Children of the Secret

From the Afterword of the book False Allegations by Andrew Vachss:

Every year, millions of children in the United States are victimized by severe abuse. This maltreatment takes may forms, but all have this in common: they rob children of some percentage of their potential, some vital human piece of themselves. And by such robbery, all America is looted. The problem has been documented to the point of nausea. The media dutifully report the body counts, but the one-sided war rages on. Domestic violence, sexual exploitation, rape, sociopathic plundering, homicide… we remain under siege even as our "protective" institutions rot from within.
We know the root cause of our societal ills and evil - the trans-generational maltreatment of children. We know today's victim can become tomorrow's predator. We know that while many heroic survivors refuse to imitate the oppressor, the chains remain unbroken as abused children turn the trauma inward and lose their souls to self-inflicted wounds - from drug and alcohol abuse to depression to suicide. Their lives are never what they could have - should have - been.
We know the enemy… but where is the counterattack? More social engineering? More pious whining? More networking? More conferences? More unfocused, blundering incompetence? There is a Rosetta stone to societal decay. Child abuse, simply, modifies development of the brain. It alters "processing," so that the abused child (of whatever age) assimilates and responds to stimuli in distinctly aberrant ways. Most of those ways are self-destructive. Some destroy others. All, eventually, destroy us… as a country, and even as a species.
The CIVITAS Child Trauma Programs at Baylor College of Medicine are attacking child maltreatment in three distinct ways: (1) providing clinical services to desperately underserved children; (2) training a cadre of dedicated and superbly skilled professionals; and (3) carrying out these services and this training in the context of ongoing research. Without an understanding of what happens inside maltreated children, we can never hope for meaningful change, but must expect only a continuation of our pitiful policies of appeasement and amelioration.
CIVITAS provides a multidisciplinary and interinstitutional spirit that synthesizes the complex social, legal, cultural, psychological, and physical issues related to child maltreatment. When is it safe to return an abused child to his biological parents? What about "false allegations"? What constitutes a truly professional investigation? What turns one abused child into a healer… and another into a serial killer? Are monsters born or made? CIVITAS is answering these questions and, more importantly, documenting the answers, proving them again and again, developing a body of scientific knowledge to replace the psychobabble and guesstimates that pass for "truth" today. A major goal of CIVITAS is to develop, pilot, and evaluate innovative models for clinical service, training, and research in a replicable model for use throughout America.

Even though Mr. Vachss is letting you know about an organization that he's endorsing… that assists children, the manner in which he describes society today could not have been said better, in my humble opinion. I have taken the term "Children of the Secrets" from a series of books written by Mr. Vachss. For this website we will refer to this branch of society as COTS (Children of the Secret).

"Children of the Secret" come in all colors, all races, all sexes, and all beliefs. They are the children that are raised by or around monsters/freaks/perpetrators of unspeakable evils upon those children. Vachss carries no special categories for these children other than: what they share is TERROR. What is the secret? Well, if you were a child of the secret you would know… the secret is really nothing but lies: (1) if you tell I will kill you; (2) if you tell I will kill your ________; (3) if you tell, you will be blamed; (4) if you tell, you will be arrested; (5) if you tell, they will say it is all your fault. Hopefully, you get my meaning here. The "secret" is really nothing more than any reason that these monsters can come up with to keep their victims quiet. Pain is the usual tool in enforcing the "secret"; humiliation is the leash that keeps the victims restrained. If the "secret" stems from incest, this too can cause other definitions.

Some of these children became monsters themselves, however, MANY of us have this inexplicable ability to find each other. At first we come together in pain or humiliation, or madness. We learn first and foremost that we are NOT alone. To some of us this is a good thing, to know that there are others that can UNDERSTAND our feelings of isolation... but then again it is also a bad thing because we find out how truly HUGE in numbers our kind truly are. We are the secret society within the societies of this planet that have YET to see our day! To become the force that we truly are! We have worked endlessly, it seems, to release fully our RAGE, but it NEVER truly seems to leave; it just becomes that dragon that quietly sleeps for awhile. There is a reason for this: we are to come together, we are to work together and we are to UNIFY!

NOW IS THE TIME!

Some of you may be reading in the papers, on the computer or seeing on TV about the Catholic Church coming under fire for all of the priests that they have known about, that abused children, has brought RAGE up in many "Children of The Secret". It is not a personal RAGE... IT IS truly a righteous RAGE and THIS is our call! WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE, WE CAN COME TOGETHER and most importantly of all WE CAN MAKE SOCIETY SEE US FOR THE FIRST TIME!... AS A WHOLE! UNIFIED! A FORCE NOT TO BE DENIED!

