Childhood Struggling to Untangle Autism from Intentional Sexual Abuse

[Sadwetcat]

My family doesn't know about the abuse I went through, but it wasn't all behind closed doors. Granted, though, it wasn't anything like... incriminating? It was really just, grooming I guess that took place around my family, he would make me hug him, and kiss him on the lips, he would grab me and touch my thighs, put his hands on my shoulders, make his knuckles white and leave marks in my skin. He would make me sing songs and play along with him, no matter how badly I didn't want to, and my family would shame me if I didn't play along and go with it.

They always told me that he has autism, that I need to be nicer to him, that he just does things differently, that it's just different culturual norms, that he doesn't mean anything and there was no cruel intentions behind it. I think I also have autism. And a lot of the time it scares me, that I will end up as he did and do the same things as he did.

Sometimes, in the moments when I could not escape him and was fully at my abusers whims, with no other family members around. He would put vibrators in my underwear, put anal plugs in me, put vibrating dildos in me, and he would take me outside, in public, around people. Sometimes we would get groceries, sometimes we would go out to the park or to some random little fun thing that a normal child Would actually have interest in. Sometimes, when I was just wearing the bedazzled anal plug, with an obnoxious jewel on the back, he would make me wear something very showy, oftentimes with no underwear on, and we would go to the adult store where his 'friend' worked. I know.. I think... I think I know, that the man commented on it once.

I feel so shameful when I think about it, all the people in public that I had been indecently exposed to without their knowledge. Even moreso when I think about the comments that my family members have made, about needing to be kinder to him because of his autism, and to understand that he just does things differently, to know that him making me feel bad wasn't intentional.

All of these thoughts just swirl around my head and mix together so disgustingly. I can't untangle what was "the autism" from what was "the intentional sexual abuse" even though, I guess realistically I can understand that his autism had absolutely nothing to do with it.. Right? I'm not sure. I find it near impossible to determine what aspects of his abuse were just.. lack of social awareness due to autism? and what parts were just.. normal abuse. Maybe I am just finding ways to make up excuses for him? I feel like my mind is a prison sometimes.

Whenever I see people use autism as an 'excuse' or 'justification' for violence or abuse, I get upset, potentially even unreasonably so. Yet here I am, trying to pick apart what was and wasn't from a situation I'm no longer in. I guess it's meaningless to try because it won't further my health. If anyone else has struggled with or been told similar excuses, it might help to know you're not alone, and no disorders or mental illnesses will ever excuse putting someone through trauma. But here I am, wondering if it's all different in my situation. Or if it is a valid reasoning. Maybe it's not as helpful as I thought.
I dunno

 

[Weemie]

I can't untangle what was "the autism" from what was "the intentional sexual abuse"

I'm having a difficult time understanding your difficulty. Autism does not cause people to intentionally sexually abuse others. Putting a vibrator inside of a child is a purposefully malicious behavior.

It's not within the realm of inappropriate behavior due to developmental disabilities. And this does happen. Including sexual acting out and violence. A majority of the time there's no moderation to this conduct at all, it's relatively purposeless. Not harmless, obviously, but it's an entirely different forensic profile.

This was deliberate and specific. He only did it when he was alone with you. He knew what he was doing, made a plan to do it, and then did it. He may happen to be autistic. It's not like autism prevents people from being shitty. But they're two separate statements. He or your family can claim it's autism all they want.

He did it because he is a sexual abuser. Not because he's autistic.

 

[Dark.Green.Feathers]

Agreement with what Weemie said.

That is intentional sexual abuse and grooming. Very. People should not infantilise him as if incapable of malice because he is autistic. They are using it as a scapegoat, I think.

His behaviour and their brushing off of it is disgusting and I’m very sorry you were forced to go through it

 

[Rose White]

I can understand that his autism had absolutely nothing to do with it.. Right?

Right!

Maybe I am just finding ways to make up excuses for him?

Yes, it’s a survival instinct to protect your ego from feeling vulnerable and victimized—which, if you were a child, as it seems you were, is something akin to death from the child ego’s perspective. But when you hold onto those excuses beyond when it’s necessary (assuming you are no longer being sexually abused and assaulted) it prevents you from grieving, which is the path to get through and past the grip of the memories.

