FeminismIsFree!

My childhood and adolescence were perhaps unfortunate from both a socioeconomic perspective and from a family dysfunctionality perspective. I tend to not go into much more detail than that and when I do, it is usually both very sparsely presented and moved on from as quickly as possible, for various reasons. However, for the purposes of this post, I will choke out a little more information than usual, because it’s relevant.

Warning: Somewhat graphic descriptions of child abuse below.

One interesting thing about said disadvantaged childhood is that at the time I was living it, I didn’t actually realize how bad it was. That was in part because children tend to accept whatever situation they are in personally as the default situation; without ever actually articulating it to themselves, they believe that everybody’s lives are the same as theirs. However, that was not the main reason. The main reason was that my life, bad as it was in many ways, was still a hell of a lot better than the lives of most of my little friends.

Nobody ever raped me as a reward for getting all A’s on my report card. Nobody ever raped me because he showed me his penis and could tell from the way I looked at it that I wanted it inside me. Nobody ever made me smear honey on my genitals and hold my legs apart while a dog licked it off me while he took pictures. Nobody ever told me that I wasn’t washing myself clean enough down there and made sure that every night he got the inside of my vagina thoroughly clean with his soapy finger. Nobody ever put me in a bathtub filled with too-hot water and scrubbed me with a toilet brush and Ajax. Nobody ever threw a big book at me, broke my arm, then ignored my weeping and inability to move that swollen purple limb for three days before kicking me into the truck and driving me to the emergency room of the nearest big city and telling me that if I didn’t lie about it I’d get worse. Nobody ever pinned me down and pinched my nose shut so I couldn’t breathe and and poured an entire bottle of tabasco sauce down my wide-open mouth into my throat. Nobody ever beat me with a board on the back of the head so hard that blood flew out of my nose and I couldn’t hear for a week.

There are more examples, but I would like to stop now, please. The above nonsexual abuse events I witnessed firsthand. The sexual abuse events were told to me by the various victims, ranging anywhere from the day after the incident occurred to years and years later during very private conversations. Consider this, then, a curriculum vitae of sorts–my qualifications in the world of child abuse–to not only know for certain that it both exists and is widely practiced, but the signs and symptoms that both the children and their homes and families display that corroborate the signs of abuse.

For my hypotheses on children lying about abuse, I have to rely on articles, books and studies I have read over the years, as I never encountered it firsthand. Of all the abuse I witnessed, only one child had ever experienced legal intervention of any kind, and that was before I knew her; she was the girl whose stepfather scalded and scoured her with toilet cleanser in the bath. The only reason I knew of any legal intervention is because she mentioned once that it (the scalding and scouring) was still better than what her father used to do to her. When I tentatively inquired what that was, she said, “That sex stuff,” and that he got sent to jail for it. No one else had any legal intervention, positive or negative, interfere with the hellish tenor of their lives. So I also have to rely on my rather wide-ranging reading on the subject to hypothesize about what might happen when the legal system does get involved. I have read a great deal on the subject, though, especially in my younger days when I was fairly desperate to comprehend why, why, why.

The following arguments against mandatory sentencing and capital punishment for child rapists have been proposed to me:

1. In prosecuting child rapists, the human rights of the accused rapist should be held to be more important than the emotional and psychological well-being of the alleged abused child.

2. A child who has severe emotional issues resulting from childhood trauma lies all the time about being sexually abused, both about who did it to them and about being sexually abused at all, ever. A reason suggested for this is to “get attention.”

3. A child who is mentally ill lies all the time about being sexually abused, both about who did it to them and about being sexually abused at all, ever. A reason suggested for this is to “get attention.”

4. A child who is telling the truth about being sexually abused, if the abuser is a known and cared-for or previously trusted individual to the child, would feel terrible if that individual was sent to jail for life based on the child’s testimony. It may be more traumatic for a child to send an abuser to jail, on top of the trauma of being abused, than it is for the abuse to stop because the child sent the abuser to jail.

