HELPLESSNESS: The Mental Health Trauma Brothers Experience After We Learn Our Sisters Have Been Sexually Abused By Our Parents
$9.99 Kindle Edition
As the lone voice speaking on the trauma brothers experience after learning their sisters have been sexually abused, Keeper is a highly sought-after speaker and advocate for brothers in the child sexual abuse/survivors space.
“Brother’s trauma can no longer be treated as a taboo or an inconvenient truth. We cannot be shunted to the side as if our trauma does not matter. Our voices must be part of the conversation because, without our voices, our families never fully heal. Our mental and emotional pain, guilt, and shame must be treated. Otherwise, we never heal. We will forever carry our trauma in silence.”
– Keeper Catran-Whitney
Author, speaker, and activist Keeper lived in fear of talking to his four sisters for forty-five years. That fear impacts every facet of his life as a brother, husband, and father. It is a fear that we brothers carry in silence.
In 1977, after learning their stepfather had sexually abused his four sisters, with their mother’s knowledge, his oldest sister told him and his three brothers, “You can’t talk about it. It didn’t happen to you boys. It only happened to us girls. You can’ talk about it. Ever!” At that moment, Keeper was locked out of the most important conversation of his life for forty-five years. In 2013, after decades of hiding with guilt and shame, he finally found the courage to speak to his sisters. Even though those conversations changed his life, he still sought ways to heal the wounds left behind by almost fifty years of trauma and PTSD. It is the same trauma and PTSD all brothers who learn their sisters have been sexually abused suffer in silence.
Unlike his sisters and other women, there are no support systems for traumatized brothers. There are no books, articles, T.V. shows, movies, documentaries, interviews on Oprah, or even a one-step program to help innocent brothers cope with their PTSD. No one asks brothers, “Are you okay?” “Do you need to talk?” Brothers are left to experience their trauma in silence, with their trauma impacting every decision they make, specifically those that have to do with women.
Six years before his four sisters were sexually abused, Keeper was sexually abused almost daily by his babysitter for six months at age six. He understands both sides of the sexual abuse coin – the damaged and the collateral damaged.
Keeper speaks on the mental and emotional challenges brothers suffer around child sexual abuse in the family.
HELPLENESS is book one of Keeper’s three-book series, From Helplessness To Hopefulness To Happiness.