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Childhood abuse and neglect - personal testimonies

stu neville

stu neville

Commissioner.
Staff member
Joined
Mar 9, 2002
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This new thread has been extracted from the Savile and Yewtree threads, and deals with personal testimony from posters, as it is apparent there does need to be some sort of outlet on thread that can be given the attention it deserves without the sensationalist news stories swamping them.

As such, this is a very sensitive subject, and will be closely moderated.
 
I saw on the news this morning that many of Savile's victims were laughed at, ignored or told they were lucky to have received attention from him. What continually shocks me about this case is not that Jimmy Savile was an evil old pervert. The world's full of evil old perverts. What continually nauseates me is how much easier the many people who knew of it found it to keep quiet or dismiss it rather than do something about it. It's a failure of humanity.
 
This is what happens when you allow civil cases to consider matters of criminal law. No doubt it seems 'fair' to someone, but the fact is Savile is dead, there is no way he can be convicted after his death, he 'got away with it'.

That cannot be put right, and attempting to do so is only likely to create further injustice, not 'fairness'.

What can be done, but isn't being done, is to make sure that a) no modern day 'celeb' could similarly abuse his or her position and b) anyone who facilitated Savile is identified and at minimum removed from any positions they may hold.

Properly investigating the whole chain of care home scandals might restore some faith in the system as well. At least the Welsh Assembly are trying to do so for the ones in their area.
 
I think you're being very optimistic. From my own limited experience, sexual assaults on women and children are far more widespread than many wish to admit. As one of our colleagues has often stated, her experience as a teenager in the 1970s means she can totally understand what many of the victims have alluded to. Regarding how 'loved by the public', some of the accused have been, many offenders have the ability to present different faces. Exactly what RH has been accused of.
 
balding13 said:
I think you're being very optimistic. From my own limited experience, sexual assaults on women and children are far more widespread than many wish to admit. As one of our colleagues has often stated, her experience as a teenager in the 1970s means she can totally understand what many of the victims have alluded to..
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Oh, I'm with you on that, although your assumption that women/girls are somehow the only victims is also 'optimistic'. I was sexually assaulted twice in the 60's as a pre-teen - I'm a bloke - and I never told anyone until my second wife. I've mentioned it to a few more people now. However, I would even now not mention names or locations because a) it is so long ago I no longer trust my memory on the exact sequence of events and b) they are either dead or of an age where revenge is pointless. In any case one of them was later convicted for a more serious offence.

Why didn't I mention it them ? Well, I didn't think anyone would believe me, and I felt that I had managed to escape in both cases - having no real idea what the possible consequences might have been. Frankly, I would suspect the chaps are even less likely to report such an assault than girls, certainly if they haven't mentioned it at the time, We are supposed to be able to look after ourselves.

None of that means we should prejudge cases, however, nor assume that what goes in the papers gives us enough information to make that judgement.
 
Yup Cochise, I agree with everything you say. Back in the day when I was fending off sweaty hands at every turn (very little exaggeration there, I assure you) it didn't occur to me that young men were also being harassed. I know better now of course.

It's not surprising that I didn't know, or that other people don't, if young men didn't tell anyone either. I mean, Cochise, you didn't disclose anything at the time or probably even dream of reporting the trouble you were having any more than I did. We didn't because we felt powerless. That's how it works.

The only thing that stopped one particular pest was telling another female worker, who I think must have told his wife and got him in trouble. He didn't bother again. :twisted:
 
escargot1 said:
I mean, Cochise, you didn't disclose anything at the time or probably even dream of reporting the trouble you were having any more than I did. We didn't because we felt powerless. That's how it works.
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As a pre-teen , you are afraid you will get into trouble, because what just happened doesn't fit anything you understand, but you know it was wrong. We didn't know what sex was as a pre-teen in in the 60's, but we did know touching our private parts was 'dirty'. I was not especially close to my mother or father, and in any case the idea of talking to them about such things was too difficult. I wonder if it is really all that different now.

