To ask how can anyone abuse a child, unless they are on drugs?

[Howcantheydothat]

I have some mild childhood sexual abuse in my past. I say 'mild' slightly bitterly, because it affected me badly - it should never have happened and no level of abuse is ok, but what I mean is it wasn't violent, sustained or rape. Just a couple of isolated incidents of inappropriate and revolting behaviour that should not have happened. My memories are hazy, I remember up to a point and then my mind locks down with flashes of awful things. I get frightened and upset, and sometimes have horrific feelings in my body. I've basically made my peace with the fact I will never know exactly what happened and the body memories, and tbh they don't happen so much nowadays.

None of what happened to me was due to drugs but I think there was drink involved, but can't be sure as I was so small.

Sometimes I just can't deal with the fact that there are people out there who do these things. I know that in warzones where they have boy soldiers, etc, boys and adult men are often given drugs which can lead to the most horrendous sexual violence against women and girls. At least with powerful hallucinogenic drugs, and an environment where they are being encouraged to rape etc, there is sort of a reason. I am not saying for a second it's an excuse but if they are in a false reality, and perhaps it feels like an immersive video game or something, well then I think it's a reason as to why they might do horrendous acts.

But what I really cannot understand is how someone can hurt a small child, sober and sane and knowing the suffering they are inflicting on someone - physical, emotional and mental.

What does that say about the human race? It challenges the assumption that most of us are basically good? Because there seems to be a huge amount of people who want to do really shitty things to children. Abuse is everywhere, or it feels that way.

How can you do stuff like that and the rest of the time go about your normal life like you're not seriously damaging a vulnerable person? How?

It doesn't make sense, it goes against everything that is kind and good in the world.

People are evil. Simply put.
My abuser knew exactly what he was doing when he sexually abused me ever week for 11 years. From the age of four until I was sixteen.

I'm so sorry, Darkriver.

It's got nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with male entitlement.

I'm sorry.

They don't care :( They don't think about the child(ren) they are harming as being a real person. It's pure selfishness and no further thought or consideration at all.

I'm very sorry you've been harmed in this way. I struggle to get my head around how anyone could do this as well.

I do think that most people are basically good, though. It is a small proportion of people who abuse and a smaller number who abuse children.

In respect of neglect/emotional and sometimes physical abuse it is not always deliberate - parents are sometimes unable to parent/protect their children for a myriad of reasons far beyond their control.

Sexual and other deliberate abuses are an entirely different matter and I have no idea what would make anyone justify their sctions8

"They don't think about the child(ren) they are harming as being a real person. It's pure selfishness and no further thought or consideration at all."

I agree with this.

How though do you get to adulthood without realising children are human beings in their own right, with a right to live in safety and dignity?

What goes wrong inside an abuser's head that they don't recognise the person they hurt as another human being?

Bertie it is not an insignificant minority unfortunately. Between 1 in 4 and 1 in 5 children are abused. It is common and there literally is an abuser around every corner. It is cognitive dissonance that people can’t put those 2 facts together.

Part of the reason it is so prevalent is because people can’t handle it and do everything they can to prevent it from coming out from under the carpet.

A very large proportion of people are cruel and evil. There's no rationalising their behaviour because they enjoy inflicting pain on others and feel no remorse.

Between 1 in 4 and 1 in 5 children are abused.
That's a gobsmacking statistic.

My mum is physically and emotionally abusive. In her case, she's not a product of abuse but sees her children as property who don't have emotional needs themselves (ie Her needs are a top priority but fuck her kids needs) She's a vile person who thinks that I'm outrageous for being NC for over 15 years. (I am in secret contact with a sibling)

IAmWonko, completely agree with you

My abusive father abused me and my DSis from a very early age, I had problems underneath from under 3 years of age, so it may well have started then and gone on until the the age of 13, when I gave birth to a baby that died. He also allowed others to abuse us.

He was also emotionally abusive towards our DM, though I can only see that as an adult looking back.

some people abuse because they are terribly depressed and angry at their life situation.

Not insignificant, no. I hope it can change within our lifetimes. I do think with modern trends of emphasising and encouraging development of empathy in children, particularly boys, things could change although of course children are still growing up in horrendous circumstances and sometimes that childhood hurt manifests in people who go on to abuse too.

I don't think it's a case of not realising children are real people. Unless somebody has severe narcisissm and doesn't see anybody as a real person except themselves, of course they know - it's just dissociating for the sake of your own momentary pleasure. To be honest we probably all do it to some extent. I don't think about the suffering of an animal when I eat meat, I don't think about child textile workers in factories when I buy convenient high street clothing. I look aside when I see a homeless person more often than not and on some level think "Not my problem". Everybody does this kind of thing, because we'd go mad if we took on the suffering of every situation we encounter.

