The impact of child abuse. (Sexual Rights and Reproductive Rights).

Sexual abuse of children is a crime against childhood, but it is still relatively well hidden. Our society is not yet prepared to eradicate this disease, which spreads like a virus from one generation to the next, reproducing itself within the walls of the home.

If we examine our society, we must reflect on the generations that preceded us and their behavior in relation to the rights of the child, to sexuality and violence; and we must take into account the ways these mindsets continue to undermine our hopes of forging a real social commitment to conquer the disease of child abuse.

Those of us born half a century ago can recall the stories of our grandmothers, who were married at 14 or 15 to men twice their age, often strangers or matches arranged by their families. Our grandmothers were completely ignorant about sexual matters and were often victims of marital rape. This was not even registered, much less repudiated; it was simply known as "conjugal rights."

In those countries of Latin America where mass migration occurred, there are endless stories of young girls handed over by their fathers often to total strangers who were leaving the old continent in search of new horizons. Since their husbands were "hardworking" and "honest," they deserved respect and obedience; the subjection of these women within the family was a matter of course.

Sexuality was not something to be talked about; whatever happened, it must be accepted as "the way things are." Sex was the man's affair, a notion transmitted along with the double standard in traditional families. In that private world, the head of the household imposed the rules, and there was no place for the rights of women and children. Today, even though these rights are now socially established, the old attitudes still persist.

"Society delegates power to the family to handle matters of aggression, nurturing and sexuality within the confines of the private sphere. Its frontiers are thus closed against the outside world when it comes to the issue of protecting the child, and this has double implications when domestic violence and sexual abuse occur. There is an absolute conviction that the family alone, its adults in particular, must resolve all matters relating to family life themselves. This delegitimizes outside intervention in the family, and its members remain locked into their abusive beliefs and behaviors. The situation favors a culture of chronic family violence, transmitted down the generations." (1)

This ideology usually makes it impossible to achieve real support for and protection of childhood. Most attempts run into a wall of prejudice about sexuality, privacy and the rights of parents over their children. Reworking this ideology with teachers and health workers, in the judicial system and in the media is crucial to unraveling the web of injustice, violence and abuse. The myths of the ideal family cloud judgment, and parents are given the right to determine the development and practice of sexuality in the family. But that delegation of power is the main obstacle to achieving change in families that abuse children.

People who have endured this traumatic experience carry within them contradictory experiences which have various long-term consequences, depending on the kind of relationship in which the abuse occurred, who abused them, for how long, from what age, the sex of the aggressor, the degree of intimacy to which they were submitted, the reaction within their environment, and what sort of help they received. In all cases, however, the emotional development of the victim is affected.

Human sexuality goes through different stages and aspects, all of which must be understood as positive and necessary for emotional development.

A sexual identity is an inherent aspect of all human beings, men and women; sexuality colors what we feel and think about ourselves and other people. Our bodies acquire meaning from our stage of psycho-sexual development. We express our sexuality in many ways, through emotions and attachments, through our attitudes and our bodies, and independently of our age.

As sexologist John Money explains: "From childhood, each individual builds up their love map. It starts with exploring their body, in games with other children of the same age, in the relationship with their parents." According to Money, the sexual offender is created when the love map is vandalized: when children are constantly punished for playing with their genitals or denied information about sexuality, or faced with a critical situation such as sexual abuse. (2)

In situations of child abuse, the adult's sexuality disrupts the child's psychosexual development and distorts his or her own identity.

Children are sexual beings with their own potential at their own level of development. It is that potential which is damaged when an adult imposes a condition of genitality which the victim cannot absorb. Immature and dependent, the child has no critical capacity to judge what is happening and therefore cannot assent or dissent in the act.

The adult can always impose the act of abuse through seduction or violence and is responsible for the situation. The asymmetric relation of power between adulthood and childhood, in addition to simple coercion, are basic structural factors in the genesis of sexual abuse.