The incidents have never gone away, I have sometimes wondered how much they have contributed to making me the somewhat detached person I am. I eventually told my wife, one's relationship with one's spouse includes a level of intimacy different from the parental relationship and I have a dislike of kissing which may arise from the assaults. My wife wanted to know why I rarely kissed her - she was quite tactile and it concerned her - and I explained the possible reason.

Another result may be that the only two long-term relationships I've had have been with women who have also suffered various kinds of abuse.

Mods - I wonder if it would be better to have a thread about childhood sexual abuse in general? It's not really Fortean, just distressing that such things happened - and still happen. The relevance to Jimmy Savile is of course that if you have been a victim, you know that such predators exist, and you are firstly alert to the rumours and secondly under no illusions about how such people may not be obvious.
 
When famous men are arrested on sexual assault charges people say 'Oh no, not him! There's my childhood ruined!' and so on.

I think yeah, go after him, I bet he did it. That's because I have personal experience of seeing apparently respectable men go suddenly sex-mad as soon as they had a little power. Just being in charge of the photocopier seems to turn some men into rampant satyrs.

What did I do at the time? I certainly didn't go to the boss. He'd probably lock the door and drop his pants. :roll:

Monica Lewinsky has the right idea. She may not have been able to stand up to Clinton back then but she can keep on embarrassing him forever if she feels like it.
He'll just have to deal with it, like she did.

I'm half-expecting her to have a mysterious accident, however. :shock:
 
escargot1 said:
When famous men are arrested on sexual assault charges people say 'Oh no, not him! There's my childhood ruined!' and so on.
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It does bother me that way when a cherished celebrity from my childhood is found guilty of these kinds of crimes. It feels a bit like a betrayal. It isn't, of course. The betrayal is to the victim of the crime. My memories of my childhood have been tarnished. The victims of many of these men had their actual childhoods tarnished.

escargot1 said:
I think yeah, go after him, I bet he did it. That's because I have personal experience of seeing apparently respectable men go suddenly sex-mad as soon as they had a little power. Just being in charge of the photocopier seems to turn some men into rampant satyrs.
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I wouldn't go so far. I refuse to assume a person is guilty of such a crime based purely on the accusation. And it's probably an over-simplification to assume men are more likely to lose respect for the rights of others when they gain some sort of power. But there seems to be a lurking monster within many of us. I wonder whether they know at the time they're committing evil, or whether they switch off from it when they think they will get away with it. I wonder how many of us would recognise we were changing as it happened.
 
PeteByrdie said:
My memories of my childhood have been tarnished. The victims of many of these men had their actual childhoods tarnished.
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Into all this we have to allow for the fact that many abusers were themselves abused as children. We need to learn how to break this chain of events.

Perhaps the Yewtree prosecutions will help, by warning off those who might be tempted to abuse, and encouraging those who have been abused to speak out and not suffer in silence.
 
rynner2 said:
Into all this we have to allow for the fact that many abusers were themselves abused as children. We need to learn how to break this chain of events.
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Yes, this is a particularly odd thing. Why would a person who was abused in their childhood go on to become an abuser themselves? I mean, surely the mental scars would give them enough introspection to think 'I don't want the same thing to happen to another child', thus breaking the cycle of evil.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Why would a person who was abused in their childhood go on to become an abuser themselves? I mean, surely the mental scars would give them enough introspection to think 'I don't want the same thing to happen to another child', thus breaking the cycle of evil.
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My father has always dealt with frustration with tantrums. My brother has also always responded to frustration by lashing out. I had a terrible temper when I was younger, and have fought with myself all my life to control it. I don't think that's genetic. My guess; we're programmed to learn behaviour patterns from our parents and adults. When we're abused, in whatever way, it becomes ingrained within us that it's okay, at some incredibly deep level, even if we don't feel that it's okay at the time.

