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.

Lizzie I'm so sorry, that is dreadful

Is it abuse if an invalid father asks hid mid teen daughter to show him her body? This happened to me regularly over about 3 years until one night I didn’t respond and he never asked again. He used to say it would make him feel better. He was bed fast and there was no touching involved. I never told my mum at the time.

This may be triggering but I believe people can be born bad, certainly.
It comes from my own experience of being raped by a sibling after he was awful to me and my family for years and years.

Including setting the house on fire and climbing out the window while we slept, my mother narrowly found the burning sofa and curtains in time to get us out, trying to strangle the family dog, masturbating in places he knew me and my sister would catch him and not stopping when we walked in). We were all raised the same.
He was not abused and his behaviour started young (first incident; trying to set fire to my blankets with a lighter while I was a baby in a Moses basket - he was 3. No harm done as he was quickly caught) but wasn't taken seriously by professionals until he was in his late teens (he raped me when he was 18).
We are all NC with him and police etc were involved but I've considered over many years WHY it happened and why he was so horrible. I've come to the conclusion he was born that way. Whether that's a misfire in his brain or "evil" well who knows. But I just can't accept that it's not that when we experienced the same upbringing he was not on any drugs or anything.

@Theresasmayshoes11 thank you for your kind words, yes I have had EMDR therapy so I'm not getting the distressing flashbacks I was in the past. I'm due to start trauma based therapy in 2 weeks.

My DSis and I buried the memories for years and I couldn't place the horrible flashbacks, thought I was going mad. In a way, shocking though it was, it helped to know that they were flashbacks and not that I was just crazy.

It also made sense of my relationship with my F. At times he could be loving, but he was so very controlling. I couldn't stand him near me, he gave me the creeps and I didn't understand why. He died 20 years ago and I remember being with him towards the end in hospital and willing him to die. It made me feel horribly guilty and it added to my grief (because I loved him as well as hated him).

I think my F was a narcissist. He saw us as extensions of himself, he continued to be emotionally and financially abusive once the SA stopped (he had Parkinson's and he became too infirm I think).

I think boys suffer SA as much as girls. My DB was abused too, but not by our F. He also abused us when we were growing up, and now his life is completely messed up.

I guess boys that are abused can go on to be abusers, I don't know, but even there the majority don't. That's clear from victims' stories.

@thegreylady I would say yes, sexual abuse.

I'm sorry.

Ah well
My parents are long dead. I am in my 70s now with no issues. I didn’t feel abused really just awkward and embarrassed. I am so sorry for all the children who suffer abuse of all sorts. One effect it had was that I never let dd stay with my parents without me 🙁

I had unemotional parents, and never felt loved by them. They did not physically abuse me, they just did not show me any love and blamed me often for a myriad of things that I can see now, were in no way my fault. Their treatment of me led me to grow up believing I was nothing. I had no feeling of entitlement to anything normal (eg I used to walk past a college daily on my way to school, but I took it for granted that such places were where normal people went and not for me - although I had no feeling at the time that I was abnormal IYSWIM - I just had this knowledge that I couldn't expect anything, anything at all). I was given no sex education, I had no fashionable clothing, I was told regularly that I was selfish, moody and belligerant. I was the eldest of four children and expected to "know better" if I asked for anything, though my siblings were not "expected" to be anything other than children. I never had stationery for school, or books to read at home, (I love reading but it never occured to me I could join the library - I have no idea why now, unless it was because I had this huge feeling already mentioned above, that I wasn't entitled to things unless my parents specifically said so - though I have no idea when or why this feeling became my default).

Anyway, I was sexually abused by my grandfather, between the ages of 9 and 12. This started when my parents moved away from their families for my father to take a new job and my grandparents visited and stayed for a few days at a time. My grandfather had always asked me for kisses as long as I could remember, they were always nasty and wet but I was always told to "give granddad a kiss and stop being so silly", if I said I didn't want to. Never occured to me that this in itself was abusive, it was just something else that I didn;t do right and got into trouble about.

Anyway, I never told anyone about the sexual abuse. I did try and tell my Mother after the first time, but she told me she hadn't got time to mess about and to go away. After that I suppose I just sort of added the abuse to the things that I had to live with in my life and that it would probably be my own fault in everyone elses eyes.

I can see now that my parents were abusive in their own way, not physically, and not sexually, but abusive all the same. I was in my 30's though before I started questioning my upbringing, because your own normality is always seen as normal (if that makes sense). I never had friends at school and was bullied often, so I had no yardstick to measure my life by.

I am a terrible people pleaser who gets full of anger that I find hard to control - because I feel that I was an innocent child who has been left with all the consequences of awful adult behaviour towards me, whilst those adults have ended up with no consequences at all....and there is still a tiny voice inside me that whispers "well it's only me, so it doesn't matter, and anyway there is nothing to be done to right it all now, so I will just have to get on and put up with it!".

Lizzie48you sound very strong lovely keep going.

TheGreyLady goodness that’s very creepy how on earth can anyone explain your dads behaviour. I think you were so right not to leave your dd with them.

