For A Child's Sake
Gregory K. Moffatt, Ph.D.
I would like to discuss with you a disturbing issue that will not go away. In twenty years of practice, I have noticed a troubling pattern. Among my adult clients, especially women, a strong majority were sexually or physically abused as children. Among my child clients, many of them are, or have been, sexually or physically abused. Some of these children are physically abused or neglected by well-meaning parents/guardians who have used inappropriate forms of discipline. Some are simply the victims of brutal adults who elect to take out their wrath on those who are helpless to defend themselves or those who selfishly pursue their own physical urges regardless of the cost.
Three terms are important to this discussion: neglect, sexual abuse, and physical abuse. Neglect is failure to meet a child's basic needs (food, shelter, emotional needs, etc.). Sexual abuse is exploitation of a child, which includes fondling a child, forcing a child to watch sexual acts, intercourse with a child, and a variety of other forms of sexual contact. Physical abuse includes burning, scalding, pinching, bruising, cutting, breaking of bones, and other physical acts that injure the child either temporarily or permanently.
Several things about these victims and abusers remain consistent. Abuse, both sexual and physical, is not class bound. It happens in homes that net six figures and it happens in homes that are on welfare. It happens in minority families, in white families, in religious families, and in secular ones. Abuse nearly always continues until there is some intervention - either legal, religious, or therapeutic. Abusers often want to stop but they cannot. They may sincerely apologize to children and to spouses for their behavior and they make promises that "nothing like this will ever happen again." These promises will be broken.
Abusers may believe they have a right to engage in the acts they commit. Spouses who are aware of the abuse wish it would go away and ignoring it often seems the easiest way to deal with it. The reality of abuse is sometimes so painful to a spouse that he or she may simply refuse to believe what is obvious. Spouses often cannot bring themselves to deal with sexual or physical abuse that is being committed by the partner on a child because legal or therapeutic intervention means betrayal of the loved one. A bad situation, then, just seems then to get worse.
If children survive the abuse, they grow bitter, apathetic, and are more likely to have relationship struggles as adults. They are more likely to become pregnant as teenagers and to engage in dysfunctional and abusive relationships. Abused children are more likely to abuse their own children as they become parents themselves.
In my practice I have seen children who have been burned with cigarettes for crying. I have seen children who have watched as a sibling was beaten to death. I have seen children who have been shot, had skull-fractures, brain damage, broken bones, teeth knocked out, and noses broken. I have worked with clients who were sexually abused from as early as age two and for as many as ten or more years.
The only hope for intervention is for the abuser to seek help or for the spouse to decide that enough is enough and to help those who cannot help themselves. I am speaking for the helpless. I may be speaking for your child. Experience has taught me that, unless you act, the abuse will go on.
For help, contact a member of your religious community,
a therapist, or the County Department of Family and Children's
Services.