Last updated July 21, 2005

Stopping the Silence about Intimate Violence: Laying a Foundation for Peace
By Heather Grimm, WIFP

On Friday March 11, 2005 Stop the Silence: Stop Child Sexual Abuse, a national non-profit organization in Maryland that raises funds and conducts comprehensive programming to end the sexual abuse of children, held the colloquium "Stop the Silence about Intimate Violence: Laying a Foundation for Peace" in Washington DC.

Dr. Pamela Pine, the Director of Stop the Silence and Health Communications Director at Futures Group, and Sharon Rodgers Simone, a survivor of child sexual abuse who speaks about the uses and abuses of power related to child abuse, rape, and domestic violence, lead the colloquium. In addition, Ka (Kathyrn) Flewellen, an organization development specialist, was the lead facilitator of the colloquium, and her co-facilitators were Elizabeth Corley, from the Futures Group, and Charlyn Griffith, Heather Kaye-Jacobs, and Grace Poore, from Generation Five.

The colloquium featured Riane Eisler and Nontombi Naomi Tutu as keynote speakers. Eisler is an internationally recognized scholar, futurist, and activist, who helped found the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence. She is also the author of The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. Tutu is a global peacemaker, international leader on race and gender relations, and the daughter of Nomalizo Tutu and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The purpose of the colloquium as outlined by Flewellen was to get the individuals and groups present to come together in support of ending intimate violence and to "figure out how to bring others who need to be part of the fight into the fold." Simone and Pine foreshadowed this sentiment by stressing that there is still a lot of work to be done to end intimate violence, including child sexual abuse.

Statistics show that 1 out every 3-4 females and 1 out of every 7-8 males has been sexually abused by the age of 18. Additionally, 73% of prostitutes were sexually abused before age 16, 60% of teenage mothers were sexually abused as children, 73% of runaways are sexually abused, and 83% of people incarcerated for homicide were physically and emotionally abused as children and 32.2% were sexually abused. As these and other statistics (available on http://www.stopcsa.org/cause.cfm) show, the colloquium leaders and facilitators insisted, child sexual abuse and intimate violence in general is a problem worthy of society's attention.

Eisler delivered her keynote, which shared its title with the colloquium, first. In her speech Eisler pointed out that "We still accept human rights violations as the way things are." She also questioned how it is possible to talk about peace without talking about the idea that it is okay to force your will on others through violence, because those things people learn in/through primary relations directly influences how they act in society. To this end, Eisler explained and discussed the partner-domination continuum. In this continuum the domination model is identified by its authoritarian structure, which is present both in the family and the tribe at large, and has a high degree of violence built into the society. On the other end of the continuum, is the partnership model, which is held together by the idea of pleasure and sharing. Societies with this model will undoubtedly still have some amount of violence, but no type of violence will be publicly sanctioned. According to Eisler and this continuum, "Intimate violence is an inherited social and cultural problem," that stems from the struggle for domination and power. This indicates that the way to stop intimate violence does not lie in dismantling the top of the pyramid (society's structure), but by changing the foundation of the pyramid. Eisler, therefore, urged, "We need to move towards prevention otherwise we will just keep intervening We are talking about changing the conversation, our job is not that hard."

Tutu gave her keynote, which was on "Silences," after table-level discussions of Eisler's keynote had been conducted. One of the first things Tutu mentioned in her speech was the fact that "We have a lot of words out there about human rights (in the form of documents), but we seem to believe that once those words are out there our job is done." What this amounts to is silence, and Tutu encouraged her audience to think about what it is that teaches children to be silent, since silence is so foreign to a child's nature. This is an important question she asserted because "Silence spreads; we start giving up on changing the way things are, we stop putting things in any context that makes sense So as long as we accept silence as public policy we are going to get silence and ignorance as public policy." Logic follows then, that as Tutu stated, the silence that we maintain around international violence is the same as the silence that we maintain around intimate violence. Consequently, she implored her audience to recognize that we are set up to silence some people, which sends the message that there are some voices that aren't worth hearing and as long as we have this we will have violence. Tutu concluded her speech by noting, "Today is about hearing other voices."

Another table-level discussion followed Tutu's keynote, which was followed by a coming together of all the tables for a larger discussion. These discussion sessions were meant to give those present a chance to reflect on and respond to the keynote speeches. Within them the participants were able to come to a consensus on many points, including the need to change the foundation of society in order to fight intimate violence, to bring men into the fight, to listen to people with respect, and to "start the dialogue with whoever you're sitting next to."