For those of you that are not of the secret, you may wonder at this energy that you are feeling as you are reading this. This energy is a pure energy; it is an energy that truly defines the lightworker term of "embracing your dark side." In order for some of us to have "Heaven on Earth" much will have to change! In case you haven't understood so far what I'm talking about... WE ARE THE BACKBONE OF THE ARMY OF GOD! (NOTE: I am NOT referring to the organization that calls itself God's Army and blows up abortion clinics or kills medical personnel that work in them!) Scriptures tell us "a child will lead them" and those scriptures are correct... and that child will be a child of the secret! Just like the children (no matter what their body age is) that are currently taking the Catholic Church down brick by brick! We are the keepers of the RAGE, we KNOW injustice, we KNOW pain, and we KNOW survival! We also know that Society as a whole, would rather keep us in the closet.... Well, we are not coming out of the closet... we are tearing the closet down… to shreds. When we are through with that closet, it will be nothing more than a pile of splinters.

We have to begin now... we have other things out there to fight. Example: Abstinence or Virginity pledges... many churches and schools are pressuring children to sign these pledges that they will NOT have sex before marriage. Some states are even bringing this into public middle schools. As a parent you may like this idea... or perhaps see NOTHING wrong with it. I am asking you to look deeper... look at the suicides that have happened because of them. Two cases that I know of were two children who were pressured into signing these pledges and could not take the guilt that came afterwards... you see they were "Children of the Secret" and they had already been having sex with their father! What I point out is, the fact that, if these things become law... again "Children of the Secret" are again being forced into doing something they don't want to do! Once again I will state clearly, I am NOT saying that Abstinence/Virginity are bad things, what I am saying is that when a child refuses to sign… do NOT pressure them… they probably have an excellent reason why, and maybe even a "secret" to keep. Pressuring children will NOT open them up to talk of the "secret"; it will just reinforce programming that has been instilled into them by their personal "monster."

Another example of what needs to be taken care of: some states still have laws on the books that will punish a perpetrator, UNLESS he is related to the victim! In other words there are still states and countries that will NOT punish incest perpetrators! What about the newer laws that require convicted child molesters to post a notice on their property that state their crime, but many move to neighborhoods where the language is different… such as an English-speaking person moving into a Spanish-speaking neighborhood… the law does NOT require a bi-lingual posting?! Then of course, we have had circumstances where a convicted child molester is released from prison and moves back into the house right next door to his last victim. Cannot society as a whole see what is wrong with these examples? Well, if society cannot… then it is our responsibility to teach society differently!

Let me introduce myself, my name is Debbie Wright, and I am a minister duly ordained through the Universal Life Church. I have spent the last four years of my life completely devoted to my ministerial duties. Before that I did what I could on a part time basis while working to support my one and only child. I was ordained in 1989… at a point in time in which I refer to as a "dark night of the soul." You see, I, too, am a child of the secret. You see many years ago, when I was 26 years of age, I decided to quit being a person of RAGE, and begin my walk out of RAGE and see where it lead me. To keep the RAGE in check, I built a dragon, and this dragon lives in the deepest recesses of my being. Occasionally, my dragon would rear its magnificent head and would ROAR in the RAGE that built it. The times that would awaken my dragon would be the times that reminded me of the pain of my childhood. The only thing that would quiet that dragon would be RAGE and ONLY RAGE at the injustices that happen to the children of this Earth. Then, one day about 10 years ago, I stumbled across the book Sacrifice by Andrew Vachss. After reading this book, I found and read EVERYTHING else this man ever wrote and have been a faithful follower since. You see, what Andrew Vachss writes, is Dragon Food! He feeds my dragon in order that it may quiet and go back to sleep. These books are NOT for the faint of heart... these books are VERY dark. You see, Andrew Vachss writes about a man (by the name of Burke) who hunts down and KILLS monsters, the monsters that prey on children. I personally feel that he began writing these books as a self-exorcism. Andrew Vachss is a lawyer in New York City and his clients are children... mainly "Children of the Secret". He saw perpetrators get away with murder and worse! I see this as his reason to exorcise his soul, to purge his hatred, and go back into the battle once again.

IF YOU ARE NOT A CHILD OF THE SECRET AND ARE FAINT OF HEART... DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING PAGES! And please, do not pity us... we are very proud of who we are, of our strength, and most of all, of our will to survive against adversity.