Should the Person(s) Who Traumatized You Be Punished for What They Did?

[void]

:hello:Hello all! I hope to generate a debate on this subject and encourage each of us to evaluate our anger, desire to see punishment and even the desire for revenge! This will be a very difficult topic for some but many of us have these kind of desires deeply repressed(ie buried) and to heal they must be felt and sorted.
I do believe that my mother should spend life in prison for what she did to me. My sister has very little memory of our childhood and is more emotionally numb than anyone I know. We are both serving a life sentence of severe psychiatric dysfunction and pain and so I believe that my mother deserves to be punished as well. Of course, she will not and is in 100% denial that she harmed us. So the victims endure continuous agony and the vicious b*#% gets off with no consequences. Ahhh! the justice of the universe:mad::mad::mad:

So weigh my friend , let it all hang out and may the healing come!
void

 

[Deleted member 541]

Void,

This is a very hard subject for me.... I totally understand where you are coming form. I too felt very angry for years because of the trauma and pain inflicted on me. I was a very angry person filled with rage because of my trauma. I didn't know how to deal with it, how to vent or release it.

I turned that anger onto myself. I drank, did drugs, neglected my daughter, was a verbally abusive and sometimes a abusive parent with spankings and way to many groundings. I used sex as a weapon, and I had a tongue that could cut you down in less than 30 seconds. I was suicidal and have attempted it 8 times in my life.

I hated myself and everyone around me. I was like this for 30 yrs....What a waste.........What an utter waste. I had to learn to forgive in order to be a better person. I had to forgive the ones that had hurt me in order to move forward in my healing.

I had to understand deep within myself that the very people that had abused me, were VERY sick people. They had emotional issues. NORMAL PEOPLE DO NOT DO THESE THINGS TO OTHER PEOPLE!!!!!! I had to learn to forgive them.

It took time and a very good therapist to do this, but I am grateful that he stuck with me. I am no longer an angry angry mean hateful person.

I hope that one day you can come to terms with your anger. If you can't then I am afraid that your healing will be halted. Anger consumes you and it doesn't allow you to be open for any other emotions. It has a death grip on everything good and kind.

 

[goingonhope]

My father should've been taken from our home and incarcerated in prison the first time my mother called the police on him for his beatings, other abuses, violent rages, terrorfying drunken episodes/+drunken driving and for terrorizing my sisters, mother and I once again with his intimidations and threats: "Someone is going to die in this house tonight," and all while boasting of his power and the condition of his prized butcher knife collection.

But, oh' No. Cops just took away his knives and told him that he could come get them at the station the following day when he was not drunk. Or, they'd tell him to go find a motel room to sleep in for the night and he'd be outside banging on the door pleading and crying nearly as soon as police left.

Had he been disempowered and taken away by those with the authority and ability to do so, I doubt that my mother would have given him our home and left our friends behind while fleeing with us 3 girls out of state. Also, she would not have had to leave us with our grandmother while she drove back to not only claim some of our possessions but to clean up the bloody mess he made of our diningroom when he got good and angry drunk and scalped a man.

We left a bit to late, I'd say!:eek:.:eek:.:eek:.:eek:

Void, an interesting idea for a thread. I think I'll do my best to go very careful here reading or posting.

But, yes certainly that man should have been imprisoned for a long stay.


Hope

 

[Dylan]

If the person is still a danger, then I believe they should be removed from society. I also don't believe that any capable and sane being would beat a child, rape a woman, or kill or torture another being.

So, mostly I end up feeling like this:

"People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply, by the lives they lead."
- James Baldwin

 

[nic]

Love the quote, Dylan.

When I decided to report the rapes three years after the fact, I knew there would be little to nothing done, as there is no evidence. Would I like to know that he is in prison? Maybe. It may help to make me feel safer, if nothing else. However, the guy who raped me had a bunch of his own issues. What he needs, more than anything else, is very intense counseling.

 

[SweetpinNH]

The one person who caused me the most emotional trauma has Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. He has no clue what he did to me. He probably never will because of his OCPD. In some ways I feel sorry for him because he refuses to see he has problems.

 

[Marlene]

I hope, with every fiber of my being, that the man who sexually assaulted me as a child is either dying or has died a painful death. I offer no forgivness to him. For a person who deliberately, and with a plan hurt me, I have no forgivness to offer.

My punishment for him would be that he suffers (or suffered) the mental anguishes that I've had to deal with for the last 30 years. That and only that would be a fitting punishment. Or if a prison stay was available for me to give him now, it would be that he stays in the general population to spend the rest of his life in fear and looking over his shoulder.

Do I sound vindictive? I really don't care. What I go through every day of my life is caused from what this man did to me. I think the punishment should fit the crime.