We have been educated in a negative experience of sexuality which reduces it to genitality. This creates a breeding ground where sexual abuse of children can flourish, shielded by silence and secrecy. The prevalence is hard to quantify, since between 30% to 50% of the victims remain silent, and only 10% of cases are ever legally investigated.

Child abuse covers all kinds of ill-treatment, from the intangible forms of psychological abuse and neglect to visible forms such as beatings and desertion. All forms, in different ways, leave wounds and scars which make children vulnerable and place them at risk of becoming victims of sexual abuse. It occurs when there are other forms of abuse, and although the signs are often clear, it is usually ignored.

Children are entirely dependent on the adults in their environment and the ways these adults handle them to ensure obedience. Humiliation and different degrees of punishment are a form of abuse in children's upbringing. Insults, mockery, insidious criticism, all undermine self-confidence and the development of self-worth.

Degrading treatment and punishment will differ for girls and boys. Gender-differentiated education, an aberration in itself, introduces roles for each which limit their human capabilities. The aberration is even greater when the characteristics of women's roles are belittled and denigrated.

"A man's first duty is never to be like a woman," so all insults, taunts and criticisms follow this precept. This command makes men feel insecure in their identity. As a result, they feel a need to reaffirm themselves and alleviate their insecurity with violent displays of power over others.

A girl's first duty is to be "good." The connotations of the word usually teach her to be defenseless, submissive and subordinate and create a sense of guilt that makes her even more vulnerable, confusing and paralyzing her so she acts against her own wishes and chooses what she fears or rejects.

Beatings and blows only reaffirm the power of the adult. Children who suffer such treatment feel that they do not own their own bodies, and that the adults can do as they like with them. But their emotional dependence makes the treatment seem natural, and children accept the situation as it is. Adults hold all the power, though they are often unaware of this because of their deficits as parents.

Many parents were brought up in families with a long history of disturbed relationships, and they have a chronic tendency to repeat the same abusive behavior towards their sons and daughters as they are incapable of recognizing the fragility and vulnerability of the child.

"The child is not the real object of violence so much as the means by which parents 'settle scores' with their own parents. This is so patent that the emotion or impulse the child shows the parents (through angry denials or tantrums, for example), irritates them to a point where they can forget children are more fragile and vulnerable than they are and come to think of them as rivals. The reaction springs from the hurt child of the past who lives on in the adult. In the parents' imagination, the child challenging them is at virtually their own level, and they are unaware of their own control [over the child]." (3)

III treatment usually alternates with kindness, and though the gestures of affection may be few, they are enough to ensure that the child is completely loyal to the adult, always ready to accommodate her aggressor's wishes and expectations in order to deserve the nourishing love she needs. Children, who seek affection constantly, become used to all kinds of treatment and are then unable to see themselves as victims.

Children brought up within these parameters are easy prey for all sexual predators, whether relatives, acquaintances or strangers. The unknown predator is likely to make a single violent attack and seeks to terrify and hurt his victim. He seems to pick out and be drawn to defenseless and insecure children. A child's low sense of self-worth and an education of silence about sexuality always puts her at risk of abuse. In the case of abuse by a stranger, the family's reaction will determine whether the child can work through the trauma satisfactorily.

Generally, however, the family's first emotional reaction in these cases is one of consternation and condemnation of the predator, followed by a tendency gradually and increasingly to blame the victim, for not coming home by the proper route, or being late, or going out without permission, or whatever other reason. These attitudes become far more damaging than the original trauma.

On the other hand, the predator who is an acquaintance or a relative of the child manipulates the relationship of confidence and affection and uses the victim's obedience and submission for his purposes. The result is to pervert that relationship, which becomes the model for future relationships.

He prepares the ground carefully, building up a gradual, insidious process of abusive behavior (exhibitionism, erotic caresses, masturbation, showing pornography) which the child does not perceive as abuse. Often she feels pleasure or does as the adult asks to please him. As time goes on and the aggressor introduces other behavior and demands (fellatio, anal or vaginal penetration with the finger, dry penetration, coitus) he imposes a law of silence and secrecy.

Since he knows the child's personality, he can use his knowledge to manipulate her, playing on sibling jealousy, for example, or threatening her with the disappearance, sickness or death of a loved one.

