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.
Sexual Abuse
We would all like to think that when something bad happens to someone that the justice system is just sitting there waiting to respond at a moment’s notice. Well this isn’t the fire department. And if you think that Special Victim’s Unit wrapping up a case on 60 minutes has any bearing on reality, you would be disappointed. The crimes may be the same, but the timelines are quite a bit different. At one point the time for a child sexual assault case to come to trial in New Haven Connecticut was 10 years. I suppose we should consider ourselves fortunate with only 4 years.
What’s Real
The reality is that courts are over capacity and in today’s economy, there just isn’t enough money to prosecute. One of the things we found was that 5 of the courts in Connecticut did not have victims advocates despite being mandated by state statutes. When we pushed the issue we were told by the Office of Victim Services that unless we could prove that our civil rights were being violated, they could’t do anything about it. We eventually got one after about a year and a half, but this is just one of the ways economics affects the abuse process.
In the normal course of budget shortfalls you will routinely see positions go unfilled for as long as people can stand the inconvenience. With today’s economy, things are a little different. In Topeka Kansas the county has elected to no longer prosecute misdemeanor crime. 4th degree child sexual assault and risk of injury of a minor generally fall into this area. In addition to pushing these cases off the books the city council is considering “repealing the part of the code that bans domestic abuse” . What an easier way to reduce the cost of fighting crime. Eliminate the activity as a crime and then you don’t have to prosecute it.
If You Don’t Like the Answer…
In Hartford, CT the schools started asking children if they had been sexually abused. The system couldn’t handle the number of cases. So what did they do? They stopped asking the question. Several years ago I spoke before a state senate panel regarding child sexual abuse. During the session I directed a question to the Commissioner of the Department of Children and Families and was told “if the child is safe in their home, we can’t help you”. I’m paraphrasing, and I don’t mean for it to sound cold, it’s just how things are setup. And I actually worked for the Department of Children and Families at the time. Organizationally, if you aren’t arrested or in foster care your service choices are limited.
So where does that leave us in a time when state and local budgets are being cut back to the bare bones? First advocate for your child in whatever systems you have available to you. Second educate yourself to help your child through whatever challenges they are likely to face in their lifetime. And third try to find a success path for your child that is not dependent on government services or the outcome of a trial. The cavalry isn’t always going to come to the rescue. Even when they do, that isn’t always the key to long term success. Ultimately the tools are within you and your child. You just need to find them and figure out the right path. And what’s the cost of that…priceless!
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
The challenges of being a parent who’s child has been sexually abused go on for a very, very, very long time. Clothing sizes and hair color are likely to change in the process. You’ve probably said “I can’t do this anymore” on more than one occasion. But then you wake up the next day and deal with the next batch of challenges. Chances are that you haven’t hit the breaking point yet.
One of my favorite movies is “The Count of Monte Cristo”. There is a scene where the priest tunnels into Edward’s cell for the first time. Edward hasn’t seen another human in years and has started to lose his mind. In an awkward introduction, he simply states that the number of stones in his cell and that he has counted them many times. To which the priest replies, “Yes – but have you named them yet?”. Edward breaks down at this point and begins his transformation.
Real World
Several years ago I met several of the Iran hostages. One of the men said he got in the habit of talking to his watch. His captors were convinced they had radios of some sort. He did this to try and screw with them. Instead he realized that the cameras that were pointed at them around the clock weren’t actually working. On a regular basis the hostages were taken into a freezer, stripped, and forcefully interrogated. One day one of the men had enough and told his captors to simply kill him and he wasn’t going to answer any more questions. They didn’t kill him and that was the last time anyone was taken to the freezer.
There is a moment between insanity and clarity where something breaks the cycle of your thoughts. Your brain can reboot and things start working again. I wish there was a magic formula for getting there. Sadly facing death is a common element for many people. It’s sort of a cliche but that which does not kill you does make you strong.
If you have simply given up, chances are that most of your tomorrows will be a reflection of today. If instead you keep pushing ahead and challenging what is holding you back, you have a chance to break through. It will probably be the hardest thing you do in your life. But once you have dealt with an impossible situation, a world of possibilities open up to you.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Parenting
If you are a parent dealing with your child’s sexual abuse, you may find that holidays take on a new dimension. They may not be as much fun or you may dread them all together. If this describes your holiday season, you may be wondering how you got here. Welcome to survival mode. You probably entered it sometime after the abuse. The brain assesses basic needs and much like a computer goes into safe mode. It might get you back working again, but you may not to be able to do everything.
Safe Mode
If this was your computer, you would have powered down, and rebooted. Things would have come back up normally and you would have gone back to doing what you were doing. But you never rebooted, and so you are still running in safe mode. Holidays, birthdays and other special occasions fall into that category of higher level function that your brain has difficulty accessing without the reboot. Getting to the reboot is the hard part.
I don’t have an easy answer to get to where you want to be. It takes time, and a little bit of practice. Here’s a simple exercise that may help you get part of the way there. Take out a piece of paper and write the alphabet down the left side. Now for each letter write “I am grateful for (something that starts with that letter)” when you are done, fold it up and put it in your wallet or purse for later use. You may need a reminder from time to time. You may not notice any difference right away but you will be flexing your mental muscles and rebuilding pathways that might have been dormant for a while.
This may not be the year for happy holidays, but with a little bit of practice, the ghost of Christmas past may bring out some changes yet. There’s always next year.
God Bless Us Everyone!
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Sexual Abuse
When a parent finds out that their child has been molested, aside from wishing it didn’t happen, the main thing people want is justice. There should be some sort of universal balancing, usually through the legal system, that leaves you with a sense that the offender has paid for his/her crime. This is the promise of the legal system when you walk through doors of a police station or district attorney’s office. They are going to get the bad guy and make them pay for their crimes. Great, sign me up!
Reality Test
Reality is a lot less cut and dry. The justice system is a well orchestrated dance that we as victims simply provide the basis for it’s continue momentum. In one respect it is there to protect us, and in another it is there to protect the process. The promises of the justice system represent the best intentions of the system, but not necessarily the reality that it will bring into your life. So go into the halls of justice with your eyes open.
If you get the justice you are looking for – congratulations! Chances are it will fall a little short of your expectations. The one thing that isn’t optional is supporting your child to grow past their abuse, and not let it define their life. There’s a saying that living well is the best revenge. So let a good life for your child be your focus in dealing with their abuse because justice is optional.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
