My seven year old daughter is a bright, intelligent and highly sensitive child. She has always struggled to go to her father's house since we separated four and half years ago. Until Jan 2011 we co-parented until she refused to go to him anymore and started exhibiting distressing behaviours of hitting herself, not eating, and more self-harming types of behavior; she also communicated how she wantied to shoot him with a big fat gun. This culminated in a 11 month court process which concluded with a shared residency whereby she lives with me, my partner and animals the majority of the time and sees dad every other weekend. Since this arrangement began in JAN 2012, getting her to go to dad's has been a struggle; both my partner and I have worked beyond what would be considered normal in supporting her to go and see her father. What is no more than a standard model of every other weekend contact with one mid week tea time contact should not be so difficult, but in our lives it has been a real struggle.
However, in October 2013 she disclosed to me that dad has been hitting her since she was 4 years old mainly around the eyes, head and on her private parts. She also disclosed he swears at her, pushes her and tells her she's F*ing shard work, silly and stupid. After contacting social services and involving child protection, we now have her under a child protection plan on the grounds she has already suffered significant emotional and physical harm, but contact is still happening, as the court to date have refused to agree to varying the court order. In the past three months we have spent many thousands of pounds on the court system, simply in pursuit of getting her voice heard but to no success. She is currently seeing a social worker every two weeks and is still discussing with me how she wants her life to end, and asking me what ways can she do it; she speaks about putting a knife in her eyes, head and private parts and still tells me how she wishes daddy was dead and that she wants to buy a gun and shot him.
Whilst my parnter and I are very well educated and work involves children's research and development, what my daughter is presenting is beyond my parental capacity to deal with. Whilst I do my psuedo- conselling from her bedroom until she recieves the correct professional help, I am looking to best understand what has happened to my daughter to cause her to associate such harmful thoughts of her father with such equally harmful thoughts of harming herself in such a violent and invasive ways.
Can someone please advise me should I be concerned, as I already caustiously am, that sexual abuse may be at the root cause of these disturbing and harmful thoughts. I am waiting for her to be seen by a specialist but as yet I have no idea when this likely to occur due to demands on mental health services for children. She is by nature a very loving, sweet and non - aggressive little girl. Any advice would be enormously helpful, or any suggested reading that exlores the evidence or research on why children hold such violent ideas about self-harming and harming another parent.
Many thanks for reading.
A very, very concerned mummy.