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Adults clutching stuffed animals at the Clarion Hotel in Blue Ash this week arn’t necessarily cleaning up after kids; more likely, the toys are for their own comfort.
A playroom — for throwing jacks, coloring books and games of tag — is also for adults, some of whom want to connect with parts of childhood they didn’t experience. Not everyone remembers childhood as a time of laughter and light.
“When you’re a child and you’re subjected to sexual abuse, it takes you to somewhere dark,” says Holly Sowels, new president of the board of VOICES in Action, whose 20th international conference meets at the hotel Thursday through Sunday.
VOICES, which stands for Victims of Incest Can Emerge Survivors, aims to create a convention environment that helps participants get in touch with the children inside who might be still scared and hurting.
“One of our slogans is, ‘It’s never too late to have a happy childhood,’ because most of us didn’t,” Sowels says.
‘We’re everywhere’
At age 17, Sowels fled her family and her hometown and started a new life in Cincinnati.
“My father started having sex with me when I was 5 years old,” she says.
Sowels is not alone — something VOICES believes is one of the most important messages for victims to hear.
“There are survivors everywhere,” says Judy Little, executive director of VOICES.
“One out of three girls and one out of five boys before the age of 18 are sexually abused.”
The fact that sexual abuse is far from rare is a message VOICES expresses in many ways. The non-profit resource center publishes a bi-monthly newsletter and maintains a national database of member-recommended therapists, agencies and support groups.
This year’s conference welcomes participants from Canada, England and South Africa. Based in Chicago since its start as a group of survivors meeting to pool resources in 1980, VOICES now has more than 700 members around the world.
The conference features several well-known keynote speakers: authors John Bradshaw, who started the inner-child concept; and Laura Davis, who in 1985 co-wrote The Courage to Heal, one of the most influential books on recovery from sexual abuse.
“For a moment, a long moment, it was the Bible of recovery,” Sowels says.
Davis’ book is also credited with spawning the “recovered memory” craze of the 1980s. When co-author Ellen Bass spoke at a VOICES conference a few years ago, she needed special security against protesters.
“We don’t expect any problems this year,” Sowels says. “There’s too many other things on people’s minds.”
For example, the Catholic Church scandal has again brought attention to sexual abuse.
The conference offers more than 30 workshops for survivors and professionals such as therapists and clergy. Staff from agencies such as Lighthouse and Beech Acres participate.
“We create an environment of healing and learning,” Little says.
A workshop at the VOICES conference will discuss clergy abuse. But the topic is more complicated than some realize.
Clergy might not know how to respond to sexual abuse accusations by members of their congregations because the charges are usually against another congregant. The workshop focuses on teaching clergy what a victim of sexual abuse does and does not need to hear from them.
“Sometimes clergy will secondarily abuse people by not validating their stories or just saying ‘Pray about it,’ ” Sowels says.
Workshops for survivors focus on issues of recovery, including such unexpected areas as expense. Survivors spend a lot of money on recovery — paying for therapy, books and conferences — and at the same time often find themselves unable to complete tasks of money management, even down to balancing a checkbook.
“Self-esteem and self-confidence are the biggest issues for survivors,” Little says. “They don’t feel they deserve money.”
Workshops cover managing checking and savings accounts and investing.
‘Daddy, don’t!’
A year ago VOICES in Action had less than $1,000 in its checking account. The organization was coming off a less than successful national conference in Arizona, attended by only 80 people.
“We really didn’t know if the organization would make it another month,” Little says.
But child sexual abuse numbers, unlike the group’s, weren’t diminishing and Little refused to let the group fade away.
The board, spread out across the nation, meets over the phone once a month in conference calls. VOICES has moved its operations from Chicago to Cincinnati, where four of the 10 board members live, including Little, who is about to re-occupy the organization’s only full-time position, executive director, and Sowels, who replaces her as president.
“I think with our core group here we’ll be able to expand faster,” Sowels says.
Most of the credit for keeping the organization alive goes to Little, who has been running it from her house for the past year, essentially acting as president and executive director pro bono.
“I’m really here because the organization was here for me,” she says.
Little attended a VOICES conference as a survivor in the 1980s and was so impressed she joined the board in 1989.
Nine of the 10 board members are survivors of child sexual abuse. The 10th is a pro-survivor, a term for supportive family and friends of survivors.
On Saturday night, the conference presents the play Daddy Don’t, adapted from the book of the same name, written by Sowels about her personal experiences. The intensely personal story is told as a monologue with the illusion of abuse created through the use of shadows.
VOICES continues to conquer barriers to reach victims both internationally and at home. This year’s conference will be signed for the deaf. When a contact was recently made in France, language was the immediate barrier, but they worked through it.
“Pain is universal,” Sowels says. “Recovery is universal. We have enough in common that we can work through our differences.”
The organization wants to focus on expanding its membership to better include under-represented victims from the African-American, Hispanic and deaf communities, all of which, Sowels says, traditionally don’t talk about sexual abuse.
Sowels and Little both want to establish a core group in Cincinnati to expand VOICES’ name recognition as the first place for adult survivors to contact for support.
“I think we are the best-kept secret in town,” Sowels says.
Eventually the group would like people to stop calling. VOICE’S goal is to help victims become survivors and help survivors become thrivers.
“That’s our goal: to help people get to the point where they don’t need us anymore,” Little says.
The 20th Annual VOICES in Action Conference meets Thursday through Sunday at the Clarion Hotel in Blue Ash. For more information, see www.voices-action.org.
This article appears in Jul 10-16, 2002.