Who Do You Believe?

Let's start with this idea. Every trauma survivor is different. Different history, different abuse and other factors to struggle with. On the other hand, what do all trauma survivors want? To be able to tell the truth about what happened to them. Also, vindication. Having some sense of justice in some way. Does that always happen? Unfortunately, no. Yet, survivors continue to fight for that.

Dylan Farrow is trying to do that in her recent New York Times letter about being sexually abused by Woody Allen when she was a little girl. Now, just in case Woody Allen's attorneys are reading this, let's legally protect ourselves from any libel lawsuits.

She's "alleging" that these "incidents of abuse" (also known as rape) continued to happen over a period of time.

She told her mother what happened, and then? Nobody was charged.

Set aside all of the TMZ celebrity hype about Allen, Mia Farrow, who slept with who, is Frank Sinatra REALLY my father, and other stuff. Let's not take the MSM hype approach, and do something else.

Why would she talk about this now, twenty years later? What possible motivation(s) would she have?

She's telling the truth. She wants the truth to be known. She's a normal human being that's entitled to normal emotions (sadness, rage, abandonment and others).

Rape is torture. It doesn't matter if you're a little girl or boy, woman or man. The pain never goes away.

Trying to tell others about this (and then get them to believe you) can be almost as painful as being raped.

She's now a married woman. Are she and her husband having financial problems? Is she trying to shake Allen down for millions in a lawsuit settlement so she'll shut up and go away? My problem with this is this. I've NEVER met another survivor who would willingly lie about rape. It's hard enough as it is to deal with being raped yourself.

Now instead of people trying to find out the truth and deal with the reality of people being raped, what do we have? Celebrity mega hype with various doctors, attorneys, show biz reporters and the obligatory actor/comedian to give "expert" analysis on this.

And that's considered normal.

You may not believe it. But Farrow's speaking out is actually doing everyone a favor.Why? because it's forcing you to face harsh reality. If you got raped, wouldn't you want to be heard and treated like a normal human being?