Time to End Incest

A Global Call to Truth, Healing, and Courage Especially During the Holidays

The holidays are often portrayed as a season of joy   families gathered around tables, laughter filling warm rooms, traditions passed lovingly from generation to generation.
But for millions of people around the world, this season is not joyful.
It is painful.
It is heavy.
It is triggering.

Because for survivors of incest and childhood sexual abuse, the holidays often mean returning to the very spaces, memories, and people connected to their harm.

This is the reality we do not talk about  but must.

The Hidden Pain Beneath Holiday Lights

While the world decorates trees and wraps gifts, survivors often wrap themselves in courage just to get through the day.

Family gatherings can be minefields:

• the relative who hurt them sitting at the same table,
• the adults who never protected them exchanging cheerful stories,
• the pressure to “keep the peace,”
• the forced hugs,
• the silent expectation to pretend nothing ever happened.

The holidays intensify what is already unbearable:
the collision of trauma with tradition.

And this pain is not rare. It is not confined to isolated families.
It is a global crisis.

The Global Reality of Incest and Child Sexual Abuse

Incest is not cultural.
It is not regional.
It is not a “family issue.”

It is a global epidemic.

• 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 13 boys worldwide experience sexual abuse before age 18.
• More than 90% of the time, the child knows the perpetrator.
• In many regions, 30–50% of childhood sexual abuse is committed by family members or relatives, making incest one of the most underreported crimes globally.
• Survivors often stay silent for 15–25 years on average, and many never tell at all.

These numbers become even more heartbreaking during the holiday season, when children are often left in the care of extended family — unsupervised, unprotected, and unheard.

Cultural and Generational Barriers: The Chains That Must Break

Across cultures, the holidays are when family loyalty is emphasized — often at the expense of truth, safety, and justice.

This is where the most dangerous barriers show up:

Culture Says:

“Family is sacred.”
Survivors Feel: “Even if someone in the family hurt me.”

Culture Says:

“Forgive and forget.”
Survivors Feel: “My pain is inconvenient.”

Generations Say:

“We don’t talk about these things.”
Children Learn: “My suffering does not matter.”

Families Say:

“Don’t ruin the holidays.”
Survivors Carry: “I must pretend everything is fine.”

These cultural and generational walls have protected perpetrators far more than they’ve ever protected children.

And the holidays, meant to bring light, often deepen the shadows survivors have lived in for too long.

The Emotional Weight: Holidays Through a Survivor’s Eyes

For many survivors, this time of year brings:

• Anxiety weeks before family gatherings.
• Flashbacks triggered by smells, songs, or traditions.
• Sadness watching other families celebrate what they never had.
• Loneliness inside crowded rooms.
• Guilt for not wanting to participate.
• Anger at the silence that everyone still maintains.
• Grief for childhood they never got to experience.

Survivors often feel they must perform happiness, even as their bodies remember trauma they never chose.

The holidays highlight the deepest wounds:
the betrayal, the silence, the complicity, the generational patterns of looking away.

 

A Global Call: It Is Time to End Incest — Everywhere, In Every Culture

Ending incest is not simply about stopping abuse.
It is about dismantling the structures that allow it to flourish:

• silence,
• shame,
• denial,
• loyalty to image over children,
• cultures that punish truth-tellers,
• families that would rather protect tradition than protect a child.

We cannot end what we refuse to name.
We cannot heal what we pretend is not broken.
We cannot protect children while protecting perpetrators.

And we cannot keep teaching survivors to “be strong” while teaching families to stay silent.

 

This Holiday Season: Let Us Reflect on This Pain

As the world enters its season of celebration, I invite all of us — families, communities, leaders, advocates  to pause.

Let us take time this holiday season to reflect on the pain that so many survivors carry quietly behind their smiles.

Let us honor:

• the child who sits at a Christmas table afraid to speak,
• the adult survivor who avoids family gatherings to protect their heart,
• the ones who grieve the childhood joy they never tasted,
• the millions who will spend the holidays reliving trauma they never asked for.

Let us reflect with courage, not fear.
With honesty, not denial.
With compassion, not excuses.

The holidays will never be truly joyful — not for any of us — until every child is safe.

 

A Promise for a New Future

This season, let us give the gift that matters most:

the promise that incest ends with us.

Let this be the last generation taught to stay silent.
Let this be the last generation whose trauma is dismissed for the sake of appearance.
Let this be the last generation where holiday gatherings mean fear instead of joy.

Truth is the beginning.
Healing is the path.
Courage is the legacy.

And together, we can ensure that no child ever again has to sit in holiday darkness, carrying a pain the world refuses to see.