Filipino Children and Adolescents’ Stories of Sexual Abuse: Narrative Types and Consequences

Abstract

There is a paucity of qualitative research on children’s and adolescents’ perceptions of their sexual abuse experiences. This paper aims to describe the narrative types and consequences of sexual abuse stories among ten female Filipino children and adolescents. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using dialogical narrative analysis. Results show that three narrative types appear in the stories of the survivors. These are the tragic resistance narrative, rescued slave narrative, and heroic saga narrative, and each of these narratives has idiosyncratic effects on the identities, affiliations, disclosure, and adjustment processes of the participants. The results show how symbolic cultural structures can have far-reaching consequences on sexually abused children and adolescents.

Introduction

Sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence remains a prevalent social problem. A worldwide estimate shows that 13% of girls and 6% of boys experience sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence (Barth et al. 2013). As a result, they experience debilitating adverse mental, psychological, physical, and health effects (Amado et al. 2015; Hillberg et al. 2011; Maniglio 2009; Norman et al. 2012; Teicher and Samson 2016). In the Philippines, a national survey shows that the lifetime prevalence of child and youth sexual abuse is 21.5% - 24.7% for boys and 18.2% for girls (CWC and UNICEF 2016). These reported abuses are a bit higher than some worldwide estimates, and they even lead to early smoking, sex, and pregnancy, having multiple partners, substance use, and suicide among the victims (Ramiro et al. 2010). Despite this information, research on children’s and adolescents’ narratives on sexual abuse in the Philippines gathered through qualitative approaches t is limited (Roche 2017). This gap is not surprising because systematic reviews show that only a handful of extant studies have analyzed children’s and adolescents’ perceptions of their sexual abuse experiences (Morrison et al. 2018; Watkins-Kagebein et al. 2019). The bulk of the literature on children and adolescents’ sexual abuse experiences comes from retrospective accounts of adult survivors (Alaggia et al. 2019; Tener and Murphy 2015), which may differ from children’s and adolescents’ themselves due to recall bias, participants’ advanced developmental phase, and other factors (Foster and Hagedorn 2014; Morrison et al. 2018; Watkins-Kagebein et al. 2019).

Nevertheless, there has been a recent surge of interest in studying young victims’/survivors’ sexual abuse accounts. These studies documented the emotional experiences of children and adolescents, including their fear, anger, pain, worry, and coping strategies (Foster and Hagedorn 2014; McElvaney et al. 2014; San Diego 2011; Schönbucher et al. 2012); the disclosure processes and their barriers and facilitators (Foster and Hagedorn 2014; Jackson et al. 2015; Jensen et al. 2005; McElvaney et al. 2014; Schaeffer et al. 2011; Schönbucher et al. 2012); and the subjects’ healing journey through therapeutic processes (Capella et al. 2016; Foster and Hagedorn 2014; San Diego 2011). Besides the emotional aspects, secondary victimization in the justice system (Foster and Hagedorn 2014; Capella et al. 2016) also manifested in the reports.

However, what remains underexplored in these studies and adult retrospections are the meso-level factors that affect post-sexual abuse emotions, reactions (e.g., disclosures), coping and adjustment, and identity work. One example at the meso-level is culture (Sanjeevi et al. 2018). In their review, Sanjeevi et al. (2018, p. 631) note that studying culture is essential to “provide culturally competent and culturally valid services” to children and adolescents who have experienced sexual abuse. However, this inquiry line is underdeveloped as most culturally-oriented studies have either studied culture as practices (e.g., ways of raising a child, sleeping arrangements, child marriage) or beliefs (e.g., beliefs on what constitutes sexual abuse). A treatment of culture as a system of symbols is absent in child sexual abuse literature, especially in studies of children and adolescents’ accounts of their sexual abuse experiences. In this study, we treat culture as “a structure of symbolic sets” that “provide[s] a nonmaterial structure” of actions by “creating patterned order, lines of consistency in human actions” (Alexander and Smith 1993, p. 156). Furthermore, a narrative is an example of a symbol. Narratives are culturally available resources and structures (e.g., tragedy, romance, comedy) with which people construct their personal stories (Frank 2010). Furthermore, narrative analysis makes these narrative types visible (Wong and Breheny 2018).

The narrative approach has not been extensively used in sexual abuse studies. Although few studies employ this methodology (e.g., Capella et al. 2016; Foster and Hagedorn 2014; Harvey et al. 2000; Hunter 2010), these studies were more thematic. They focused more on the ‘what”s’ of storytelling and neglected the ‘how’s’ (Gubrium and Holstein 2009). Thus, there is a need for other narrative approaches like dialogical and structural (Riessman 2008). We argue that Arthur Frank’s (2010, 2012) socio-narratology and dialogical narrative analysis can fill this void.

