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.

I didn’t report because I realized that 1) reporting might not change anything and would just make him angry and 2) ending up in the foster system would have given me a worse education. I was a savvy enough child to realize I probably had a better future in that abusive middle class home getting to stay in one school and not getting moved around from school to school with every new placement. I bet my life on my education and it worked out.

I was born in 1975.

I didn't know it was abuse. I just knew I was desperately unhappy and that my parents didn't like me.

By the 1990, and in my mid teens, I knew that some of my parents' friends knew what was happening because a couple made comments to that effect and told me that I knew where they were if I needed them. I needed them but I never said anything to them. It had become obvious at school - I pretty much told them - and nothing happened.

I was scared of what would happen.

I told my mum once I wanted to go into care. She said I had a choice to be beaten by my dad or raped by a stranger in a children's home.

I thought that the adults around me knew but did nothing so maybe there was nothing to be done.

I once told my mum that I'd call childline after seeing Esther Rantzen talk about it on TV. she told me they'd laugh at me and say I was a naughty girl who deserved it. I was too scared to call.

It was fear that stopped me. Fear that I wouldn't be believed and fear of what would happen next if I was.

I had a violent upbringing in the same era. I was taught (by behaviour, and then later threatened…) that there would be no point telling anyone. I had been humiliated and beaten into sheer submissiveness and felt that no one would believe me of I did tell anyone.

I’m not sure how much help you would have received tbh. I did a series of articles about this and heard from survivors of extreme abuse who were not believed by authorities and repeatedly returned to the family home where they were beaten, raped, even tortured.

I can only say Why I didn’t report it? Because I was made to feel I deserved it by my mother because I didn’t behave or react or do the right arbitrary thing at the right randomly selected time. Because my extended family if I tried to raise it told me not to tell tales or kept on about how hard my mother worked to make sure we were fed and clothed, how she was doing her best, how she needed to live her own life. How difficult it was for her as a single mother and we ought to appreciate what she did for us. Because she told me she loved me.

People knew what went on but everyone looked the other way. She blamed me for her rages and now pretends none of it happened and if I try to discuss any of it goes on about what a terrible mother she must have been to us.

You're looking back at this with the experience and rationality of an adult. Children don't think like that. Perhaps it was fear,perhaps it was just not really understanding that things could be different.

Children need adults to reassure them about big changes. And in spite of what your 9yo classmate said,in spite of you 'knowing' it was abuse it was also your reality, and your normal.

Its really really hard for a lot of adults to imagine things being different from their status quo, let alone children who sense they're dealing with big, adult issues.

Not speaking out didn't make you complicit in the abuse you suffered and you're not to blame for any of it.

I was born in 1971. My Mum was a single parent.

She used to beat me (and my Sister) with a slipper. This was for minor things. Like not going to sleep. We would talk or giggle and she didn't like it. She would pull up my nightie and literally beat me.

I thought it was normal for parents to do this. I now see it as abuse.

She was quite mentally abusive too at times.

It sounds like you feel ashamed. You might have felt ashamed as a child too. Shame makes people want to hide things. You may have felt that it was something you deserved. You may have believed that you weren't a good person. Those beliefs, if you held them, would have been false, but firmly held because you were a child who was trying to make sense of a scary, confusing world.

Because I think it was more normal. Caning in school was only just stopping. And at secondary school I regularly saw teachers hit the boys and nobody reported that either

my mum in particular but also my dad were very violent to me and my brother. Slippers and wooden rulers and prolonged beatings. My gran used to hit us all with a wooden spoon so she’d have been no help

I remember social services coming round once. The neighbour had reported my parents. My parents were informed beforehand of the visit and I was told to tell the social worker I was ok. Nobody ever said what it was about, I assume the violence. The social worker talked to my parents alone for a while and then I was called in. Social worker asked in front of my parents if everything was ok and I just said yes.

They never even asked if I was getting hit. Not sure if they’d asked what I’d have said. My parents were respectable teachers so I just thought nobody would believe me. but what bad practice to talk to me in front of my parents. Guess that was standard practice then

Have you had therapy OP? I think it would be helpful if you could forgive yourself. It was not your responsibility to report or keep yourself safe. It was your dad who should have acted differently to keep you safe.

Is your dad still alive? Have you ever spoken to him about it, would you like to?

It wasn't your fault. It wasn't any of our faults.

We were taught that they would do exactly as they pleased and nobody would care, that teachers were busybodies who had no idea how awful we really were and when they did, they'd agree that it was the only way to deal with somebody as awful as we were. We were taught that child protection was there for children who were starved, whipped and 'interfered with' or whose parents were 'druggies and alkies', not for the likes of us who were just stupid, bad children.

We were taught to have no faith in anybody in authority. And if, on the rare occasion we did say something, nothing ever came of it as it was explained away as 'funny ideas', dreams or making up stories, so as far as we knew, nobody cared about what we had said.

We compartmentalised. School was school, if we acted up, we were punished for our misbehaviour and were even less likely to tell anybody - they weren't asking as they hadn't been trained to ask. The concept of the At Risk register had only been in operation for a few years.

And home was home. What happened there wasn't anything to do with school and, in order to function, we pretended nothing was happening even though we knew it was and that everytime we walked through the front door or got up in the morning or any interaction at all, even none, it could happen.

It didn't matter that we knew it was wrong. We also knew without saying that our parents could do exactly as they wanted to us. Because they'd taught us that since birth - we'd been trained to accept abuse and ignore the knowledge we gained later on that it wasn't OK.

And we were kids. We still had some attachment, whether to the abuser, school, friends, pets or other family. We'd probably been told and forgotten that we'd be taken away and never see anything or anyone we cared about again.