Sashh I saw they programme too about Nazi leaders and one woman saw her dad actually pick off prisoners with his rifle and shoot them through the bedroom window. They overlooked a concentration camp, and then turn round and cuddle her and be s loving family men!!

I don’t think people are born evil or good. We all have both in us and we choose our path.

Weightloser I just wanted to say you write with such honesty about your childhood and what was definitely emotional neglect/abuse as well as the sexual abuse of your grandfather. In a way, it was all of a piece- it just confirmed 'you don't matter', whereas of course you do and I'm sure now you do feel very angry as that is a bad message to send a child. I don't know if you have seen the Stately Homes thread in Relationships, but it just strikes me your parents would say- but we did our best/took her places/gave her food and a warm bed, what did we do wrong? In fact, they didn't reassure you you are a valuable human being and it's much harder to live a life when you don't have this knowledge which many others do have. Hugs to you.

weightLoser

None of that was in any way your fault. They all sound horrific and didn’t deserve you. Have you had help to deal with your past? How are your siblings? there are other areas of mumsnet where you will get so much support. Have you seen the ‘stately homes’ thread? Many posters have had similar childhoods.

X post inthedeep

Thank you for your kindness - I appreciate it. No, I've never had any help with it all except for my DH listening to me cry about it (he's very good but comes from a loving family background so finds it hard to understand, but does his best).

I've seen the stately Home thread but it was on a bad day and I found it too much, I'll give it another try though I think.

I don't have a good relationship with my siblings really. I don't really feel we are siblings, if that makes any sense. There is a 9 year age gap between me and my youngest sister. They all grew up together and I left home at the earliest opportunity when I was 16, and their childhood experiences did not seem to mirror mine from what I could see.

@WeightLoser you've done so well and your DH sounds amazing. I have a lovely DH as well, who has put up with a lot from me. I find physical contact of any sort very triggering so I'm quite closed off, though I try not to be with my DDs.

I do recommend that you give therapy a try, I've had several therapists over the years and you do need to find the one that's a good 'fit' IYSWIM.

You can PM me if you want to.

My stepdad wasn't on drugs. DM recently told me that he emotionally and physically abused her too, DS1 lived there from the age of 6 and still lives with DM at 27, he has cystic fibrosis, DM told me that my stepdad deliberately sent him to school when he should have gone to the doctor's. I don't think DS1 would be as ill as he is now if he'd been taken when he should have been. I was shut out, so I knew nothing about it.

He was just a bastard.

Yes, that's abuse, thegreylady.

I have never accepted the concept of the abused becoming abusers

Nor have I. If abused children grow up to become child abusers, then since the overwhelming majority of childhood victims are female, the vast majority of adult abusers would be women. And they aren't.

But it's actually not true that the vast majority of SA victims are female. Look at the scandal in football and at what has happened in public schools. Boys are frequently victims too. The vast majority don't become abusers of course, and I don't know how many paedophiles were victims of SA as children but I expect it is true of some.

Grown men are not often victims but boys are.

There's a difference between being selfish or lacking empathy, and gaining pleasure from hurting other people. Sadistic behaviour may be on a spectrum but I have no problem labelling it as evil, even when its 'only' low level.
I also think its a lot more common than we like to think.

And quite a few of the child murders we hear about on the news are boys. I think it's probably pretty even. But it is boys and not girls who grow up to be abusers. Although if you visit the Stately Homes thread you will see how some mothers can be abusive too (though not sexually, this is mainly men). We shouldn't generalise.

Lizzie while I agree that there is a lot of CSA of boys, I think it's generally accepted that girls are victims more frequently.

We should generalise - the vast majority of sex offences are committed by men.

That isn't to say that women don't do it - they do. But when looking at why people do it, why they don't seem to care etc, it feels foolosh to pretend that there's not a sex differential here. It removes one aspect which I suspect is very important when looking at this. ie why do men do it so much more, and if we can work that out maybe we can reduce it.

I think there are just some evil people in this world,
I was abused along with my DSis from a very young age till I was 7 we had to endure a court case and all that comes with that,
Sadly my stepfather was a predator he knew my mum had abused children and he groomed her and was very controlling and he went on to abuse and rape me from 11-17.
He’s one sick evil man and only this last 18 month was I able to report it and go ahead with a court case.

I don’t know if these people who do these horrific things are born evil but I do believe they choose to commit these acts 😢😡

I had a sheltered childhood. I am almost 40 and until recently I thought most people were fundamentally good. Recent public events have caused me to return evaluate that.
Op and others I'm so sorry for every thing you've been through. Op, might it help to accept that what happened y to you wasn't mild, it was shit and just completely unfair.
I have two dcs and while theyre very resilient and self confident I realised how early on how easy it would be to crush them, destroy their self confidence and their sense of being valid, valued people. Their self esteem while they're young is so bound up with what adults around them say about and to them. That sense of responsibility terrifies me.

Yes I did say that CSA is mostly committed by men. Women don't do that mostly, but mothers do physically or emotionally abuse their children (my own mother did, but she was a victim herself).

I think boys don't talk about it so much, so I think it's very hard to know whether there are more female victims. My brother was. CSA victim as well as DSis and me, but he also abused us when he was a teenager.