Silence is sometimes bought with affection, most commonly in the case of abusive fathers. Emotional dependency means the victim may keep secret the trauma she has suffered for most or even all her life.

The impact of abuse is different for a girl and for a boy: In the case of boys, it usually takes only a short time before the abused becomes an abuser, though not all victims become predators. But all abusers have been abused, whether physically, emotionally or sexually.

Girls may suffer different long-term consequences, though all of them will suffer a halt in their emotional development, and they usually remain fixed at an infantile stage.

The defense mechanisms abused children used during the trauma stage, and which allowed them to survive it, form blueprints that lead them to repeat behaviors and relationships that take them back to the trauma, though very often they will not remember it. Often it seems the child who has been abused remains frozen in time, only to emerge again in the adult to demand justice and seek the help and protection she could not ask for as a child. Her behavior is incomprehensible to those around her, and she is judged and sent back again to the place for bad girls.

Survivors of sexual abuse often display behaviors that are incomprehensible both to themselves and their environment. Where the experience of secrecy and silence influenced the development of their identity, they usually feel torn by a constant battle between an infant self, which fights furiously to escape the emotional jail it was locked into at the time, and an adult part, which keeps all the emotional outlets closed as it learned it must do out of loyalty to the grown-ups.

Sometimes victims of incestuous abuse in early childhood become the victims of other predators when they reach puberty. Brainwashed, or vampirized, by their aggressor to feel guilty, they repeat self-punishing and self-destructive behaviors compulsively.

The affectionate relationship perverted by the abuser prepares the victim for other similar relationships, and she is "more likely to have children who will be abused both physically and sexually." (4)

The negative impacts of violence in general, and sexual violence in particular, thus not only influence the identity of the victims but also are closely related to social ills which are fed by these family tragedies.

"Many girls who become child prostitutes prefer a life of sexual exploitation in the streets to suffering the constant family violence and incest in their homes." (5)

"Poverty, violence and family conflicts are the breeding ground for child prostitution. Rape within the family, young people thrown out of their homes (or escaping from the violence there), and the need to survive in the street are the conditions for a painful apprenticeship.... Many fathers or relatives are implicated in what has been called training incest, whose only purpose is the sexual exploitation of the girls." (6)

The most dramatic aspect of these horrors is that there is no political commitment to end them. Well-organized mafias run the business of child prostitution, illegal adoptions and organ trafficking, but many governments remain indifferent to or even abet these activities.

These issues reveal the ideology of inequality, discrimination and the violence between genders and generations which are politically significant in sustaining systems of unequal appropriation, which endlessly produce and reproduce the conditions that make them possible. Repressive and symbolic violence come together in different areas of social life and, fundamentally, in the family. Where they are needed, the myths created by the dominant power continue to function so that in our identities our own desires still turn towards the patriarchal capitalist power that infects our societies. Fighting for recognition of sexual and reproductive rights, including those of children and young people, is a start towards the deconstruction of the myths that uphold the failure of a society when it comes to banishing the scourge of abuse in human relations.

Denying women the right to make decisions about their own bodies is one example of this reality. Population control policies always pass through our bodies, our wombs. Entire peoples may be sterilized in places where too many "insignificant" lives are an inconvenience. Reproductive health information, counseling and services may be systematically refused. Safe, legal abortion may be denied to women in places where poverty forms part of the vast business network of the body trade. These are the contradictions in our societies that help create so much tragedy.

"Argentina exports children through organizations which traffic in babies. The children of poverty are handed over by their teenage mothers to be sold to European couples, who take away the children with all their papers in order, thanks to the collaboration of lawyers, judges, doctors and nurses ... In the USA, a book in general circulation, How to Adopt Children in Latin America, published in 1981 by Dillon Press, Minnesota, recommends: 'If you want white children, go to Argentina, Chile or Costa Rica.' According to Ricardo Ivosku (an Argentine congressman who in 1993 reported the "export" of 40,000 Argentine children to the USA and Europe), Argentina is seen as a good supplier of blonde, white, light-eyed children. But we know that some German, Swiss, Norwegian and Swedish couples prefer to adopt Argentine children with native Indian features." (7)

Two fundamental issues in the prevention of child abuse are sexual and reproductive rights and the rights of the child. Yet these rights are questioned by a conservative U.S. government and by the conservative Vatican administration, and they put tremendous pressure on Latin America regarding these issues, particularly in Chile, Argentina and Mexico.