Socio-narratology views stories not just as retrospective devices of representing the past but also prospective ones that interpellate people to assume identities, affiliate/disaffiliate from others and do things (Frank 2010, 2012). As Alameddine (2009: 450) notes: “Events matter little, only stories of those events affect us.” This view tends to find support in some narrative psychologists’ (e.g., Bruner 1987; Polkinghorne 1988) and philosophers’ (Carr 1986; MacIntyre 1981; Ricoeur 1984) stand on the power of stories in people’s lives. As Polkinghorne (1988, p. 145) posited, life/action is the “living narrative expression of a personal and social life. The competence to understand a series of episodes as part of our story informs our own decisions to engage in actions that move us toward a desired ending.” Polkinghorne added that stories and narratives provide us with models for the self, action, and life, and we use these models to plan our actions and assume identities.

This paper aims to describe the narrative types and consequences of sexual abuse stories among ten female Filipino children and adolescents. We argue that cultural symbols in the form of narratives describe phenomena through personal stories, and they also tend to influence emotions and actions. This perspective, we believe, is also applicable to children’s and adolescents’ stories and experiences of sexual abuse. Narrative types can be visible from these stories of sexual abuse, which have material effects on disclosure processes, emotions, coping, identity work, and behavioral and social adjustment of children and adolescents who have had the experience.

Methodology

Data

The researchers sought to capture data by profiling the Filipino children’s and adolescents’ lives before, during, and after experiencing sexual abuse through semi-structured interviews. The participants were contacted and recruited through a temporary government-controlled crisis center in the province of Negros Oriental, Philippines, where they were housed. Of the twelve participant interviews, only ten were analyzed because two participants did not answer some questions critical to the analysis.

Table 1 shows the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants. As shown, most of the participants were sexually abused in their adolescence (10–19) by family members with whom they lived at the time of the abuse. At the time of the interview, all of them had studied for at least 3 years when the abuse started.

Table 1.

Socio-demographic charateristics of the participants

Participant	Age During Abuse	Age During Interview	Present occupation, if any	Abuser
1. Ana	6 years old	9 years old	Student	Stepfather, cousin, uncle
2. May	8 years old	15 years old	Student	Stepfather, uncle, and brother in law
3. Jess	9 years old	15 years old	Student	Stepfather
4. Kay	10 years old	14 years old	Student	Uncle
5. Joy	11 years	13 years old	Student	Grandfather
6. Kim	11 years old	15 years old	Student	Uncle
7. Bem	12 years old	14 years old	Student	Father
8. Kat	12 years old	14 years old	Student	Father
9. Mary	13 years	16 years old	Student	Stepfather
10. Jean	18 years	19 years old	Student	Employer

Data Gathering Procedures

After having been granted the ethics board approval, consent from the government agency that controlled the center, the caregivers, and the participants was obtained. Contacts with the target participants were developed through the said government agency, which had personal information in the center. The target participants were then informed about the nature of the study and its purpose and were also asked about their willingness to participate. They were briefed on the confidentiality of the information gathered from them and the anonymity of their identity. Those who opted to participate were requested to sign informed consent forms and to indicate their preferred schedule and place of interview, which could be any place conducive.

The study utilized face-to-face semi-structured interviews, which were conducted by the lead author and employing narrative interviewing techniques (Jovchelovitch and Bauer 2000). A debriefing to prevent the recurrence of trauma was given to the participant right after every interview, which could last for 30 min to one-and-a-half hours. All audio-recorded interviews were password-secured and were only transcribed and translated by language-proficient staff and verified by the researchers for accuracy and consistency. For ethical reasons, participants’ names and other information were kept anonymous and replaced with pseudonyms.

Dialogical Narrative Analysis

Frank (2010, 2012) coupled socio-narratology with his methodological technique – dialogical narrative analysis (DNA). DNA is a heuristic guide in analyzing stories. It is a combination of thematic, structural, and dialogical analyses (Smith 2016). DNA “studies the mirroring between what is told in the story – the story’s content – and what happens as a result of telling that story – its effects” (Frank 2010, pp. 71–72). In other words, DNA is concerned with the content of stories and their effects on selves, affiliations, and actions. Although Frank (2010, 2012) intended DNA to be heuristic in nature, there are phases of the analysis that can be implemented (see also Caddick 2016; Smith 2016). However, these phases are not necessarily linearly followed: even in a later phase, one can always return to the initial ones.

