Monday, December 1, was a world AIDS Day. At Wheaton College, the Student Global AIDS Committee (SGAC) commemorated the event for week. On Wednesday, December 3, I served with three other faculty members on a panel discussing the pandemic. Each of us shared how Christians from our discipline can address the issue. Dr. Paul Robinson represented the social sciences, Dr. Jerry Root represented theology, Dr. Kristen Page represented the sciences, and I represented the humanities.
I learned a great deal from my colleagues. Dr. Robinson shared about his experiences with AIDS in his home country of Congo. Dr. Root spoke about personhood, evangelism, and taking a stand on the issue. Dr. Page shared about her knowledge of human beings who are apparently naturally immune to HIV-AIDS either because of their genetic makeup or their uniquely resistant immune systems.
I was amazed to hear that scientists have isolated the genetic markers that produce T cells that do not have the receptors that naturally allow HIV to bind to those T cells. For an overview of how HIV AIDS works, with references to immunities, download Dr. Page’s PowerPoint lecture from the link below:
Understanding how HIV/AIDS works
When it came to be my turn to speak, I shared my own story of taking an HIV/AIDS test because I had been sexually assaulted as a child and placed at risk thereby. I explained how sexual abuse and assault, prostitution and sex trafficking are specific vehicles for the transmission of HIV AIDS. I include my remarks below:
“When I was eight years old, I was sexually assaulted.
The year was 1983. Two years before, in 1981, the first cases of HIV/AIDS in America had been identified by doctors and scientists in the two urban epicenters of the disease: New York City and San Francisco. At that time, AIDS was called GRID, gay related immune disease, and many intelligent people wrongly believed that the illness was confined to those practicing homosexual behaviors. Of course today, we know that HIV/AIDS is transferred through the exchange of body fluids, such as semen and blood, most commonly through sexual contact with an infected person, contaminated needles used intravenously, and from HIV-positive mothers to their children in the process of natural childbirth.
The psychological devastation I experienced as a result of being assaulted as an eight-year-old girl was intense. Like most children who experience sexual abuse, without consciously planning to do so, I used the defense mechanisms of dissociation, active repression, denial, and avoidance of sensory triggers that would make me remember what happened to me. When I grew up, however, these defense mechanisms stopped working, and I entered counseling to deal with the intense flashbacks, painful memories, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
It was at this time that I realized that I needed to take an HIV/AIDS test.
I had done research on the criminal background of my assailant, and I knew he was a convicted sex offender who had raped multiple women and sexually assaulted a number of children. So far as I could tell from my own terrifying experience, he was not the sort of man who used a condom or was regularly tested for sexually transmitted diseases. He’d had multiple, unprotected sexual contacts with people living in the San Francisco Bay area in the early ’80s, which meant I was at risk.
I remember what it was like to request an HIV/AIDS test from my doctor. I was able to explain to him the reasons why I needed the test, and he was both sympathetic and supportive. When I went to have my blood drawn, however, there was no conversation. There was silence. The nurses did not look me in the eye, they did not talk to me, and they were extremely careful when drawing my blood. I noticed how my blood was not placed in the same blood vial holder as most of the other blood vials; it was separated and specially marked. I realized acutely that if my blood were infected, and someone else were to accidentally make a vulnerable contact with it, that person could get HIV/AIDS and die as a direct consequence.
While I was waiting for the results of my test, many thoughts went through my mind. If I had HIV/AIDS, how would that affect my life and my decisions in the future? Would I ever marry? Would anyone ever want to marry me knowing that I had a fatal disease that could infect him too? Would I ever have children, knowing that simply by being a child of mine, my son or daughter would be at risk of getting HIV/AIDS?
About this time, I picked up a copy of the Pentecostal Evangel, a magazine published by the Assemblies of God. In it, there was an article by a woman who had HIV/AIDS. She was married, to a man who married her after she found out she had the disease, and she talked about what it was like to live as a Christian married woman with this devastating illness. She also talked about how deeply loved she felt by her husband and by God.
About this time, I also picked up a book called Startling Beauty, by another Christian married woman who had been raped by a stranger and become pregnant as a result. She wrote about what it was like to be raped and to have to take an HIV/AIDS test when she had not done anything wrong or risky, but instead had had her will violated and her life endangered as a result. Her test came out to be negative, which was positive for her. Later on, she found out she was pregnant, and rather than abort her daughter, she gave birth to her. She did not give her up for adoption but kept her, and her daughter has become one of the greatest joys of her life.
These powerful stories with their emphasis on redemption showed me that if I had HIV/AIDS, then God would still be faithful to me and He would still help me. Even though I feared being isolated and alone, rejected and stigmatized, even though I feared that my dreams of a happy and healthy future family would be stolen from me by a disease transferred to me by an evil man who’d already stolen so much from me, God showed me through the stories of other women of faith that my destiny was not going to be determined by my fear, but by the love of my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
By God’s grace, my HIV/ AIDS test came out negative. I do not have this disease even though I was placed at risk for it through experiences of childhood sexual assault. But if I had contracted HIV/ AIDS, God’s grace would have still been made manifest to me, and through me, to many other people.
When I was asked to be on this panel, I wanted to tell this story because it is a way of modeling what I believe to be the most valuable skills in the Humanities for addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis in our world. Because those in the Humanities can read, write, and think critically, we can communicate effectively about HIV-AIDS in the schools, in the churches, in the courts, in our culture and our subcultures, and in all media: on TV, on the radio, on the Internet, in newspapers and magazines, in research papers, and in books of all genres.
We can bear witness and testify. We can define, and we can educate. We can record and relate the stories. We can advocate for those who cannot do so for themselves. We have all the skills to bring forth lesson plans in the schools, sermons in the churches, legislation in the courts, and relevant knowledge, encouragement, and truth to our culture and subcultures.
I’ve seen others to this, and I have been personally encouraged and empowered through the actions of those willing to tell their stories. I have also become one who bears witness and testifies, educates and advocates, specifically through JSASSN International.
JSASSN, or Jane’s Sexual Assault Survivor Support Network, exists as a prayer, education, and networking ministry, whose focus is to stop sexual abuse, assault, and trafficking worldwide through the love of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. I would invite anyone who wants to learn more to visit jsassn.wordpress.com, where you can see additional strategies for addressing not only HIV/AIDS crisis but one of its specific contexts, that is, one of the systematic ways the disease is perpetuated: through sexual abuse, assault, prostitution, and human trafficking. You can also join my cause, STOP SEX TRAFFICKING, on Facebook.
Thank you for listening. I’m looking forward to questions and answers on these vital issues, and to our breakout sessions after everyone on our panel has presented.”
Since this meeting, I have begun to pray for the end of the AIDS epidemic worldwide and to believe that the name of Jesus would be glorified through the end of this disease on earth.
Please agree in prayer for this with me.
Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International
