Societal Assumptions on Abuse and the Victim’s Perspective

Anthony K says:

An interesting point of view. Until recently I worked with very difficlt and damaged boys in a special school, some of whom – without doubt more than I knew about – had been sexually abused. I never got involved with any counselling to do with that specific area (though if I had concerns I certainly passed them on) but one or two things certainly struck me. The first was that the immediate consequences for the child of disclosure were, and would be, traumatic in themselves; the horror of social workers, police, family and others at the abuse itself, the process of endless interviews, case conferences, legal procedings and so on, and on and on could constitute a life event worse, psychologically, than whatever had actually happened, instilling a guilt in the victim that would last far longer than the (possibly) relatively mild events that inspired them.

I felt quite strongly that, in cases without severe trauma or coercion, the child was in fact very badly served by the system set up to protect them.

I mean if, on whatever level, the child had “consented” to a relationship with an adult – often a trusted one – then the child itself was somehow guilty: for if he wasn’t, why were all these awful things happening to him?

(I became rather loathe to voice this. At one child protection course where I brought this up the instructor said: “that’s what paedophiles claim.” That shut me up.)

But I don’t know the answer to this. We can’t downplay CSA, we can’t ignore it, and we must prevent it legally in every way we can: it does, however, seem unpleasantly ironic that our response to a victim’s disclosure seems exquisitely designed to prolong the victim’s suffering and to create in his or her mind the most fertile grounds for subsequent, lifelong trauma.

I was also watching am interview documentary about two 11-year-old British girls who had been aducted, raped, and imprisoned for several days by a paedophile – pretty much the nightmare scenario, except that they were found, and saved. One of the girls (who are now OK and grown up) recalled her unhappiness for years afterwards with the breakdown of her relationship with her friend. This had to do with their counselling: after about a year the friend refused to go, while the other girl had to continue, and she found the constant reference, over and over again, to the events themselves destructive and distasteful – in a sense, the well-meaning counsellor was merely repeating and perpetuating the abuse itself.

Sorry for the long post. I can’t see an obvious answer – perhaps it begins with an acknowledgement that there is a problem here and that society’s often hysterial response to paedophilia can sometimes harm the victims themselves.

Eli says:

Add me to the list of those who found the original sexual contact between me and the adult unacceptable, but certainly not ‘traumatic’ in any way. But I sure as hell did find the way others reacted to my revelations about the experience two decades later to be a very major life trauma, from which, a further two decades on, I still am trying to pick up the pieces and make something resembling a life. And I was supposed to be the victim that they were all ‘helping’! What a brutally incompetent farce.

I bitterly regret ever mentioning it to anybody. (This is the first time I have since then.)

Hysterical moralistic vigilantism from middle-class mediocrities, gutless opportunism from the political and legal class, and professional empire building by the psycho-babblers. A truly lethal cocktail.