Sexual Abuse
Last week Jerry Sandusky was officially sentenced and the letters to the court from Jerry and Dottie Sandusky were publicized. Basically they blamed the system and labeled everyone who testified against them as liars. Anyone who has testified against an abuser has heard the same thing. Having read similar letters, they seem to have a similar tone. They have sort of a memoiresque quality to them, as if they were written for an audience. It’s not an appeal, it’s more of a narration of events. It’s not until you get to the end he says something curious, “I know in my heart, I didn’t do these disgusting act.” When was the last time you heard that type of phrasing? Imagine if your child told you, “I know in my heart, I did not eat the cookie.” It sounds even stranger when you try to use it in a different context. I basically read this as they are things that go against everything he believes in, and he can’t reconcile himself that he is responsible.
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
This logic plays itself out in virtually every high profile abuse case. Prominent men, dedicated to kids and the community, are doing things that go against everything they stand for in the public eye. The public can’t reconcile it, and logically it shouldn’t be true, so calling victims liars makes perfect sense. It’s basic logic – I do good things, these are bad things, therefore I could not have done them. By the same token you can say I like to go south in the winter, birds go south in the winter, therefore I must be a bird. It looks obviously stupid when you see it on paper, but watching it play out in real life or in a court room isn’t as clear. Sexual abuse is about deception in a series of relationships that we want to be able to trust. We want our world to make sense and when things don’t make sense we revert to the simplest answer that does makes sense. And whether that is something we tell ourselves, or tell the world, just because it makes sense logically doesn’t make it true.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse victim situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Parenting, Sexual Abuse
A few months ago the phrase “Jerry’s Kids” brought to mind a charitable organization that has helped children for years. Now it’s more aptly associated with Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State sexual assault victims. There are some interesting parallels. Both center around non profit agencies for children. The question of motivation is where things get muddy. Both organizations clearly value and try to further the interests of children. It’s still mind boggling when organizations with an unquestionable purpose actually turn out to have a dark side.
I use the term mind boggling figuratively. But there is a very real component of this conflict of reality that most people’s brains can’t comprehend both conditions existing. The brain tends to be binary in it’s early stages of learning. There are good people and bad people. The possibility of both existing within the same person is a concept that the brain would rather ignore than accept because it violates the rules.
Brain Damage
If you are a Star Trek fan you will remember an episode where an entity takes over the computer. The crew is able to destroy the evil entity by giving the computer an impossible problem to solve. It basically crashes (Sorry for the spoiler if you are just rediscovering the Star Trek series). People’s brains do the same thing. They want to crash and reboot when they encounter something that shouldn’t be possible. If you have ever lost work when your computer crashes, memories can equally be lost when our brains try to convince us that what we experience is not real and should therefore be ignored. This is one of the reasons why so many people come forward years later. Pieces of new information allow them to recognize events as real.
In our daily lives we are surrounded by organizations that are setup to serve children. The assumption is that their purposes are purely motivated and they are run by good people. It’s a reasonable assumption that is generally true until it isn’t. What’s even more confusing is that the children who are often getting the most positive attention, are also the ones who are being abused. We all need to get our brains to recognize that the lines between good and bad frequently blur. The sooner we can identify this incongruency in the organizations that serve children, the sooner we can begin to deal with the evil entities that sometimes take up home in them.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse victim situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
