One of the most insidious repercussions from child sexual abuse is the harm done to the family of the victim. It is widespread, indirect and unforeseen. The sister sleeping on the top bunk who is awakened by screams and mattress noises, and as a result of her terror later becomes afraid to do anything with her life, the brother who is confused at what is happening to his sister and turns to alcohol to blunt the trauma, the mother who hates herself for not turning her husband over to the law, and becomes heavily neurotic and takes to her bed weeping, the small toddler who sleeps in a crib next to the bed of the victim and wets the bed till she is ten, is unable to speak except in baby prattle till she is ten also. All are victims as well.<\/p>\n
The traumas suffered by other family members are often difficult to diagnose. A sister who silently witnessed the crime but as she grows older is unable to recognize what is bothering her can be as traumatized as the actual victim. She is fearful all of her life but is unable to put a face to her fears. She only knows that she witnessed something terrible, something she is grateful didn\u2019t happen to her even if she doesn\u2019t know what \u201cit\u201d is. She also wears the heavy burden of guilt because she did nothing to help. Her unconscious mind feels both that she did something wrong and that in being a party to the trauma by virtue of watching it somehow feels she \u201cenabled\u201d it to happen.<\/p>\n
And what of the person who is responsible for all this dysfunction, all this emotional pain? The patriarch or the matriarch, whoever is the perpetrator, started this evil on its path to the destruction of several souls. Let\u2019s assume it\u2019s the father, the patriarch. He is in a position of enormous power and he knows it. His wife, the co-dependent, is helpless to stop the giant locomotive that is bearing down on the heart and soul of her family. If her motto is, \u201cEven when he\u2019s wrong, he\u2019s right,\u201d she has almost no chance of righting this perfidy. Perhaps he was set up in his youth by being a victim himself. Perhaps his father was a womanizer, teaching his son the wrong lessons in his journey to adulthood. That doesn\u2019t matter. Being a victim yourself is never an excuse for turning into a perpetrator. If you had been robbed does that mean it\u2019s okay to rob someone else? Of course not.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I go into my father\u2019s mind and try to reason out how he got to be a perpetrator. As a young man he seemed to have strong morals, strong character. Once married, he became a husband capable of finding out that with his power he could mold the character and temperament not only of his mate but of his issue. After having four children in four years his wife is fearful of more children. They belong to the Catholic Church, more patriarchy, and birth control is not allowed. She closes that door to her husband. Years go by and one day he takes a second look at his young daughter with budding sexuality she scarcely knows she has. We now have five out of six of the family system denominators as outlined in my book REPAIR Your Life: patriarchal family system, obedient\/co-dependent mother, religiously regimented household, eldest daughter, and family history of sexual boundary violators.<\/p>\n
His poor daughter doesn\u2019t have a chance. The father does some fact finding and discovers that people in the Appalachian District do it all the time. It\u2019s actually a relationship that a lot of fathers and daughters have. This gives him permission to awaken his daughter in the middle of the night and rape her. He\u2019s a staunch Catholic so he goes to confession and tells the priest what he did. The priest gives him a penance and absolution. The priest cannot violate the sanctity of the confessional. There\u2019ll be no reporting and no follow up to protect the young girl. Her life will never be the same. She will go through year after year, decade after decade making poor choices, suicide attempts, severe depression, weak boundaries, addictions, people pleasing, needy, obsessive compulsive behavior and severe nightmares that shadow her day of a deed she can scarcely bear to think about much less give it a name.<\/p>\n
This one person, this patriarchal person is single handedly responsible for not only the agony of his young daughter but the anguish of every member of his family. No one escaped. Not only that, the victim herself has sexually abused daughters that, because all they learned, their mother unwittingly taught them. They too make poor choices, attempt suicide, have weak boundaries, addictions, severe depression, are co-dependent and needy.<\/p>\n
In my family my father is responsible for the possible destruction of my three daughters who were all sexually abused. He is responsible for the shattered lives of my sister\u2019s children, my brother\u2019s children, my grandchildren and their grandchildren. Out of all these progeny we have one suicide, several multi-married women, several alcoholics, several suicide attempts, and a string of broken relationships.<\/p>\n
Because I went through recovery, because I REPAIRed myself, my three daughters are today stable and in happy relationships. They are leading productive lives, giving of themselves to the community, One daughter volunteers at her children\u2019s school, is active in AA helping people to get sober, is running for office for a local position, and is tireless in her efforts to help other people and other causes. Another daughter goes twice a year, at her own expense, to Thailand to take care of refugees from Burma. She has gone to Mexico several times to bring chickens to an orphanage where she taught them how to build chicken coops and showed them how they would have eggs every day. Another daughter, working as an RN in ER is a loving, caring and wise beyond her years nurse, a source for those in need. They have all stepped out of the shadow that sought to ruin their lives.<\/p>\n
But what of the others, the sister who continues to be silent about what she witnessed, the alcoholic brother who suffers from COPD and is on oxygen 24\/7. And what of the tiny child who slept in the crib and couldn\u2019t talk till she was ten, wet the bed till she was ten. At the tender young age of twenty-five, after deciding she never wanted children, she became convinced that she was going to die soon and a few months later was killed in a car crash.<\/p>\n
Wherever you are Dad, I want you to see the fruits of your labor, the tragedy of your progeny. Was it really worth it?<\/p>\n