The present analysis started with getting the story phase done by the first researcher. Here, the stories in each interview were identified using Labov and Waletzky’s (1967) structural model of narratives. Then, the getting to grips with the stories phase was implemented by the two researchers. Indwelling with the data by listening to the audios and reading the transcripts several times was done at this phase. Also, narrative themes, relationships among themes, and the structure of the stories were identified. The opening up analytical dialogue phase followed by asking dialogical questions by the two authors directed towards the narratives identified (Frank 2012). This makes DNA unique from other analyses. Dialogical questions include resource questions, affiliation questions, and identity questions. Finally, pulling the analysis together phase was done by choosing among the five forms of DNA, the best way to structure the results. We chose to build a narrative typology as our approach. Narrative types are ‘the most general storyline[s] that can be recognized underlying the plot and tensions of particular stories’ (Frank 1995: 75). After weeks of analysis, the data revealed three narrative types and their consequences, which are discussed in the next section.

Results

The Narrative Types

This section shows that there are three significant narratives to which the participants of this study subscribe. These narratives are tragic resistance narrative, rescued slave narrative, and heroic saga narrative. The most common among these are the tragic resistance and the rescued slave narratives. The heroic saga narrative serves as a contesting narrative against the dominant ones. We will also show that these narratives interpellate the participants to assume particular identities (selves), connect or disconnect from alliances, and do things for and on them.

Tragic Resistance Narrative

Its Structure

A common narrative emplotted by some of the participants is the tragic resistance narrative. This narrative starts with some favorable situations, followed by a disruption in the form of sexual abuse. Due to fear of negative consequences, the participants subscribing to this narrative tended not to disclose their victimization. Moreover, if they disclosed, they did it covertly with those outside the family. This does not mean, however, that they did not do anything against the offender. They tended to make subtle but covert resistance against the abusers. This narrative has this structure: “Girls live a normal life. It is made horrible when they are raped. However, they could not disclose it because they fear that their resistance might fail as the abuser might retaliate.” This narrative appears to be a derivative of the culturally available rape myths such as “No woman can do much about rape” (Gordon and Riger 1989; Plummer 2003). Also, fear of retaliation among the sexual abuse victims in the Philippines circulates culturally (Hunt and Gatbonton 2000). Previous research also documents fears experienced by children and adolescents due to their abusive experiences (Foster and Hagedorn 2014; McElvaney et al. 2014; Schönbucher et al. 2012).

One example of this kind of narrative is a story told by Mary, who was raped by her father. She said,

That night, he came home very drunk. My brother and I only slept side by side in the sala of our house. Then my father laid down in between my brother and me and started to undress me. I said, “No, Pa,” but he held a knife and said that he would kill me if I refused. So, he succeeded in undressing me and finally raped me. When he inserted his penis into my vagina, it was very painful. It happened when I have not even had my first menstruation yet. When I tried to move, he would threaten me with the knife.

Mary did not continue to resist because of the threat made by her father to kill her if she would fight. She emplotted her experience in a tragic resistance narrative yet did not offer more resistance. Other participants’ stories unfolded through this type of narrative. Ana, for instance, shared this story:

One time when my Mama left, my father and my siblings were left at home. Then he [stepfather] attempted to rape me, but I shouted, and it was on time that my Mama came back. So Mama had the incident blottered. My stepfather was so mad. Eventually, he was put behind bars because my godmother, who was a policewoman, helped us. We went home to Zamboanguita because we were in Bayawan during that time. We did not know that he was temporarily freed but he was able to post bail. He came back and planned to kill us all. He murdered Mama, who was pregnant. I was almost killed too. He almost killed Lolo. If Lolo was not able to kill him, all of us could have been killed. Lolo killed him at that time.

Ana related that she screamed when her stepfather attempted to rape her and her mother reported it to the police. Then, the offender was arrested and detained. However, such resistance was tragic. When the offender was able to post bail, he retaliated and killed her pregnant mother and almost killed her, but her grandfather eventually killed him. This tragic resistance created extreme fear in her as she relayed, “.. . that is what I fear. Because of me, my family would kill each other.”

Jess took the same narrative to describe her initial resistance against her stepfather. It was not her stepfather, however, who foiled her resistance. It was her mother. Her mother prevented Jess’s attempt to resist. She said: “He abused me every night, and if I said no, he would go wild. I was angry with my Mama because she did not believe me.”

Tragic Resistance Narrative’s Effects on the Self, Relationships, and Actions

With the tragic resistance narrative, the participants experienced what Freeman (2010) calls narrative foreclosure, wherein one believes that he or she has no or little prospect for the future. This is detrimental to the self. Some participants experienced hopelessness and even considered committing suicide. This kind of narrative led them to offer little (covert) or no resistance against subsequent abuses. They even became emotionally attached to their abusers.

Dirty and Foreclosed Self

When asked what she felt immediately after the abuse, Jess described herself as

“Filthy. I considered myself filthy because my being had been devastated by a person who was good for nothing.”

