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“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
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Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)
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Introduction By Tyardia & Nonke van Leiden
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A few days ago I introduced “Nova’s Story” to our women’s group, and in the course of reading it to them I would say fifty percent of them identified in an intimate way with the story, and all of the rest were without exception moved by it. It is often painfully hard for survivors to ever talk about their experiences, which is why their experiences often find expression in so many self-destructive ways such as self-harming, drug and alcohol abuse, so it is always heartening when a voice is found. Please read Nova’s Story.
Ten years ago my cousin Judith was the victim of a particularly violent and sadistic sexual assault. Until that day I had lived a life well insulated from such horrors, all of us had, but suddenly and terribly the vileness of the world was pushed upon us. In the time since, as Judith struggled to regain her physical and mental health we, as a family, came to realize that the tendrils of sexual abuse reach out across the years to corrode and destroy lives long after the actual events. After her attack we started to get involved in support groups and gradually the full scale and scope of the abuse of women became all to clear.
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This part of the Willothewisp web site started off as place for Judith to write and give voice to her own experience, but with our latest refresh of the web site we are going to use it to highlight some of the abuses endured by women from around the world. Depending on the response we get to it we may expand it further.
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If you have your own experience that you would like to recount, or if you just wish to vent then we would like to hear from you.
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Write to us here: survivors@willothewisp.org
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We will Not publish anything from you sent to this mail address without your clear and express consent.
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Please be aware that if you use the comment boxes that these are published by default.
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Judith’s Story
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Read
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Judith was just turned twenty years old at the time of the attack on her. During the course of a frenzied twenty minute ordeal she fought off her attacker but at tremendous cost in terms of physical injury to herself. Only the timely and desperate measures of an emergency medical team saved her life.-Her recovery was long and painful, as over the following two years in hospital she had over twenty six major corrective surgeries, and a great many more minor ones. She was in a coma for six weeks, in Intensive care for over five months, spending two years in hospital in total. It took eighteen months for her to learn to talk. It also took a long and painful eighteen months to learn how to walk again, after her pelvis and lower spine were put back together. All the time she had to try and to hold onto her sanity, a difficult enough task with all your senses and abilities intact, but much more frightening and challenging when your world has become near silent and your ability to express yourself has been all but destroyed.
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Since the attack, and in the years that have followed all of the family have encouraged her to try and tell her story because we felt very strongly that all too often the full horror and consequences, particularly the long term consequences, of violence on Women fail to be appreciated.
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Her story shows that each and every rape victim has a life sentence inflicted upon them by their assailants. Survivors of sexual assaults have to struggle with both mental and physical problems for the rest of their lives, while their assailant usually escapes the consequences of their crime with only one in two hundred ever seeing the inside of a prison for what they did. Rape creates a most profound wound, it is a wound that cuts so deeply that the victim can and will have a lifetime trying to apply whatever they can find to force it to heal.
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When five years ago, as what was left of Judith’s damaged hearing started it’s final decline and silence became her world. She started, tentatively, to put her thoughts and feelings into words. It has been a challenging time for her, adapting to the silence, having to leave one way of life because of it and start a new one all while giving voice to her experiences. While her story starts in it’s most violent and dark moments but it is does eventually emerge into the light of day and shows that while many survivors never “recover” they do go on to reclaim their lives, and some like Judith go on to find love and joy again.
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In an effort to help her recount her story family and friends have provided a narrative, you will see that narrative in italic script, to Judith’s words which you will see are in plain script. This is an on going work, and as more of the story unfolds Judith adds to it.
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Dear reader, please be warned, both her pictures & her words are very graphic in their detail and make no effort to spare sensitivities. If you are upset by these things then we suggest that you go no further. If you are a Survivor yourself and are subject to ‘ triggering ‘ please proceed with care, we suggest that you read the story with the support of a friend.
-Tyjardia van Leiden.
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