Brought up in 70s and 80s - Why didn't I report physical violence

[jisudye]

My parents never told me to keep it secret.
The teachers would have informed the authorities if I told them
My grandparents lived just under an hour away in the car and we saw them often, they thought wrongly that my parents were good.
Why didn't it cross my mind?
I could have been protected.

Did you realise that the violence you were experiencing or witnessing wasn't normal domestic behaviour? If it was all you had known, it wouldn't occur to you to report it.

Because you didnt know life could be anything other than what is was.

Did you know it was wrong at the time? It seems from threads on here and my own experience that occassional smacks were quite normal in the 70s and 80s.

Most children who are being abused do not want to leave their families. They love their parents, they just want the abuse to stop. Most often they believe that if they could just behave better or be the child their parents want them to be, that it will. You might have spent your energy on this kind of thinking rather than looking to other people for help.

I think a lot of the time we don't report things because we are afraid that the people we love will be taken away from us. I know that's why nobody reported the abuse which happened in my family (not to me). I used to feel very guilty about this but now I recognise that I was a child, it was not up to me to report it. The adults who knew about it should have reported it, but they did not, because they feared that the children would be removed and they would never see them again.

Born in 73, my parents divorced a few years after I was born due to his violence towards her and one of sisters. He took the belt to my sister who was probably 8 and hit her with the buckle end because she took a fairy cake. He slammed the front door so hard the glass shattered and cut my mothers hand ..that was the final straw for her. However, she then hit my sisters and I as we grew up. That smack on the legs (she said it didn’t hurt us.. I can tell you it did) also did the one smack over word.. if (hit) you (hit) ever (hit) and so on. If you cried she hit you again, if you mumbled under your breath and she heard you she’d be up those stairs so fast and you’d get hit again. she’d shout but if you shouted back you’d get hit, used a slipper at times too. Horrible woman.
Why didn’t I report it, what would be the point, she couldn’t see what she did as being abusive, she always said it never hurt us, it did us good because we aren’t criminals! The word of a mother who was brought up being hit, who had a violent husband, in turn she was violent towards us kids rather than have to deal with whatever the issue was, a smack and to her the issue was over.
she really should never have had kids

Because you didn’t know any different.

Me too. But they still caned students at school where I lived so I thought being beaten was normal adult behaviour towards children.

Yes, sorry, I should have put in the original post I knew it was abuse.

Sorry you were beaten.
I knew the behaviour was not normal, I should have posted that in the original post.

Sorry you went through that with your Dad and smacked/slippered by your mum.
I don't mean to mimimize what you went through.
My Dad scared us so much I wet myself, he hit us across the head and once with a big torch.
My mum used to slap our faces hard. We got smacked and slippered, yes slipper hurts, I wouldn't have reported smacks and slippers as I wouldn't have seen them as abuse unless they made a mark, I just don't know why I knowingly didn't report the hitting on the head.

I knew it was abuse at the time, that's the thing.

Difficult to say really. We all deal with things differently.

I personally didn't know my abuse wasn't normal. It was just my life. I'm still disbelieving of it now. That said, if I did know, as you did, I'm not sure I would have been able to speak up. I wasn't believed much as a child, so I probably would have thought no one would listen or believe me about the abuse anyway.

It's easy to reflect back and think of the what ifs, but you were (assuming) just a child.

I would have left my family to be with relatives or someone safe away from them. I told a girl at school who said it was dangerous.
I still didn't report it.
I knew it wasn't normal, smacks or warnings of smacks were common.

Sorry what you went through, although wrong, the adults did have a reason, I knew abuse was happening and never reported it and don't know why.

It was normal!
looking around, yep, it went on in other houses too.
Ive broken the cycle. Generations after me won’t see or experience it while I’m around.

Born '49. Abuse of any sort such as, domestic, sexual, financial were firmly swept under the rug. It wasn't talked about. Adults, particularly men had control of everything. No agencies to help those in need of help.

Sayings like' children should be seen and not heard' were commonly used. The cane was used regularly at school but not for girls. Just some of my thoughts. I often say that if my father was still alive I would take a court prosecution for the physical abuse he inflicted on me, particularly as I was the oldest.

In our family everyone knew our Uncle was sexually abusing our cousin (his daughter), none of us talked about it, no one thought to report it. 1970s things like that weren’t acknowledged 😢

@jisudye , forgive your younger self. You had reasons for making the decisions you made at the time even if the you of today would have made different decisions.

It's the fact that I knew I was being abused and it not crossing my mind that makes it hard to forgive myself.

Sorry that happened in your family.

I am sorry this happened to you.
I was born in a generation where children were more protected, 70's and 80's.
In the fifties and sixties, there was no child protection for stuff like that.

It wasn't normal though in the 70's and 80's.
Even at 9, I asked a girl at my school if she got hit on the head and she said "no it's dangerous"
I knew it was abuse.
Smacks on the legs or warnings of a smack were common, and were not seen as abuse, as parent's often felt guilty when they went as far as a smack, I have read on other threads, not sure about this site, I know there is one on smacking, and I think one person argues to the others it was not normal.

@RhythmStick I am sorry you had no one who would believe you.
I know my grandparents and teachers would have believed me.

Child abuse wasn’t public ally acknowledged like it is today. It wasn’t really spoken about.

I think Childline made the big difference to this - it brought child abuse into the public domain, and gave children a channel where they can get help. Prior to that, it was very much that ‘children should be seen and not heard’.

We were children, maybe you didn’t think you’d be believed or know who to tell or where to get help. Any number of reasons but you shouldn’t blame yourself for not speaking up. Thousands of us didn’t I’m sure.

i still remember my mother telling me if I ever reported her to social services she’d make it worth her while 😮 it actually hadn’t ever occurred to me to do that anyway. She only stopped hitting my brother when he caught her hand when she went to slap him. That was the last time she raised a hand to him. I wasn’t brave to do the same. I’m NC and he is LC. People still don’t see who for she was/is, they’d just say oh your mother is so hard on you.

I was born in 73 and my dad hit us round the head a lot as well as the "normal" smackings. We were always told we were lucky as the girl across the road had parents who were "properly" strict and beat her with a cane. The implication being that we really deserved to be beaten much more badly than we were. I thought we just had to put up with it. It would never have occurred to me to tell a teacher or anyone else. You just didn't tell anyone what went on at home, otherwise you'd get treated worse, and the emotional abuse and withdrawal of love was far more distressing than the physical abuse.

My dad also sexually abused me. I did not report it until I was 15 because I didn't really understand what was happening for a long time. When I did report it to school, I was threatened and outcast by my family for bringing shame on the house. Familial abuse was never, ever mentioned at school or on TV really until Childline was started in 1986.

Sorry you all had to go through that but back then everything was hushed up and we all felt shame inside. My dad was violent to my mum, my brother's were violent to us girls in the house but my mum was lovely. My dad used to scare us so much and beat my sister and brother with the belt. I remember the sound of the tips on his shoes as we heard him walking across the road from the pub. My brother boxed me in the face when I was 11, no doubt I was probably annoying him but I ended up with a black eye and my nose in bits and have awful sinus problems to this day and nothing done about it and not even brought to the doctor. Different times and still no one talks about what happened. My sis and I talk and it was like growing up in a muslim household where the men were the top dogs and women's voices not heard at all and treated so different. Weird that put me in a relationship where there was violence as it seemed normal. When you have your own children you realize it is not or never was normal just male violence against women and girls and a cycle of what they seen growing up but as another user said I changed that cycle.