It took Jennifer Nadler 13 years to admit that she was sexually abused during her childhood.

Nadler, an adjunct professor of English as a Second Language at Onondaga Community College, gave a presentation entitled “No More Sorrow, No More Silence: The Voice of a Survivor” on Thursday in the Falk Complex. Her presentation was part of the National Week of Action, a part of the It’s On Us initiative, a national educational campaign launched by the White House.

“I can’t stand the word ‘story’ when it comes to sexual abuse,” Nadler said. “If anything it’s not a story, it’s history. So today I share with you my truth.”

Nadler’s truth began when she moved in with her aunt and uncle at age 12. Her parents had moved from Queens to Long Island, and she wanted to finish seventh and eighth grade at her Catholic middle school. Shortly after moving, her uncle began sexually abusing her, and it continued regularly for two years.

After she graduated from Le Moyne College, she began teaching middle school. It was there, when she was faced every day with students who were the same age she was when she was abused, that Nadler began to realize that she had to address the psychological effects of her abuse, she said.

Nadler said her Type A personality is why she found solace in a book called “The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse.” The book provided a list of steps — a list for Nadler to check off as she crossed each mark. She wanted to heal herself.

But healing is not linear, Nadler said.

Nadler acted out to cope with the pain, she said. She found herself deep in a hole, and began the healing process by checking into a hospital. She said she tried all sorts of therapies and quit her job to make healing her full-time profession.

After leaving the hospital, where she faced her past head-on for the first time, Nadler said she was grappling with coming to terms with it all. She would clean her house and scrub each shower tile with a toothbrush, but the dirt never seemed to fade.

She said she later realized this was an outward manifestation of what was going on inside her.

Nadler talked about the idea of the locus of control, the psychological notion that people feel they control what happens to them. She was a child during her abuse and felt it was her own fault what happened. She said this is why children are often afraid to come forward.

After 13 years of silence, she told her friends, family and her parents about the abuse. She decided to report it to the police, but she was aware that she had missed the statute of limitations by only one year. She said she did it in case any other survivors of her uncle’s abuse came forward.

Looking back on the day she reported her abuse to the police, Nadler said she walked outside of the station, looked at the American flag and “finally felt a little freedom.”

After much grief — for the innocence lost, for the child who was not protected, for everything that was and never would be — Nadler said she was finally able to get in touch with her anger.

“The day I shifted from grief to anger was the day I went from being a victim to being a survivor,” she said.

Following 13 years of serving time for a “crime” she did not commit, Nadler said she was finally able to see that what had happened was not her fault. Her abuser was an adult and she was a child. This was her “light bulb moment.”

The band Linkin Park was also a solace for Nadler throughout the healing process, she said, and served as a soundtrack during her lecture. She learned that the lead singer, Chester Bennington, had too been a survivor of sexual abuse as a child.

As for forgiving her abuser, Nadler said she has. To her, forgiveness is not letting bygones be bygones.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and to discover the prisoner is you,” Nadler said.

Nadler added that conversations about sexual abuse are changing. As a child, Nadler said she was never really educated about sex and her body. However, as a survivor and as a parent, her 8-year-old son is already well educated about the fact that his body is his own.

“The message of today is that we can change the culture,” she said.

Published on November 15, 2015 at 7:08 pm

Contact Joanna: jorland@syr.edu