Training for psychologists in sexual violence in childhood

The notion that there are people in the world capable of sexually abusing the least causes discomfort, anger and discomfort in the population of the entire world. Still, ignorance regarding sexual abuse remains apparent even among mental health professionals. Things as basic as the psychological damage caused by the abuse, the extent of the consequences or the composition and behavior of the families where the abuse occurs are unknown..

Because, despite the widespread belief in the lone wolf who abducts minors on the street, most cases of abuse In childhood they occur in the family environment or within the home of the victims, with the perpetrator being the father in most cases. cases. Then we can also find that the perpetrator can be a brother, grandfather, uncle, and in a residual way the mother or another female figure.

A percentage of these abuses are carried out by other minors. Now we are seeing how victims begin to talk about the abuse they suffered in sports, religious, or recreational settings, such as summer camps, but

the bulk of abuse occurs in the home, and we haven't started talking about that yet.

• Related article: "What is trauma and how does it influence our lives?"

Sexual Violence Against Children

And since we are leaving clear concepts, let's start with the very concept of "sexual abuse". As many victims claim, using the term "abuse" is an understatement.

The most appropriate name to talk about this is Sexual Violence Against Children, VISCI. Because despite the naive belief about the nature of the sexual abuse of minors, in most cases we speak of rape. And we all understand that, for a minor, being raped by an adult (or a larger minor) is extraordinarily violent, even when such abuse is taking place in a seductive way.

You just have to think about the difference in weight between victim and perpetrator, about threats against life or integrity of siblings or mother, and in the deception and manipulation of the perception of what is happening to the minor. All these They are experiences of violence, and to affirm the contrary is to minimize some very serious facts.

Using certain milder terms, such as “abuse” or considering that “if there was seduction, you cannot talk about violence” is to continue promoting a naive image of abuse. And we must understand to what extent that hurts minors in general, and not just those who have already been victims.

Family dynamics

When abuses occur within the family nucleus, we find that these groups display behavioral traits specific, common to all these families, perfectly measurable and extrapolated to other families where the abuses. The behavior of these clans is mafia-like, so we can classify these families as mafias. These are not normal families. Their reality is far from what we all understand as normality, beginning because in normal families there are no pedophiles who rape the minors of the family.

As in all mafias, each component has its own particular role. The lord of the clan, usually the father or grandfather, controls and sets the tone. And then, all the others, contribute in some way so that it can continue to act. They are complicit and cover-up characters, which are normally female figures, such as the mother or the victims themselves.

One thing we frequently find is that many women who have been sexually abused in childhood end up being involved in relationships with pedophiles and acting as their partners in crime. Thus, and although it seems counterintuitive, having been a victim of abuse is the most direct path to complicity in the abuse. In front of each victim capable of reporting what happens in their home, we find about ten victims capable of assaulting them to protect the pedophile., starting with the mother.

Logically, maternal complicity destroys the lives of the children, and the fact that the mother herself is traumatized or has been a victim of herself does not justify what she does. Some traumatized mothers report abuse suffered by their children despite what happened to them. It is this reaction of the mother that impacts the most in cases of domestic abuse, because she moves away enough of what we understand in society that a mother should do when one of her children suffers hurt.

Many female victims, faced with the rejection of the mother, will conform to what the family wants, and in their adulthood they will repeat their mother's behavior automatically. The robotic behavior that we see in many of these women, who limit themselves to repeating what she has seen around them, has to do with the processes of dissociation suffered by traumatized people.

The worst thing about this behavior is that these women will expose their own children to abuse, very often at the hands of the same man who abused them. It is not strange that these women visit the pedophile in family gatherings, and that they leave their children with those men, even though they already know that this person is a pedophile. And this is how sexual abuse passes from generation to generation through the maternal line.

The psychopathic personality of the perpetrators

With regard to the perpetrators (pedophiles), according to the testimonies of the victims, we verify that, in most cases, they are people with psycho personality.

For the psychopath, the rest of us are not people, but only instruments that they use according to their convenience. Thus, when a pedophile realizes that it is difficult to get child prey at random, what he often does is marry and have children in order to abuse them with impunity. In other cases, pedophiles seduce women who already have children, for example those who are divorced or separated, and end up using those women to abuse their children.

Forms of emotional manipulation

Pedophiles are often very promiscuous and abuse all the children they can. Normally the abuse is the same type for all its victims, but sometimes we find that they make exceptions for some children and treat them somewhat differently.. This does not mean that these children are not abused; If they live in the pedophile's environment, they will end up suffering harm. What it means is that these children may be hurt less than others.

This type of different treatment can generate conflicts between victims, something that only benefits the pedophile. The pedophile himself can generate conflicts between the different victims to entertain them while he abuses everyone. This is especially easy when it comes to just girls.

Another typical behavior of the pedophile is trying to convince all his victims that each one is his favorite: "You are a special girl for me." This is part of grooming and generates a very dangerous emotional dependence of the pedophile for life.

Victims are often surprised when they discover that they were not the only victims and that the father abused all his siblings and his cousins ​​and practically all the children of the neighborhood. It is often shocking to discover the extent to which the pedophile is promiscuous and to wake up from the absurd belief that you have been a special child for a rapist.

• You may be interested in: "What is an emotional manipulator? The 6 characteristics and warning signs "

The need to train in this area

There are so many preconceptions and misinformation around sexual abuse that it is terrifying for minors. We not only neglect them when they are abused; We also abandon them later, in adulthood, when they try to explain to us what has happened to them and find the absurd beliefs implanted in the heads of the supposed experts.

In that sense, we would never finish explaining the terrible damage that Freudian rhetoric has caused in the victims, now and forever. That minors seduce adults; that minors want to have sex with adults; that abuses do not cause harm to the minor, they are all Freudian ideas, implanted (unfortunately) in the collective conscience, as unalterable axioms and untouchables that many believe in, despite the fact that common sense, good judgment, and one's own experience of observing child behavior tell us everything contrary.

Sexual abuse generates trauma because are a highly traumatic experience, and therefore generate dissociation, as we have been explaining.

Dissociation can lead to different consequences such as psychogenic amnesia of the experience. And even if the victim does not dissociate the experience, his brain will not function correctly. Because of this, there are a myriad of trauma-related illnesses and disorders that women typically experience. victims of abuse (of trauma in general), and that usually take a lifetime, in the absence of specialists who know treat them.

For all these reasons, it is imperative that psychologists are well trained in trauma and sexual violence of all kinds, but particularly in child sexual abuse. With that objective, from La Psicología Responde we have created a very complete course on abuse that no psychologist is going to want to miss.