A reader emailed me and asked me to cover the topic of how the world blames the child abuse victims and how the world thinks they know the effects. This is a great topic idea that we need to talk about.
My experience is that, while most people are sympathetic to an abused child, they are mostly ignorant about the aftereffects of child abuse, especially in adulthood. I frequently hear comments such as, “an abused child is just going to grow up to become an abuser himself.” (This is not supported by statistics. Actually, only 1 in 10 abused children have been found to abuse in adulthood, which means that 90% of abused children do not become abusers. See this article.) I have been asked why I did not tell anyone. My response was, “Who would I tell? My own mother was hurting me. Who would I possibly have thought was safe when my own mother wasn’t safe?”
These are comments that I hear from well-meaning, law-abiding, “good” people. These are not abusers or people who in any way condone child abuse. However, society as a whole is woefully uneducated about child abuse and the aftereffects. This is one reason I am so passionate about educating people about child abuse every chance that I get, and I do this a lot at my church. Church people have the collective power to make a difference if they take a stand, but they are not going to do it if they are ignorant to the issues and statistics.
Another big area of societal ignorance is repressed memories. I strongly believe that the big wave of false memory syndrome propaganda in the 1990’s was perpetuated by child abusers, and many members of society still buy into the misconception that, if you did not always retain every memory of abuse from childhood, then it must have been implanted.
Stepping up on the soapbox…
When someone tells me that I must have false memory syndrome, I feel insulted, and I don’t feel this way easily. This assumption about me presumes that I am so weak-minded and weak-willed that I would simply allow another person to embed false memories in my head. I don’t trust many people, and I am a very intelligent person (graduated from a Top Ten graduate school). To tell me that I am so gullible that I would allow another person to implant these memories in my head is incredibly insulting.
Stepping off the soapbox…
Now that I have that off my chest, I will tell you how I respond … My sister and I have recovered numerous memories of the same events, and we have never seen the same therapist. We haven’t even lived in the same state since I started having flashbacks in 2003. So, to implant this many memories with this level of detail in two women living in two different states who do not see the same people regularly sounds like a much greater conspiracy theory than the truth that it happened.
It is well documented that young children (and even many adults) repress traumatic memories. Soldiers frequently return from battle with no memory of seeing their buddies’ body parts blown to bits. I know a five-year-old boy who was in a fatal car crash that took his mother’s life. He has no memory of that event, yet nobody questions that it happened. Everyone gets that the event was so traumatizing that he has repressed the memory. So, why does society at large have so much trouble understanding that a child exposed to repeated traumas would repress those memories?
Bottom line – Society at large does not “get it” about child abuse, and they are never going to “get it” unless we educate them. We need to do all we can to educate society about the epidemic of child abuse and the aftereffects. We need to stop sitting by silently listening to ignorant comments and educate these people. Of course, you need to heal enough to feel strong enough to take this on, but when you are ready, join the fight! If 1 in 3 women and 1 in 5-7 men spoke out about the truth of child abuse, it wouldn’t take that long to educate the world.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
I am more accepting that society is ignorant by nature. Y2K is equivalent to global warming is equivalent to weapons of mass destruction is equivalent to the world is flat is equivalent to false memory syndrome is equivalent to ….
I am now about relationships. That is where real change seems to come from for me. Positive and negative.
I feel that ones relationship to self is more important than relationships to others.
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I’ve been following your blog for some time now, and it’s been very helpful – thank you.
Faith, if your sister had not recovered memories of the same incidents…do you think it would have been much harder to “accept” the memories as real?
Hi, Lilo.
Yes, I would have had a much harder time believing myself without my sister’s validation. I don’t know if you have read my story. I suffered from many forms of child abuse that are not mainstream. For example, before recovering my own memories, I had never read or heard about an abuser forcing one child to hurt the other child. That would have made me question whether I was the only one who suffered from this on the planet and, if I was, then perhaps I was crazy?? I questioned my sanity throughout therapy. Thank goodness I had a therapist who completely believed in me.
