We have to kick it up a few notches for our kids. All of the above reasons are based on some form of individual selfishness, bad choices and immaturity. These numbers could come down with each person making the individual choice in the quiet of his or her own home, to grow up and live differently. That’s not a statement of judgement. It’s a statement of recognition that little ones around the world can be protected from a lifetime of pain if we just reach out to help ease the stresses of others rather than always reaching inward to look after ourselves.
Some known consequences of child sexual abuse
Because only a percentage of actual incidents are reported, it is impossible to ascertain the full impact on society or on individuals. According to the American Medical Association, one-fifth of all victims of child sexual abuse develop serious, long-term psychological problems. The following list is simply an attempt to identify some of the known results and is not meant to suggest that any individual will suffer all of the results listed.
• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Increased drug and alcohol abuse
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder
• Panic attacks and anxiety disorders
• Depression
• Personality disorders
• Increased utilization of health services
• Increased utilization of social services
• Sexual dysfunctions - ranging from sex addiction to total aversion to sex
• Suicidal ideation
• Greater risk for relationship and parenting problems13
That’s the obvious list. Less obvious are the rampant psychosomatic disorders that can’t be definitively linked to the abuse—headaches, lower back problems and muscle tension caused by stress.
Day to day life for an abuse survivor can be filled with the residue of the experience. Gone is the opportunity for normal peer exploration. Victims already know all about “it.” Relationships can no longer happen normally. The secrecy inherent in all abuse situations robs the child of normal intimacy with anyone—because he or she has a secret which must be guarded at all costs. No one else can get close. The child lives in emotional isolation, often so preoccupied with thoughts of the secret, that it is impossible to concentrate on other normal tasks like school and goal setting. Unable to understand why the child doesn’t focus or get more involved with those around him or her, people can get frustrated with the child, further alienating him or her from normal, loving relationships.
The normal attachment issues are complicated by an inability to properly regulate emotions and stress response.
Self-esteem issues can be huge as survivors grapple with the understanding of their value. It’s very difficult to know you’ve been used like a toy or consumed like a piece of meat. If that sense of not having as much value as other people is not put in perspective, seeing the offender as the one who is “not like other people,” victims can spiral downwards into a life of chronic victimization, allowing themselves to be further used by other people. Finding clear perspective is critical.
Children who have been abused and have not found recovery, are more likely to stay in abusive relationships. Having developed the pattern of putting up with pain and unhappiness in childhood, they have established a kind of perverse “comfort zone.” It’s a situation of damsels (or boys) in distress feeling as though things are most familiar in the distress—the painful “known” versus the peaceful “unknown.” Exiting from such a situation successfully, requires the individual to make the emotional transition from the helplessness of a child to the recognition of empowered adulthood.
The inability to trust is generally the central issue as abused children grow into adulthood. A child who has been abused by an adult in a position of trust, such as a father, grandfather or priest may have a hard time ever trusting again. This inability to trust ripples out to include everyone surrounding the child during the time of the abuse because they (knowingly or unknowingly) failed to protect him or her. And then there’s the issue of trusting themselves to know whom to trust. If they make a mistake, they risk being used or rejected again—like a china doll left broken, abandoned on the floor with a cracked head.
At the very least, sexual abuse of children most often results in bitterness, hostility, misplaced guilt, depression and shame. Unless properly addressed and dealt with, these can last a lifetime, destroying not just the lives of the victims, but all those whose lives are entwined with them. This will be further discussed in Chapter Seven.
Maintaining perspective
Having touched on many of the known consequences of child sexual abuse, it is important not to exaggerate the effects. Everyone reacts differently to circumstances. In their writings on the initial and long-term effects of sexual child abuse, Browne and Finkelhor14 warned about over exaggeration. While the mental health industry has described child sexual abuse as “a special destroyer of adult mental health,” their conclusions are largely based on clinical samples and so are not necessarily representative. If that contention were true and the latest findings that indicate that over half of the female population of the world and a third of the males have been abused, a huge segment of our society would be exhibiting destruction of their mental health. That’s just not so. Destruction of mental health is not necessarily a consequence of child sexual abuse.
At the other end of the continuum, we have a pile of studies indicating that child sexual abuse results in little psychological harm. The advocates of adult-child sex, while obviously in the minority, are becoming more and more vocal and can easily skew studies to bolster their agenda.
To me, it’s simply a no-brainer that something as unnatural and traumatic as child molestation (no matter how gentle or sadistic) is going to affect a developing child—but to varying degrees, depending on the individual and individual circumstances.
Abuse add-ons
Sexual abuse seldom happens in isolation. A study of 17,421 adults at Kaiser Permanente’s Department of Preventative Medicine in San Diego found that of the adults who reported being sexually abused as children, many of them reported other traumatic experiences that were happening concurrently—things like neglect, losing a parent as a result of divorce or imprisonment, living with a dysfunctional parent who was a substance abuser.
This is particularly interesting when coupled with the knowledge that child molesters often seek out needy children.
Those in the study who had at least four adverse factors going on were twice as likely to be smokers, 12 times more likely to have committed suicide, seven times more likely to be alcoholics and 10 times more likely to use street drugs. Dr. Vincent Felitti, one of the authors of The Adverse Childhood Experience Study wrote:
“The study makes it clear that time does not heal some of the adverse experience we found so common in the childhoods of a large population of middle-aged, middle class Americans. One does not “just get over some things, not even 50 years later.”15
Economic factors
When we fail in our efforts to protect children, there is a cost beyond the trauma to the individual and his or her family and friends. Economic costs for child welfare services as well as the indirect costs of the long-term consequences of abuse, take a toll on the economy of individuals, families and nations.
Sadly, the understanding of child sexual abuse as a priority has failed to reach the budget pencils of those who hold the purse strings.
A 2001 study by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation used federal data to determine annual direct costs of all child abuse in the United States,