Alissa Milano’s 2017 #MeToo tweet caused a huge uproar worldwide. Thousands answered Milano’s post with the hashtag Metoo almost instantly, and these numbers increased rapidly as the days passed. Few are aware that the #MeToo movement was originally started by Tarana Burke ten years earlier, in 2006. Her intention was the same as Milano’s: she wanted to express that sexual abuse and harassment are a plague-like problem; that women and children exist within a culture of sexual violence where victims are constantly silenced or at the very least, nobody believes them. Where sexual violence is normalized in the media, literature and porn. Where victims had no words until now to recount their cases of abuse, because patriarchy did not provide an alternative discourse in which the stories of these women may be revealed. The #MeToo movement drew the world’s attention to the fact that sexual violence and harassment are not individual problems, not something that occurs one or two times; it is a social problem, a systemic problem that infuses our daily lives.
image: Sam Deadrick | The State Pres
The effects of the movement are still present in our society; it shapes the patriarchal structure which - earlier – had not left any room for the stories of victims, because it had prioritized the protection of the perpetrators instead. This of course does not mean that patriarchy fell in a blink of an eye and that an ideal state has replaced it; it only means that there are still plenty of goals to fight for and people must be continuously reminded that sexual abuse, harassment and victim blaming still exist.
Silencing the victims has been and still is today a common practice in religious institutions. Power imbalances between the victims and the perpetrators are apparent here too. This is exactly why the Catholic Church was able to cover up sexual abuse cases for decades. But the sovereignty of the Catholic Church seems to waver ever since the reporters of Boston Globe exposed the systemic pedophile abuse that the church leaders themselves had glossed over.
For the past years church sexual abuse cases have received increasingly bigger publicity in Hungary too. However, in this discourse the emphasis primarily falls on sexual abuse committed within the Roman Catholic Church, as it is the dominant church in Hungary, while sexual abuse committed in the rest of the institutionalized religions, or in New Age communities that do not classify themselves as part of any world religion but are organized within institutionalized frameworks, vanish into thin air. These religious and spiritual sexual abuse acts are mostly committed by male gurus, priests and spiritual masters in powerful positions, most commonly the ones that are at the top of the hierarchy.
It is undoubtedly important to expose the sexual abuse cases committed in the Catholic Church, but at the same time it is also vital to draw attention to the fact that these spiritual and church sexual abuse cases are not solely committed by Catholic priests. Wherever a religious or spiritual absolute respect for authority appears, or a charismatic leader, a sacred supremacy is present, the structure itself lays the foundation for sexual abuse.
The movement called 16 Days of Activism is an international initiative held annually from 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, to the 10th of December. During the campaign the participants draw attention to the systemic problem of violence against women in various forms (e.g. by articles, marches, or by roundtable discussions). Now, within the context of 16 Days of Activism Hanna, under an alias, recounts how a leader of a spiritual community sexually abused her as a young child.
Author: I think maybe you should tell us about how you got into the spiritual community where the abuse occurred.
Hanna: It was a sort of a traditionalist spiritual community, the leader of which was the “magnificent” man who sexually abused me. I got there through my father, who believed deeply in this whole thing and visited them regularly. I don’t remember exactly, but from around when I was five, for three summers we attended these two-week events that were held on the farm of Tamás, the spiritual leader of the community. My mother didn’t come with us, because she stayed at home with my younger siblings. My father, being an alcoholic, stopped paying attention to me as soon as we arrived. I actually walked around wherever I wanted for almost the entire two weeks, without any parent supervision. I don’t even remember if there were any more men apart from my father and Tamás. A mass of women surrounded that man, you could say, they were his fan club, they looked up to him as if he were a god. My father practically considered him his master; it was even explained whose descendant he was and what ancient bloodline he carried.
Author: Can you recall when the abuse started?
