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By Alexandra Bogdanovic
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Sometimes silence is anything but golden, according to speakers at a community forum on Sexual Predators, held at the Culpeper County Library April 27. Joyce Allan, who wrote “Because I Love You: The Silent Shadow of Child Sexual Abuse,” was the keynote speaker.
Allan explained that the book was based on her own experience: Her father sexually abused her “regularly” beginning when she was 3 years old. She said he also abused her children.
“While he was molesting me, my father would tell me that he was doing it because he loved me,” Allan recalled. “I loved my father. People who molest kids are people we all know, love and respect. It is our silence that is betraying our children. We cannot afford to be silent.”
Allan said she spoke to 150 people who knew her dad when she was doing research for the book. Many of them were family members. She said some of them knew what her father did. But she was astounded to discover how many of them never said anything about it.
“In one extended family, 18 people kept silence about sexual abuse,” Allan told the audience. “In one extended family, there were 13 identified victims and
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