It strikes me, just from reading stories and news reports, that it is fairly common for it to turn out that pedophiles or rapists have often suffered a similar experience themselves in their youth. A man who abuses a child turns out to have been abused by his father; that sort of thing.
Is this really a common phenomenon? Do psychologists actually recognize it? If so, is there some sort of supposed causal connection beyond “it messed them up”?
The reason I ask is because it seems so counter-intuitive. I could understand a child who had suffered traumatic abuse growing up to harbor anger or violence issues, or to struggle to trust people. But I don’t see the causal process in their head that would lead them to commit that exact type of abuse themselves against someone else.
Because it seems normal to them–even if they know it’s not.
(ETA: That was a WAG btw, hopefully something more factual can be said.)
Here is an article about revictimization, how people tend to replay old wounds either as a perpetrator of victim.
The argument seems to be that identifying with the abuser helps suppress all the feelings of fear, shame and helplessness that a person feels after being abused, but identifying creates a new generation of abusers. It happens with other forms of abuse aside from sexual (physical, emotional, verbal, etc).
I found Vulnerable Populations, Vol. 1 by Suzanne M. Sgroi, MD to be very enlightening on this subject. The case histories are a very tough read.
I’ll boil down the answer to “why do victims become perpetrators?” to two very generalized statements: they do it so that they know they aren’t the only one, and thus feel (somewhat ) less freakish; they attempt to recreate the circumstances of their victimization in order to control the event and thus change the outcome.
I encourage you to read the book. The author answers your question better than I ever could.
Having essentially no expertise in this area, it’s always seemed – well, one can’t really say things like ‘understandable’ or ‘sensible’ here, but it’s seemed to make sense that somebody who has suffered a loss of power – over themselves, their circumstances, etc. – like that will want to reclaim that power, to conquer the situation in which the loss of power occurred. But that’s just a WAG.
One key thing to know is that the rate of committing an offense increases massively when one is stressed – losing your job, death in the family, divorce, etc. I think that largest single instance of rape is a woman by her ex-boyfriend, soon after they break up (though I may be wrong).
One answer, then, is simply that people make ill-advised choices when they are stressed. They act on their urges.
Most people won’t have the urge to rape another person, because the idea simply won’t pop into their head. Someone who was raped as a child will have the idea pop into their head. If they’re angry and just want to be mean to someone, well they know a good way to be mean to someone. If they’re tremendously lonely or horny, again, they know a way to solve that, without having to go through the hassle of dating. That’s not to say that they will act on it, but by virtue of knowing about it, the chance is raised.
There’s also the issue that, as a victim, they know that you can get away with it and how to do so. Even when we’re stressed out and angry, the lizard brain will kick in and warn us away from anything which seems like it’s just going to get us locked away for the rest of our lives. But if you don’t have the immediate reaction that Rape = Jailtime, then the chance that you will commit the crime raises just a bit more.
Further, there’s the issue that you may well be somewhat sociopathic. You might have inherited sociopathic genes (if such exist), or simply been beaten into a state of not really caring about others, just about yourself. Technically, this isn’t much different than the first reason – you’re horny, so what’s the closest piece of meat you have access to? However, the necessity for a catalyst – stress – goes down by a significant factor.
Wow, that was all a lot more useful even than I was expecting. Thanks for the two links in particular Toucanna and Wesley Clark. Seems like it is indeed a well-established psychological phenomenon, sadly.
Well, have we established that it happens that regularly? Most victims of sexual offenses are female, after all, and most perpetrators male so there you have a lot of victims who aren’t going on to offend.