Social Impact Heroes: Why & How Author Risa Shaw Is Helping To Change Our World
Be creative, speak up and speak out — make conversation and make art.
I tell people I’m a survivor and talk about sibling sexual abuse with ease and frequency. I connect with other survivors and family members. I go to bookstores and say I want to do an event and when they say “no” I ask for clarification “Is it because of the topic?” How will we keep children safe if we don’t offer this to people and talk about it? I talk to anyone who wants to about being a survivor and what that means to me. Speaking up opens worlds for me and others.
As part of my series about “individuals and organizations making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Risa Shaw.
Risa Shaw, the author and editor of Not Child’s Play: An Anthology on Brother-Sister Incest, is a truth teller. Her goal is to heal the harm to girls* and families caused by sibling sexual abuse and prevent further harm by brothers* and families. As a survivor of sibling incest, Risa knows first-hand the benefits of speaking up, telling her story, confronting the trauma that sibling incest causes, and showing that bravery is contagious.
*Note on language and gender: Most of the sibling sexual abuse that happens is an older brother sexually assaulting a younger sister. Because most of the perpetrators/ones who harm are male and most of the victims/survivors/ones who were harmed are female, I use gendered language to reflect this. It is also true that boys are the victims of men and other boys, as well as women, and girls are the victims of women and other girls. This book and my writing centers on the experience of women and girls as the victims and survivors that they are and makes explicit that patriarchy and misogyny are central to the occurrence of this type of abuse. There are also many boys who have been sexually abused, largely in religious, educational, and sport institutions, as well as in families. Naming the fact that it is overwhelmingly sisters who are abused by brothers is essential to fully understand the consequences of this type of abuse and in no way minimizes or dismisses the fact that boys are also abused and that girls are also abused by their sisters.
Website: www.notchildsplaybook.com
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
As a kid I thought I was unworthy and unlovable, and that there was something very wrong with me. What other possibilities could this child fathom? My brother was sexually abusing me so “I must have done something” to bring it on. There was no one for me to tell, and even if I had tried, no one would have believed me. I was a child.
I had to save myself and figure out a way to free myself. I started my journey as a traumatized young person. And I learned. I watched activists, became an activist, and saw how important it is for victims/survivors to be seen and heard. This motivated me to support, be an ally, and speak out with and on behalf of other marginalized people. It has been a defining characteristic of how I have chosen to live my life. My first professional job was as an ASL/English interpreter. (Interpreting between those whose language and culture are opaque to the hearing world and those whose language and culture are dominant gave me the opportunity to see first-hand what is like to be marginalized as people whose “voices” were deemed unworthy. This also gave me the opportunity to see how fundamental and liberating it is when these voices are made heard.) I became a professor of interpreting and sociolinguistics. I did research on disclosure stories of deaf and non-deaf sibling incest survivors. As I became more involved in activism, I realized the original edition of Not Child’s Play: An Anthology on Brother-Sister Incest needed to be updated for the 21st century and that the book could be a vehicle for prevention and greater healing. At my core is truth telling, breaking silence that keeps hidden harmful and hideous secrets. I have forever been able to speak out for others, support them, get people to stop harming them. Now, I can add myself to the list of people I’m there for.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
We made Incest Survivor Action Figures! Who knew we needed them? One day I was joking with a survivor friend that the world needed Incest Survivor Action Figures and the next day she dropped off a box of found objects, clay, and “well-used” Barbie and Ken dolls. So, we created them. And that act of creation was powerful. We were talking, working in silence, laughing, sharing our stories of having been abused and of telling our families, sharing the reality of the risks girls face within their own families. We may not have known it at the time, but we were healing some of the shame and helplessness in our bodies and beings. All the while we were creating strong, fierce bodies of clay. Cutting off the high-heeled feet of Barbie dolls so we could mold sturdy boots to enable them to stand strong and run fast. Wrapping a doll’s face in plaster-of-paris while putting a mirror in one of her hands and a long spear in the other for her to stab her skeletons (also a part of the Action Figure). People love them. And many others have since made their own.
“The Girls” as we fondly call them, are both disturbing to look at and serve as badass protective beings, as symbols of power for us when we had no protection and for children now in threatening and harmful circumstances. It is disturbing to see the harm of being victimized, both by the brother who sexually abuses his sister, and by the family’s refusal to acknowledge the cruelty, shame, and harm of the abuse that had been compounded by the family’s inability or unwillingness to protect its daughters. We decided to take into our own hands protecting and uplifting ourselves and others because we did not have anyone who did that for us.