If anyone else has struggled with or been told similar excuses

Yes I very much struggled with it. It made more sense to me for a long time that my dad sexually abused me because he had autism or some mental disorder. I much preferred to feel sorry for him (his dad was a sadistic pedophile) than to feel angry at him. But if I felt sorry for him then I abandoned myself which led to all sorts of PTSD symptoms and inability to feel safe enough or comfortable enough around people. So through years of grief work I learned to choose myself over him.

It’s hard because the structure of a pedophilic “relationship” (if you can call it that) necessarily involves brainwashing to various degrees. Kids are generally easy to manipulate as they are typically conditioned to accept their dependency on adults. The mindf*ckery of feeling the need to protect the pedophile/rapist is one of the most difficult things to recover from.

 

[Movingforward10]

Did he definitely have autism? Or was that a clever lie to have access to you? As the autism part seems to have really worked a number on your parents and exposed you to abuse. They taught you that someone else's feelings were more important than your own.
So I understand the confusion of autism and abusive behaviour. Because that situation was set up for you.
.but nothing you describe has anything to do with autism. And everything to do with an adult intentionally abusing a child.

I'm sorry he did that. I'm sorry no one stepped in to protect you. I'm sorry that there was the added humiliation of those public events.

 

[Sideways]

Some abusers are autistic.
Some have blue eyes.
Some of them have cancer.
Some of them are cops.
Some abusers are homeless.
Some of them are protestant.
Some are unintelligent.
Some are incredibly attractive.
None of those things serves to invalidate the suffering of their victim.

Abusers come in all forms.
Yours came in the form of a person who happened to have autism.
Your suffering is just as valid as the suffering of victims of any other abuser.

 

[Ecdysis]

Hmm, I actually disagree with what most people here have replied.

I do agree that this perp's behaviour was because he was a sexual perp, a paedophile.

And that on one level, it's irrelevant whether he was autistic, or whether he claimed to be autistic, or what.

But in terms of having experienced it and trying to make sense of it, I do think it matters.

My main abuser was autistic too and it made a huge difference.

People who have pronounced forms of autism are often unable to feel empathy or to have "theory of mind".

So their abuse is a particular type of abuse - just like there are other types of abuse that have their specific set of issues.

I remember being incredibly shocked by the lack of "empathy" of my abuser... that they seemed literally incapable of understanding that this was hurting me, was massively detrimental to me, was harming me... It was like it didn't register with them at all. It made them seem "inhuman" to me... Like they were some weird kind of monster, incapable of "normal human" responses.

Part of not having adequate "theory of mind" in autism, can also mean not understanding that the other person (the victim in this case) is a real human being, with real feelings, with an own will, etc. They treat people sort of like objects, or dolls... They don't understand it's a human being. They assume that what they themselves want is what is "right" and that the other person is there to do what they expect.

This too, is really disconcerting to experience. How someone is unable to understand that you're a human being. How they treat you like an object and there are zero qualms about it... They just keep going with their behaviour no matter what... It doesn't even seem to register with them that what they're doing is not okay...

I didn't know my abuser was autistic at the time... Tho, as a chlid, I don't think it would really have made sense to me anyway... Maybe, maybe it would've helped me to seek help somewhere if there had been the label of "autism" attached to this person... Maybe other people like teachers would've "heard" me, if I'd asked for help.

So I do think that this is a "specific category" of abuse and abuser.

It's NOT the same as an abuser having any other trait.

Having said that, of course there's also overlap with other "types" of abuse and abusers.

And regardless of what any "reason" may have been, abuse is abuse and what matters is what effect it had on the victim.

But I can definitely understand how it makes understanding what happened/ making sense of your experiences more challenging.

I agree with what others have said about your parents' behaviour being shockingly inappropriate and absolutely neglectful. They were enabling a paedophile. There's no way of excusing that.

I wish you well with working through this @Sadwetcat

It's a difficult combination of issues to resolve.

For me, it has helped realising what role autism (and lack of empathy, lack of theory of mind) played in my abuser's behaviour. It acutally makes it less "scary" for me, because before I understood the role autism played in their behaviour, I thought they were this weird, crazy, scary monster. That's the feeling/ image that child-me had stored in her brain/ subconscious. Realising that it's actually something "explainable" and "understandable" was helpful for me and took the scary element out of it, so I've been able to make peace with it better and to realise that "it had nothing to do with me". I was the random victim of someone with autism who was unable to feel any human empathy or understand that hurting another human being is not okay.