She also felt that her future was foreclosed as she lamented,

“I felt hopeless. I felt like I was already totally hopeless. I can’t think of any solution to the problem during that time. I thought there was nobody who could help me because I was hesitant to tell anybody.”

Ana and Mary had the same thought about themselves immediately after the repeated sexual abuse. And after a considerable number of years, they still felt marred by such molestations, although not as intense as immediately after the incidents. For instance, Mary still felt her womanhood tarnished:

“Sometimes, I feel I am the filthiest person. My father sexually abused me.”

Ana had a similar struggle with herself even long after the event. She continued to experience confusion about herself.

Interviewer: Let me ask you this, “How is Ana?”

Ana: Tired.

Interviewer: What makes Ana tired?

Ana: It’s like I do not understand myself.

Due to confusion, Mary even engaged in homosexuality. She became attracted to lesbians and hated men. She said,

“Yes, we see each other because her peers are also our classmates, but we feel nothing more than friends. She would just tell me to take care, then we go our separate ways. She asked me why I get attracted to girls. I said I am not attracted to girls; I get attracted to boyish girls. I used to get attracted to boys, but now I hate them. I never had feelings towards lesbians before. When a cousin of mine got into a relationship with a lesbian, I even admonished her from getting involved with the same sex. I wonder why I have changed. Ate Lyn even asked me why I got into a relationship with a girl.”

Emotional Attachment with the Abuser

The tragic resistance narrative invites the participants to build an emotional attachment with the abusers. This is in line with some qualitative research that documented children’s conflicted feelings toward their abusers (Morrison et al. 2018). Probably, this is to prevent any harmful retaliatory acts from the abuser towards the abused or to their significant others or to make the abusers believe that they were not resisting.

For instance, after she was abused for the first time, Ana lived with her uncle; she was again raped by her cousin. This time, she did not resist her cousin overtly after the death of her mother and her unborn child, which resulted from her previous overt resistance against her stepfather. Instead, she built a close relationship with her cousin and his family with which she was living. When asked about the frequentness of being abused by her cousin, Ana said:

“He did it to me, maybe two or three times in a month. Sometimes I got insulted because he would bring his girlfriend, and still continued to abuse me. (But) I had high respect for him as an older brother.”

Ana may have been “insulted” or probably jealous that her cousin had a girlfriend whom he brought latter to their house. This indicates her attachment with the abuser, which is also manifested in the last sentence, where she expressed her respect towards him as her elder brother. Ana treated him as part of her family and considered his family her own; in fact, she even participated in their family drinking sessions and became drunk at times. And just like Ana, Mary also became attached to her father, who raped her repeatedly. This was because she was concerned with what could happen to him if she would leave him. She said:

“He even told me that he wanted me for his wife because women avoid him. After all, he bathes only once a week. He smells foul and dirty. I was the one who did his laundry. Our neighbors kept on telling me to finish my studies so that I could get away from him. But it is difficult to leave him. I am concerned about him because every time he got drunk, he would wake up everybody and put a fight.”

Subtle Resistance and Disclosure

A tragic narrative calls one for inaction because of fear (Smith 2005). It curtails any hope for the future and halts one from advancing towards it. Similar things occurred among some of the participants. Despite the abuses, they stayed with their abusers. That is why they experienced repeated sexual abuse. Their actions were enactions dictated by the emplotted narrative of their experiences of abuse (Frank 2010). Their actions became dialogical copies of their narrative. Nevertheless, instead of not doing anything, they made subtle resistance and disclosure. They expressed their agency strategically in a covert way, possibly, to avoid retaliation from the offender.

Ana, for instance, feigned a pregnancy after experiencing repeated abuses. This was a very strategic ploy. It was effective and, at the same time, did not require her to create a disorder in the family; although, there were still risks associated with it. She shared:

“At the end of December, I pretentiously told him I was pregnant to stop him from raping me. He was terrified, and he did stop raping me. He even gave me some pills, but I did not take them.”

On the other hand, Kay employed playful covert resistance. She used jokes against her abuser, although it had no similar effect as that of Ana’s. For example, she said,

“Mama’s brother used to carry a gun and has abused me several times - five times already. At times, I would jokingly tell him: “You know, I will report what happened; I will report you, Uncle, to the police station.” But, he wasn’t thinking that I was joking. I asked him, “Uncle, how many times have you done it to me already? Do you remember you stripped me naked, you removed my panty and my skirt and then kissed me in the mouth, my breasts, and licked my bottom?” After that, he warned me: “Do not to tell your father, mother, and my older brother -- because if you do, I will shoot them.” I said, “Yes, Uncle, I understand.” I was crying at that time.”

