Karen A. Duncan, M.A., LMFT, LSW
A Frank Discussion on Family Sexual Abuse and Children
Documented reports, clinical studies and crime statistics indicate that the majority of children know the people who sexually abuse them. These adult and juvenile perpetrators are family members or someone that the family trusts and knows well. Incest, as studied over the past twenty years, focused mainly on sexual abuse of daughters by fathers. In clinical practice, this definition of sexual abuse became narrow and confining because it was learned that perpetrators could be other family members as well as individuals outside the family who were trusted by the family to be with the child. Therefore, the term "incest" restricted women from fully realizing the disruption and devastation of this trauma when the perpetrator was someone other than a girl's father.
For example, there are cases where women minimize the trauma of sexual abuse by a stepfather, uncle, brother, or cousin regardless of the type and frequency of sexual abuse perpetrated. When the perpetrator is not a father, there are women or family members who will view the harm done by the perpetrator to the child as "less than" the harm done to a child sexually abused by her father. The impact of this restricted definition of harm is that some women may not believe they deserve therapeutic treatment or may think they are exaggerating the problems they experience from childhood sexual abuse and downplay what happened to them. When this view exists within the family or our society, it translates into less support for a woman to recover from the trauma of sexual abuse and maintains a part of the denial system that abuse is not that bad.
All sexual abuse is traumatic and harmful. It profoundly disrupts a child's development in a multitude of ways affecting her life for years after the original trauma may have ended. While women are helped by recognizing the individual differences among them regarding how they have experienced the devastating effects of sexual abuse, they are not helped by placing conditions that predicate whether they deserve to heal or will receive support in seeking therapeutic treatment. Each woman deserves to know that she is not the forgotten victim of childhood sexual abuse and that there is real hope that her life can be restored. Women can regain a sense of well-being and the happiness that was taken from them when this traumatic crime occurred to them as children.
Since the perpetrator often knows the child, this generally means that the child was sexually abused by someone who lived with her, who had access to her and the opportunity to sexually abuse her. Perpetrators are someone with a level of power, influence, or control over children and are protected to some degree by the family's rules of silence, belief system and denial. He was someone the child probably cared about and the child or family trusted. Therefore, the sexual abuse did not happen because of who a woman was as a child or what she did or did not do at the time the abuse occurred. The abuse happened because the perpetrator was in the child's family or trusted by the family and had access to her. Accepting this fact about the abuse and the perpetrator helps dissolve some of the responsibility women have carried about the actions of the perpetrator because it helps to challenge their misplaced blame or belief that the sexual abuse happened because of them. Challenging this false belief starts the process of transferring the responsibility of the abuse back onto the perpetrator, which is where it always belonged.
Sexual offenders abuse across the spectrum of children's ages. They abuse infants, toddlers, youngsters, and adolescents and they abuse a number of children over their lifetime until they are finally reported, exposed and no longer given the opportunity to sexually abuse. Medical, psychological and legal reports document the kind of harm children experience from sexual abuse. Perpetrators are not discriminatory when it comes to this crime. They create harm the moment they decide they are going to abuse a child. Children can be any age when the abuse begins while being unaware that they are being brought into the abusive cycle because perpetrators are calculated, manipulative and controlling in their intent to force sexual abuse upon children.
Women also report that the abuse occurred before or after they entered elementary school, before puberty or during adolescence. Remembering milestones such as holidays, birthdays, school years, where they lived, or when they moved assists women in identifying when and where the abuse began or ended and the age they were at the time of the abuse. Their young age or developmental stage is another aspect of remembering that helps women stop accepting responsibility for the abuse. While women do come to appreciate the strengths they had as children to survive this trauma, they also struggle to find a way to feel grateful that they lived through the abuse and the difficult years that have followed. Women have the right to feel outrage and sadness by how their lives have been continually disrupted and changed by the acts of a perpetrator. As a society we need to normalize what women know, feel and think about sexual abuse based on what they experience. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to the traumatic crime of childhood sexual abuse. It is important to remember that fear does not translate into consent and children are never able to consent to sexual abuse nor would they because they do not know what it is or how it is going to impact their lives until they have experienced it. What women remember long after the abuse has ended is the shame, humiliation, betrayal and confusion about what happened to them at the hands of someone they trusted.
Sexual Abuse and Distortions About Consent
Women also relate how the sexual abuse that happened during childhood caused them to blame themselves because they believed that somehow they had a role in their victimization because they did not tell or because they were confused by what they experienced especially if the "bad touch felt good". This is simply not true. Perpetrators manipulate a child's body as they force sexual abuse onto children. They present themselves as someone a child can trust. They speak to children and behave in a way that is meant to gain children's trust, confuse their thoughts and feelings, make them feel special and prevent children from telling. Adults in our society need to understand the perpetrator's cycle of abuse if they ever hope to stop this trauma from occurring to children. Most perpetrators are not remorseful for the sexual abuse of children, but they do regret getting caught and that is the reason the majority continue to lie about their crimes and deviant behavior even when they have admitted to some aspects of them. Few perpetrators fully disclose their crime and even fewer admit to their crime before being found out.
The behavior of teenage girls who have been sexually abused can sometimes be mislabeled as promiscuity rather than as a reenactment of the abuse or an outcome of the behavior learned from the perpetrator. Many adolescent girls and even adult women are not able to say no to other people's sexual behavior because they are not even aware that they even have the right to do so. Some women share how the abuse by the perpetrator either began or continued during their adolescence and interfered with their ability to date or caused them to fear and avoid boys their own age. Some withdrew from social activities, which limited their choices and opportunities. They may have been confused about their sexual identity and what it means to have a close intimate relationship that is not sexual. Most discuss how their lives were restricted, inhibited, or dominated by the sexual abuse.
Often the perpetrator taught a child that to be accepted or loved she must behave as he taught her - passive, compliant, and non-demanding. A teenage girl's passive response to other people's behavior along with the ease by which she can be intimidated and confused is not readily overcome without help, support, understanding and assistance. Sexual abuse often sets in place destructive patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that are seldom recognized by women or those who know her as stemming from the sexual abuse.
As women heal, they learn that giving or withholding their consent with people they can trust comes with time and that their past behavior is more than likely a reflection of what they experienced during and after the sexual abuse. Jodi (age thirty-two) came to understand this difference: "Even if I did not say 'no,' my body was telling him not to do this to me. I felt the same way with boys, and later with men, who would try to coerce me or pressure me to be sexual."
Teresa (age forty-one) shared that "Today I know when I am giving consent and when I am not or when someone is trying to force me to go along with them."
Women did not consent to be sexually abused and they did not determine how the abuse would disrupt their lives. Neither the abuse nor its effects were caused by women when they were children. Both simply and tragically occur through no fault of the child's or the woman she became.