Hanna: I don’t really remember how exactly it started. It was all a process. In the first summer, when I was five, I must have met him, because these events were always held at his place, in the middle of nowhere, somewhere hidden. Maybe it was his yurt where he first came onto me, which also served as a huge sanctuary. Let me also add that he started treating me as if I were some kind of a chosen one, he saw me as his successor. So I had to help him around the altar, and since it was a complete ritual, I had to wear the appropriate outfit for it. Normally the two of us would go into his yurt where he was the one who would change my clothes and touch me in places where he was not supposed to. So in short, he used to grope me while dressing me. He showered me with presents, always had me sit on his lap and groped me a lot then too. Actually, this groping was always present, the weird thing is, that nobody noticed, or at least no one said anything even though he did it openly. Once he even forced me to grab his penis. My only luck was that just then my mom called my father and asked him where I was. When my father told her that I was in Tamás’ bed, my mom scolded him and told him to get me out of there right away, so he came and took me. Apart from this, there was another case, maybe during the second summer, when I was left with him alone in the car and he tried to kiss me, but I pressed my lips together as tight as a six year old can.
Author: So this was a complex process with different forms of display of the abuse. At first this man who was viewed as a master would be kind to you, treat you as the chosen one, then slowly stepped over the boundaries right in front of the eyes of adults?
Hanna: Yes, at first he used to be relatively cautious. He slowly assessed if anyone would notice this, if any kind of reaction would show up, but there were no reactions from anyone, so he kept on doing it. Despite the fact that his actions were terrifyingly public. For example when he wanted me to stand still, he would simply reach under my skirt and grab me. And nobody seemed to notice that this was not o.k.
Author: These are well-established, universal methods, when a perpetrator watches what the surrounding people say, and assesses how far he can go. And the more such a perpetrator is in a position of power – when he is explicitly regarded as a saint, like in our case – the more his environment will normalize his abusive behavior. Moreover, often this environment is well aware of what these people do, they just overlook it.
Hanna: Sure, I actually think that this was kind of an open secret. It was obvious that older women were competing to be the next ones to bed with this noble spirit. Because ultimately it turned out that this man banged every living creature he could, and he could, so he did.
Author: And you had to cope with all this alone as a child.
Hanna: Yes, there was an ever-present pervading feeling of anxiety. I kept thinking about how I could avoid all this, so I tried to work out different tactics in my little brain, so I wouldn’t have to stay alone together with that man.
Author: Do you remember what tactics you worked out?
Hanna: For example, I used to be fully determined to say no to him but this was met with relatively little success. I had a constant resistance in me, which I tried to express, so he would leave me alone. I tried to stay out of his sight, to connect with someone and make up an activity to be able to say that I was busy. As soon as we arrived in these summer camps, I felt the constant distress that I must avoid him. Of course, when these gatherings ended and we went home, I forgot about the whole thing. But fundamentally I felt anxiety about every man. Up until just last year. Which means I was distressed for a brief thirty years.
Author: How did you recall the abuse itself, when did the process of recognition start in you?
When we attended these events I was supposed to enjoy them. So back then, my reality was that I was supposed to be proud to have the opportunity to be present, not to mention being beside such a great man. Some images even come to my mind, where this old horny man is constantly surrounded by his fan club, worshipping him. I remember trying to look up to this man because that was the reality I was to make my own, the one that the outside world communicated.
Then I later realized that I was taking it pretty hard when the guy I was going out with came less than two meters near me. This was why I started wondering about what had happened to me. Somehow I still didn’t think, even then, that I had been abused. I did remember what he had done to me, I just kept up an attitude believing that that’s just the way it is, it’s my business and everything else is unrelated. Then I started dealing with it more around the time my daughter was conceived, because I had to, since my little girl was not conceived because I wanted to have a child but because the father of my children refused to wear a condom. For a while, I was on contraceptive pills, but it was too expensive, and a family living in extreme poverty couldn’t afford it. So I didn’t have any more pills, I had a child instead.
At that time, I had a very strong feeling that I had been raped, that my body had been taken possession of, while I did not want that. Giving birth was badly traumatic, because I had basically prepared for home birth, so I hadn’t even chosen a doctor. But the baby arrived prematurely, so at eighteen and pregnant I landed in the Hungarian health care system, where I experienced the complete spectrum of obstetric violence. By the time of my second child-birth I was well-prepared with my rights and it worked, I was able to persistently say no to doctors. Following an at least three-hour argument with the doctors, they had me sign a paper on which I could declare that I refused medical treatment on my own responsibility. So, I stayed there on my own, I gave birth in total peace, and in the end, I caught my second baby with my own hands.
That was the moment when I regained control over my body, the point where I was able to say no, and so the victory was mine.
translated by Dóra Horváth
