have dismissed complex, imaginative fantasies as unhealthy, Dr. Feuereisen believes that they have been a necessary coping mechanism for many of her clients’ survival. Some young women leave home; others later change their names in an attempt to erase incestuous linage. More than advocating one path or set of choices, Feuereisen applauds not just survival; she validates the difficulties of being a young woman today.
From a practical perspective, Invisible Girls offers a lot of useful information for young survivors. Women of any age can have difficulty advocating for themselves in the wake of sexual abuse, but young women are arguably the most vulnerable. From detailing STD testing, rape kits, and filing police reports to a thorough back-of-book resource section, Feuereisen explains the ins and outs of recovering from abuse. She doesn’t offer advice; she puts the tools for healing in her readers’ hands.
Not one to shy away from controversy, Dr. Feuereisen also devotes a chapter to prostitution, which she claims is sexual abuse. While her rhetoric may anger some former sex workers or pro-sex feminists, her arguments are solid. She compares an older john who pays for sex with an underage prostitute to an uncle who bribes an underage niece with gifts and explains the same type of “do it for daddy” coercion exists across the spectrum of sexual abuse. Equating sex work with frat house culture, Feuereisen points out that we imprison prostitutes instead of their patrons and pimps, further supporting the idea that women are routinely sexually devalued in our society.
When dealing with familial issues like incest, it’s difficult to avoid blaming an adolescent’s parents. Perhaps because it can be so difficult for others to offer this crucial validation, Feuereisen repeatedly takes a stand against parents – and communities – who fail their children by looking the other way. Dr. Patti explains that physically or emotionally absent mothers are often compliant in father-daughter sexual abuse, and she does not believe that forgiving your inattentive family – or your abuser – is necessary for recovery. Instead, because assault survivors so often carry immense guilt and shame, she repeatedly explains that the only person you have to forgive is yourself.
Perhaps most relevant to increasingly wired generations are Dr. Feuereisen's online communities at her foundation’s website, GirlThrive, and on Facebook. Sent to Feuereisen through various online channels and included in the book’s updated Epilogue are collected stories of hopeful survivors and letters from survivors’ parents.
Rape is still the number one violent crime against women in the United States, and young women ages 16 – 25 are at the greatest risk for date rape. It should go without saying that a culture permissive of this widespread abuse against its women and girls, ultimately fails us all.