That's not quite the same, because a person who abuses a child is causing direct harm to the person at the moment, they are faced with them. I don't understand that level of detachment, but I know that it exists because that is exactly how it happens. It is absolutely entitlement as somebody else said, they feel entitled to their sexual pleasure or the power thrill they get from dominating somebody vulnerable, whichever it is, and they dissociate in that moment from believing that the victim they choose is going to be hurt or damaged by it long term. Maybe they know, and they feel guilty, but their own feelings are more important - or maybe they actually box it away so that they never have to confront it at all. Perhaps a small proportion even find that an extra bonus - but I don't find it helps to dwell too much on how a truly evil person's mind must work. The in between are what scare me more because they are so common and because that slip must be fairly easy to make, from the suffering we look away from on a daily basis to something which is deliberately caused through selfishness.

Lizzie that is horrendous, I am so sorry.

There I should no excuse ever for abusing a child
I have never accepted the concept of the abused becoming abusers
I had stuff happen as an adolescent
My number 1 priority is to protect my child and others from the same
And I am far from super Mum trust me — I f up regularly

Dear god .Lizzie hope you have had help so sorry for what you went through

Op I think some people are simply evil and cruel.

It really annoys me that people talk bollocks about those who have abused are likely to abuse!!! bollocks that’s an excuse. And it’s not true it there would be far more women abusers than men.

Evil Is evil snd we need to judge more and excuse less. .

ive

Sorry that’s utter bollocks.

Thank you all for volunteering your thoughts, and for sharing your experiences. I am so sorry to all of you who have suffered. It is hideous.

I'm struggling tonight. I mean, I'm fine, I'm a big girl and not remotely in harm's way, but it makes the world seem like a terrifying place to think of all these random shits out there. I'm also struggling with how what I experienced interacted with all the other stuff that was going on in my life, and just feel sad.

I want to walk back into my childhood as my adult self and take care of the little girl I was. We can never do that.

I can't get my head around a tiny baby simply being born evil. I don't think anyone is born evil, I think it's largely down to the environment they grow up in. Sure, personality traits will factor in, but I can't believe a child is born with evil in them that means when they grow up they will abuse.

Believing in 'evil' sounds almost too much like supernatural or religious talk to me. Reminds me of how women were burnt at the stake for being witches in these islands centuries ago, and how kids are sometimes accused of witchcraft even today in certain religious communities.

At the same time...I do believe strongly in the importance and presence of 'good' as a concept and an ethos and a strong theme of the human narrative, so if I believe in good then the flipside of that is, well, evil. I guess. I feel mixed up.

sadly when it comes to physical and emotional abuse sometimes it is just a shit life that tips someone over the edge and they then takes it out on the kids or dog.
a hard slap across the face because your boss treated you like dirt at work, forcing a child to clean up the toys on the floor because your partner is going to beat the crap out of you if the place is a mess.
sometimes the person is just in an terrible terrible place.

YY I don't really believe in evil. However there are rare people who take sadistic pleasure in other's suffering. I don't know what to call them other than evil. But I really think that is rare eventhough it's the image most people have of abusers.

I do think most abusers are playing out a product of their environment and have poor coping skills plus usually warped expectations, it's a toxic triangle. Sexual abuse it's more about that selfishness, entitlement, dissociation, maybe a twisted need for power. But I thought this thread was about Sexual abuse except it seems to have gone another way so we may be talking at cross purposes.

Bertie Your first type would perhaps be a psychopath.

Second could be a narcissist.

There are several type of abusers. I think the ownership feeling as Jammielannister said is particularly relevant both for child and partner abuse. I read a text from an anthropologist where she writes about why men kill their partner while it's not generally the case amongst animals (males don't tend to kill females) and she concludes that it must be because of a sentiment of ownership that animals don't have.

I wasn't sexually abused but I did come in for a lot of emotional and verbal abuse.

I think I could do the same, it is one of the reasons I have not had children. I am more like my mother than I want to admit. I'm not a total narcissist but I can be a bit of a control freak.

I watched a TV programme a while ago, they interviewed the children of prominent Nazis, children whose family home had been on the edge of concentration camps. Most of them have also not had children.

I was never a separate person, I was an extension of my mother and frighted of her. I never want a child to feel that.

Psychopaths don't feel empathy, not necessarily get pleasure from others' suffering. That might be a subtype of a psychopath but from what I understand of psychopaths, it's more that they are simply indifferent and it is this which allows them to behave in ways others find abhorrent simply because it benefits themselves.