5. Advocating for children to help send their abusers to jail is teaching children bloodlust.

6. Children who have never been sexually abused may get the idea to claim it has happened to them because they heard another child talking about it or they saw it on the Internet or on TV.

My thoughts on these arguments:

1. I disagree. I believe that they should be held to be equally important and I truly can’t imagine why anyone would think otherwise–the emotional and psychological well-being of a child is an intrinsic part of the human rights of any child, and that is also basically the same concern we have for the accused rapist–he is being threatened with a jail sentence, where he will be more than adquately fed, clothed, and sheltered–jail will distress him primarily emotionally and psychologically. Why should his well-being be more important than the child’s, then?

2. Mentally normal children almost exclusively only develop severe emotional issues in childhood from, you guessed it, abuse. In other words, any child exhibiting that behavior is proving, by exhibiting it, that the cause attributed to it is true. Now, these children, who likely have been sexually abused, are probably the group of children most likely to lie about who and when and etc. However, one thing that they don’t do is accuse family members. That is definitely a red flag. On the rare occasions…and I would like to point out how much rarer it is that children are lying than telling the truth, and any cursory search of the literature will confirm this…that these children do falsely accuse, without any adult leading or encouraging or threatening them (as with the eight-year-old girl in the recent Supreme Court death penalty case) to do so, a truly innocent person, it will tend to be a person from whom they feel safe from reprisals, such as a teacher or social worker that actually shows signs of caring for them, or someone who is mentally disabled in some way.

3. It is true that children who are genuinely mentally ill as children can actually weave these kind of fabrications from nothing. However, genuine childhood mental illness, not trauma-induced, is also extraordinarily rare. (The prognosis for any recovery and normal adult life is also extraordinarily poor. The articles on the subject of, for instance, childhood schizophrenia, are very depressing.)

4. It is true that what any abused child wants most of all, in the cases where the abusive adult is a parent or other close trusted individual, is for the abuse to magically stop overnight and for that person to stay with them and love them in a NORMAL fashion for the rest of their lives. And when children learn that their choice really is either the end of the abuse or the end of the relationship period, if the abuse is not actually crippling, disfiguring or killing them, often they suffer additional misery. However, I did also get to see the results, several times over, of when the abuse is not stopped. My impression from reading and personal experience is that the guilt and loneliness after an abuser is removed from the child’s environment fades by adulthood and is replaced by relief and gratitude. I can tell you for a fact that when the abuser is not removed and the abuse continues until adulthood, there is no fading and the damage usually lasts well into the later adult years, if not for the lifetime. It does suck that the child endures increased trauma either way. However, there is such a difference in the long-term recovery that ending the abuse should be pursued without hesitation as far as the child’s well-being is concerned.

5. I fail to understand how teaching a child about justice and proving to them that they deserve to be protected from harm is teaching them “bloodlust.” Most abused children are left with the strong impression that nobody really cares what happens to them; finding out that there are a great many people that think it is horrible and awful and want to save them seems like it could only do them a world of good, psychologically speaking. But perhaps someone has an angle that I lack on the subject.

6. I watched probably as much TV as the next kid. While the Internet did not really yet exist, my mother had interesting sexual tastes and left a great deal of reading material and VHS tapes lying around that would curl the hair of most adults, never mind children. “Explicit” is possibly too mild a word. And as you read above, I certainly spent a fair amount of my childhood hearing other children talk about sexual abuse. However, I had no incentive nor desire to ever accuse any adult of sexually abusing me; not only did I not want to do it, it never even remotely occurred to me. So my firsthand experience says, This does not happen in statistically significant enough numbers that we should really put it on our top ten list of concerns when a child comes to us claiming abuse…aside from articles written by men’s rights activists, who clearly have an agenda, no other literature I have come across appears to disagree with me. The Salem witch trials were a historical anomaly, fascinating of course, but not the dynamic that explains the majority of cases of young children accusing adults of abusing them, I’m afraid.

Well, this post wasn’t too much fun. I hope it gives anybody interested out there food for thought, though.

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