Emily Parker spoke to Tim Hein about his book 'Understanding Sexual Abuse', and how to best respond to someone when they disclose to you that they have been abused.

Tim Hein

Emily: First of all, Tim, tell me a little bit about yourself and the work that you're involved in.

Tim: I'm Vice Principal and Director of Discipleship at Uniting College for Leadership and Theology in Adelaide, Australia, so I lecture and train people who want to go into the ministry or study theology. I really enjoy that. I'm also a minister, so I've planted and pastored a church and been involved in various forms of ministry over the years. I have some side interests as well, I do a podcast with a friend and I'm also involved as an elected member in local government for my local community.

Emily: Tim, why did you write this book?

Tim: Well, the topic is so relevant. This is an issue that has really come into prominence now in terms of the media and is a very prevalent issue in society. It's also one that's personal to me. Anyone who reads the book will know that I'm basing it out of my story and also some parts of my wife's story as well. It's not a biography. My own experience certainly piqued my interest in it along with seeking to understand myself and going on my own journey of recovery.

It also got me thinking about the importance of having a resource that you can hand to someone like myself, and also to hand to Christian leaders to give them an overview. I would have loved to have had this book to read years ago, and I think everyone should have some knowledge of this subject, particularly those involved in ministry and leadership, and in a Christian environment. It's such a complex area, I wanted to write a book that was clear, a bit of a map, an introductory guide to the issue, that leaders could read but also survivors would find really helpful as well. So, that's what I've tried to do.

Emily: What is your definition of 'sexual abuse'?

Tim: There are different legal and technical definitions but it is really any sexual attention paid to a child. Sexual abuse in more general terms talks about inappropriate sexual attention that is paid to a person, where it crosses a boundary. When you're dealing with children, there is no need for the word 'inappropriate'. All sexual attention towards a child is inappropriate and, indeed, illegal. So the technical terms vary region by region and country by country of course, but that is what we're talking about, children to whom sexual attention has been paid when they are under the legal age of consent.

Emily: You mentioned earlier on the fact that sexual abuse is something which is starting to get talked about more. It does still feel like there is a taboo attached to it. What do you think needs to be put in place to make that taboo go away?

Tim: I think the issue that needs to be more broadly understood in the wider community, and in the church, is the prevalence of how common this is across our community and through history too.

I mean, we don't understand just how recent the attention given to this topic is. We're talking about a growing body of work over recent decades. I give a little bit of the history of that in the book because it's intriguing to see why it hasn't been given the attention in the past.

Our statistics talk about up to one in four girls and up to one in six boys. That's huge. In the book I cite a number of studies, and increasingly governments are looking into institutions' responses to this issue. Attached to those are a lot of academic studies around the prevalence of abuse. It's far more common than we think. There is a sense that, at the moment, while we as a society are condemning and rightly holding to account institutions and the way they have not adequately addressed this issue in the past, it's much more close than that. It's throughout the community and extended relationships. A massively high proportion of survivors knew the person who abused them, sometimes a family member or family friend.

We've really got to understand that prevalence in order to understand the way that trauma has influenced a whole range of other aspects of society, where people have sought to try and cope and make their way through life.

Emily: One question that victims often have is "Where is God in all of this?" Why do you think we lean towards this question when we're in the midst of suffering?

Tim: Well, it's not just a question for survivors of abuse, it's not even a question just for people of faith. It's a question for all humans to sit and to ponder about the meaning of life in the context of suffering. For Christians, of course, there is an added dimension, called theodicy and the questions about how can a good, all powerful God allow suffering, and I do explore that in the book. But I think survivors have every right to ask this question. Suffering is the common experience of humanity, and suffering from trauma has some unique complexities to it. For instance, trauma survivors as children will blame themselves.

There is a narrative that begins very early on that says that if the world is full of big adults and this is being done to me by one of those big adults, it's too overwhelming to think that the world could be out of control so much that the fault lies with the adult. So therefore it must be my fault. There is huge psychological damage that's done to a child as they grow up believing they are to blame for the traumatic act done to them.