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The Power of Collaboration: Engagement-Enablement-Ennoblement: Our Children Will Have Taught Us Well

Writer's picture: Brad Hutchinson Brad Hutchinson

Updated: Mar 7, 2024

By Arthur Lockhart, Order of Ontario 2022


As One

Waywaymegwun

 

When you are sexually abused, elements of your wholeness can begin to disappear.  Your voice is taken from you. Your sense of self is forced off balance.  And, when you start the journey to reclaim your voice, when you set out to reclaim your sense of self, people (wonderfully well-intentioned supportive people) can at times respond not so much to you personally, but to you as the “client”; as you the “victim.”

 

The professionals are the good people. Yet, when I am seen as a “survivor,” a “victim,” a “patient,” my role can be subtly, unintentionally set within a framework wherein  I am “sufferer.” “Just calm down and tell us what happened.”  I am now the  ‘sufferer-victim’ forced to wait: in the waiting room at the therapist office; in the waiting room at the hospital; in the waiting room at the court; in the waiting room at the police station; in the waiting room/office at the school. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting in the office. Waiting, while the other takes notes. I am witnessing my story, my life being placed in a container, so that I can be “helped.” “Tell me what happened.”

 

The intervenor is to be objective, to paraphrase, as they fit my story into their framework so that they can help me, so they can understand me.

 

And, as all this swirls around and within me, I ask myself: Can I say what happened?  Not really sure what happened. Who am I? What will happen if I am not seen as the victim? What if it was my fault? What is a victim? What did I do to deserve this?  What will others think of me? How do I think of others?  What do I think of me?

 

How does society see people who have been sexually harmed by another person? When we use the word victimized to describe someone, do we see the person as a strong person or a weak person? Do we relate with the person from a strength-based stance or a weakness-based stance? What is our unique role in this unfolding story?

 

And, while there are those of us who may say: “the truth is, we are all in this together,” there is another profound truth to accept.  And this Truth is: our culture is not overflowing with empathy. Staggering statistics from Canada’s Centre for Child Protection, CSA Reports, show offenders luring children online are up 15%; the making and distribution of child sexual abuse material incidents are up 27%, compared to pre‑pandemic levels.


Yet, our culture still maintains systemic barriers which inhibit the opportunity for our children to learn and develop skills and means to respond to sexual abuse. For example, there is no formal curricula in our public educations systems which deals specifically with childhood sexual abuse despite the reality that 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys will be sexually abused in their lifetime. If ever there was a clarion call for collaboration these statistics alone ought to be it.

 

The Power of Collaboration brings to life the capacity to create the space for openness in the sharing of ones’ story; the unedited one. This collaboration is predicated on the  integration of supportive resources that reflects the whole of me. This is to say we all move together. 

 

The Power of Collaboration begins with the understanding that CSA is not just a legal matter, nor an individual therapeutic matter, rather it is a societal matter. It requires a full integration of all our resources beginning with how we as a society engage the matter of Childhood Sexual Abuse. It begins with a foundational view of child empowerment rather than child protection. 

 

Child empowerment begins with Empathetic Engagement both at home and at school. Curriculum is created that empowers the person, engages the person, in such a way that an authentic connection is created. It is this connection, this collaboration that leads to Enablement;  the open expression of ones’ ‘voice’, the telling of one’s story from a position of strength. And this element of collaboration reflects the overarching embracing element of Ennoblement: dealing with the whole person with dignity.

 

So here it is. The Power of Collaboration must be grounded in “teaching our children well.”  So that in times of great turbulence, everyone: child, youth, adult, absolutely everyone ought to be related to as a whole person. A whole person who can move with the subtle power that comes from knowing they are not alone. Knowing that when they move, their movement is in unison with others who are alongside them, collaborating with this powerful human being. This person who is willing and so very able to grace us with their unique story. And, as they transform their trauma, so do we all. 


Through this power of collaboration as a society, we are ever-more elevated to new levels of being, because our children, they will have taught us well.

 

 


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