Meliha Yildiz’s Sacred Solitude” is published by Red Cat Publications. “The victims don’t shut up, the problem is people don’t want to hear it,” Yıldız said.
Eser Demirkan
DUVAR – Sacred Solitude, published by Kırmızı Kedi Publications in the last days of 2021, focuses on the issue of domestic sexual abuse. We talked about her experiences with Meliha Yildiz, the process of writing her book and the aftermath. Yıldız said: “When I realized that my traumatic experience had affected my daughter, I started my therapies again. Working with a psychologist who confronted with his holiness and who believed in me and gave me the strength to face the guilt… Facing the divinations of mother, father, family, state, religion, society made me believe in my innocence. It was not difficult to talk when I gave up the sacred that no longer protected me, that did not protect the children, when I was on the side of the children…”
Sacred Solitude, Meliha Yıldız, 128 pgs., Kırmızı Kedi Publications, 2021.
The story of child Meliha in Sacred Solitude begins at the age of eight. Do you remember your younger years? Do you have any older memories of the family or the place you lived in?
In the book, my story begins at the age of age eight because my father’s domestic sexual abuse started then. I don’t remember much about my childhood. This is one of the common problems experienced by victims of domestic sexual abuse. The memory focuses on survival and is split in two. Memories to be remembered, those not to be remembered.
I was born into a working-class family. I spent my childhood in a town in Ankara. Apart from domestic sexual abuse, I grew up in a home where physical, emotional abuse and neglect were intense. My mother and father were loved by the neighbourhood. My father was the honourable, honest and charitable man of the neighbourhood, and my mother; the woman who suffered all the suffering of life…
Who did you share your experiences with for the first time? How did the people you told react? Shall we talk for those who haven’t read the book yet?
I’ve shared it with my mother first. I was eight years old. Right after my father’s second attempt of domestic sexual abuse. I didn’t tell mom all my father did. I didn’t think my father was a bad person. My father was the good guy in the neighbourhood, I didn’t want him to be looked at badly. And I loved my father. So, I just said to my mom: “My dad’s taking my panties down.” My mother didn’t believe me. And then she didn’t protect me during long years of domestic sexual abuse. I can’t be sure if I hid years of abuse very well or if people just ignored it.
‘THE CHILD NEVER TELLS; SHE’S WEAK’
In fact, you answer this in your book: “A child cannot talk about it; she’s weak, she’s scared. She fears that if she does, she’ll hurt herself or her relatives. Abusers often threaten the child. No matter how ridiculous the perpetrator’s threat may sound to us, a child will believe it.” Maybe that’s the common dilemma of the victims. After many years of silence, how did you decide to stop blaming yourself and talk?
When a child goes through something like this, she can’t make sense of it. And when she wants to make sense of it, she thinks: “I’ve definitely done something bad or wrong, which is why this happened to me.” When the victim becomes an adult, she can’t escape the guilt of the childhood era unless she gets professional psychological support, no matter how innocent her mind is. It’s not easy; It’s hard to accept that your father could commit such a brutal act on you, that your mother could condone this atrocity, that society, the state, would not protect you, and that you would remain silent.
When I realized that my traumatic experience had affected my daughter, I started the therapies again. Working with a psychologist who believed in me and confronted me with his holiness gave me the strength to face the guilt. Facing the divines like mother, father, family, state, religion, and society made me believe in my innocence. It wasn’t hard to talk when I gave up the divine that no longer protected me, that didn’t protect the children, and when I was on the children’s side.
So, I gave a video-interview in which I told what I’d been through. I didn’t hide my name, my face, who I was. I was a child, I was abused, I was left alone and no one had ever heard me. When I grew up, when I was mature enough, I stopped my father’s sexual abuse on my own. I wasn’t the one who had to hide, to shut up!
‘VICTIMS DON’T SHUT UP!’
The reactions you got when the video interview was published were actually very interesting. Could I ask you to tell me about it?