I was bullied at school. The moment I found someone who I could bully, I did. When I was told how I'd behaved shortly afterwards, I can honestly say I did't remember feeling anything as I was doing it. It was like some other person deep down was controlling my actions. I was disgusted at myself, but also I remember thinking how easy it must be to bully, when even the bullied need to be told that they've bullied. I don't really understand what goes on within us that makes us act in such ways, but I'm sure we rarely know ourselves as well as we think. Counterintuitively, just because something someone does to us makes us feel dreadful and powerless, I'm not sure that we automatically take from that the message that it's wrong. I think, at some level, we end up feeling that it's okay for the person that has the power, therefore, when we gain that power, it feels fine to abuse.
 
Thanks for your honesty. That must have been a difficult post to write.

I was bullied at school by three lads until I found the courage to stand up to them with the help of my Dad and a teacher. Years later, I threw a party at my house and the same guys turned up. The ringleader came and apologised for how they'd treated me and we shook hands. I still felt uncomfortable enough to let friends know this and after the silent treatment, they got the hint and left.

I've never gone on to bully others. If anything, I've been meek ever since with the occasional anger flash when I've felt it's starting to 'happen again' ..
 
Thirty years in law enforcement....

Not only do the abused so often turn into abusers, they target children of about the same age they were when molested. They can't explain it themselves.

We'd have to kill all the victims to break the chain(the compulsion of the pedophile is so strong that only death ends it. Not even castration, chemical or surgical works. And the abusers often hate themselves, but they yield).

Only problem, many victims don't become abusers.

Human sex is a labyrinth.
 
Sexual abuse is about exerting power, like any other type of bullying - emotional, financial, verbal, social. That's why it can't be solved by treating it as just a sexual urge.
 
I'm making a mess of this one! re-edited several times. Apologies to anyone who read earlier versions.

The need to control others coming from a lack of control over your own childhood in which you were abused is surely an understandable response? Especially if said abuse has destroyed your ability to empathise with others, as it quite often seems to do. You can read Ann Rule's books for several examples of people who were abused as children and have gone on to behave monstrously, not only in terms of their sexual habits but in their general treatment of others, friend and enemy alike.

It obviously doesn't happen with everyone who is abused, far from it - some remain distressed and timid all their lives. Others work it out in different ways.

So, as Krakenten says, lets not be too sweeping about this - the vast majority of people who were abused do not go on to become abusers themselves, the equation is the other way round - many abusers were themselves abused, but that is a small proportion of all those abused.

But. however we deal with it, I think sexual abuse as a child always has a life-long effect even if an individual tries to pretend otherwise.

The count of people who had some kind of childhood sexual abuse - I suggest that, if everyone was asked the question in a secret ballot and was totally honest, that number would be be quite shocking. I actually count myself lucky - my attackers were not family so I could simply avoid them.
 
Quake42 said:
I think yeah, go after him, I bet he did it.
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Fantastic attitude. I don't know why we bother with a justice system at all.

:roll:
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She didn't say to convict him. Just to go after him. Justice requires that evidence is gathered and a prosecutor "go after" a suspect. That doesn't mean a conviction is inevitable.:roll:
 
She didn't say to convict him. Just to go after him. Justice requires that evidence is gathered and a prosecutor "go after" a suspect. That doesn't mean a conviction is inevitable
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Fair enough, but the disquiet over some of the Yewtree arrests is due to the absence of any evidence other than unsupported testimonies from decades ago. Even if they don't result in a conviction, those accused have had their reputations trashed and may have been near-bankrupted over the legal costs.

I have a real problem with the "no smoke without fire" attitude. "Go after him, he's probably guilty" on the basis of what some entirely different people may have done to entirely different other people in the 70s is several steps beyond that and strikes me as a pretty terrifying approach.
 
