Sexual abuse of children: how to overcome its consequences

The most dangerous situation, according to most parents, is a meeting with a rapist on the street. The offender usually chooses deserted places: parks, wastelands, basements, entrances, or breaks into an apartment, making sure that there are no adults in it. It is not uncommon for the perpetrator to use a weapon (gun, knife, or fake) or simply to intimidate the child. These can be direct threats (“I will kill you”) or manipulations such as “If you make a peep or say a word to someone, then I will kill your parents (brother, sister), and you will be guilty of their death.”

At this moment, children often experience numbness, which is what the criminal uses. Quite often, the child then asks himself if he could have done something differently, and «gets stuck» in a state of self-flagellation. Therefore, upon learning about violence, the first thing adults should do is support the child, emphasize that he did well, did everything right, remained alive and shared what happened with adults.

Complete Emotes

A child who has experienced violence retains incompleteness of emotions in relation to the offender. Incomplete emotions are stored in the body and can lead to both muscle excitation and muscle “freezing”, apathy, depressive states, regression, which occurs because the child constantly experiences a feeling of helplessness, hopelessness. Typical phrases of people in this state are “I can’t influence anything”, “What can I do?”, “You can’t change anything”, “I have no strength.” Quite often, children (especially boys) «run away» from this helplessness into computer games, where there is no physical interaction and responsibility for real actions.

The child drives deep, displaces heavy emotions into the unconscious. Undoubtedly, it is better to contact a specialist who has experience working with children who have experienced violence, but if this is not possible, you can try to help the child express his emotions. To do this, you can take a punching bag or pillow and give the child the opportunity to direct his aggression towards the offender to this bag or pillow.

In other words, it can (and should) be beaten until the emotion subsides and the object ceases to be of interest to the child. If you can get the abuser out of the center of your child’s thoughts and fears, it will be much easier for him to turn this page in his life and move on.

Another way to extract repressed emotions is a tray (iron or tin). The child can, imagining the one who hurt him in the form of a tray, throw his offender on the floor and shout out on the exhale: “Go away!” The noise that occurs when the tray falls provokes an additional emotional inclusion of the child and stimulates the release of repressed emotions.

Initially, as practice shows, the child throws the tray uncertainly and barely pronouncing the words. But the support of a close adult allows the child to gradually enter this process in full force and thus not only draw out unfinished emotions, but also complete them.

Needless to say, boys and girls experience violence differently. For boys, society and relatives in one way or another form an image of themselves as a protector, a fighter, a winner, so the feeling of being sexually used for a boy is perhaps an even more traumatic experience than for a girl. He has, on the one hand, a feeling of his own weakness and failure, and on the other hand, the inferiority of himself as a representative of the male sex and, in some cases, a loss of confidence in his natural sexual orientation.

Often the first question a boy asks a psychologist is: “Am I different now? Am I homosexual now? Asking this painful and difficult question, the boy is waiting for adults to confirm that what happened to him did not violate his masculinity, did not cast doubt on his masculinity.

Liberation Through Regret

However, even a completed emotion of aggression can lead to the development of destructive life scenarios in a child. Therefore, the next step in helping should be the transformation of the emotion of aggression, hatred into the emotion of compassion for the rapist. In this case, the child retains aversion to the actions of the aggressor, but experiences indulgence for his mental illness.

When talking with a child, you need to show him that the perpetrator of violence is a weak and embittered person, deprived of love: “What do you think: a person who is capable of violence against a child is a strong person or a weak one? Can he be kind? Where does anger for the whole world come from? Perhaps he did not need anyone? But if his parents loved him when he was little, could he become kind? .. It is a pity that not all parents love their children … Come to me (hug the child at the same time), because we are really lucky with you, we we know what love is. You are my dearest son (or daughter), and there is no one dearer to me in the whole world. I love you very much…»

The person for whom we feel regret ceases to pose a threat to us, we are no longer afraid of him, and accordingly, he loses his significance in our eyes. But it is important that both we and the child continue to condemn the act of the rapist, so as not to fall into the trap of the «Stockholm syndrome» (when the victim fully justifies both the personality of the aggressor and all his actions).

The child is not to blame!

The role of parents in overcoming the trauma of the child is extremely great. Often it is the parents who exacerbate the situation and contribute to the development of post-traumatic syndrome. First of all, by blaming their child for what happened. Parents should remember that a child in sexual interaction with an adult cannot be guilty, since his psychological resource is obviously less than that of an adult. Responsibility for any form of violence against a child always lies with the elder; no matter how provocative or frivolous the child’s behavior (or appearance), no one has the right to violence, especially sexual.

