I'm a newbie catching up on the stories here.
I'm surprised that OPI [Bethel abbreviation for Office of Public Information] would use the quote "People didn't have the body of knowledge 18 or 20 years ago to say that this is something that will harm your child emotionally, if you don't address it. Parents didn't know the seriousness ... and the long-term effects." If anybody in Bethel wasn't aware that sexual abuse of children would cause emotional harm, maybe they should read some issues of TheWatchtower and Awake! magazines, published by the Watchower Bible & Tract Society. Here's three excerpts: 1983 showing the emotional damage caused by incest was know in the US and other countries. 1991 the long lasting effects of child sexual abuse are clearly documented. And a lengthy quote from 1993 which would cause any thinking person to realize without doubt that child sexual abuse should never be minimized.
*** w83 10/1 p. 27 Help for the Victims of Incest ***
"FOR most of her life Rachel has been ridden with guilt, convinced of her own worthlessness, and trapped in a sense of hopeless isolation." What could so blemish the life of a British housewife and mother?
A 16-year-old girl from California said: "I now have a pain deep in my heart that will never go away, and it hurts, truly hurts." What could cause her such anguish?
The answer in both cases is the same: incest. Both of these women were sexually abused by their fathers when they were children. Unhappily, there are many like them. Studies in the United States suggest that one in five girls and one in ten boys suffer sexual molestation before they grow up. In most cases, the crime is committed by someone the young victim knows, and in many cases it is incestuous. Reports from other countries tell a similar story.
***g9110/8p.3TheInnocentVictimsofChildAbuse***
"I’M NEAR 40 now," says Eilene. "And even though my problem is over 30 years old, it still haunts me. The anger, the guilt, the problems in my marriage! People try to understand, but they just can’t." Eilene’s problem? She is a victim of childhood sexual abuse, and for her the effects have proved to be long lasting.
Eilene is far from alone. Surveys indicate that an alarming number of women—and men—have suffered such mistreatment. Far from being a rare act of deviant behavior, then, childhood sexual abuse is a widespread affliction, one that cuts across all social, economic, religious, and racial lines.
***g937/22pp.6-7AbusiveParents—TheUltimateStressors***Sexual
AbuseAccording to one estimate, 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys have been forced into a sexual experience by the time they are 18 years old. Most of these children suffer in silence. "Like soldiers missing in action," notes the book TheChildinCrisis, "they remain lost for years in a private jungle of fear and guilt."
"How I hated my father for abusing me and how guilty I felt for hating him," says Louise. "I felt such shame because a child is supposed to love her parents and I didn’t all the time." Such perplexing feelings are understandable when a child’s primary protector turns into a perpetrator. Beverly Engel asks in TheRighttoInnocence: "How can we acknowledge that our own parent, someone who was supposed to love and care for us, could care so little about us?"
Sexual abuse can warp a child’s entire view of life. "Every adult who was molested as a child brings from his or her childhood pervasive feelings of being hopelessly inadequate, worthless, and genuinely bad," writes Dr. Susan Forward.
It
Doesn’tGoAway"It is not just the child’s body that is abused or neglected," writes researcher Linda T. Sanford. "Troubled families mess with a child’s mind." When a child is abused, either emotionally, physically, or sexually, he or she may grow up feeling unlovable and worthless.
Jason, mentioned earlier, had such low self-esteem as an adult that he was declared a suicide risk. Needlessly putting himself in life-threatening situations, he assessed his life as his mother had taught him: ‘You should never have been born.’
Reflecting on the effects of being physically abused as a child, Joe says: "It just doesn’t go away because you move out or get married. I’m always afraid of something, and I hate myself for it." The tension of the physically abusive household causes many children to grow up with negative expectations and rigid defenses that imprison rather than protect.
For Connie, incest created a distorted self-image that solidified in her adulthood: "I still think a lot of the time that people can look right inside me and see how disgusting I am."
All forms of abuse teach poisonous lessons that may become deeply entrenched by the time of adulthood. True, what is learned can be unlearned. Countless survivors who have recovered from childhood abuse testify to that fact. But how much better if parents realize that from the time of their child’s birth, they are shaping much of his concept of himself and the world. A child’s physical and emotional welfare is largely in his parents’ hands.