In this case, the participants made subtle disclosures – although not within their immediate family. They disclosed to their friends, neighbors, and the police. Mary opened to her neighbors (boarders), who were also caught in a tragic resistance narrative. This time, it is the neighbor’s daughter who was almost raped by her drunk father. But they did not report it to the authorities. She shared this:

“They asked me what my father did to me, but I did not answer them; I only cried. They said it would be New Year so I should have a new life and should not be staying at home always. That prompted me to tell them what happened to me. They asked me how I should deal with the situation. That was it; they were also afraid to report to the police because my father warned that whoever will help me, will be killed. He also warned of killing my brother and me if I would tell anybody about the incident.”

Ana made a similar kind of disclosure to the mother of her best friend. She did not disclose it to her uncle, who supported her, because she feared that a similar tragic event in her family would occur again. Ana said:

Interviewer: Did you tell anybody?

Ana: I didn’t tell anyone except the mother of my best friend whom I trusted most.

Interviewer: What prompted you to tell?

Ana: Because I could no longer bear the thought that even his father can do the same to me when we were supposed to be kins. So I told the mother of my classmate, and she even cried.

Rescued Slave Narrative

Its Structure

Another common narrative invoked by the participants is the rescued slave narrative. This is a progressive type of narrative (Gergen and Gergen 1988). Emancipation was the key theme in this narrative: emancipation from the bondage of sex slavery and other forms of oppression. However, this emancipation was not the participants’ initiative but of other people and a Higher Being. The agency on the part of the participants was minimal, especially in terms of disclosure and resistance. This narrative’s typical structure is: “Women are subjected to slavery and other forms of oppression. They become martyr slaves and break down inside. Somebody rescues them, and they are freed from the bondage of their abusers.”

Joy had employed this kind of narrative. She was repeatedly raped by her grandfather as if she were a sex slave. She broke down and cried. She was asked why and then she disclosed. Then, some people helped her get her grandfather arrested and incarcerated.

“The first time I got raped was when I was eight years old. Since then, I was raped by my Lolo several times. I never told anyone about it because he warned me not to. Every time he gets drunk, he would rape me. One time, my Lola's sibling was in the house, and my nephews and nieces, Lolo started to rape me. However, I cried, so they asked me why I was crying. It was then that I told them about it. They helped me get my abuser jailed.”

This rescued slave narrative tends to be a mimetic copy of her slave narrative before the sexual abuses occurred. The same is also true with the other participants who employed this kind of narrative. Their narrative of the abuses was dialogical (Frank 2010) because it cohered with the narratives of their lives before the abuses. We can see that Joy’s slave narrative during the abuses formed a dialogue with her narrative of her experiences before the abuses. Both narratives cohered. Joy shared that before the abuses happened,

“I used to babysit my nephew and niece. When I get home, I would fetch water. And sometimes, I get home late after traveling on foot because we had no money to pay for a ride from school which was quite a distance, and I get whipped, and the child of my Lola (grand) would hit me on the head when I commit an offense."

The participants used the same type of slave narrative to emplot the abuses but in a progressive mode due to the rescue being made by others.

Jean, likewise, used the same rescued slave narrative. She experienced trauma after her employer abused her, and she seldom talked with her co-workers; she was in shock and absent-minded. It was her boyfriend and her mother who rescued her. She recounted her rescue moment:

“I was already at home one evening. My boyfriend noticed that I wasn’t my usual self and appeared bothered. Then I confided to him about the abuse. The following day my mother went to the police to report.”

Meanwhile, Bem had a similar narrative:

Interviewer: What prompted you, Bem, to speak up? Who was the first person you have spoken to?

Bem: My aunt.

Interviewer: Why did you speak up?

Bem: They confronted me, saying, “Bem, we heard stories that your brother has molested you.” I said, “Yes, Auntie, and I don’t know why.” And she said to me, “Just don’t tell him; we will just report it.”

It was only when her aunt confronted Bem that she disclosed. This was typical in the rescued slave narrative. These participants were powerless, martyr victims. They broke down, and people noticed their depressive symptoms and then asked them why, and that was when they eventually disclosed.

Rescued Slave narrative’s Effects on the Self, Relationships, and Actions

The participants who employed the rescued slave narrative saw themselves as powerless against the oppressive forces which perpetrated sexual abuses and other forms of torment. But, they were rescued after others noticed the pain they just kept inside them. This type of narrative has profound effects on the self, relationships, and actions of these participants.

Rescued Slave Identity

On the other hand, some participants in this study also assumed the rescued slave identity. With this identification, they felt relieved to have been freed from their oppressors. Some frequently heard words in these narratives include “makagawas” (to be free), “move on,” and “nahuwasan” (relieved). Another participant named Kat reported that,

“After arriving here (crisis center), I felt relaxed because nobody bothers me anymore, especially at night. I am thrilled to learn that I have many companions here who are also victims like me. I thought I was the only one who had experienced such an ordeal. I am happy because no matter what, there are people who could help.”

