Where You Have Gone To

Brian Wallace, 1959 – 2017

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Listen to the song “Where You Have Gone To”

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Download the song “Where You Have Gone To” as an MP3 file for free (Note: the MP3 is in a zip file because otherwise, the MP3 is opened up in the browser and is played rather than downloaded. So just unzip the file after downloading and you will have the MP3.)

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I’ve also made a Youtube video dedicated to Brian.

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ABOUT THIS SITE, AND ABOUT MY BROTHER BRIAN

This site (and song) is for my brother Brian, and for everyone else who has been the victim of sexual abuse.

Brian was a sunny little child. Then, still a young boy, Brian was sexually abused by a male schoolteacher. Afterward, Brian talked to my parents about just a small part of what had happened to him, and my parents went to the school principal. As was the nature of the times, the result was that the schoolteacher quietly disappeared and the whole thing was hushed up.

But the school kids found out. Brian was taunted mercilessly at school, and by one child in particular. Even so, Brian went on to become a talented athlete with a magnetic personality and a smile for everybody when he was in high school.

As an adult, Brian became a skilled sailor who delivered yachts to people up and down the East Coast.

However, Brian could never shake the effects of what had happened to him as a child. He had a sweet and giving personality; he would do anything for you. But he was tormented by his PTSD (post-traumatic stress syndrome). PTSD is a common aftereffect of sexual abuse.

PTSD is the result of trauma that is so horrendous and incomprehensible that it changes the way the mind works. In PTSD, a traumatic event, or series of events, resets the mind’s fear response so that it never turns off. PTSD sufferers often turn to alcohol or drugs for relief. Also, their loss of trust in life itself can produce unaccountable bouts of anger.

We didn’t find out the true extent of Brian’s experiences until decades later, when he told us more. He had been repeatedly raped by the schoolteacher.

Slowly, over a period of years, Brian went downhill. He lost the ability to hold a job. His drinking became worse, and he became angrier when he was drunk. When he was sober, he was his old, sweet self, but I saw sadness and bafflement behind it. One night when he was quite drunk, he attempted suicide by placing a flare gun in his mouth and firing it, but he survived the incident and the subsequent surgery.

From then on he lost interest in taking care of himself. He drank whenever he could get his hands on alcohol, ate poorly, and ended up in the emergency room close to cardiac arrest a number of times. A year after his suicide attempt, he died.

I want you to have peace, my brother. The devil, he can’t get you now.

–your brother John

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NOTES

Two things helped clue me in on what Brian was going through, although unfortunately at a late stage in his life:

1) Talks with Brian in which he would briefly open up about the extent of what happened to him, but then not want to talk about it further.

2) The book “The Body Keeps the Score” (2014), by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., who has 30 years of experience in developing treatments for PTSD. While this book is about all types of PTSD, the author discusses in detail the physical and mental effects often suffered by adults afflicted by PTSD as a result of childhood trauma (including sexual abuse). For example, the still-maturing brain can be physically affected by childhood trauma in certain ways; these changes include “rewiring” of the brain, as well as resizing of some brain regions (some becoming larger, some smaller). The effects of these changes pervade the PTSD sufferer’s life.

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SOME RELEVANT LINKS

From the U.S. department of Veteran Affairs site:

1. (For the public)
https://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/types/violence/child-sexual-abuse.asp

2. (For professionals)
https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/trauma/other/child_sexual_abuse.asp

From the National Institute of Mental Health site:
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml

From RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network):
https://www.rainn.org/articles/child-sexual-abuse

And there’s always Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse

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