Quake42 said:
...but the disquiet over some of the Yewtree arrests is due to the absence of any evidence other than unsupported testimonies from decades ago. Even if they don't result in a conviction, those accused have had their reputations trashed and may have been near-bankrupted over the legal costs.
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Fair point. But, as much as I know people make such accusations falsely, and the consequences for the accused are terrible, I simply can't justify thinking that any such accusations shouldn't be followed up, because of the nature of the crimes and the potential for further offences to be committed. But, there's another thread for Yewtree, where I think these points have already been raised.

Quake42 said:
I have a real problem with the "no smoke without fire" attitude.
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I'll give you that. But Escargot was basing her feelings on personal experience. Not the stuff of which due process is forged, I'll grant you, but Escargot is not (as far as I know) involved in law enforcement or the judicial process, and her instincts will inevitably be based on her own experiences.
 
Fair enough - and as you say some of these points are probably better discussed on the Yewtree thread.
 
Not all men behave like that of course but the ones who do can make life a misery.
As I've said many times, many are apparently respectable men in responsible jobs - the very last people you'd expect to behave that way.

That's how they get away with it. It's one skinny kid's word against theirs. If the victims are troubled teens, especially in care, they're automatically not believed. Even when accusation after accusation has been made against powerful people, no charges have stuck because other powerful people (especially the police) have protected them.

I wish Cyril Smith had been brought to trial. I can remember reading about his antics in Private Eye in 1979. No newspaper would print the story, although the Guardian hinted at it and that's how I heard about it.
Smith didn't sue and nobody mentioned it again. I've read that he was protected at a high level because of his Liberal party's importance in propping up the minority Labour government.

There're surely men shaking in their shoes right now, wondering if there'll be a knock at the door.
 
The downside.....

Remember the 'Satanic Abuse' scare some years back? Based on 'hypnotic regression'(can you say spectral evidence?)and little else, there were arrests, indictments and people sent to prison.

Fabulous tales of human sacrifices and cannibal feasts were told. And believed.

Not one speck of actual evidence was ever found.

I used to write horror stories, these accounts reminded me of plots I'd rejected as too over the top.

Smoke does not mean fire! Remember Tawana Brawley? Al Sharpton rode her delusions to a TV career. When I was in college, a young woman made similar accusations, and there were several attacks to 'avenge' her. Young men went to jail. And it was all made up from whole cloth.

Sherlock Holmes said, "Dark waters!", and that will cover a lot of cases where the noose is being tied and the tree selected.

Beware the Big Lie!
 
krakenten said:
The downside.....

Remember the 'Satanic Abuse' scare some years back? Based on 'hypnotic regression'(can you say spectral evidence?)and little else, there were arrests, indictments and people sent to prison.

Fabulous tales of human sacrifices and cannibal feasts were told. And believed.

Not one speck of actual evidence was ever found.
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Indeed. It seems to me that justice for all, accuser and accused, must require substantive evidence and/or thoroughly corroborated testimony. Memory is itself unreliable, even for significant events.
 
markrkingston1 said:
krakenten said:
The downside.....

Remember the 'Satanic Abuse' scare some years back? Based on 'hypnotic regression'(can you say spectral evidence?)and little else, there were arrests, indictments and people sent to prison.

Fabulous tales of human sacrifices and cannibal feasts were told. And believed.

Not one speck of actual evidence was ever found.
Click to expand...

Indeed. It seems to me that justice for all, accuser and accused, must require substantive evidence and/or thoroughly corroborated testimony. Memory is itself unreliable, even for significant events.
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Agreed. One person's unsubstantiated testimony is not enough, and now we have the Internet wild accusations can spread like wildfire before there is any chance of a case being brought to court.

On the other hand we have cases like Savile and Smith where, even before the Internet, many people knew something was wrong, or at least worth investigating, and nothing effective was done.

It is very very difficult, and its very tiresome when people pretend there is some sort of magic wand solution, or come out with phrases like 'this must not happen again'. It will. At least now there is help for the victims, although even that can have ulterior motivations. I don't mean to sound so cynical, its just that we humans lose our balance so easily, and fanatics or obsessives of every sort - even those with the best of intentions - are so dangerous.
 
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