This kind of narrative was also captured in the stories of Joy. She recounted that she was happy after leaving the house of her abusive grandfather. She said:

“I am happy I have left the house of my Lolo and met some people here in the city. In here (crisis center), I feel like they are my family.”

However, this narrative only indicates that the abused just keep a physical distance away from their abusers. Like in the account of Joy, this physical or spatial dimension only allowed them to escape in space but not in memories. The stigma associated with their slave identity remained, and getting rescued would not wipe away the stains. This slave identity still dwells in them. After being rescued, Joy again employed the same type of narrative, this time in another form of oppression:

“Where I used to stay was quite okay, but I still felt a little sad because the sibling of my auntie was a bit nosy on me and my personal belongings and went around telling unpleasant and unreal things about me. Now I am okay that I am out of that place.”

Kim had a similar experience of oppression after being freed from sexual abuse. He could not escape the stigma of having a slave identity, and neither could he escape its enslaving memories. Like Kim, Jean recounted these memories:

“I am attempting to disregard what happened. I want to move on now. But I could not avoid remembering it, mostly since our courses now talk about court cases. So, I would have no reactions; I keep quiet, and I do not study the lessons. However, I try to overcome it as much as I could.”

Disaffiliation from the Abusers

Within the tragic resistance narrative, the participants developed an emotional attachment with the abusers; on the contrary, the participants were disaffiliated or disconnected from their abusers and connected with those who rescued them in the rescued slave narrative. The participants were happy to have escaped from the control of their abusers and tried as much as possible to keep their distance from them. All they wanted was for the abusers to be punished.

While Joy was delighted to leave her grandfather’s house, Bem also learned that her father had known the abuses done by his brother towards her when she was still 5 years old; however, instead of standing by her side, he blamed her and calling her slutty. This changed Bem’s perception of her father, so she decided not to stay with them anymore.

As for Jean’s abuser’s daughter-in-law, who befriended her on Facebook:

“I want this case to be resolved, especially that he has not been arrested and is currently free. On Facebook, his daughter-in-law sent a friend request to me. I wonder how she knew my Facebook profile and why she sent a friend request. I just disregard her.”

Therefore, the participants were disaffiliated from their abusers, and those they believed were their cohorts. They executed what the rescued slave narrative demands, and this is to separate and leave their abusers in space as traditional slave rescue dictates. As a result, they became more connected with their heroes who rescued them.

Emotional Resistance and Disclosure

The classic slave narrative demands that the slaves be submissive to their masters and be martyrs regardless of the oppression and abuses (Jacobs 2009). This narrative had a profound impact on some of the participants. They executed what this narrative demands and played martyrs to the repeated sexual abuses.

This action prevented them from initiating the disclosure process; however, this does not mean that they did not participate in the disclosure process. Although their rescuers initiated the disclosure by asking and confronting them upon seeing them in distress, the participants were truly part of the ritual. The participants’ emotional manifestations of anxiety, depression, and shock were part of the slave narrative. Apparently, they used these to let others know that there was something wrong with them. This cue invited the “heroes” to make sense of their tormenting situation and initiate the disclosure process. Such is what happened to Joy in her previous recount “…so they asked me why I was crying. It was then that I told them about it. They helped me get my abuser jailed.” Her aching emotions were a form of resistance and disclosure, albeit not in words.

Heroic Saga Narrative

The last of the narrative types is the heroic saga narrative. Here, the protagonist is characterized as undergoing a “continuous array of battles against the powers of darkness” (Gergen and Gergen 1988: 26). This character experiences a series of ups and downs; the theme is progressive but ends in success. This narrative is generally “an adventure tale with several stops where the protagonist encounters trials, oppositions, and challenges but overcomes such testing and emerges as victorious.” This narrative serves as a counter-story to the most dominant and common narratives - tragic resistance and rescued slave narratives. Specifically, only one participant in this study emplotted her experiences through this narrative. May had a similar and could be a much worse experience than some of the participants. She was molested repeatedly by multiple offenders. Unfortunately, along with her, her twin was also abused by her abusers. However, she employed the heroic saga narrative portraying herself as the hero who was in control of herself and the situations she was in. Much can be learned from her. As she recounted:

“I do not know. When my stepfather molested me, I was not in the right mind because my nephew was in the hospital with a 50-50 chance of surviving. My twin and my elder sister were the ones who were in the hospital while I was left at home. On that day, Mama was in the market; it was noontime. He called me to get inside the house because I was at the store. He was holding a knife and told me to sit in the cot and remove my clothes. I refused to remove my clothes despite his insistence until my mother arrived. He dropped the knife beside me and ran to the restroom.

