BEYOND ABUSE: GRANT WILL COUNSEL WOMEN SEXUALLY ABUSED DURING CHILDHOOD

"All I kept thinking was `Oh my God, even him.' I knew I was going to die before I let him touch me. I kept thinking, `I thought he was safe; the one family member who hadn't done it to me.'"

This is only one of many instances of early childhood sexual abuse 38-year old Tina remembers experiencing from the ages of 6 to 18. It's been a part of Tina's life for nearly as long as she can remember.

She was molested by all but one of her uncles, and witnessed her brother molest her stepsister and stepbrother. She learned how to stay awake at night when her stepbrother started crawling under her bed to touch her while she slept, and her sister's husband stalked her from the age of 10 to 18, when she finally slept with him.

Nearly all of the memories were repressed before she entered individual counseling sessions with therapists at Lutheran Family & Children's Services two years ago.

"This is my safe ground; it was the place where I was understood," Tina, who asked that her real name not be used, said during a recent visit to the center. "It's nice not to feel that hopelessness day after day after day. This is a one-of-a-kind organization."

Tina and other victims of early childhood sexual abuse will gain even more benefit from LFCS beginning July 23, thanks to a $7,000 grant the center recently received from Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (WELCA). In about two weeks LFCS will use the grant to start providing group and individual counseling services dedicated to helping female victims of early childhood sexual abuse regain control of their lives.

"This goes way beyond just surviving -- we want them to do more than survive," said Tammy Gwaltney, LFCS director. "Sexual abuse is about power and control, and that's what we want to give these women: Healthy power and healthy control over their lives."

Gwaltney said the sexual abuse of children is being reported more and more often. Two of every four women has been sexually abused before their 18th birthday, she said, and that number is nearly the same for men. These figures represent only the reported incidents, she said, which means the actual number of incidents is probably much higher.

"We're already servicing 40 women in individual counseling with some type of sexual abuse," Gwaltney said. "We know there's a need for this service, because Cape's shelter is referring more than 150 women each year to a program over in Carbondale, and (that program is) overwhelmed just trying to serve Southern Illinois."

Debra Hamilton, shelter manager of the Safe House for Women, said she's glad LFCS will be counseling early childhood sexual abuse victims. Shelter workers are trained to look for signs of sexual and other types of abuse in children, she said, and they are required by law to report any suspected cases to government agencies.

Children are generally not mature enough to express what's happening to them verbally, Hamilton said, so workers look for signs like sexual play with other students, advanced knowledge of sexual activities, and extreme bedwetting. Other symptoms include separation anxiety from the mother, overprotectiveness towards the mother and other siblings, nightmares, emotional outbursts and violent behavior, she said.

"I'm so pleased that they did in fact receive that grant because we do get calls asking for support groups with that type of abuse," Hamilton said. "We see it quite often with the children who come to the shelter with their mothers. Either they've been sexually abused or they display behaviors symptomatic of early childhood sexual abuse."

Tina's life reflects many of the problems victims of early childhood sexual abuse experience after they become adults. Relationships are often problematic for victims; Tina is currently separated from her second husband and has been fired from numerous jobs because of verbal and physical altercations. Victims often try to blot out memories using drugs, alcohol and other items; Tina has been hospitalized for misusing drugs and is overweight as a result of binge eating. Victims often have trouble following through on things; Tina has withdrawn from counseling many times because she felt overcome by her feelings and memories.

"Balance is the most difficult thing in the world for these women to achieve," Gwaltney said. "There are no gray areas for them: Everything they do in life is either here or there, overly this or not enough of that."

Although WELCA provided the start-up costs needed to get the new support services off the ground, Gwaltney said she is still about $5,000 short of what she needs to keep the services inexpensive and available to victims. "I needed $12,000 to make this thing happen, and WELCA gave me the first $7,000," she said. "If we're able to treat these women and help them learn healthy lifestyles, it helps the public. We're trying to stop the tape of negativity that's constantly playing in their minds. Part of therapy is erasing the tape and showing the victim how to rewrite the song. We want to help them replace the negativity on that tape with the song they want to hear.

"I went after this grant because I wanted to help these women stop feeling so helpless. Somebody out there has the other $5,000 and wants to help us help these women. I know they do."