THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 25, 1996 TAG: 9610240144
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 93 lines
Insistent little fists of memory pound on the walls of the lockup room inside Lara's head, clamoring to get out, and again, suddenly and inexplicably, she can't breathe.
She struggles for air and the coughing begins as another scene from her twisted childhood begins to play itself out in her mind.
The setting is invariably the same - a living room, a lounge chair. The only variants are the face of her abuser and the sex acts she is forced to perform.
Sometimes, it's her older brother who finds her hiding behind the big upholstered chair, then rapes her. Other times, it's her father who's sitting in the chair and orders her onto his lap to fondle her.
Lara - not her real name - is in the throes of another panic attack. The 22-year-old mother of one began experiencing the attacks last winter. She consulted Howard Weinberg, a nationally recognized expert on asthma and its treatment.
Lara's symptoms didn't fit the typical asthma pattern - they came on too suddenly and went away too quickly, for one thing - so Weinberg dug deeper and determined that his new patient was experiencing panic attacks. Then he asked the question he almost knew the answer to. Was Lara sexually abused as a child?
Weinberg has so often discovered that patients who suffer from panic disorder were victims of sexual abuse as children that he has come to suspect abuse in all cases.
Panic attacks may manifest themselves in any of a number of ways, including shortness of breath, dizziness, palpitations, trembling, sweating, choking, nausea, numbness or tingling sensations, hot flashes or chills, chest pain and a fear of dying or losing control of oneself.
Weinberg, who works out of Sentara's London Bridge office, often prescribes anti-depressant drugs for patients with panic attacks. Then he has them meet with Julia Milner-West, a Sentara social worker, for referral to a therapist. Medication and therapy can help, says Weinberg.
In therapy, a victim brings memories into his or her conscious mind and, hopefully, gains insight into the causes of the mental scars, he says.
The numbers of people who were molested as children are ``staggering,'' says Milner-West, citing statistics that indicate that one in every three women and one in every four to seven men is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
Those victims who are doomed to suffer most are those who were victimized at a very young age and whose lives were threatened, says Milner-West. ``They will use repression, though all (abuse victims) will suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome.''
Lara's recent panic attack came on for no apparent reason. Minutes later, when it was over, she had relived yet another of the traumatic scenes from a childhood littered with incidents of sexual abuse and incest. Though the things that were done to her from about age 9 on already were indelibly etched on her conscious mind, earlier experiences had been repressed and have now begun to surface one by one.
``I'm starting to get a headache,'' she said, describing the panic attack. ``It's the wall the memories are beating on trying to get out.''
By the time Lara was 13, she was regularly using crack cocaine. The drug, she says, eased the pain of what she knew her father would do to her when she got home.
``I'd go out and get high,'' she says. ``I figured if I was high it wasn't me he was doing it to - it was the druggy part of me.''
By then, too, she had run away from home so many times that she was on probation, and at age 14, Lara began having sex with boys she dated, something she did because, ``I thought that's how I had to be loved.''
Lara quit school during her freshman year, and over the next six years had six spontaneous miscarriages before giving birth to her now year-old son. She has had one abortion since.
She says that for as long as she can remember, she wanted children.
``They'll always love me for me regardless, no matter what was in the past,'' she says, rocking her child to sleep.
Lara lives with two other single mothers and plans to work on getting her General Equivalency Diploma. Beyond that, she's not sure what her goals are.
``Since I've been able to talk about it, it's getting better, but I know I have a lot more to face,'' Lara says.
Getting the repressed memories out can be ``empowering,'' says Milner-West.
Though ``we're hearing more about'' childhood abuse today, Milner-West does not think that means it's occurring with more frequency.
Weinberg agrees. ``I'm sure it's gone on forever.''
But discussion of what has long been a taboo subject is beneficial to patients and may help raise public consciousness, says Milner-West.
``What are we doing to our children?'' she asks.
``If we could identify all (victims of childhood sexual abuse), we wouldn't have enough therapists to deal with them,'' says Weinberg. ``We've got to protect children, break the cycle.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by STEVE EARLEY
Julia Milner-West, a social worker, works with sexual abuse victims.
Howard Weinberg, an expert on asthma, often discovered that patients
who suffer from panic disorder were victims of sexual abuse. by CNB