The Incest Survivor Action Figures proclaim clearly and boldly that their message is more important than anyone’s comfort or discomfort when children are being harmed. Making these Action Figures, proudly displaying and talking about them, and encouraging others to use their own creativity to show our own power underscores the value of our own safety and healing.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I don’t have a funny story that fits this question, but I’ve learned lots of lessons and will tell you some of those.
I thought I was alone, that I was the only one whose brother was sexually abusing her, and later the only one who lived with abuse. But no! I learned how profoundly I am not alone; we are not alone. I learned that once you start telling your story and asking for the stories of others, survivors come out of the woodwork. They want to tell their stories, they want to be heard, they want to know they are not the only one, and they want others to know they are there. Sibling sexual abuse is ubiquitous. I learned this and realized that the sense of isolation is an illusion.
I learned that when you want so badly to make sense of horrors that happened to you when you were a child, and when you don’t give up, you figure out how to make something out of what happened to you. More than 25 years ago over 100 women sent me their stories — prose, poetry, visual art — to publish about a topic no one wanted to hear about. Most of the 35 women in Not Child’s Play used their real names; they refused to be anonymous. Remember, at that time (1990s) there was no email, no social media. We found one another by word of mouth, friends of friends, flyers posted in bookstores and coffee shops. I am forever grateful to each person who sent and trusted me with their stories.
I learned that there can be a tipping point, and that is joyous even when it doesn’t show up on my schedule. What happened with the #MeToo movement, the Kavanaugh hearings, and particularly the outing of Harvey Weinstein as a sexual predator, was that women started speaking up at dinner tables, at meetings, in the media describing the sexual abuse they had been forced to endure. This was another reminder for me that it wasn’t just me or my family, that I had not done something wrong. This was also an opening, an invitation to me to get Not Child’s Play back into people’s hands again. Maybe, just maybe our culture was now ready to talk about sexual violence in ways we had refused to previously.
I learned recently that there are several (a handful, and that’s a great start) other organizations and websites that are specifically focus on sibling sexual abuse! There are podcasts and conferences that focus on sibling sexual abuse. There are parents and perpetrators who are speaking out along with survivors! There are little pockets of girls and women everywhere saying, “oh is it our turn now?” Yes, yes, it is your/our turn now! I’ve learned again and again how my story can and has been heard and is joined with many others’ stories. So, let’s do this!
Can you describe how you or your organization is making a significant social impact?
Our biggest impact is breaking the silence about this specific type of harm. This is important because sibling sexual abuse tends to be ignored, dismissed, and hidden. We are breaking that silence with the second edition (October 2023) of Not Child’s Play: An Anthology on Brother-Sister Incest, the Not Child’s Play website (notchildsplaybook.com), interviews, collaborations, and centering the voices of the survivors.
We are using the biggest megaphone we can to alert families that sibling sexual abuse has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen if we don’t pay attention and act now to stop. I’m grateful to Authority Magazine for being a partner in revealing and exposing this long-kept secret, furthering this conversation, protecting children from harm, and helping survivors and families heal.
So far, I’ve done interviews on general radio shows, health programs, motherhood platforms, and in educational settings. For example, Not Child’s Play has been displayed and discussed at book fairs. At Kindness Day (in Takoma Park, MD, in honor of Tommy Raskin and Tommy’s Pantry), kids of all ages were invited to play a game where they could spin a wheel and answer a question (more than one, or none) about consent, boundaries, bravery, trust, and connection. Kids and adults sent their friends to my table, and many returned more than once for longer conversations. More interviews and events are in the works, including a podcast specific to sibling sexual abuse, an international webinar, and collaboration with The Moore Center for The Prevention of Childhood Sexual Abuse.
Can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
I have many stories about specific individuals. I’ll share three.
Survivors have told me they are alive today because of reading Not Child’s Play. They didn’t die as a result of isolating themselves as kids so no one would have to know or see how “dirty” they were. They didn’t bleed out from cutting themselves to try to drown their physical pain over the emotional pain. They didn’t take handfuls of their parent’s pills or find their own pills to escape the pain. Saving lives that have already been devastated is a success story. Preventing such damage in the first place will be successes that we will be happy to never know about.
