In this second installment of the planned series on child abuse in childhood, we are going to focus this time on one of the most painful aspects for the victim, the blindness of the people responsible for the care and attention of the child.
This fact, above any other consideration, defines like no other the feeling of loneliness, “fog” and helplessness of the abused infant, especially when the “blind” caregiver is none other than the mother or, where appropriate, the father.
Indeed, in our daily experience in therapy, the phrase like: “almost more than the abuse itself, the most terrible thing, what hurt the most was that my mother, above all, did not see it, or if she saw it, she did not do nothing”. Even if the boy or girl has the courage and strength to tell it, on many occasions it collides with the disbelief of the close caregiver. “What really broke me is that mom didn’t believe me. She couldn’t understand it.”
Situations of lack of protection against child sexual abuse
The impact on the boy or girl, innocent victims of an aggression that is sometimes incomprehensible to them, in the face of the indifference of the figures closest to them emotionally speaking, is, as is well known, devastating, and will be the subject of subsequent reflection.
On this occasion we want to focus above all on the figure of attachment, especially the mother. In most cases, mothers don’t even realize what is happening., because in the case of not having suffered a traumatic experience of this type, thinking that your husband, uncle, the trusted caregiver in whom you have placed the safety of your son or daughter, or in your case the priest that guides them spiritually, they are doing something bad to their children, it does not enter their heads. As I sometimes tell mothers, “that possibility wasn’t in the control panel of your brain.”
It is also true that sometimes we find absent mothers, who do not pay enough attention to the behavioral and psychological changes, sometimes significant, that occur in their children. This emotional neglect by omission is also common.
But, in our experience, even more common is the fact that many mothers literally cannot accept this reality and prefer to look the other way.
The victim may be threatened to make her deny the facts rather than face the reality that is occurring, since glimpsing both the preference for the daughter and her passive role in the abuse cannot be digested, and defenses are put into action, whether they are denial, minimization or idealization.
On other occasions the mother is pre-aware of what is happening at home, but chooses silence simply out of fear. Whether direct fear, because she has also been abused or violated by the aggressor, or indirect, by having an economic, emotional or any type of dependence, which makes it impossible for her to protect herself and herself. There are also cases, perhaps less frequent, but in a non-negligible number, where Priority is given to the relationship they maintain with the abuser, social status and family subsistence..
It is curious, but this last type of omission, although it occurs in all types of social strata, is especially common in the wealthiest class, where the family institution is an untouchable and immovable bastion. Actually this phenomenon of the family, recognized by all as the basic institution on which our entire social fabric is based, acts as a deterrent when it comes to becoming aware of a fact that calls the institution into question. This is the burden that weighs on the victim, the lid of his coffin and the cause that explains many of the negligence by omission described above.
However, this article does not want to and should not fall into the easy temptation of blaming mothers for what has happened to their children. This simplistic, blaming view has been common in specialized literature. over the years, especially if the abuse has been committed by the male parent. Thus Cartes, Gavey, Florence, Pezaro & Tan, Shonberg, Womack, Miller, Lassiter… abound in the role of the mother as an accomplice, knowledgeable, negligent and even facilitator of abuse.
This vision has also been transferred to clinical practice in psychotherapy with victims of child abuse; It is born from the social expectation of a perfect mother, capable of protecting her children from any danger.harm or suffering and, ultimately, the figure with the greatest influence on everything that happens in the family and solely responsible for the well-being and safety of the children.
Two approaches
Caroline Sinclair and Josefina Martinez, in their beautiful work: “Guilt or responsibility; therapy for mothers of girls and boys who have suffered sexual abuse”, they distinguish between Two approaches to dealing with mothers of abused children: blame approach and responsibility approach.
The guilt approach places emphasis on the deficits, emphasizing the role of the mother in the occurrence of the abuse, which in a certain way represents a judgment on the person and ends up paralyzing a fundamental resource for therapy. This approach will provoke a resistant and defensive attitude in the mother, which will not help the therapeutic process at all.
At Vitaliza we lean and act from the perspective of responsibility, which places more emphasis on competencies than on deficits, and emphasizes the mother’s role in reparation. This implies analyzing concrete actions, not easy and general visions, which activates resources and favors the association and reunion of the victim with the mother, with all the benefit that this brings to the reprocessing and healing process.
Without going into simplistic evaluations, as we have stated above, most of the time the mother is still a vicarious victim of her children’s abuse, and although her non-action has a devastating impact on the victim’s loneliness, her person is not a figure to blame but to integrate into the psychotherapeutic support of the victim.
Author: Javier Elcarte, psychologist specializing in trauma. Founder and director of Vitaliza.
