Have you seen the article about the child abuse survivor who beat up his abuser? According to this article, 43-year-old William Lynch confronted his abuser, 65-year-old priest Jerold Lindner, in the lobby of a retirement home. According to the article, Lynch asked his abuser if he knew who he was. When the abuser said no, Lynch basically beat the h@$% out of him – enough to send him to the hospital.
According to Lynch, Lindner raped both him and his brother at ages 7 and 5 and also forced them to perform sexual acts on each other. The article says that Lindner has been accused of sexually abusing others as well. It sounds like, other than being ostracized from him family, Lindner has never really paid for hurting so many children. Meanwhile, Lynch has “had nightmares for years, battled depression and alcoholism and had attempted suicide twice because of the priest’s abuse.”
Here is a quote from Lynch in that article:
Many times I thought of driving down to LA and confronting Father Jerry. I wanted to exorcise all of the rage and anger and bitterness he put into me…You can’t put into words what this guy did to me. He stole my innocence and destroyed my life. ~ William Lynch
I find this whole story sad. I like the part of the article quoting a psychologist who said that it is “normal for victims to fantasize about revenge without acting on it.” If you are burning up with rage, that is the course of action that I recommend rather than risking getting yourself thrown in jail for beating up your abuser.
Visualizing beating up my abusers has been very effective for me. Like Lynch, I have experienced lots of rage festering inside of me toward my abusers who, to my knowledge, never spent a day in jail for abusing children. Rather than take physical action like Lynch, I have chosen to “beat up my abusers” in my own head. I have found this to be a very healing exercise in which nobody (including me) gets hurt.
The beauty of it is that I don’t have to stop or worry about anyone trying to stop me. I can beat up, maim, and even “kill” my abusers over and over again in my head without doing any harm to anyone. I was actually a bit disturbed by how graphic these fantasies got at first, but I soon recognized that I was finally giving my anger and rage a voice. I did not need to involve another person for me to express my rage – I could do this successfully inside of my own head.
As for Lynch’s comment about his abuser destroying his life — Don’t let your abusers have that kind of power over you! Notice how the abuser did not even know who Lynch was after all of these years while Lynch probably never stopped thinking about his abuser. Choosing to work through therapy, process your pain, and heal is the way you resurrect your life. Our abusers definitely destroyed our innocence, but only we have the power to let them destroy our lives.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
” Our abusers definitely destroyed our innocence, but only we have the power to let them destroy our lives”.
I think that may be true in some cases, but not in all. Not everyone is born with the same capacities, tolerance and physical/biological and psychological make up. For some people, it does destroy their lives, and I believe that they have no control over it. If they did, why would they choose to have their lives ruined?
I do see what you are saying, but I also see that they “choice” is simply not there for some people.
peace,
mia
Hi, Mia.
This sounds like a good blog topic. I am not saying that our lives are not profoundly affected by abuse. My point is that only I can choose to find no value in my life after the ends. I will save further comment for my blog on the topic. :0)
- Faith
I do visualizations about destroying my abusers. Sometimes it was and is how I go to sleep at night. As of late I have sometimes started and it has felt kinda boring on almost a task that I do not want to bother with.
The whole thing is very worked out. I have little fear of getting caught. Part of this is I was trained how to do such things in MKULTRA. The risk of getting caught is not a deterrent. In a real way it is that I could not tell anyone that would make it so unsatisfying.
I am not weak I am a gentle soul.
Helpful to think that many of the abusers would not even know who I was. In a way the hurting them would be a way to try and force them to know I exist as a person. It would not work they are not capable. It is not just me they are not capable of seeing anyone as a person perhaps not even themselves.
I stay away from destroying my life. I go with made it very hard to express and be who I am. Sometimes I can even go with made me more aware of who I am.
I frame many things with I …. because of …. and stay away from they made me. The made me stays with the things that I had to do as their was no positive choice.
I was often told well you much want to be here and do this as you did not kill yourself. Having a person kill them self is a feather in many of the abusers cap. Something they would brag about.
My innocence was not destroyed it was made very hard to find and live.
Recently for the first time in my life, I had fantasies about hurting those who hurt me. But that’s not the kind of person that I want to be.
Hi, Lilo.
I am not that kind of person, either. I just needed a way to express my rage, and visualization worked for me. Something else might work for you.
I could relate to Michael’s comment about getting “bored” with the visualizations. For me, getting bored meant that I no longer had a need to do it. If I uncover a pocket of rage that needs to be processed, I might do it again. Otherwise, I really have not felt the need in a long time. :0)
- Faith
“My innocence was not destroyed it was made very hard to find and live.” – Michael
I like this. Defining our lives in shades of gray eventually allows us to see it in full color.
As for acting on anger or visualizing it…
I can’t site the source, but I’ve read that both observing and visualizing violence toward people/animals is associated with a higher incidence of acting violently toward other living things. Physically acting out anger toward inanimate objects in a way that mimics violent action towards others increases the likelihood of violence toward the living also but not as much. I have found the most beneficial release for pure anger is writing scathing letters combined with non-mimicking physical action – stomping paper cups, ripping an old phonebook, physical exercise (short, fast, hard). The most healing though has come from acknowledging then soothing the anger. In art I can give life to the anger, but the very act of how I express it creates soothing movement. In writing, I can tell myself what I most want and need to hear. In visualizing, I can recreate my past from a place of strength; I give myself the power I didn’t have to say “no” or to push my abusers away or to…
I’m still working on finding the balance between respecting my memories as my reality versus recreating them to steal the power from them. Actually, I’m still working on expressing my anger at all. I tend to want to rationalize why expressing it is futile. Feeling angry is very uncomfortable but necessary. It signals injustice and provides the energy and motivation for change.