After publication of the first edition of Not Child’s Play (December 2000) I was contacted by two sisters who were in their 70s. They had read the book and been able, for the first time in their lives, to talk to each other about the abuse their brothers had subjected them to. They were born in the 1920s. They had never talked, even to one another, about the abuse until after one of them found my book. They contacted me and wrote and sent their stories to me. I got to correspond with both sisters. I got to meet and stay in touch with one of them until she passed when she was in her 90s. How brave were they?! Look at how much have they taught us about finding courage and speaking out. They show us 1) This type of abuse did and will continue to happen if we don’t do something to bring it to light, 2) Without a safe place to tell one’s story, the harm lasts forever, 3) Even 70+ years after the fact, healing can still occur. They said that reading my book, talking to each other, and meeting me helped their healing! This is the epitome of “Your Silence Will Not Protect You” and how it is NEVER too late. Thank you, Marian and Dorothy, you are heroes!
My third story is about generations. Empowering the next generation to stop the cycle of abuse is always an ultimate goal. Years after telling her about the abuse I experienced, my mom revealed to me that she was victimized (by a boy cousin) when she was a child. Learning this affected how I thought about what happened to me, and how I understood her inability to intervene and stop the abuse. I realized that she couldn’t protect me because she had never dealt with and healed from her own trauma. It didn’t change what happened to me or my need for her protection, but it helped me have some compassion for how difficult it was for her as well. My mom and I learned and understood the practicalities of unhealed generational trauma. It wasn’t until she was in her 70s that she told me of her cousin’s abuse of her. She had never talked about it prior to this. The publication of the first edition of Not Child’s Play allowed my nieces and nephews to see the truth of their family, and hopefully prevent their children from suffering such abuse. This next generation, my nephews and nieces, has shown me how knowing truths, no matter how hard they are, and having the willingness to accept, talk about, and deal with them is necessary. Their courage and fortitude are examples for all of us.
All three of these stories show how powerful and full of possibilities revelations can be, how it is never too late to begin to heal, how important educating the next generation is to break the cycle of abuse, and how resiliency shows up again and again.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
- Dismantle the systems of oppression that provide the foundation for abuse. The source of all sexual abuse is domination and control, exercising power over others. Systems of oppression, including male supremacy, white supremacy, able-bodied supremacy, poverty, etc. have to be eradicated to address the root of abuse and domination. The activist and resistance movements working for equity for all are attempts to remedy this. I include the exposure and eradication of sibling sexual abuse as a movement on par with other movements for justice and equity.
- Teach and model boundaries and consent in all relationships, including with partners, relatives, friends, and especially children. Without explicitly instilling these values and behaviors, parents are setting young people up both to victimize and to be victimized. That means letting even little kids decide what happens with their bodies, including whether or not they hug a relative or sit on someone’s lap. I think parents would be horrified to realize that by making seemingly “innocent suggestions” that compel their children into unwanted contact, they create this type of environment and fail to protect their children by perpetuating a power dynamic that leaves children vulnerable to the damage perpetrated by the culture of domination inherent in our history of patriarchy and misogyny.
- Believe survivors and support their safety and their work of healing. Understand that sibling incest creates lifelong wounds and that survivors will experience its consequences throughout their lives. Support survivors when they want to hold their abusers accountable for the damage they caused. Work to create laws that remove the limitations of legal remedies and allow survivors to report and file charges if they choose to. Do not prioritize the needs of the abuser over those of the survivor or expect her to be silent about her experience to maintain the appearance of harmony in the family. Remember that the pain and disruption caused by the abuse and its aftermath were caused by the abuser’s behavior, not by the survivor’s response.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
I believe effective leadership comes from people who collaborate and who are open to possibilities that may take forms you never would think of yourself. Engage with other people. Bring everyone to the table. Center those who are most impacted. Brainstorm. Listen to one another. Figure out goals together. Encourage people to participate in any way they are able. If you are one who always speaks up first, write or draw your ideas and wait. If you are one who doesn’t have the words, use movement or drawing to express yourself. Create teams to focus on specific things. Talk to one another again and again. Adjust and modify and change your mind and change your ways.
There are so many ways of being a leader. And they show up in different ways for different people at different times. Leadership with Not Child’s Play takes many forms, including the following:
- Working behind the scenes writing, editing, offering suggestions
- Working, playing, and living with children, making sure that the concepts and actions of consent, boundaries, trust, and accountability are understood and carried out on a daily basis
- Being accountable with one another so that when harm is done, it is acknowledged and repair happens in ways the one who was harmed is comfortable with
- Speaking out when one sees a wrong in private or in public
- Speaking out in public forums at events, with the media, by giving presentations
- Making art
- Setting up art spaces to make art with others
- Sharing ideas, knowledge, and questions with others.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
1 . Trust yourself, do what you want to do, and go big.