I think it was a shock to people. Some tried to talk to me because of their shock, but we didn’t know what to say to each other, or we were talking to each other, but it just wasn’t coming down to the topic. And when I brought it up, they said, “We didn’t want to talk about it and upset you.” And later on, I realized that they themselves were the ones they didn’t really want to upset. They still wanted to keep it quiet. And some said, “I will not watch it.” Why are we friends If you can’t watch my pain? Others said, “What is the point of revealing privacy, encouraging the perpetrators?” One in four or five children are sexually abused, and 90 per cent of perpetrators are in the immediate vicinity. The perpetrators are incredibly brave in this country, in the world; That’s what the numbers are indicating. It is certain that we can’t change these figures by ignoring the stories of abuse and staying silent.
Being subjected to such reactions made me very uncomfortable at first. And then I thought, “That’s why the victims are not talking about it.” Whether I was eight or 18, I spoke up, but people didn’t want to hear about it, just like today. That’s why the slogan “Victims Don’t Shut Up” doesn’t make sense to me. The victims don’t shut up, the problem is people don’t want to hear it. And I decided to write a book while I was trying to make sense of what I was going through. The book also made it easier for me to understand and accept that people want to keep deaf.
Shall we explain a little bit why you call your book Sacred Solitude? How do you think victims are isolated?
Many women, men, and LGBTI+ individuals contacted me after the interview was published. I think it was their messages that made me feel good and empowered me to fight for it. In fact, in their stories, I’ve realized that we never shut up, that we always talk. We are always talking about it, but the others never want to hear it.
I think the most important reason why it’s hard to talk about domestic sexual abuse is because it touches a lot of divinities. The mother, the father, the religion, the state, the society… Our sanctification of these causes us to leave the children and the adults who are exposed to them alone. To protect the sacred, we give up on the child, we sacrifice the child, and we isolate the victims.
You’re talking about it now, and you didn’t go quiet after the book was published. In a blog you start under your own name, you continue to get other victims to talk, to be their voice, to tell their stories. How do they reach out to you and how does it feel to hear the likes of what you’ve been through from others? It must be an exasperating, exhausting process.
True, it’s hard, but we’re trying to get to know ourselves and heal through each other’s experiences. The strength I get from the victims motivates me on my works. Most importantly, I never want any child to go through this again. I want everyone to see how severely we try to deal with these problems as victims. I want to show the severe consequences of sexual abuse, domestic sexual abuse, and wish to better protect our children. Victims reach out to me through my blog and my social media accounts. Listening to their stories also allows me to make sense of some of the things I’ve intuitively noticed. Unfortunately, there are not many studies done on this subject in Turkey.
Sometimes it’s not emotionally easy. There are times that I can’t sleep for days. The desire to protect those children who were not protected on time… It’s as if they live in a room in my house where I do the interviews. I’m trying to protect them in that room. Then when I see them fighting, getting stronger, I accept that they’re growing up, and I try to break up with them.
‘ART WAS MY SHELTER’
In the book, we read about Meliha’s experiences, on the other hand, we think about the problem of domestic sexual abuse, we are suggested movies, games, and books etc. What would you say about seeing your own experiences in a book or in a movie?
Art was a place for me to run to, a refuge. When I couldn’t look at my own pain, when I couldn’t cry, art made it easier for me to cry to myself through the others’ pain. Art has always been in my life, in terms of production as well. I attended writing workshops, script workshops. In these workshops, I dreamt of describing domestic sexual abuse, albeit fictionally. I don’t know what it would be like if someone else told my story. I see my book as a piece of mine, and I can’t look at it from the outside. This book has been a medium of transformation and embrace of my childhood to me. My second book, which is not yet finished, bears witness to a similar process.
Therapies, your video-interviews, and writing this book have been a way for you to become yourself, to resist. We know that what you talked about in your book continues to happen somewhere around the world. Your fight may be hope for other victims. What would you like to say about this?
There’s ceramic art that belongs to the Japanese: Kintsugi. An art made by combining broken ceramic shards with gold dust. In Kintsugi, broken ceramics are not considered wasted, instead, broken ceramics are made more valuable using gold. In Kintsugi, cracks are not hidden, but rather highlighted. The ceramic is given a second life on a philosophical basis. Sexual abuse in childhood, unless it is cured, is an attempt to survive as a shattered ceramic. So come, let’s give life another chance, let’s fix ourselves. Without hiding our brokenness, emphasizing our value that can never be never lost… I say let’s break the silence, as the society, and reach out to the victims and support them so they can recover.