Notice that despite the repeated demands of the abuser, she did not obey his order to undress herself until her mother arrived. This kind of narrative is resonant with the narrative type of the story of the second abuse she shared. This time her brother-in-law attempted to abuse her, but she did not bend to his demand. She was hit, so she screamed aloud, and her sister discovered about this attempted abuse. May recalled:

“He grabbed my leg and pulled me downstairs, but I managed to climb upstairs and hold tight to my twin. He called me to go to him, but I did not. I whispered to my twin. I said, “Jam, our brother. . .” Jam clutched me tighter. The two of us were bracing each other so that I could not be pulled down. Because I did not give in, he hit me, causing me to scream. The commotion roused my elder sister, Che. She asked me what happened. He went downstairs, and I said, “Our brother hit me.” As he resumed his drinking, my sister called him, resulting in another fracas.”

Still, there was another instance when her brother-in-law fondled her. She ran away afterward. With this, she acted with full agency and full control of herself and her situation. She was not a helpless, powerless girl submitting herself to a master, and she was not afraid of retaliation. She fought. She said:

“There was also a time when my older sister told me to stay home because she was going someplace. Our brother started touching me (during that time, I was already working). The following day, I did not return home. My twin and I left. We searched for a new job until we reached Pampanga and found a very kind employer. We stayed there for a long time and have not seen our sister and our Mama since then. “

Heroic Saga Narrative’s Effects on the Self, Relationships, and Actions

The heroic saga narrative had far-reaching effects on the identity, relationships, and actions of May. She viewed herself as a hero who did not wait for help from her family members. She fought her way to free herself from the bondage of her sexual abusers.

Heroic Identity and Heroic Actions

In the adventure tale that she had emplotted, May stood as the main protagonist. Although the heroic saga narrative is characterized by the hero as the abused, it also has a progressive theme similar to that of the rescued slave identity where the hero is the rescuer. In the case of May, she had the full agency and control of herself and her situation. She did not let her situation or other people dictate what to feel, think, and do.

In line with the heroic narrative, she felt much stronger about how she coped with the abuses than others who would typically break down. May said:

“Difficult. I do not know. The good thing was, for example, if this happened to other people, I think they would already break down. It was a good thing that although there were so many challenges that came to my life, I stood my ground and was able to surmount them all. Even in this recent ordeal, I fought and remained strong.”

She narrated that she had fought and survived and even acted in full control of her abuser at one point. She even objected that her brother-in-law’s term of imprisonment be lowered:

May: I wanted him incarcerated for six to eight years, but he pleaded for three years or below. I was against it, but I told the fiscal that if he did not agree, I would testify [in court].

Interviewer: Oh, did they move for amicable settlement?

May: Yes, but when [social worker] and I went to the Hall of Justice on September 11, it was Monday, they agreed to my offer of six to eight years.

In this part, the word “my offer” implies that May was in full control. She was the one offering – suggesting that the fate of her abuser was in her hands. She also had good future aspirations: “Everything is now clear because the case is already over. I have a plan to go back to my school before in Piapi. My elder brother asked me whether I would continue. I said, “Yes.”

In terms of her affiliations, she found connections and easy identifications with those people who had similar narratives with her. She could open up her problems and shared her experiences with people who, in a way, lifted her spirit. Moreover, the heroic narrative also seemed to wipe away all the stigma of the abuses. During the interview, she reported having no negative feelings because “I do not mind it anymore… it’s harmful to me. It is nothing to me anymore.”

May’s reaction could entirely be different from that of the dominant tragic resistance and rescued slave narratives. Unlike the rest where the stigma remains, her narrative tells that she has won over the torment.

Discussion

The purpose of this paper was to describe the narrative types and effects of the stories of sexual abuse experiences of Filipino children and adolescents in their childhood and adolescence. The study is essential in filling up gaps in the literature on child and adolescent sexual abuse. Also, it introduces an alternative narrative analysis – dialogical narrative analysis – in analyzing stories on sexual abuse. With this perspective, stories are seen as retrospective and prospective polyphonic and heteroglossic devices in representing actions and experiences. Narratives as cultural symbols tend to have influences on children and adolescents’ adjustment after sexual abuse experiences. The study provides an answer to Morrison et al.’s (2018) conflicting results of their review. In their review, some studies show that fear may or may not prompt children to disclose, and they attribute this to the type of abuse experienced. However, we argue that it is not primarily the type of event that occurred, but the type of narrative a particular child or adolescent takes to narrate her story that influences her reactions to the abuse, as shown by the idiosyncratic effects of the three narrative types in this study. As Rabih Alameddine (2009, p.450) notes: “Events matter little, only stories of those events affect us.”

