EPA
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NOS News•today, 17:33
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Jules Jessurun
editor Online
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Jules Jessurun
editor Online
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British singer Marcus Mumford was sexually assaulted when he was six years old, he said in an interview with on Wednesday GQ. in the number Cannibal he sings about this candidly. According to experts, this can also help other men talk about sexual abuse in their past, which is still considered taboo.
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“It is so brave that someone is doing this at all,” says Sabine Meulenbeld, co-founder of the Netherlands Sexual Welfare Foundation. “Boys and men are tough and self-reliant, those are the myths that men and boys marinate in. So it’s brave that Mumford is trying to rise above that stigma.”
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“We know that men have much more trouble talking about sexual violence and abuse than women,” says Karlijn de Blécourt, specialist in gender and sexuality at Rutgers. “But men also experience this and may as well be traumatized by this.”
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Mumford, who rose to fame as the lead singer of the band Mumford & Sons, compares the culprit in the song Cannibal with a cannibal. “I can still taste you, and I hate that. It wasn’t a choice a child’s brain can make and you knew that,” the Briton sings. “You took the first piece of me and you ate it raw. You attacked it with your teeth and your lips like a cannibal. You fucking dier.”
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According to Meulenbeld, who herself treats people who have been sexually abused, all victims “in one way or another” think the abuse is their fault and feel alone. She therefore occasionally refers in treatments to interviews that celebrities have given about their experiences with abuse or songs about it. “Mumford’s lyrics are more explicit than anything I’ve heard before”. And that is positive in this case, she says. “The more explicit you make something, the more you give someone the opportunity to mirror it, so the more recognizable it becomes.”
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Watch the music video for Cannibal, which was directed by Steven Spielberg:
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Mumford didn’t talk about the abuse for thirty years. He does not name the perpetrator, but tells GQ that it is “not a family member, nor is it someone from the church, as people may think”.
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On other tracks on his upcoming solo album, the artist talks about dealing with this trauma. That’s how he sings in the song Grace about the conversation he had with his mother about the abuse.
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According to De Blécourt, the songs can also be “a call to everyone not to judge men so harshly when it comes to their vulnerabilities”. “That it becomes more widely discussed and therefore not only among people who have experienced it.”
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De Blécourt emphasizes that it is good that Mumford and initiatives of the Sexual Violence Center more attention is being paid to violence for sexual violence against boys (and men). “Because in the end you want every child to feel safe to share his or her story. Mumford’s story helps to show how intense this is, how impactful.”
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The solo album Marcus Mumford by Marcus Mumford will be released on September 16.
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