STFU Kevin

Guest List: Op-Ed C.A.Villalba

Those who know me well, know that I am a survivor of child sexual abuse. If you don’t know me — my name is Christian. I was sexually abused and emotionally manipulated starting from the age of 8 through 13 by a “friend” of the family, who also happened to be a boxing coach to my older brother and other neighborhood kids. I am a Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) Survivor. And I own it.

As I mentioned, those who know me, know my story. If you don’t know me, you’ll eventually piece together my story as you get to know me. I am very vocal and open about CSA and the trauma it creates for everyone involved. But, I am not going to share my story today. Today is my day to shine a bright light on bullshit revisionists like Kevin Spacey.

This being said, you can imagine how triggered, confused, and seriously outraged I was when I came across this video and the headline from a recent HuffPost article: ‘Kevin Spacey Compares Coronavirus Impact To His Own Unemployment.’

 

 

I don’t even know where to begin.

First, the fact that Spacey is comparing the fallout from COVID-19 to his predatory actions is deranged. The hours, days, months, years, of perfecting his hunting skills, grooming his victims, preying on them for his sexual pleasure is what caused his fallout. The idea that he is now comparing his past struggles to those that most of us are going through right now is deranged. It’s crazy. It’s delusional. His statements are a misinterpretation of events, and they conflict with the reality and the facts of his actions.

But, this is what predators do, to get themselves through each waking day. They comfort themselves, reinterpreting their unsolicited and unwanted gropes that scarred a child forever, with their own versions of what happened. They re-write their personal history. They tell new stories to normalize their behaviors. They tell themselves and their victims, stories that help normalize the abnormal. They cleverly revise their history.  

 

 

This is what Spacey is doing. He’s delivering us a narrative, a story, to blur the real one. He wants to share his perspective on “what it feels like to suddenly find yourseld in a situation you could not possibly prepare for or anticipated was coming.” This comparison of his downfall and banishment from Hollywood to the current fallout of this pandemic dilutes the real story. That is NOT normal. It’s delusional. But see, to him, it seems quite normal. He understands what it’s like to be “suddenly unemployed.” After all, he found himself in a “similar situation” once before; his life was “after all, demolished in the fall of 2017.”

“My job, many of my relationships, my standing in my own industry, were gone in just a matter of hours,” Spacey says on the video, and continues with “and so while we may have found ourselves in similar situations albeit, for very different reasons and circumstances, I still feel that some of the emotional struggles are very much the same.” 

No. Our “emotional struggles” are not the same. We did not have a choice — in either situation. We didn’t have a choice when our predators declared ownership over our bodies and our souls. Nor, did Americans have a choice when it came to this pandemic. The worldwide disruption caused by the pandemic is nothing we could control. COVID-19 just hit, but unlike the virus Kevin, you had control. We didn’t. Perhaps we didn’t have the vocabulary or familial strength to tell you to keep your fucking hands off our bodies, or perhaps we were threatened into submission — either way — we had NO CHOICE. But you did Kevin; you had a choice. You chose to be OK with manipulating, intimidating, coercing and seducing a child to satisfy your sexual proclivities. We didn’t. We Don’t.

Your “emotional struggles” were brought on by you. You were the source of your demise. You were always in control of your choices. You went on with your life. We hid in the shadows picking up the pieces, slowly trying to make sense of it all. So, no Kev. Not the same emotional struggles.

Our struggles are endless. Depression is the most common emotional struggle among survivors. We also have difficulty in externalizing the abuse, thus thinking negatively about themselves. Child sexual abuse has also been associated with higher levels of guilt, shame, self-blame, eating disorders, anxiety, dissociative patterns, repression, denial, sexual addiction, and relationship problems. 

I am one of the lucky ones. I have learned to cope with my daily emotional struggles with the help of life-long therapy sessions and self-care. Some of us, not fortunate enough to have access to mental healthcare, have taken darker journeys, paths that you and predators like you forced us onto. Either way these invisible scars you’ve reopened, and memories you have triggered with your video will always be part of our lives. They never go away. 

According to Darkness to Light, an online resource dedicated to empowering adults to prevent, recognize, and react responsibly to child sexual abuse through awareness, education, and stigma reduction, 1 in 10 children will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday. Of those children who are sexually abused, 20% will be under the age of 8. And, nearly 70% of all reported sexual assaults occur to children aged 17 and under.

That is one too many children falling to predators like you.

So, no Kevin. Fuck you. Not the same thing.

The only words worth listening to on your video were of you thanking our nurses on the front-lines — and even then those words are polluted and covered with the dust leftover from your repugnant actions.