Recently, The New York Times ran a piece about author Amy Griffin’s memoir, The Tell, that leaned on tired and harmful tropes. The authors of this article suggested that if sexual harm cannot be proven in court, or if law enforcement does not believe the victim, it must be suspect. They even implied that if no one else has reported something similar against the same offender, perhaps it never happened at all.
These claims undermine the reporting of child sexual abuse and show little effort to understand the nature of this kind of trauma. The framing in this article doesn’t just miss the mark — it sets back the hard work so many are doing to change the narrative. Child sexual abuse is often called the “perfect crime” because children are uniquely vulnerable: they dissociate, lack the words to explain what happened, and are easily silenced by fear or shame.
Memories often surface much later in life, sometimes decades later, during pivotal experiences like first sexual encounters, childbirth, medical crises, or other moments when life events trigger intense emotions or a feeling of being out of control.
The article also cast suspicion on the use of mood-altering substances in therapeutic settings to access memories. However, survivors often disclose at times and in circumstances that might be counterintuitive to those who are unaware. For example, when using recreational substances with friend, during an EMDR session, through hands-on body work and, of course, with more traditional vehicles for accessing our lived experiences, like talk therapy.
We can intentionally create intensity through the use of medicinal hallucinogens and potentially access what we could not in traditional therapeutic settings. Healthy adults can tell the difference between a hallucination and a memory.
And memoirs are not criminal complaints; they are a person’s account of how they have made sense of their life. I believe we have famously been down this path with Oprah and James Fry. We don't get to stand in judgment of someone's lived experiences as they choose to tell them. We do get to understand that all memoirs have a fundamental truth, whether we can appreciate it or not.
Amy's book has helped countless survivors believe themselves. Not just those who have used MDMA. Regardless of how they started their healing journey, they need support to unpack it. Survivors often spend years questioning their own fragmented memories. They even doubt themselves when their experiences are confirmed by others. Survivors do not want this to be a part of their history. They know by speaking it out loud, they will lose people, reputation and potentially be publicly ridiculed.
Traumatic memories can come and go, and unfold in pieces that might not make sense. It isn't as simple as replaying a video to see what happened, and record "the facts". Harm experiences must be integrated slowly, intentionally and without challenge as they are being explored. That process is not evidence nothing happened. It is simply how trauma healing works.
What’s most troubling is how quickly the public can be led to dismiss survivors. One reader commented they didn't believe a 16-year-old could forget repeated rapes. In guiding readers toward the binary of “I believe” or “I don’t believe,” the authors paved the way to misunderstand our role as the public. As bystanders, we do not get to decide if harm occurred based on a thin article, our own subjective perspective and limited lived experiences.
The math is sobering. One in three girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18. That means when someone recalls harm from their youth, it is not an outlier. It is painfully common. And no one is asking for our opinion on whether or not it happened. Our energy belongs elsewhere: asking why so many young people are sexually harmed by the trusted adults in their lives, and what are we, the public, willing to do to stop it.