I was talking to someone who was very experienced on behavioral problems in the adult population who have suffered from sexual abuse as children. It was their position that, the standard model of behavioral cconcerns in sex abused children as adults, in fact, masked the neglectful or hostile relationship between a child and his/her mother.
This is a new concept to me however, I know a number of people who do claim a sex abuse past as a child and coincidence or not, they have all had poor realtionships with their mothers.
Is this psychology 101 or a radical idea?
I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, but maybe they feel betrayed because their mother didn’t protect them (knowingly or unknowingly) from the abuser. Interesting idea. Maybe someone with Bona Fide brains can jump in!
Kalhoun, your connection is in part what was being argued by the person I spoke to. They made the link between the fact that a hostile or neglectful mother would either blame or not be present to protect the child and that a perpetrator of such an act against a child would be much more likely to act on a child that had this strained relationship with their mother.
As a side note, it was also noted during my discussions that if the victim of the sex assault was female she would be hostile toward male relationships for not having a father acting as “knight in shining armor” in protecting her.
Thoughts?
I can see the argument against the mother more easily than I can against the father. I think that’s because generally the mother is the “protector” for most of the child’s life, i.e., there are far more stay-at-home moms that would be in the position to protect all day long.
I wasn’t actually saying that the mothers were deserving of the hostility from the child, or that the mothers were actually neglectful – only that the child might interpret it that way because the mom wasn’t there to protect them – for whatever reason.
I am always horrified at reading of mothers who seem to stand by and let their kids be abused - sexually or physically - by a father or stepfather. Very often, they let the kids go into care, and stay with the abuser!!
Now IANAmother nor particularly maternal, but it strikes me that to put your (harmful, aggressive) mate above your (innocent, vulnerable) child is something sick to the core, something that really represents a perversion human nature. I cannot imagine - if I did have a child - that I would feel any emotion other than the raw desire to destroy anyone who harmed my offspring.
That’s this the basis for how I see the concept. It is important to note that it is not the case that the mother is always aware of the abuse , in fact, it may play into a perpetrators mind that the child, “won’t tell mommy” as there is poor relationship that does not support open or truthful discussion.
That’s this the basis for how I see the concept. It is important to note that it is not the case that the mother is always aware of the abuse , in fact, it may play into a perpetrators mind that the child, “won’t tell mommy” as there is poor relationship that does not support the child’s open or truthful discussion.
I think that’s the key…truthful discussion. Your kids need to know that you’ll believe them if someone harms them. And a lot of families don’t discuss “icky” subjects, so a child might not even know how to approach a parent to tell them something happened.
Then the mind starts doing weird stuff. The kid may start to blame the mom for not being there, even if she wasn’t supposed to be there, i.e., at school or at a playground or something. You know the mother WOULD have done something had she known, but she had no way to know what was happening.
Yes to Kalhoun’s thoughts…I’d like to add that I have read that predators often look for and target children who are vulnerable for whatever reason. That vulnerability could come from a destabilized relationship with the mother (say she has just divorced/remarried/started a new, demanding job/whatever, and her attention is engaged elsewhere). So some children may be victimized at just the time when their mothers are dealing with a lot of stuff and aren’t paying as much attention as they would like.
Wow, that wasn’t very coherent, but I don’t seem to be able to word it better. Sorry.
There’s no real clear answer here.
Yes, a child sees a parent as protector and yes, survivors of child sexual abuse do say that they expected their parents to protect them, they do resent them for it.
Added to this are factors such as:
a child who has been sexually abused is likely to “misbehave” and require ALOT of discipline for which the average parent isn’t prepared
A parent of a victimized child will be traumatized as well.
These two factors alone are enough to set up problematic patterns of interaction between parent and child. A lifetime of problematic patterns equal a problematic relationship
Although I haven’t worked in this area I did study sexual abuse as part of my Social Work degree. I have also spoken with a number of victims about their experiences.
