Welcome

March 30, 2013 7:59 am ,

The Purpose of this Website

This website has been prepared as a contribution to the goal of reducing the incidence of adults (mostly men) sexually abusing children.

It has the potential to be shared with members of the community in a variety of formats, and adds another prong to the goal of prevention, but differs in that it transfers responsibility back onto adults.

In the short term, responsibility for reducing the incidence of abuse is passed onto offenders and prospective offenders. In the longer term, prevention will be favoured by an understanding within the community that improved parenting practices are necessary to reduce the emotional vulnerabilities in children that increase their motivation and risk of becoming adolescent and/or adult abusers.

This website offers information to promote understanding of the main factors that contribute to the sexual victimisation of children so that more people who at risk of offending, or who may have started offending, will be encouraged to stop, and to seek professional help and support. It also offers suggestions for what we must do as a community to reduce the incidence of child sex abuse in the longer term.

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What’s wrong with adults having sex with children?

March 14, 2013 11:31 am ,

When adults engage in sexual activity with children, they are likely to damage the future wellbeing, development and adjustment of those children, due to children being emotionally and physically immature.

For example, sexual abuse can:

  • Damage the child’s self-esteem and feelings of worth as a person,
  • Cause a self-blaming outlook or “template” for explaining negative events that may contribute to ongoing feelings of guilt and /or depression,
  • Promote ideas about self-harm, and actual self-harm or suicide, to reduce emotional pain,
  • Create an unhealthy preoccupation with sex, (or its opposite – an aversion for sexual intimacy) which interferes with adult relationships,
  • Create confusion in sexual orientation and preferences,
  • Promote mental defenses which block out pain at the expense of fragmenting the mind or deadening the experience of good feelings,
  • In certain individuals contribute to the perpetuation of child sex abuse by the victim later in life, be it within the family, or outside it.

It is important to remember, however, that there are individual variations in how sexual victimisation affects a child. Some professionals suggest that some children experience as much, if not more damage, by the Court processes associated with prosecuting the perpetrator, than the original abuse. Of course, this means that we should review and improve those processes, not abandon the issue of justice.

Additional information on the harmful effects of child sex abuse can be obtained from links on the Web.

For example:

https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/long-term-effects-child-sexual-abuse

https://www.victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual-abuse/effects-of-csa-on-the-victim

Posted in: What’s wrong with adults having sex with children?

Are all adults who sexually abuse children predatory, violent, cruel, and uncaring?

March 14, 2013 11:28 am ,

No. Only some abusers are antisocial or disrespectful of the law, such as having histories of aggression and violence, dishonesty, causing property damage, or an involvement in drug and alcohol abuse. Such offenders are typical of those who cause harm to other community members. Most people who are destructive or hurt others have a history of having suffered emotional wounds in childhood from abuse, neglect, and sometimes trauma which no one could avert. Such offenders learnt to cope inappropriately with their pain by acting-out impulsively or acting in a retaliatory manner, often unconsciously.

In summary, it can be said that:
Most people who are cruel suffered severe childhood losses or trauma, or were victims of cruelty themselves, and they repeat the cycle by creating new victims.

The common desire to retaliate when we are hurt (or if one of our loved ones is hurt) demonstrates the underlying processes, but in the most serious offenders their vindictiveness or desire to hurt back can operate unconsciously. However, individuals who are better self-controlled refrain from acting on their desires or impulses if it creates negative or bad outcomes. Antisocial individuals are more prone to act on impulse, without regard for the effects on others, and are more concerned with short-term benefits to themselves, which can include avoiding pain or chasing an altered (improved) state of consciousness associated with pleasure.

Posted in: Are all adults who sexually abuse children predatory, violent, cruel, and uncaring?

Why don’t all people show restraint and respect for others, and concern for kids?

March 14, 2013 11:27 am ,

Some adults have great difficulty handling internal upsets, and some even become habitually impulsive. Such people usually carry high emotional burdens from childhood neglect or trauma. That burden takes the form of emotional pain, which affects them both consciously and unconsciously.

Many antisocial people learn to express pain and frustration by acting-out their upsets from a young age – they react by doing bad things or taking out their feelings on others, and that coping style becomes a habit, as it makes them feel better in the short-term. They may also use drugs or alcohol to reduce internal pain. Intoxication can contribute to poor choices and loss of control. (People with addictions or substance use problems are encouraged to seek professional help from a drug and alcohol agency or clinical psychologist in their area).  A number of men who engage in inappropriate sexual activity with children are not chronic offenders, but regress to such activities after rare life stresses that re-awaken pain arising from unmet childhood needs.

Posted in: Why don’t all people show restraint and respect for others, and concern for kids?

What are childhood needs?

March 14, 2013 11:26 am ,

When a baby is born, it has both physiological and psychological needs. Needs that begin in utero include the need for physical nourishment and for safety. From birth, human beings also have ongoing psychological needs that manifest more in different stages of development. These are the needs for safety and security, for physical touch, love and affection, for acceptance, for autonomy, for approval, recognition, admiration, and for order and stability. These needs don’t disappear: as adults we continue to manifest these needs, and we experience wellbeing when they are gratified or respected, and feel stress or upsets if they are threatened or frustrated.

Infants communicate their needs by their behaviours, including vocalisations – and later the use of language. Underpinning the expression of a particular need is a negative feeling. For example, the feeling of hunger arises from the need for food. The psychological needs listed also give rise to negative feelings that motivate the infant, child or adolescent to react. Their reactions are ways of trying to bring attention to their needs, to try to have them fulfilled or respected.