- Faith
Hi Faith
Thanks for your reply.
Some of what I recall is not quite mainstream either. I don’t have any physical scars (do have physical problems that might be related though) and do not dare to seek validation from sibling or other family members. I sort of had one possibly validating conversation with a sibling, but I wasn’t “there” when we talked due to the terror and shame, so I can’t remember what was said during that conversation.
There have been many days where I didn’t believe the things that I recalled, or my intepretation of these events, despite the ptsd, dissociation and all that. Sometimes I still doubt certain aspects of what I remember…
I had a friend though, who completely believed in me.
I read your entire blog, took me about a month to do so.
Your blog enabled me to know that I wasn’t the only person who has struggled with sexual SI etc etc.
thank you again for your blog and send your little sis a friendly hi from me, if you like.
This really touched me. I am recovering from the effects of verbal and emotional abuse from my mother. I constantly get berated by family and friends that I was “spoiled” and I am the one hurting my mother. No one seems to understand that emotional scars are invisible but still there. A mother to tried to buy love from her children while systematically eroding their self esteem does not a good mother make. Even when I cried out for help as a child(running away, self mutilating, and smoking pot) the authorities berated me for “putting my poor mother through this” and threatened to lock me up. I try to educate anyone I can about the effects of this type of abuse and will continue to do so as long as I am able.
I frequently get the response of “just let it go–its in the past.” If only that were true! I am only in the beginning of dealing with the most horrible and traumatic abuse that happened, and “IT” is almost always there. I don’t think that it will ever go completely away–I am just TRYING to believe that it won’t always be this bad, and it won’t always hurt THIS much!!!
Hi, Theresa.
I won’t always be this bad, and it won’t always hurt this much. You will always remember, but the “punch” of the memory will ease with healing. I can now take a trip down memory lane without even getting triggered very much. There was a time that I breathed my past. It felt quite ever-present to me.
- Faith
I agree society doesn’t understand very well. But, as I’ve written on my blog, I think the ignorance is sort of natural and expected. Yes, it really is not good. But I’m not sure education will make it better.
As an aside, I want to comment on your stats on percentage (90%) of child abuse victims who do not become abusers. I think those statistics can be flipped. I think upwards of that percentage (90%) of child abusers were abused. But I’m not sure on this… I think I read this somewhere. Maybe someone can verify this for us.
Hi, Paul.
My guess is that virtually all child abusers were themselves abused. Unless you can be born a psychopath, an abuser would have to have suffered some sort of trauma to inflict such pain on others.
- Faith
Faith,
I just stumbled on your blog today and your work is phenonimal. For some time I have thought about starting a blog and you are already saying so many of the things on my heart. I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and I am on a slow journey to find healing. One of my passions is to educate my community about sexual abuse and create a movement, similar to breast cancer, where everyone will know what it is, how to prevent it, and how to help one another heal. Thank you for having the courage to share your experiences, your committment to helping CSA survivors, and the wonderful example that you set for me to push forward.
“So, why does society at large have so much trouble understanding that a child exposed to repeated traumas would repress those memories?” That is a key question, and the core one. I think Alice Miller answers that, abuse, in various forms is so prevalent, that many people have to defend against the fear of activating your own memory. I’ve been to self half groups, AA groups, where the instant I start to speak about the damage I suffered, the reaction is always uniformly discouraging. My advice is to find a supportive self help group, that focuses primarily on child abuse. This will help you find people willing to support and listen. Damaged people, which are the majority (look at the state of your society) do not want to be reminded of their own repressed damage. Hence the denial and the whole false memory syndrome.
Good luck in your healing.
I also highly recommend Daniel Macklers site for recoverers. HIs little book is a practical approach and goes beyond Alice Miller. You can find him on YouTube and also theres an interview on him. Forgot the title but its very good.