Poll Your Children And Your Abuser

[Abstract]

@intothelight I am sorry for what you went through. I actually can't see anything you could have done differently. As Ms Spock said you could have ended up in a situation where they were only with him and you lost custody. I met someone on line who kidnapped her children and she ended up jailed and the father had full custody.

The only possible way through and way you could have kept them safe is if you had him killed and you were not caught. That is very unlikely to happen when you are a law abiding person and non violent. There was nothing you could do. I doubt any single person would say any different to you.

If you had a choice would you have done supervised visits or kept your children away entirely?

I do agree that blanket statements are unhelpful. Often they don't express all we mean and they offend people and get their backs up and often for good reason. There can be a lot of truth in what we say but people end up unable to hear it.

 

[Abstract]

I was osctracised.

I am so very sorry Ms Spock. It is an awful thing to experience.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

You all are in la-la-land. Outside of a court order, what's the excuse?

"Sorry daughter Susie, I know that my father raped me as a child but I couldn't make waves and upset the family so I decided that it was ok for you to be around your grandfather and that is why you, too, were raped as a child"

It takes TWO seconds for you to turn your head. What happens if you pass out? Have an emergency and can't take your child with you? Yeah, I'm sure the kid would appreciate hearing why mommy didn't love him/her enough to keep them away from an abuser.

I have PTSD from child abuse. What would it say about me if I decided to keep my abuser in my life and have her around my kids? No, my abuser is NOT related to me. (See how ridiculous my argument is getting...?) This is where the blood is thicker than water argument falls apart.

Original poster,
I know you fear having your kid taken away from you. If you subject your child to your abuser, I don't think you deserve to keep him. Don't slam me, you opened this poll and I'm answering based on this thread as well as another where you ask if you will lose your child. I don't think you are acting in the best interest of your child. You are still letting your abuser control you. If your child gets abused, I hope that one day you'll be able to look him in the eye and tell him that you could have prevented it but didn't.

I honestly don't understand why parents want to throw their kids into the vicinity of evil. It's sad. My parents were so pissed when they found out about my abuse. It speaks volumes when a parent makes excuses about subjecting their kids to evil.

And as bad as PTSD is, I think I'm more than a bit perturbed about the excuses for exposing someone to an abuser. I don't wish this disorder on my own worst enemy. It's sad that some are (effectively) wishing it on their own kids.

This is one issue that is black and white for me. I won't apologize for my stance.

 

[nursenurse]

After reading everyone, I just don't see the benefit of this exposure to the child. "We don't trust Grandpa" using this to teach the child by exposing him/her to this? Unless required by the sometimes dumbass legal system, I still don't get it.

 

[ms spock]

In Australia there are statistics, depending on what research that you read. 1 in 4 girls are sexually abused by they time they are 16 and 1 in 8 boys are sexually abused before they turn 16. Or 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 6 boys or 1 in 2 girls and 1 in 4 boys. So wherever go or whatever you do you can't stop these sexual predators from having contact with your children. They are there in our families, they are there in our schools, they are there in our churches, they are there in our scout groups, girl guides, social events, little athletics, coaching netball, soccer teams, music teachers etc.

So after considering the dynamics of the incestuous family unit. I am interested to know what are the solutions that you have come up with. What studies have your read? How do you see us protecting the next generation from child sexual abuse?

One of the ways I have been thinking about it is that the best thing to do is to build up a close emotional contact with your children and teach them protective behaviours. My friend's daughter was sexually abused from age 2 to 4 in a prestigious kindergarten. There was no other area of her life where sexual predators could have gotten access to her children. She was 4 when she disclosed fortunately her mother immediately acted which immediately brought an influx of parents who also had children in the same kindergarten with the same outcomes for their children of being sexually abused. That was the third kindergarten that year in that area that had child sexual abuse revealed on their premises. This was in the top end of town, highly affluent area.

So if you are realistic about the incidence of child sexual abuse there is some influence you can have but ultimately it is the close emotional attachment with parents that puts sexual predators off. They are looking for poor attachment and emotional skills, they are looking for sick parents, they are looking for where the kids are just another box ticked on the life of things that you have to do, they are looking for single parents, they are looking for untreated parents, they are looking for people with poor parenting skills and they are particularly looking for incest survivors that haven't processed their trauma.