Hi, Mojedapoet.
I think the purpose of the visualization drives whether it makes you more or less likely to do something in “real life.” For example, before a person actually has an affair, he or she often thinks about it (visualizes it). The more the person visualizes the affair, the more comfortable he or she becomes with doing this action, even though before the visualization, the person was reluctant to cheat on his or her spouse. This is not the type of visualization I am talking about.
When I process my anger through visualization, it is about taking my power back. I visualize the child me about to be abused. Then, the adult me swoops in and kicks the ever-living $@#% out of my abuser. I am not fantasizing about hurting anyone today. Instead, I am changing the ending of something that really happened to the way I needed it to end, which helps me give my anger a voice and also helps me to feel empowered.
- Faith
“Feeling angry is very uncomfortable but necessary. It signals injustice and provides the energy and motivation for change.”
No wonder I don’t like it. Smile
“The more the person visualizes the affair [or violence], the more comfortable he or she becomes with doing this action” – Faith
Yes, this is the kind of desensitization to which the research was referring.
Faith,we’re not contradicting each other AT ALL. I said, “In visualizing, I can recreate my past from a place of strength; I give myself the power I didn’t have to say “no” or to push my abusers away or to…” and YOU said, “When I process my anger through visualization, it is about taking my power back… Instead, I am changing the ending of something that really happened to the way I needed it to end, which helps me give my anger a voice and also helps me to feel empowered.”
I was just emphasizing the importance to MY healing of SOOTHING the anger, not dismissing visualization as a helpful tool. I think the time frame of the visualization impacts the outcome. To further distance my past from the present and because I have found it even more empowering, I give my child self power rather than bring my adult self to the memory. Then I soothe my child self in the present because the child, not the painful memory, is a part of me.
For myself personally, I can only visualize aggression as it is necessary to protect myself when I recreate the memories. I don’t know how or if it is even possible to hurt the “person” without hurting the “human being”. (If this concept confuses anyone, my blog post on forgiveness explains it more – mojedapoet.wordpress.com). Even in MY PSYCHE I can’t hurt another living thing except when preserving myself or someone else is my primary objective. That’s why visualization wasn’t even a tool I could use before I started to value myself as worth saving. The two grow together.
Smile. I was amazed when I could feel angry for the first time. It’s a very recent change!
Fr. Thomas Smolich, now the top Jesuit official in the United States, said in his sworn deposition that Fr. Lindner may well be the sickest human being.
In regard to alleged pedophile Fr. Jerold Lindner: James Chevedden reported sex abuse within the Jesuit Order to Jesuit Leader Fr. Thomas Smolich. Smolich had publicly committed the Jesuit Order to provide a sanctuary for Jesuit pedophiles. Sadly Fr. Smolich did nothing in regard to Chevedden’s sex abuse report and Chevedden died violently at age 56. Accused violent Jesuit pedophile Fr. Jerold Lindner, with $2 million in sex abuse settlements on his record and living at the Jesuit/Smolich sex abuse sanctuary, was alone with Chevedden near the death scene just hours before Chevedden’s violent death. Fr. Thomas Smolich said in his sworn deposition that Fr. Lindner may well be the sickest human being. The Jesuit Order covered up evidence related to Chevedden’s death and made it difficult for Chevedden’s family to obtain the body for burial. Fr. Smolich is now paradoxically the top Jesuit official in the USA.
I think this story is tragic, but I do not have sympathy for Lynch’s actions. Then again, I personally have never had fantasies of hurting the people who hurt me. I believe that as an adult, Lynch is responsible for his actions. Fantasizing might be normal, acting it out is a crime.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Faith Allen, patriciasinglet. patriciasinglet said: RT @FaithLotus: #ChildAbuse #Survivor Beats Up His #Abuser: http://t.co/D2lKSYG #ConfrontingAbuser [...]
If you have an imagination not only is it unlikely that you have been given much direction in how it can be used you have received much instruction about how it should be used by people that do not have and imagination.
Giving a child materials stating what is to be made and then say go ahead and be creative which is the norm of teaching creativity is rubbish.
Creativity is often valued only as a way to make money in our current society.
There was a case in NH where a woman killed her husband. She testified about her experiences before a grand jury and the humans on that grand jury did not indite. Without knowing all the facts it seems like justice could be served if the same thing happened in this case.
I totally and completely understand what this guy did! And while it may not be ‘acceptable’ or the ‘right’ thing to do, it DOES make sense! I get that technically he committed a crime, but so did the perpetrator, and most of the time, nothing happens to these people! ‘Justice’ does not exist with child abuse! And I also disagree that child abuse does not destroy innocence and ruin someone’s life–it absolutely does! If all of the abuse and torture that happened to me, didn’t happen–I would be a different person. I wouldn’t have to struggle with the depression, the nightmares, the suicidal thoughts and self injury. It absolutely changed and destroyed a BIG part of me!
[...] 2, 2010 by faithallen On my blog entry entitled Child Abuse Survivor Beats Up His Abuser, a reader posted the following comment: “Our abusers definitely destroyed our innocence, but only [...]
[...] Child Abuse Survivor Beats Up His Abuser (faithallen.wordpress.com) [...]
Louise Hay had a visualization tape that I used to listen to years ago that had you use a lazer gun to blow away the the person that you were angry with.
[...] Child Abuse Survivor Beats Up His Abuser (faithallen.wordpress.com) [...]