Parents will first have to come to terms with what happened, so that later, without mentioning the past, they can talk about how the child can protect himself in the future. If parents experience a state of grief and cannot get out of it, then they constantly return the child to the traumatic event, giving it additional significance. In this situation, parents need urgent psychological help, for example, art therapy methods.

If the aggressor is an acquaintance or family friend

The traumatization of the child is no less severe in the case when the perpetrator belongs to the close environment of the child (father’s friend, neighbor, relative of a girlfriend or friend, teacher, coach). There is a myth that only men are sexual abusers. This is not the case, although women are less likely to experience sexual perversions. Having experienced sexual claims from a loved one, the victim ceases to trust people, and subsequently any attempt to get close to a grown child, to cross the line between social and intimate-psychological distance leads to the activation of psychological trauma.

For example, I was approached by a young girl who experienced a panic fear of male doctors. On a social level, she communicated well with them (as with family friends), but when she came to see a male doctor, she felt a panic attack at the first touch, that is, when she moved to an intimate psychological level. In the course of psychotherapeutic work, it turned out that at the age of six she survived an attempted rape. After working through this trauma, her condition improved significantly, and she was able to access male doctors.

The abuser most often uses a range of strategies to engage a child in sexual interaction. First, he tries to win over the child to himself, then he looks for an excuse to be alone and forms a sense of security in the child in his presence, trying to convince him of the naturalness of their communication. At the next stage, the rapist begins to use elements of sexual play, which gradually turn into more open scenes of a sexual nature. However, as a rule, the offender in conversations with the child focuses on the positive side of what they will do.

Here are some examples from practice: “I know such an interesting game. At first it seems awkward to play it, but then you will get a lot of fun … «,» Now we will play a nice game with prizes with you … «(a child is bribed),» You are already an adult, and it’s time to teach you how to have sex. You don’t want to be incompetent, you have to prove to everyone that you are a master, ”etc.

So the child is involved in an incomprehensible situation. On the one hand, he feels embarrassed about what is offered to him and what is being done to him. On the other hand, the person who offers this is well known and inspires a sense of trust. To consolidate his own position, the rapist gradually leads the child to the idea that what he does is quite natural and everyone does it. More often, the process develops from innocent touches to intimate caresses, which eventually turn into sexual intercourse.

By manipulating the child, the rapist over time transfers his responsibility to him, blaming him for what is happening: “I wouldn’t touch you if I didn’t see how you yourself want it …”, “Look what you did to me (a), I I think about you all the time… This would never have happened if you hadn’t given a reason / didn’t look so defiant. The purpose of such manipulations is to keep the child silent. Over time, psychological pressure increases, the child is taught that everything that happens is a secret, a secret for the elite.

When the child already reaches the state when he is ready to reveal what is happening to him, the rapist more often moves to new strategies: ridicule, humiliation, intimidation. He tells the victim that everyone, having learned about his shame, will laugh at him and point the finger at him. In order for the child to feel his “dishonor” more sharply, the criminal sometimes films what is happening on video, and then begins to blackmail the child with the fact that if he let it slip, these records will be posted on the Internet. If the parents are divorced, this gives the manipulator an additional argument: “Your father no longer needs you, do you really think that when your mother finds out what you are doing, she will not drive you away?”

Recognize alarms

Often the child hints to parents about the desperate situation he is in, but parents usually do not pay attention to these signals. Signs of sexual coercion may be a sharp transition from friendship with an adult or sympathy for him to a clear reluctance to go to visit him or to classes. The child stops talking about this person, and at the mention of his name shrinks, as if becoming smaller. Even with unambiguous remarks from a son or daughter, parents can, instead of listening and understanding the situation, begin to put pressure on the child, accusing him of ingratitude: “How can you talk like that about such a wonderful person who did you so much good!”

Therefore, the main rule for parents: listen to children, be able to hear them. Of course, a child may use such accusations as a means of manipulation or as a way to get revenge on an adult who has not satisfied his needs. Therefore, if you yourself cannot determine the degree of veracity of the child’s words, you should contact a psychologist. But under no circumstances should one turn away from the words of a child. This only drives him into a corner and prevents him from getting out of a traumatic situation.

Should you contact the police?

This question is also important for parents, and the answer to it can be only one: it is necessary to apply, since the rapist can harm other children as well. However, each parent must decide for himself how much to be included in the subsequent proceedings, based on the interests of the child: for some children, the investigation and trial can be a difficult test and aggravate psychological trauma, for others, on the contrary, the absence of such a process will be evidence that relatives are indifferent, what happened to him (or her). In order for the process of experiencing trauma to be completed, he/she needs justice to be done.