Lisa

 

[goingonhope]

Even though I state that my father should've been imprisoned, I don't say this from a point-of-view of punishment. I guess I rather stated the obvious meaning that criminals ought to be introduced to fair judges and/or jury and then held accountable to pay within reason for their actions and put away as to protect the innocent and society.

Now had my father, (whom may have done some small time at one point), gone to prison and then been violently beaten, raped, or unfairly isolated or tortured, I would've been heartbroken then and heartbroken now. I never wanted my father to hurt or to suffer. In fact, I invited him to move local and suggested he try AA, yrs. back. He did and many yrs. later he accepted my invitation for him to walk me down the isle when I got married. The picture we have captured of him is precious. His face was kind of misshapen as he held back the majority of his tears, but he was crying. It was precious. So I really, really did love that man and still hold back my own tears when I mention to others, whom know both he and I, of how I miss him. I'm really happy I got to know him, I just wish it didn't make me so ill, so often, in doing so. As he was dying from cancer I was one of the family members most interested in being by his side too, and I got to further let this man know how much I really loved him.

Also, I felt instantly even greater freedom when he died.


---
Dad if you have any idea, I'm thinking of you now, please have forgiven yourself, because really I do. Fact is, I've agonized and lost much, and will likely be in an experience of much suffering again from the traumas, (maybe again and again) but still Dad, I would never desire punishment or agony inflicted upon you.
---
Hope

 

[nic]

Whew--this thread has really hit a nerve with me. I've been thinking about this a bit more, so sorry of I ramble a little.

I'm not an angry person, and overall, I feel more sadness than anger about everything that happened. I mean, damn it WE (both me and my perp.) WERE KIDS! In his case, abuse begets abuse. I HATE what he did to me; I HATE what I have to live with. But at the same time...jeez, I don't know.

I guess I am angry that I feel like I'm the one who has to pay the price for the crime that was done to me. He called me a few years ago to apologize for "anything he did." I didn't know what to say. I couldn't forgive, not when I'm living in my own day to day hell. He can move on with his life, and I'm the one stuck with the life sentence [of PTSD]. It's just not fair.

 

[Mina]

Well, in my case it was a dog that traumatized me, so I guess it's a little different.

Yes, he should have been put down. He's a dangerous dog, no matter what DH says. Hutch had already turned on me twice before, fully bared and ready to strike, and knocked his teeth on my wrist once (DH called it a "warning tap") before the major bite. DH couldn't stand to put his precious dog down even after what he did to me, and sent him to live with his parents. The dog has since nipped my 3-year-old niece (she followed g'ma out to the kennel without g'ma realizing it), and the inlaws' solution is not to have their granddaughter to the house anymore. :mad: My brother-in-law and his gf and I are apalled at their and DH's inability to recognize this situation for what it is and DO THE RESPONSIBLE THING and put the dog down. DH and I almost got divorced over him not putting Hutch down, and he can't fathom how I could ask him to do that to his best friend. Well, his "best friend" bites people, and badly tore the throat of the inlaws' doberman (they gave him away so they could keep Hutch for DH). He also requires medication every 12 hours to regulate his potassium bromide levels...which when they get off, he has seizures and heightened agression.

The ironic thing is, DH is a police officer and was a lawyer before that, and he still refuses to understand the situation for what it is. I just don't understand how someone so smart and so well-versed in the ways of liability and fault and violence could be so...well...dumb. :stupid:

 

[linasmom]

void

Thank you for this thread.

I want more than anything, for my mother and another person who contributed to the abuse (a boyfriend of hers) to be punished. I have thought about SO MANY TIMES, calling the police, calling a lawyer..calling SOMEONE....anyone. I want so badly some reciprocity. I think about it so much...I think about it to the point where I know it's detrimental to me...I know it because it consumes me sometimes...I feel deep within me that if I could have JUSTICE, that I would feel better. I would feel ACKNOWLEDGED, I would feel payed-back, I would feel like I *exist* as a human being.

As it stands, I feel "less than" - because no one apologizes, no one acknowledges, no one else suffers except for me and I'm pissed about it. Yes, I'm angry, yes that's my main issue and I know that there is a healthier way to deal with this....but right now, and years past, I want what is owed to me as a human being.

 

[void]

WOW!! powerful stuff!:clap: look at the sides to this issue compassion, forgiveness, love and resentment, anger and seeing no reason to forgive.
This is why I posted this thread. This is a very complex, emotionally intense issue that is very troubling and painful for many of us. I hope to hear from many more as we explore this aspect of our suffering together.
My mother was a very disturbed person though by all accounts her childhood was quite good. So what was the problem? I don't know and in some ways I see no benefit in caring. All I know is that every aspect of my existence has been f****d up by what she did and I wonder if I can ever even come close to recovering.

Thank you for you responses so far and keep them coming!:smile: