Chris Kirby had known his wife for more than 20 years. They dated in high school, went their separate ways, reconnected later and got married.
She had always been supportive, and yet Kirby couldn’t bring himself to share the secret he’d kept for most of his life. It wasn’t until almost three years into their marriage that he finally told her that he had been sexually abused as a child by the teenage son of a family friend.
Jodi Stansfield did all she could to help her husband, including finding a support group. She gave him the phone number of a support group at The Gatehouse in Toronto, but Kirby couldn’t bring himself to make the call for almost a year.
Finally, the week before Christmas he picked up the phone, expecting they would be closed for the holidays and he could put it off a little longer. Instead, he was invited to join them in two weeks.
“It’s fear,” Kirby said of the hesitation of opening up. “That’s 100 different things. Fear of what people will think, fear of what it will mean going forward, fear of appearing weak.”
Once Kirby got over that fear, he found there were others with similar experiences. He no longer had to go into great detail about how and why he felt the way he did, because others in the group had those same feelings.
“I’m not exaggerating when I say it saved my life,” Kirby said. “If I continued going in that downward spiral, I was going to a place I wasn’t coming back from.”
Having seen the benefits of peer support, Kirby eventually did training to help facilitate sessions.
Then while driving home from The Gatehouse, he began thinking that there must be others who needed similar support in his hometown Georgetown.
That led Kirby to establishing The Ironwood Project. Now in its sixth year, it has helped 70 people who were sexually abused as children. But Kirby finds something curious about the demographics of Ironwood’s clients. Of the 70 who have attended sessions, only five have been men.
“If you look at the statistics, we know that’s very low,” he said.
Ironwood offers support groups for women only and for supporters (family, friends, spouses of someone who has been abused). Kirby would also like to start one for men only.
“Men don’t like to talk. Men are not supposed to be vulnerable, they’re not supposed to show weakness,” Kirby said. “This is a place to show them they’re not alone.”
Kirby said anyone coming to a session can share as much, or as little, as they wish.
“Some people hit the ground running, others, the first session all we hear is their first name,” he said. “We don’t require people to talk. They can work at their own pace.”
Kirby said the groups have very strong privacy policies, everybody signs confidentiality waivers, and meeting locations are known only to those in the group.
“We don’t have all the answers, we don’t have solutions,” Kirby said, “but it is a place where people understand and can help you work through your feelings.”
To contact The Ironwood Project, email [email protected] or for more information visit its website.