It's not a "justification" or "excuse" at all tho!

And yeah, I have Aspergers so I'm on the spectrum too - so I get the difficulty of sharing some attribute with the abuser. I'm grateful that in my case it's a mild form of autism, so I am able to have empathy and compassion and do have sufficient theory of mind to know what "harming others" is and that it's not okay.

 

[Rose White]

@Ecdysis I’m glad you have felt better by processing your abuse in that way. However

People who have pronounced forms of autism are often unable to feel empathy or to have "theory of mind".

This assumption is based on the work of Simon Baron-Cohen. There have been some criticisms of his work that are important to bear in mind. I don’t want to get into it as it is not my intention to argue about the significant healing work you have done. However I also want to point out that what worked for you worked for *you* and these ideas you put forth, while supported by some evidence, are also problematic, particularly for people living with a diagnosis of autism at a level more profound than your own. I do think you posited this is your perspective, however statements such as above are not as definitive as some may think they are.

 

[Weemie]

People who have pronounced forms of autism are often unable to feel empathy or to have "theory of mind".

There is a lot of legwork being done by the word "empathy" in that sentence. Even if we take Baron-Cohen at face value, "theory of mind" is associated to cognitive, rather than affective empathy. Which, according to him, most autistic people actually have. And which the research supports in some cases and contradicts in others.

We have some limited data that shows that people who have affective empathy impairments are more likely to engage in interpersonally abusive behavior, however no data to suggest the same is true of the empathy discrepancy described by autism, nor that it even is an affective empathy deficit. On top of the fact that even if it were, what we have, really, is a huge scientific blind-spot when it comes to this population of people.

In fact, some studies have emerged which show that pedophilia and sexual offenses in general aren't related to empathy at all but rather inhibitory failure of impulse control. (Basically pedophilia emerges as a random urge, which in this population isn't adequately controlled, and then gets expressed.) Which means that pedophiles and sexual abusers can indeed be as varied in empathy as anything else.

Then we turn around and people like Cohen and Galynker find PCL-R factor 1 traits are increased and yet factor 2 is not, which says the exact opposite thing. All we really know is that we don't know shit.

I do think you posited this is your perspective, however statements such as above are not as definitive as some may think they are.

Agreed, especially because in reality, empathy deficits are actually not precipitative of abusive behavior either. People really under estimate just how much abuse is committed by entirely neurotypical, non-disordered people.

People put way too much stock in these terms, but the fact is even people with affective empathy impairments aren't demonstrably more prone to be sexual abusers than the regular population. Affective empathy is not a proven indicator of who will or won't abuse others in this fashion, and many people with intact empathy of both kinds will engage in these behaviors.

Personally having a disorder of actual affective empathy (which was misdiagnosed as autism, so YMMV), I already do not want to talk to people, so the idea of going out of my way to sexually abuse them is absurd. Hanson & Morton-Bourgon specifically talk about this which is that empathy traits have little bearing on recidivism in sexual offenses, which limits our evidence that lack of empathy was substantially responsible for the offense in the first place.

 

[Ecdysis]

I'm not saying that someone with autism is more likely to abuse. Nor did I say that all people with autism are incapable of empathy or theory of mind.

But I think to say that the factor of autism is "irrelevant" in the OP's situation isn't valid either.

I offered my experience as an example - one of hundreds of complexly different examples just on this forum - where it does matter than an abuser has autism, is incapable of empathy and theory of mind.

This isn't some random scientific discussion of autism, but it's about the OP's experience and her expressing confusion about it.

And yeah, my personal opinion is that it's not irrelevant, that having autism in this context isn't the same as the colour of someone's eyes or what job they happen to have.

 

[Sideways]

that having autism in this context isn't the same as the colour of someone's eyes or what job they happen to have.

That was a reference to the validity of the OP’s suffering.

Don’t misquote me for your own weird narrative. The OP’s suffering is no more, and no less, than anyone else’s. Irrespective of whether their abuser has autism.

 

[Rose White]

your own weird narrative

I think something that unites most of us on here is the ability to at times dismiss and discount our own experiences and especially our abusers. Doesn’t seem weird to me at all, rather typical.