I knew I needed this book, and others needed this book when I started it in the late 1980’s. It took me 13 years to put the first edition together, but I did it. I didn’t give up. I didn’t accept people’s cynical challenges that no one would send me contributions or people wouldn’t buy the book. I accepted help looking for contributions, editing, choosing paper and ink, doing graphic design, paying for creating the book, and getting the book into people’s hands. I gave myself permission to get the second edition of the book together and out in the world, and to work hard for prevention and healing. I figured out what is in my wheelhouse and what is not, what I’m interested in doing and what I am not. I’ve brought on other people to do what they are good at doing, and I get to do what I’m good at and interested in.
I want sibling sexual abuse to be talked about, to be prevented, to be something survivors and families see that they can heal from. That is big and bold. And, I am making this happen! I have a beautiful powerful website. I make art that makes me and others happy. I speak out and speak with others all the time (yes, in interviews and with other survivors and family members, but also at food distribution, on dog walks, at dinner tables, on the metro when someone asks me what my shirt means…). Not Child’s Play (the book) and the website and me… we all have a presence that is big and bold and growing!
2 . Shame really is the biggest yuck in all of this and can shut us down hard. And you really can look shame straight on and lessen it and its hold on you.
When I started therapy nearly 4 decades (!) ago my therapist asked me to imagine an outline of myself and tell her what was in it. “Nothing” I told her, “Nothing is in it.” This was shame talking. Over the years, with a lot of hard work, I have filled in that outline by understanding that I was not complicit in the abuse, that there is nothing inherently bad or wrong about me that caused it or caused my family to ignore my need for protection and my need for help to heal. I filled it in with my voice, my tenderness, my hurts, my power, my legitimacy, and value. That outline burst at the seams long ago.
I began by removing the chokehold on my voice and spoke up about having been abused by my brother. Talking to other survivors, finding community, meeting people who do not question the effects of the abuse, trusting people who have shown me they will not abandon me, learning to find joy and beauty, trusting myself and being brave; all have all helped minimize the shame that once loomed so large. Now, when it rears its head, I can recognize it as shame. I talk to it and let it know it is part of a false narrative and that it was never mine in the first place. Then I am especially gentle with my hurt self, hurt by the shame and harm from others, and look at why the shame has come up for me (again). Each time I have more space without feeling shame, and I have tools to acknowledge it and send it on its way. It is not easy, and it will never be all gone. But I have ways of dealing with it and I know in my bones the shame is not because of “badness” inherent to me. It is because of what others did or did not do, and the consequences of other people’s failures landing on me.
3 . Bravery is contagious, and you are not alone. Doing hard things, especially when they are essential to being true to yourself, can be tricky. The more you practice doing hard things, the easier it becomes to do them. Seeing others be brave made it easier for me to be brave and that also made me feel not alone.
A while back an 8-year-old friend told her 14-year brother that she couldn’t do something. He turned to her and said, “well of course you can’t do it yet; you are unpracticed. Let’s practice so that you can decide if it is something you want to do or not.” I keep that advice in my pocket and use it all the time. It is brave to do something we have not done before.
Telling my family in 1984 about the abuse was brave. I was scared out of my mind to tell them and while I was telling each of them.
Compiling and publishing a book on sibling sexual abuse was brave.
When we were kids and my younger sister told me that our brother wouldn’t leave her alone, I told her to tell him if he touched her again I would tell everyone in the family. It was brave of her to talk to me and brave of me to tell her what I told her.
I used my name as the author of Not Child’s Play and use my name in all my public appearances. That is brave.
The first time I was to see my brother after several years of no contact would be when 3 of us siblings all flew into the same airport on our way to our mom’s house. My young nephew would be present, so I contacted my brother ahead of time to let him know what my boundaries were — that he was not to touch or hug me. That was brave.
It took years for me to tell my dad that his offer to “mediate between ‘’ me and my brother to help “resolve what had happened between” us meant that he did not understand the abuse. His offer dismissed and justified the abuse while simultaneously putting responsibility on me for what his son had done to me. Telling him that was brave.
I relate these stories because bravery is contagious. The more we share our stories, the more possibilities will grow about what each of us can do and how we can be brave.