And it wasn't all the time. Sometimes things were calm. We were able to eat unlike the children on TV. Maybe not enough, but that was our fault for being fussy, faddy or greedy. And if we didn't, it was our fault, too.

So we fantasised about becoming orphans or finding out we were adopted and always hoped to be like the other children whose parents' eyes lit up when they saw them. We made the mother's day cards. We wrote the poems about how much we loved them because that was what we were taught was normal and we wanted to be like everybody else.

If there is one phrase I would ban from ever being spoken again, it would be 'You only have one Mum, you'll regret it when they're not here anymore'.

The only thing I regret is that she was there in the first place. This way, I still miss having a Mum but she's still alive. I've been mourning a Mum since I was five and realised that the other children's mums were different. But in my child mind, I was being silly because she wasn't dead, she was at home. And might be nice to me if I didn't annoy her too much.

You were a child OP and it was 4 decades ago. You can't look at the actions of an abused 70s child through the lens of an adult in 2022, its very unfair to the child.
Abuse distorts everything. Often the only thing that matters is getting by with as little of it coming your way as possible. Whether that's by trying to comply, not rock the boat, avoiding the cracks in the pavement...The daily firefighting of abuse leaves little headspace for the longer term strategies.

Excellent post! Every word of this.

I was born 73.
As a young child I really didn't see it as abuse, I saw friends parents,other relatives ect... smack their kids and thought It was normal even though mine was much more than a smack.

My mum was incredibly violent, she'd hit with anything from fist,shoes,belts ect ., she'd kick and stamp and drag me round by my hair,smack my head into doors ect . Even when someone reported her to SS when I was around 8 and she sat and coached me for days on what to say to SS I still didn't realise it was abuse.

I only began to realise as a teen but I was too scared to tell anyone out of fear of what she'd do.Thats why I never asked for help or confided in anyone, I was genuinely absolutely petrified of her. I don't feel guilty or upset at myself for not reporting it at the time as it wasn't my fault.This wasn't your fault and you shouldn't be too hard on yourself 💐💐

I do have a lot of resentment that she got away with it though,that does grate on me a lot.Ive been no contact for 17 years but I still feel quite angry that she was never punished for her violence.x

Sorry you went through so much and glad you broke the cycle.

You were a victim :( would you blame a child now? No. Don’t blame yourself.

The connection between parents and children is incredibly strong and complicated. It’s the adults around you who should have looked out for you. I’m so sorry. You have a right to grieve what was done to you.

I was hit not smacked. I was once bruised up for talking during a TV programme. I rang the Samaritans for help in my early teens and the guy on the end of the phone was very unhelpful.

OP - even adults in this day and age when it’s ok to report things don’t do it.

it’s bloody hard to report abuse for the victim. Please be kind to yourself.

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.

@BOOTS52

Your post is incredibly offensive - how dare you tar an entire 2billion people with your islamophobic prejudice - a ‘Muslim’ household is as diverse as any other household, some are great and some less so.
Ridiculous statement - and clearly judging from this thread it’s not just Muslim families where this awful abuse has happened.

Reported your post.

One of my earliest memories is of my mum showing her sisters the bruises she had inflicted on me with a wooden spoon when I was about 5. I don’t remember the conversation, she could have been asking them for help because she went ‘too far’, I only remember being so embarrassed!
At around the same age I witnessed my aunt beating my cousin, her son, with a sweeping brush. This was in the early 80’s.

Threats of violence, or actual violence, were common in our house. It dissipated as I got older, at least that’s how I remember it, my brother remembers it differently. I think now, looking back, I spent as much time out of the home so it didn’t effect me so much, but then my brother became the target.

In subsequent years, my mum has spoken to me about how she feels she neglected my brother (he was the third child and our middle brother was disabled so, for example, my youngest brother was left alone with a bottle propped up on a pillow when she had to attend to our middle brother. My youngest brother spent so much time alone in his cot that he used to rock, like a caged animal in the zoo does, she had to nail his cot to the floor because he would rock it so much it moved into the middle of the room! She has never expressed regret over the physical violence).

I have had therapy and am nc with her. My brother has mh and substance abuse issues. Our conversations regularly are about her abuse/neglect towards him. Our last conversation was him asking me if he was really such a bad kid that he deserved it!!

Also, I did run away when I was 9. I packed a carrier bag, my plan was to beg like the people I had seen on the streets and use the local swimming pool to wash.
I climber out of a downstairs window and tried calling childline from a local pay phone. It was engaged so I went to the local police station. They took me home! My mum didn’t even know I had gone!

OP, I was brought up in the same era and my Dad was an extremely violent drunk. He would totally lose control when drinking. I was terrified of him. He would punch me in the face repeatedly until I collapsed. When I did he would continue to kick me while I was curled up in a ball. Like you I wet myself out of utter fear. He did the same to my brother and sister. We would hide under the bed when we heard his key go in the door but he would drag us out to beat us. He remembered nothing the next day and acted as if nothing had happened. I was difficult at school and had problems mixing with other kids. The school never questioned anything and neighbours actually knew what was going on and did nothing. There was a wall of silence. I believed that no one would help me or that no one would believe me. I have CPTSD as a result and have had many years of therapy. I have been told many times it wasn’t my fault and that times were different then. People ‘didn’t interfere in other parents child rearing’. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know, I have no other frame of reference. I didn’t know who I could turn to or who I could trust. Do you remember what was going through your mind then to explain why you didn’t report them? Maybe you were trying to protect yourself from further harm like I was?? I’m still angry at the world at times for failing me and still don’t know how to move passed it despite therapy ☹️