Instead of calling out any one post (there have been several), this is for those who are pointing out some significance that the girl returned to train at the same farm for “some months”, and only later changed trainers and barns. As if this matters, as if it indicates something about the seriousness (even veracity) of what happened.
So what if she did stay at the barn?
This is so effing classic. She’s the victim, and she has to allow her life to be destroyed to prove that she’s the victim? She has to lose things that are deeply important to her, that she has worked for years to experience. To show that what happened matters.
Meanwhile he just goes on his merry way doing as he has always done. While the long process to deliver consequences meanders on - or doesn’t.
Traumatic events do not have to mean that a victim must immediately cut off some of the best and/or important part of their lives.
Victims should not have to quit their job or studies or hobby or sport, quit participating in extended family events, just quit key parts of their life solely because that is where something horribly traumatic happened.
A victim has the right to manage her feelings and separate them from the setting, so that she can maintain her own quality of life in that setting if she chooses.
The traumatic event is separate. It came from one evil individual, not from the setting, location or activity itself. That evil individual is where the consequences should fall, not on the victim.
If the victim has been engaged in this activity for years, if she worked to be in this situation of development and growth and fun social experiences, and make the most of it … why is she the one who has to lose it?
Taking the barn away from her punishes her for being a victim and for reporting it to her parents.
This is precisely why so many underage victims will not tell anyone. They don’t want their own lives turned upside down, they don’t want to lose what’s important to them, as the consequence of reporting something they didn’t ask to happen to them.
It seems that her parents wisely allowed her to make the choice. I celebrate her poise and courage to manage continuing on at the same barn and not ruin her summer by being forced out by this horrible event that she did not control.
In some cases a victim may prefer to avoid being in that situation again. A victim may prefer to never return. But it should not be required that they cut important activities out of their life, just so people will take what happened seriously.
Think of a key roadway that you use constantly, that would greatly inconvenience you if it were not available. If you have a serious accident on that roadway, do you never drive on it again? Do you drive a mile out of the way every day to many ordinary destinations?
If it is best for you to avoid it, then of course that’s alright. But you aren’t required to stay away. If you can separate your feelings about the accident from your standard commute, then keep driving on that roadway and keep your life on track as you have always done.
Many decades ago when LE and social agencies began acknowledging family child abuse situations, at first they were removing the victim child from the home to ‘keep them safe’. The child lost their home, often lost access to the other parent, to their siblings and their friends, lost so many things that made up their life. The perpetrator just kept living his life at home as usual. The agencies figured out that this was punishing the child for the abuse, and for reporting the abuse. It was the abuser who needed to be removed, not the child.
It is the same consequences to the victim in this case if she is involuntarily removed from something she may consider to be her best situation. In effect punishing her because she was a victim and because she told her parents. (Assuming this happened, maybe it didn’t.)