4 . Time and making things happen are not linear and you do not always know where you are headed.
I might not have believed this if someone had told me because order and control were coping and protective mechanisms for me. But once I got some experience with iterative processes, even literally going around in circles until some lightbulb popped on, I could start to relax and be okay with not knowing how things would pan out. This was also about trusting myself to do what I wanted to do and what worked for me. As you can imagine, this was true putting together my book, website, presentations, among other activities associated with Not Child’s Play. And, as a teacher, I got to see over and over again how I was planting seeds without having any idea how and where they would sprout.
5 . Be creative, speak up and speak out — make conversation and make art.
I tell people I’m a survivor and talk about sibling sexual abuse with ease and frequency. I connect with other survivors and family members. I go to bookstores and say I want to do an event and when they say “no” I ask for clarification “Is it because of the topic?” How will we keep children safe if we don’t offer this to people and talk about it? I talk to anyone who wants to about being a survivor and what that means to me. Speaking up opens worlds for me and others.
Making art has given me access to an internal world and given me joy I didn’t realize were possible. Creating the Incest Survivor Action Figures in the 1980s (see above) set me on a path where I incorporate them in my work today. I have made their messages, my messages, into block prints that are in art pieces, on clothing, and stickers to tell our stories as brave, fierce, truth-tellers.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I’m working on creating that movement today. I, in collaboration with many others, am working to build an activist initiative that supports survivors of sibling sexual abuse. We are raising this damaging behavior up into the light, to expose it, stop it and help survivors heal from it.
We are creating ways for people to talk about sibling incest as a fact. We are expecting people to talk about the harm they have done. We are making space for survivors to talk about what was done to them and what they need. This is what we are engaged in now. We invite you to join us.
What do we want? We want patriarchy, misogyny, racism, and all forms of oppression to end. We want girls and women to be valued. We want all who have been victimized, including boys and non-binary people, to be valued and believed and supported. We want perpetrators to take responsibility for the harm they caused and speak out about what they did with the goal of inspiring others to take accountability for their behavior and to prevent future abuse. We want parents and caregivers to take responsibility for their role in the abuse. Even if they didn’t know what was happening, we want them to examine the home environment they created, the family norms around power, bodily autonomy, and consent.
We want a broader conversation that includes everyone, including survivors and abusers, siblings, parents, families, and bystanders, to break the silence about sibling incest and to create a culture of respect and consent so that this and all types of sexual abuse are eliminated.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Your silence will not protect you” by Audre Lorde
I have this quote in the form of stickers and on t-shirts and as art that I’ve made. Silence perpetuates secrecy and shame. In silence and secrecy shame grows. I have learned that we can heal the shame and live with the scars and reminders that it leaves, and we can live lives full of joy and beauty. This is a piece of art I made in a hand stitching class. In the style of Kawandi, I centered a piece of a favorite threadbare t-shirt with Audre Lorde’s quote with color and beauty surrounding and holding it. When I look at the back of the piece I see stitches and knots that remind me of my scars, healing, and resiliency that grow out of speaking up and speaking out.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
I would love to meet with other survivors of sibling sexual abuse, especially someone who has a wide platform and who would use their platform to work with me get attention to this issue. Who is that? I don’t know. I can list well-known women who have taught us a lot about sexual abuse and sexual harassment (Dr. Anita Hill, Tarana Burke, Shonda Rhimes, Natalie Portman, Jessica Capshaw, Kate Capshaw, Ava DuVernay, Michelle Williams, Natalie Portman, Salma Hayek, Ashley Judd, Reese Witherspoon, Eva Longoria, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Staceyann Chin, to name a few). I am forever grateful to them and so many more. And, I want to sit with other women whose brothers sexually abused them who want to work on prevention and healing from this particular type of family horror. I want to look them in the eye, sit with them, laugh, and cry with them, and then organize the work we have to do for ourselves, other survivors, families, and the children who we want to protect from knowing in our bones what we know.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Go to our website and share it widely (www.notchildsplaybook.com). Buy the book (on the website), read it, talk about what is in it, buy more copies for people you know. Make sure people who have not experienced sexual assault read this book. Get the book and conversation into schools, doctors’ offices, parent groups, mental health professional associations, policy and law writing organizations, activist organizations… The website also has stickers and resources, as well as a list of events and media where you can find Not Child’s Play in the community.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/risashawnotchildsplay/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notchildsplayanthology/
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
Social Impact Heroes: Why & How Risa Shaw Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.