Firstly, the allegation that it’s the mother’s fault/she should have known/stayed with a child abuser/etc generally fall into a similar category of arguement that a sexual assault victim was ‘asking for it’ etc. Usually the mother is completely in the dark, but the child is told that the mother knows all about it by the perp (I’ll explain this below). Thus the child can feel completely betrayed by the mother and believe that she let it happen. When/if the mother DOES find out she is usually traumatised byt he revelation too.
The majority of child sexual assault cases are perpetrated by somone known and trusted by the family. Most common IIRC is the stepfather/partner of the mother who is not the biological father. These men often present themselves as thoroughly respectable, caring, trustworthy, generous and completely wonderful, go out of their way to help others etc. They get into a relationship with a woman and then proceed to drive a wedge between the mother and the child through a process known as grooming. This (in a nutshell) involves acting one way when the mother and anyone else is around, and completely differently when alone with their intended victim. Although not fully sexual yet, it sets up a situation in which the child (let’s assume a girl) conflicts with her mum.
For example. When mum and daughter are both around Mr. Perp is all smiles and happy “How was school? How’s your friend, X? Would you like some ice cream for dessert?” etc. When only daughter is around he’ll change. He’ll start off small… asking slightly too personal questions, ‘accidentally’ walking in on her in the bathroom, his hand might also ‘accidentally’ brush her buttocks or breasts. Just enough to turn Daughter off him.
Then when he’s alone with mum he’ll say things like “I don’t think that Daughter likes me very much, I don’t know why. I know I’m not her real father but I really try hard.” Mum promises to have a word with Daughter. Daughter tells Mum that Perp is asking these personal questions, barged in on her, touched her etc. Mum reassures Daughter that Perp’s not that bad, but that she’ll have a word with him.
His response to these three accusations is that he was just ‘trying to take an interest in her life’, ‘I didn’t know she was in there… I apologised at the time.’ and ‘I don’t know what she’s talking about.’ He might then tell Mum not to worry. A new bloke is a big change that he knows may take a while for Daughter to get used to. Besides, she’s at ‘that age’ (regardless of whatever age the girl is), and all children go through periods where they get moody and rebel from their parents. It’s part of growing up. This makes sense to Mum so she doesn’t worry about it.
Perp now tones up the nastiness around Daughter. He may become authoritarian, touchy-feely, abusive (as in name calling: slut, bitch etc), ask her very personal questions about her body/love life/sexuality, accuse her of pinching stuff. Daughter will then go to Mum about all this, who will go in turn to Perp who will have no idea what Daughter is talking about, and be very upset that she would make such things up about him.
Mum’s view of the situation is that she is at a crossraod as to which way she should go. On the one hand she has Perp, who she has only ever seen as Mr. Wonderful, reasonable around her increasingly difficult Daughter, and everything she has ever looked for in a man. On the other hand she has her Daughter, who is having trouble adjusting to a new man in Mum’s life, as well as growing pains, and the difficulties and moods that pubescent kids and teenagers go through. Mum’s sure she’ll grow out of it so she sides with Perp, although trys to be very nice to Daughter about it.
Daughter’s view of the situation is that she has told her Mum exactly what Perp is like, but Mum doesn’t believe her and sides with Perp. Her lesson is: Mum believes him and not me.
From here it’s not a large step for the abuse to escalate into a sexual nature. Daughter believes that Mum won’t believe her, and so stops telling her mother things. (In younger children, just the Perp saying “your Mum knows that this is happening, she said it’s allright” can be enough to install this mindset into the kid)
Mum knows that the relationship with her Daughter is not what it once was, but has absolutely no idea why. Daughter has stopped speaking to her, and Perp sure isn’t going to say anything (he’s all sunny and smiles)
Voilla, one perfectly ruined mother/daughter relationship. Often the child will blame the mother, as they feel betrayed at not being believed and when the mother does find out she can blame herself too. It can take years and years of work to fix a relationship that been damaged in this way. It’s quite rare (in my experience) that the Perp ever gets blamed for these (quite Machaevellian) actions.
Of course, there are some horrible mum’s out there and occasionally you do read about some woman caught pimping out her kids, but it’s usually as above.
I can’t tidy this up right now cause my brother is kicking me off the comp, but I’ll comne back later and fix anything I missed