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Why should someone else have to do things for children?

March 14, 2013 11:25 am ,

The young in our species – children – have the longest period of dependency upon adult care, as a proportion of lifespan, of any other animal species. The emotional and social development of children are dependent on the quality of care and protection they receive. Long-term problems in wellbeing and adjustment develop when those important needs are not fulfilled by the carer of the infant, child or adolescent, or if those needs are threatened by others.  One element of emotional development is how the child learns to cope with emotional distress or upsets. The protection and fulfilment of children’s needs by their carers and peers serves to avoid the experience of intense distress, and lays the groundwork for the experience of wellbeing. Children who suffer emotionally in their developing years are generally at greater risk of carrying lifelong psychological vulnerabilities – which means they are less resilient to future stresses, and are more prone to emotional upsets such as anxiety, depression or antisocial behaviours. That is to say that they carry burdens of emotional pain into their future lives.

 

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How can one know about the long-term effects of childhood events?

March 14, 2013 11:25 am ,

Psychologists studying adults found out as early as the 1930’s that bad childhood experiences were the precursors of neurotic patterns of suffering and distress that carried forward in time and were observable in adulthood. Clinical work with sex and other offenders shows the same pattern:

pain and upset associated with unmet psychological needs in childhood carry forward as seeds for internal suffering of an enduring kind, such as loneliness, low self-esteem, anxiety and depression, or the expression of antisocial behaviours.

Posted in: How can one know about the long-term effects of childhood events?

Does that mean that unmet childhood needs predisposes the individual to being at greater risk of being unhappy and dysfunctional in later life?

March 14, 2013 11:24 am ,

Yes. There are exceptions of course, but negative childhood events are a common cause of adult misery. An important insight is that unmet childhood needs leave a repository of pain that renders the individual to be more susceptible to being affected by life stresses than others through their lifespan.

 

Posted in: Does that mean that unmet childhood needs predisposes the individual to being at greater risk of being unhappy and dysfunctional in later life?

What kind of people sexually abuse children?

March 14, 2013 11:23 am ,

The majority of adult sexual offenders against children in Australia do not express physical violence as part of the offending. They may manipulate, bribe, “seduce” or otherwise control the child’s sexual involvement in order to meet their own emotional and sexual needs. Bribery can involve goods, money, or the display of attention and affection for ulterior motives (the exploitation of the child’s vulnerability or their need for attention and to be cared about).

Three decades of clinical work with sexual and other types of offenders in Western Australia has revealed that most adults who abuse children sexually do so in a misguided attempt to reduce or quell negative or upsetting feelings that they carry inside them. Their abusive behaviours are attempts to temporarily feel better. Often this is related to reducing feelings of loneliness, or of not being loved. In other words, sexual abuse is often the result of poor problem-solving related to reducing negative or upsetting feelings of childhood origins.

Psychological assessments of abusers show that many have a very intense unmet needs to be loved, which is a result of not experiencing enough affection, attention, and particularly physical comfort (touch) during infancy and childhood. Many suffered physical and emotional abuse or neglect. Others experienced disappointment and felt abandoned.

Many are aware of their neediness, and report feeling as if they are still a child in an adult body – that is, they still feel like a child emotionally. A minority are not overt seekers of affection through relationships, because they had let-downs and deprivations in childhood. The latter grow up emotionally distant from others, preferring to be loners. They may try to get by without too much intimacy, which is threatening or anxiety-inducing for them. It creates anxiety and tension to associate closely with people, and in their avoidance they sometimes fail to meet their intimacy and sexual needs – which all people have – and may lapse into offending when their unmet needs burst through seeking gratification.

Many men who sexually abuse children find it easier and feel more comfortable to relate to children than adults, but others can have the capacity to develop long-term relationships, marry, and have families – and to generally be caring towards others – until they slide into behaviours that lead to offending.

Posted in: What kind of people sexually abuse children?

Do abusers feel shame about their offending behaviour?

March 14, 2013 11:20 am ,

There are individual differences: some abusers certainly do experience reactions of shame and remorse, and others do not because they get addicted to the pleasurable feelings produced by inappropriate sexual behaviour.

Carrying a secret involving guilt can be a very heavy burden, and many sexual offenders against children have a well-developed moral sense. However, as with most kinds of negative behaviours, at the time of acting-out there is often an over-riding of the conscience by the person’s strong feelings, urges and impulses stemming from unmet needs that were created by their early experiences, and which remain part of their personality.

Feelings, urges and impulses that resurface in adulthood relate to unmet or thwarted emotional needs in childhood that are recorded in memory as emotional pain, and as negative beliefs about oneself or the world. The worst and more chronic offenders believe that the world is bad, rather than their own actions. However, some people, including some child sex offenders, carry a biased and irrational tendency towards self-blame.

The negative feelings arising from childhood upsets and trauma energise or drive actions and thoughts that attempt to quell the internal pain and tension. The actions that occur are clearly the result of choice, or preference, in line with doing what brings about an anticipated or actual improvement in feelings. Some choose short-term solutions that bring about some temporary relief, but long-term harm to others, and also negative consequences for themselves. But with awareness, people who carry emotional burdens can improve the way they deal with such issues.

That is where understanding, community education, support and professional treatment comes into play.

Posted in: Do abusers feel shame about their offending behaviour?