If your child was molested by a parent at a “too young to remember” age, would you ever tell the child? Why or why not?
Not unless the child had issues in the future that the molestation could have been a contributing cause.
Do you mean the parent of the child? Because that woul have to play a role in why they’re “no longer living with me/dead/in prison” thingy.
Yes. If the child’s own parent molested the child and the child asks why the parents split up, do you tell? Ever? Like even when the child is an adult?
What about if the child is a bit older and wants to find the absent parent and forge some sort of relationship? Do you tell then?
I’d tell, if asked, but I’d forego any details. I’d hope it’d be enough to say “Your father was abusive and we weren’t safe with him.”
For an older child – even one old enough to protect herself (or himself) – if they wanted to contact the parent, I’d insist on being present. If the child asked why, I’d say “He’s an evil bastard and I have no reason to believe he’s changed.”
That might not be the right way to handle it, but that’s what I’d do.
Unfortunately, I have to says yes, it’s practical for their own protection, or someone else they could potentially expose to the molester downline. Besides that you can bet someone else who knows won’t have any particular compulsion to not, and if fact may take pleasure in telling the child/adult.
Out of curiosity is there any chance it could have an effect on someone, if it really did happen before they could remember? Like, let’s say infant age or age one, or two? I mean, infants are pretty much polymorphous perverse, aren’t they?
If i was in the place of the child as an older person, I think I’d want to know.
Maybe not all the details or such, but just knowing at least would be a helpful thing in my mind, as I value truth/honesty as a key value. Plus, i wouldn’t want someone else to tell me or such later on, or to have the problem as others mentioned about trying to resume contact with said parent.
Of course, by telling me such a thing, it would probably destroy any attempt of a relationship that I would want to try to establish with that parent. However, I think if you are separated and such, that’s not going to be such a problem. I liked AuntiePam’s response a lot, it resonated in my gut.
I really hesitated to contribute to this thread because this is really personal information, but your post was the tipping point.
I do remember what happened, and I was quite young when it started, less than two years old. It continued until I was about 7 (was too big for his taste at that point).
So I may be offering support to your position (since it wasn’t a one time incident); however IMO and IME what happened absolutely DID have an effect on me, and I do recall it from pretty much the beginning. And I would not have ever characterized myself as polymorphous perverse.
Kalhoun, on the off change your question isn’t rhetorical, how positive are you the child really truly does not remember? I didn’t have contact with my abuser between my 12th and 23rd birthdays–and I sought him out after that. So are you really truly positive the child doesn’t know?
No, no, didn’t mean to imply that…I just remember learning that infants (like very, very young, several months old, that sort of thing) don’t really have a sense of social mores–things that are pleasurable feel good to them and things that are unpleasant are bad…doesn’t make much of a difference whether it’s in a creepy context or not. Of course, I don’t know how true that is, and I’m just wondering that if someone inappropriately stimulated an infant in that way if it would have much of an effect on them later in life or if they wouldn’t even remember/process it. I think under two seems different…I mean, there are people who have concrete memories from that age, aren’t there?
You are absolutely right in the sense that I didn’t experience the initial abuse as bad or evil or whatever. Those nerve endings are there, after all. The attendant behaviors and expectations as I grew older, plus the sexualization of everything did cause issues. And of course when I finally did get into therapy, I felt very tainted and evil for having been in that situation. Big powerful toddler controls all, you know!
If perhaps he’d done it once when I was that age, yeah maybe I wouldn’t have experienced any effects, which is why I can sort of see your position. But he did start before my second birthday and it did continue, so yeah, I definitely remember and it sure did affect me.
I sure do, and it still freaks out my mother when I remind her of stuff. I also think that was a self defense mechanism, I became hyper-aware in order to survive.
Ahh…I’m sorry to hear all that. I hope you’re doing all right now, and that whoever did all that to you was put into jail for a long, long time.
