The Perversion of Shame that Kills
It is not the correlation that some might jump to, as in the idea that some abusers are so overwhelmed by what they have done that they kill themselves.
Even putting ‘correlation’ feels wrong, with its implication of a relationship when what ties these two groups is sexual predation, preying on those too young to understand, too small and weak to protect themselves.
The opening line raises another question: why am I focusing on the connection between suicide in young men and child sex abuse when most global statistics claim that 1 in 5 women have been through some level of childhood sexual abuse, while it is reported to be 1 in 20 men?
This is not going to be a comparison of gender sexual abuse, but it is about looking more closely at the nature of abusers. And here is that statistic: more than 90% of the perpetrators of child sexual abuse are male. They range from adolescents to the elderly, and the majority of abusers have themselves been abused.
This is the cycle that we need to look at more closely, and with care, in order to understand more fully what may lie behind the implications of the statistics.
Across a series of posts I hope you will stay with this so that we can look at:
• Why abuse happens
• Why the abused become the abusers
• How an abused child can survive and recover
• How a survivor of childhood sexual abuse can come to terms with their past and so break the cycle
Why?
In many societies, particularly more conservative ones, a poignantly high number of survivors of childhood sexual abuse attempt or commit suicide, usually long after the abuse.
Surviving abuse should be a triumph, the proof of resilience and human courage, but too often this is not the case.
Some of the reasons for this need to be looked at, particularly the ones that tend to be swept away in this time of cultural nannying and dishonesty.
Limits
In the dry language of law child sexual abuse starts under the age limit for consensual sex. As well we know this varies from country to country, even from state to state. In one place a savvy 15-year old having sex with her mature 16-year old boyfriend may be illegal, while in the next-door state it might be fine or, if it is not fine it is legal. This is where the various age-of-consent laws become uncomfortably blurred. There is also the difficult fact that law-enforcers in many places, and again particularly in more conservative societies, will arrest the ‘easy targets’, as in those right on the age limit, but shy away from the real crimes. Catching precocious teenagers on their way back from school, making out in the park, is a lot easier than going into the dark corners—into families where very young children are being serially abused by family members.
It is a desperate point that the majority, as in over 80%, of child sex abuse is by a direct family member, or a close friend of the family.
Acceptable to some
History has a habit of complicating our perception of sexual abuse. It’s too easy to wing back multiple centuries, and to use the great leap of time to make all sort of juicy judgements about the Greeks and their taste for pederasty.
Except that it is not so distant.
In the geography of where I work, The Kashmir Valley, the various Mughal courts had a great and lasting influence. Men of rank had beautiful young men as their playthings. As well as being a game for the men of power, it was seen as a way for young men to make their first mark within the tightly hierarchal court system. Of course it filtered out into society, where the habits of power were busily being mirrored by the aspirational.
And it was not just the Mughals, and it has not gone away.
American soldiers training the Afghan National Army found themselves in moral hell when they realised that some of the men they were training, and indeed getting on well with, were shipping boys into the camps as ‘donkey boys’. To explain, in this context, the sodomiser’s masculinity is rarely questioned. The sodomised are the ones who are jeered at, and called donkey boys, because they are ridden, the beasts of their society’s burden. When confronted by US soldiers the Afghans often shrugged it off as just another aspect of life that the Americans failed to understand. Even more troubling to the US soldiers was that some of the young boys told them that, for them, it was a way of getting a step up, a chance to make some money.
Rock hewn military men have wept when telling me about these cases.
And I do not want there to be a misunderstanding about the term ‘conservative societies’. In this case it is not a euphemism for cultures that we would otherwise dub, perhaps equally euphemistically, as ‘developing’. Here conservative is not about geography. It is about the misuse of ‘old value systems’ and that happens everywhere, in any kind of society, or cultural group within a society, that closes in on itself.
As soon as a community puts any kind of censure around normal sexuality any and every kind of outlet is sought. Then the distortions begin, and an increase in sexual abuse follows.
Shame
Shame has the quality of fog or gas, enveloping all, and spreading into every available space. A child does not understand what is happening, whether it is brutal abuse, careful grooming, or anything between those two. It is the nature of a child’s mind to try and make sense of what does not seem to make any sense. It is very common, and almost constant, that the abused child will think they are somehow to blame. And so the shame starts, the nagging horror that this thing that has marked their core so deeply was somehow their fault.
This is an aspect that I hope to look at separately, as in why the abused becomes the abuser.
This is not easy reading, but I ask that you stay, if you can, because the stigma and failures of understanding around childhood sexual abuse are actually killing those who could be saved, and who could save themselves.
To be continued soon….