I remember when I was a kid people saying that they would not go to the police because they didn't want their child to have to tell what happened in a courtroom full of people. The suggestion was that being in the courtroom was worse than the abuse itself
Some people also seemed to think if you never talked about what happened it would go away - forgotten forever - boy do we wish it would go away. But it doesn't.
Other people minimized it by saying "At least it wasn't....)
And they seemed to think if you warned kids about "funny" Uncle Bill (and yes I actually had a funny Uncle Bill) that whatever happened wasn't too serious. Like we didn't walk away bleeding (although some of us did)
I know we were also warned about "the stranger with candy". No one ever said exactly what the stranger with candy would do to us but we knew it had to be something really really bad because no one would even say what it was.
Some of us saw or heard people whispering about things done to so-and-so, hushed tomes, down-cast looks.
All these things contribute to our feelings about abuse. And that is before we are ever abused.
And then when it happens all our nightmares become real. The boogeyman in the closet or under the bed is the man in the next room that we call Daddy and there is no escape. We are totally trapped and totally at his mercy.
I remember being 7 and wanting to run away from home but I knew I would never survive out there on my own. So I stayed and that too made me feel guilty because if I really hated it I would leave - right?
Not a lot of options here for a little kid. Guilt for everything and no control
Shall I add the toxic guilt someone else mentioned. Abusers are great at refusing to take responsibility for their actions. They place the blame for everything on others. The abused child is no different. My father would come to me wanting sex and say "Look at what you did to me. Now you have to take care of it." To a child this can be a scary thing. In my child mind I thought of balloons. When they get bigger they explode. Conclusion was that if I didn't "take care of it" it would explode and he would die. Then I would have that guilt on me too.
I'll be honest here - I believed that until I was 35 years old and had been married for 15 years. My ex used that line on me too. But since I had never asked about my balloon theory I still believed it would explode.
I finally got up the nerve to ask someone about it and was told it just goes away. At 35 years old I was shocked and had to take a week to think about it. My final conclusion was that since priests don't have sex (I know I know but bear with me) since priests don't have sex you never see one walking down the street and it explodes or you never read about it in the papers. Therefore the exploding balloon theory was wrong. But how could a child know this? How the heck does a child come up with such a theory.
Well in the absence of information a child (like most of us) will create a belief based on what they do know. And in their minds it will be true until proven false. I look 20 years to get the courage to ask someone about my balloon theory.
So not only do we get messages from the people around us but we get them from what is said and what is not said - we get them from looks and secrets and hushed talk. We get them from out gut reactions to things that happen to us and we get them from our imaginations when all else fails.
I prefer to dispel the myths and theories.