Adults can do whatever they like with children. Those of us who work in this area know all too well the crimes that are committed. But the Bush administration argues that children's rights should not be greater than those of their parents when it objects that the Convention on the Rights of the Child would eliminate inalienable citizens' rights such as parental authority.

In his film "Life is Beautiful," Roberto Benigni gives a masterly display of how a father can distort reality in a child, making the child doubt his own perceptions and forcing him to accept the adult's objective. Independently of the motives, I think it is interesting to observe this subtle mechanism, embedded in the child's mind by his need for love and protection, which does not encourage or allow critical judgment, and leaves the child powerless in the face of the adult's decisions. Later, it will leave him at the mercy of the authorities (teachers, employers, political and religious leaders, dictators, and so on) who wield power in different areas of social life and consciously or unconsciously help produce and reproduce human tragedies.

Notes

(1.) Barudy, Jorge (1998). El dolor invisible de la infancia. Una lectura ecosistemica del maltrato infantil. Barcelona: Paidos, p. 72.

(2.) Cited by Valeria Shapira, Red Informativa de Mujeres de Argentina in La Nacionline (Buenos Aires), February 11, 2002.

(3.) Barudy, op. cit., p. 82.

(4.) Glaser, Danya and Stephen Frosh (1997). Abuso sexual de ninos. Coleccion Psicologia, Psiquiatria y Psicoterapia. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Paidos, p. 33.

(5.) Martin Medem, Jose Manuel (1998). La Guerra contra los ninos. La impunidad de la violencia en la miseria. Barcelona, Spain: El Viejo Topo, p. 85.

(6.) Ibid., p. 199.

(7.) Ibid., p. 165.

The Youth Coalition

We are an international coalition of young people (ages 15-29 years) committed to promoting adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive rights at the national, regional and international levels. We are students, researchers, volunteers, educators, NGO (non-governmental organization) workers and activists.

We believe that sexual and reproductive rights are human rights and therefore apply equally to young people. As young people, we have a valuable contribution to make to society and must be given a voice in all policy and decision-making processes which is recognized, respected and incorporated.

The Youth Coalition was formed during a meeting on the five-year review of the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD+5). The Youth Forum was held in The Hague in February 1999. Organized by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Population Foundation (WPF) and the Dutch Council on Youth and Population, the Youth Forum provided young people with an opportunity to express their views and share their recommendations regarding issues related to the ICPD Programme of Action.

A number of young people participating in the forum were particularly concerned with the sexual and reproductive rights of adolescents and young people. These individuals established the Youth Coalition to support and sustain young people's efforts towards the realization of their sexual and reproductive rights.

Since our formation, the Youth Coalition has participated in many regional and international decision-making processes as advocates for adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive rights, including the five-year review of the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD+5), the five-year review of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing+5), and the ten-year review of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (WSC+10).

The Youth Coalition website provides information on these activities and more, including Youth Coalition training and youth outreach initiatives. Members' activities and perspectives can be found in the Youth Coalition newsletter, The Watchdog.

Youthcoalition.org also features sexual and reproductive rights links and resources with publications and sites which address young people's sexual and reproductive rights, young people's perspectives on our rights, and what we are doing to promote the human rights of young people everywhere.

From the website of the Youth Coalition, http://www.youthcoalition.org/

The author is a psychologist who has worked in the area of sexual education since 1986 and has offered many workshops for teachers and students. She founded the Casa de la Mujer in Rosario, Argentina, which, together with INDESO and the group Desde el Pie, form Rosario's NGO Network against Violence which concentrates on the prevention of child abuse.