Training for psychologists on sexual violence against children.

There continues to be a need for psychologists to learn more about Child Sexual Violence.

The notion that there are people in the world capable of sexually abusing a child causes dismay, anger and discomfort among people around the world. Yet, ignorance about sexual abuse is evident even among mental health professionals. Such basic things as the psychological damage caused by abuse, the extent of the after-effects or the composition and behavior of the families in which the abuse occurs are unknown..

Because, despite the widespread belief in the lone wolf who kidnaps children in the street, most cases of childhood sexual abuse occur in the family environment or within the victim's home, with the perpetrator being the father in most cases. Then we can also find that the victimizer can be a brother, grandfather, uncle, and residually the mother or other female figure.

A percentage of these abuses are carried out by other minors. Now we are seeing how victims are beginning to talk about the abuse they suffered in sporting or religious environments, or in recreational environments, such as summer camps, but the bulk of the abuse occurs in the family. the bulk of abuse happens in the home, and we haven't started to talk about that yet..

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

Sexual Violence Against Children

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

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

Just think of the difference in weight between victim and perpetrator, the threats against the life or integrity of siblings or the mother, and the deception and manipulation of the perception of what is happening to the minor. All of these are all experiences of violence, and to state otherwise is to minimize some very serious facts..

To use certain softer terms, such as "abuse" or to consider that "if there was seduction we cannot speak of violence" is to continue to promote a naive image of abuse. And we must understand the extent to which this hurts children in general, not just those who have already been victimized.

Family dynamics

When abuse occurs within the family nucleus, we find that these groups display specific behavioral traits, common to all these families, perfectly measurable and extrapolable to other families where abuse occurs. 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, starting with the fact that in normal families there are no pedophiles who rape the children of the family.

As in all mafias, each component has its particular role. The head of the clan, usually the father or grandfather, controls and sets the guidelines. And then, all the others contribute in some way so that he can continue to act. These are accomplices and cover-up characters, who are usually the female figures, such as the mother or the victims themselves.These are usually the female figures, such as the mother or the victims themselves.

Something that we frequently find is that many women who have been victims of sexual abuse in childhood end up getting involved in relationships with pedophiles and acting as their accomplices. Thus, and although it may seem counterintuitive, having been a victim of abuse is the most direct path to complicity in abuse. For every victim capable of denouncing what is happening in her home, we find about ten victims capable of assaulting her to protect the child molester, starting with the mother.starting with the mother.

Logically, maternal complicity destroys the children's lives, and the fact that the mother herself is traumatized or has been a victim does not justify what she does. Some traumatized mothers denounce the abuse suffered by their children regardless of what has happened to them. It is this reaction of the mother that is most shocking in cases of intrafamilial abuse, because it is far removed from what we understand in society that a mother should do when one of her children suffers harm.

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

The most serious aspect of 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 uncommon for these women to visit the pedophile at family gatherings, and to leave their children with those men, even though they already know that the person is a pedophile. And this is how sexual abuse passes from generation to generation through the maternal line. through the maternal line.

The psychopathic personality of the victimizers

With regard to the perpetrators (the pedophiles), according to the victims' testimonies, we find that, in most cases, they are people with a psychopathic 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 to get married 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 these women to abuse their children.

Forms of emotional manipulation

Pedophiles are usually very promiscuous and abuse as many children as they can. Normally the abuse is of the same type for all their 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 environment of the child molester they will end up being harmed. What it does mean is that these children may be harmed less than others.

This kind of different treatment can generate conflicts among the victims, something that only benefits the child molester. The child molester himself can generate conflicts between the different victims to entertain them while he abuses them all. This is especially easy when only girls are involved.

Another typical behavior of the child molester is to try 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 on the child molester for life.

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

The need for training in this area

There are so many preconceived ideas and so much misinformation surrounding sexual abuse that it is terrifying for minors.. Not only do we neglect them when they are being abused; we also neglect them later, in adulthood, when they try to explain to us what has happened to them and are confronted with 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 to the victims, now and forever. That minors seduce adults; that minors want to have sex with adults; that abuse does not cause harm to the minor, are all Freudian ideas, implanted (unfortunately) in the collective consciousness, as unalterable and untouchable axioms in which many believe, despite the fact that common sense, good judgment and our own experience of observing child behavior tell us the opposite.

Sexual abuse generates trauma because they are a highly traumatic experienceand 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 or her brain will not function correctly. Because of this, there are a myriad of diseases and disorders linked to trauma that victims of abuse (of trauma in general) usually suffer from, and that they tend to carry for life, in the absence of specialists who know how to treat them.

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