 

[Abstract]

I am all for counselling of offenders to attempt to keep their impulses under control as much as is possible. I am afraid I see that as a totally different issue to what is good for a child though.

they look for children who have poor relationships/poor attachment - emotionally unattentive parents.

That is why general parenting needs to be addressed. Keeping a child around a known predator has nothing to do with building a healthy bond with her/his parent or with them getting self confidence and good boundaries as well as assertiveness skills. It also won't take away the mental health issues and personality disorders of the parents of these children which is part of what is responsible for their parental deficits in the first place.

If my father had been made to have contact with his children under supervised contact then I wouldn't have lost my whole family

How would that have happened Ms Spock? If your father was typical predator then he certainly wasn't going to volunteer. I imagine most would need a court order. In order to get a court order then someone would have to be willing to support the child and listen to them. Someone in your family could have insisted on your father having counselling and done supervised contact but they weren't able to. Because of their own issues they were not able to think that way and would be very unlikely to be the type of responsible parents one would need to have to ensure supervision happened all the time. How can anyone really make sure supervision happens all the time.

Social isolation of sexual predators means they are more likely to start grooming and repeat their offences.

It doesn't sound like your father was isolated Ms Spock and it seems to me most predators are not isolated. They have full social lives and continue to have access to multiple people. The more people continue to be around them without the truth being addressed and as if they are not dangerous the more the message to others is that they don't need to be careful.

Jimmy Saville is a perfect example.

Would Jimmy Saville have been likely to hand himself over to a programme where he was supervised and would find it difficult to access victims? I don't think so. He was determined to have access to as many victims as he could and had a whole social network of predators with him.

I believe in treating all perpetrators with humanity and attempting rehabilitation but I cannot see how planning to put a 2 year old around a known paedophile and thinking you can teach them to protect themselves can ever be wise and ever be anything other than plain dangerous.

All parents should be building good relationships with their children and making sure they have good assertiveness skills but there are a lot who don't. Assertiveness skills and self esteem help but not enough to protect people in many cases.

There will be dangers where we don't expect them but I cannot see how choosing to put danger in your house is ever the answer to that problem.

 

[nursenurse]

Maybe these folks can control it, but to knowingly put my child in a situation where someone who harmed me could even possibly think about it goes against everything I believe as a mother. I would never be able to stop wondering how Gramps was really viewing my child. Makes me ill really. Nope. No way , no how, this is where the perp is being put ahead of the child. Treat him, give him compassion, but not on my child's time. Time for me to bow out.

 

[ms spock]

I still don't get it.

Because like it or not, children have to learn those protective behaviours at some point. Parents need parenting classes to improve their skills base. It would be good if this could be introduced in high school.

 

[ms spock]

The thing is that a lot of people who are incest survivors have contact with their families and sexual predators - so as this is the case - doing it consciously and with integrated steps, procedures and counselling rather than denial as it is too hard to deal with.

In one project in NZ the father doesn't have to be charged. His daughter can report him. Then the whole family is involved.

 

[ms spock]

Jimmy Saville is a perfect example.

Would Jimmy Saville have been likely to hand himself over to a programme where he was supervised and would find it difficult to access victims? I don't think so. He was determined to have access to as many victims as he could and had a whole social network of predators with him.

I think that Jimmy Saville is the perfect example of many, many, many people looking the other way. I knew and had heard about his child rapist ways in Australia, so I am sure that many more knew about him in the U.K. But if the police had taken the first reports of the sexual abuse seriously and he was monitored and not allowed around children unsupervised then a lot of people would not have been hurt.

Whether we like it or not people go back to their families of origin. I think it is much better to do this with openness and consciousness rather than denial and hoping for the best.

 

[nursenurse]

Sexual offenders cannot be cured, and all the parenting skills in the world cannot cure that. Yes, teach kids what constitutes inappropriate behaviour and that abusers do not have a certain "look", but to knowingly place my child in a position to have a relationship with a known offender is just wrong on so many levels. I deal with this stuff daily as well. Now I am over and out, I was going to add this as an edit to my previous post, slow computer :)

 

[ms spock]

. No way , no how, this is where the perp is being put ahead of the child.

I don't think you are understanding what I am saying there are sexual predators in every strata of life. Parents need to be taught the skills to bond and attach with their children. They also need to be aware of grooming behaviours. Most incest survivors have their children sexually abused that I have known throughout the last 20 or 25 years.

Sure they kept their kids away from the sexual predator in their families but didn't have the skills to protect and teach their kids about other sexual predators.