It is an interesting question, though. And I suppose a lot of time adults just assume that kids won’t process the things that they do in fact remember. I’m reminded of that scene in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” where this rapist/murderer is on the loose and Francie is almost raped–her parents later tell her it was all a dream because they don’t want her to have to deal with it. She’s fourteen at the time, so it’s definitely quite a bit of wishful thinking. But I do think that adults like the fiction that kids don’t always understand the wild, wild world.
Kids can remember a lot, and they don’t always talk about issues that might be bothering them. IMO it would be better to have it out in the open. You don’t know if something is bothering them and they don’t want to bring it up for fear of hurting you.
I think I’ll move this from IMHO to Great Debates.
Strictly hypothetical, but yes, I’d tell them, as soon as they were of an age to understand and deal (middle teens? Depends on the kid, I guess). Earlier if they bring it up themselves.
As to why: what’s the value in not telling them? To preserve some criminal’s “good name”? To preserve their based-on-a-lie "relationship " with their abuser? To protect their “innocence”? None of those strike me as convincing arguments.
I certainly want my kid to be as relatively carefree as she can be, but I also hope to teach my (real) daughter that her self-worth is not inextricably bound to her sexuality, that she can always trust me to tell her the truth no matter how hard, and that I love her no matter what she’s done or had done to her. I don’t think covering up something like that, even if the victim doesn’t consciously remember, does any good. And I say this as a in-therapy victim of two childhood rapes who still has to 'fess up to his (uninvolved) parents.
I don’t want to see the results of a policy of obfuscation coming home to roost when she has important things to tell me, sexually. Like needing to go on the Pill or take the Morning After drug or …whatever (worse things that I’d rather not dwell on today).
What if the abuse is strongly suspected by medical people but no proof or charges were ever introduced?
Keep a secret for your child. Don’t keep a secret from your child.
When it becomes an issue, for whatever reason, and when the child reaches the point that they want, or need the information, you must tell them. Other than that, what they truely don’t know won’t hurt them, but the person who hurt them might well be able to use ignorance to hurt them further. There are very few reasons you would tell anyone else, and certainly not until after you told the child.
Tris
This doesn’t compute - if there was a medical suspicion, then charges would be introduced - in fact, even if I didn’t (but I would!), I believe the law here compels the med staff to do so. Is it not so in the States?
If the hypothetical other parent got off, I wouldn’t hide the fact that there had been a court case or what the charges had been, if that’s what you’re asking.
This is one question I just can’t answer in the hypothetical. There are too many “it depends”, and the way I’d handle it would vary widely.
Starting with the general: generally speaking, I’m in favor of open honesty from the outset, so that there’s no traumatic “reveal” in which you discover that something significant about your life isn’t what you thought it was. That’s why I’m in favor of adoptive parents telling their toddler about their wonderful adoption story - if it’s never a secret, then it doesn’t have power over you.
But the thing with abuse, especially sexual, is that it’s far too easy and common in our culture for that to become a personal identity. Mary is no longer Mary, she’s Mary the kid who was molested. And I don’t think growing up under that shadow is particularly healthy, either (speaking from personal experience there.) If the kid is truly clueless and carefree, it might be more kind not to tell her.
OTOH, if the child does remember anything, even subconsciously, it might be affecting them in weird ways. Fears of the dark, or of a certain stuffed animal, or an overreaction when someone plays with her hair. Depression, clinginess or aloofness or inappropriate boundaries with adults are often symptoms of childhood sexual abuse. When they get older, it might be drinking or cutting or skipping school or acting out in other ways. The kid may have this disturbing sense that they’re bad or weak or broken in some way, and have no idea where that comes from. In such a case, finding out that they’re not crazy, there’s a perfectly logical reason why Mr. Elephant is freaky, might be helpful in their healing process.
Of course, kids are excellent at hiding their pain sometimes. So it can be really hard to tell if your kid has been affected or remembers anything at all. That’s where this can’t be answered in Hypothetical Land, but has to be decided taking *your * child into account. And I think that the more you can remove YOU from the decision, the more you can make the best decision for your child. That is, try to set aside how angry you are at your ex and how scared you were that he might have hurt her then, and think only about your child’s *current *well-being.
Thanks all, for your opinions.