We found three different ‘narrative types’ (Frank 1995) in the stories of 10 female Filipinos who experienced sexual abuse. These narrative types are tragic resistance narrative, rescued slave narrative, and heroic saga narrative. We coined these narrative types by loosely basing it on the narrative typology suggested by Smith (2016). These narratives have idiosyncratic consequences on the identities, social affiliations, and actions of the participants. This supports the contentions of socio-narratology that narratives do not just represent actions but also act prospectively in influencing what identities the participants would take, whom they would affiliate, and what actions to take (Frank 2010, 2012).

We can also see the influence of the Filipino culture on the narratives of the participants. This influence demonstrates the heteroglossic and polyphonic nature of narratives (Frank 2012). Filipinos are communitarian (Guevara 2005). With this, relationships are highly valued. Thus, the interests of the family and the community are considered superior to individual interests. This is probably the primary reason why most of the participants’ stories were told in the tragic resistance and rescued slave narrative. They were afraid that if they disclosed the abuses, it would ruin family relationships. Moreover, those who used rescued slave narratives tended to be highly dependent on family and friends’ help. The self and its interests were sidetracked as only one participant storied her life in a heroic and individualistic manner.

Although the study is informative, it is not without limitations. Contextual limitations are present in the study. Other contexts might provide different narrative types and consequences of such narratives because the culture is at play in narrative research. Thus, we join other scholars’ call in conducting more qualitative studies on children’s and adolescents’ narrative voices on their sexual abuse experiences. Also, the study is limited in the type of participants. The present study analyzed stories of those who had been admitted to a crisis center. Stories of victims who have no such admission might differ. Thus, future research should explore the narrative voices of victims not admitted to crisis centers.

The study is also limited in terms of focusing only on the structure and consequences of the narrative. It has not delved into what influences one to take such a narrative. Thus, future research could address this limitation by looking into the personal and contextual variabilities in the production of stories. It has also been widely acknowledged that interviewing is a co-production between the research participant and the interviewer (Gubrium and Holstein 2009; Holstein and Gubrium 1995). The interviewer exerts an influence on the stories produced. Thus, the interviewer (first author) might have a unique influence on the participants. Nevertheless, she built enough rapport to address this. Future research can still employ less intrusive ways of conducting narrative analysis, like visual analysis (Riessman 2008).

This study is just a step going forward in employing the narrative approach to sexual abuse studies. It is only a primary seed for exploring both the ‘whats’ and especially the ‘hows,’ which have been neglected in narrative research (Gubrium and Holstein 2009). Future research could explore the different dimensions of narrative analysis – thematic, structural, dialogical, and even visual (Riessman 2008). Moreover, we argue that future scholars should take guidance from Frank’s (2010, 2012) socio-narratology and dialogical narrative analysis to do this. Socio-narratology addresses the theoretical and methodological needs implied by Gibson and Morgan (2013). They argued that there is a need for sexual abuse research to analyze the linkages among contexts, abuse, and consequences of these abuses as illuminated by stories, which do not neglect contexts and idiosyncrasies of different experiences studies suffer.

Future studies could also build upon the current findings, especially on the three narrative types. There may be other narrative types available in other localities as culture and contexts provide variability in narratives. Moreover, these narratives are the resources people use to tell their stories (Frank 2010, 2012; Harrington 2008; Riessman 2008). Thus, sexual abuse stories may differ in other places. Other researchers could pursue this line of inquiry.

Moreover, it is suggested that more studies on child sexual abuse be done in the Philippines. A recent review found a lack of research on child maltreatment, especially on sexual abuse. Sexual abuse has been known to have far-reaching adverse consequences for the victims, and more research can be conducted about this (Roche 2017). Moreover, the narrative approach could give an avenue to hear these victims’ ‘voices,’ especially with the recent interest in cultural studies of children and adolescents’ sexual abuse experiences.

Authors contribution

Conceptualization: [Nora Maria Elena T. Osmeña, Dan Jerome S. Barrera], Methodology: [Nora Maria Elena T. Osmeña]; Formal analysis and investigation: [Nora Maria Elena T. Osmeña with the assistance of Dan Jerome S. Barrera]; Writing - original draft preparation: [Nora Maria Elena T. Osmeña]; Writing - review and editing: [Nora Maria Elena T. Osmeña, Dan Jerome S. Barrera]; Funding acquisition: [Nora Maria Elena T. Osmeña]; Resources: [Nora Maria Elena T. Osmeña].

Funding

Funding for this study was derived from the Commission on Higher Education [Philippines].

Compliance with Ethical Standards

All rules and regulations related to research with human participants were strictly followed. Ethical clearance was given by the Silliman University ethics committee.

Informed consent was obtained from the participants and authorized personnel.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.