THE VERY HIGH COST OF CHILD ABUSE

I feel privileged and somewhat humble to realise that much of what I write on my blog has a positive effect upon other people.  Whether I am writing about childhood abuse, religious and spiritual abuse, all the trials of living with 24/7 pain.

Not only do people leave comments on my blog telling me how much they get out of what I have written, I also get e-mails from people all over the world sharing with me their stories of survival and pain.

It is truly remarkable to me that people do this and that this medium, the Internet, can be used in such a positive fashion.

When I first started writing my blog I did so anonymously but it soon became obvious to me that I must not be anonymous because there is no shame at all in what I am writing about.  It had begun to dawn on me that my writing was being read but I am truly amazed at how it has touched people meaningfully.

Those of us who are able to share in this manner must never think that there are millions of people suffering in this world in silence and secrecy.  In countries where freedom does not exist or even in our own countries where their freedom is severely curtailed by their family or by their church.

One thing that I know to be true and all of the evidence that I have received in the form of people sharing with me is that children are in far more danger from their own families and from strangers.  Yet we become hysterical about stranger danger and concentrate all our efforts upon it.  It is clear to me that the reason for this is that we are still in denial about the simple fact that the vast majority of children are abused in the home.

The spiritual abuse of children is rife and appallingly sanctioned by the majority of governments. If you doubt that spiritual abuse of children is a serious issue, you need look no further than the Westboro Baptist Church and countries like Iran and Afghanistan.  You need look no further than 7/7 and 9/11.

One only needs to listen to fundamentalist Christians, to the poor souls that have been homeschooled by fundamentalist Christian parents, to the filth spoken by the likes of Pat Roberts, all the rigid control the Roman Catholic church holds up over its followers, to see the damage that spiritual abuse does. Children indoctrinated in this way have their ability to think for themselves severely stunted.  Even those of us who have the temerity to ask why are filled with guilt and fear for so doing.  Not all are as lucky as myself.  In fact the majority are not.

Be it physical,be it sexual, be it emotional, be it spiritual the abuse of children causes us all to pay an extremely high price.

We do not value our children. By we I mean the human race I do not mean us in the West, nor do I mean those in the Middle East, or the Far East.  We all cripple our children.

The fact that we do not value children could not be more clear than in the example of state visit of the current Pope to Britain last year where he was met with much pomp and circumstance despite the fact that he is responsible for the horrendous sexual abuse of children and the hiding and protecting from justice the priests who committed this horrendous acts.  Whilst there were some brave souls who demonstrated, they were marginalised and Howard government showed that they to did not care truly about children.  There can be absolutely no reasonable argument in support of what the Pope has done and still does today. This is not in the past this is current. He still refuses to hand over any information to the legal authorities and worse the legal authorities who can be in no doubt that he is a criminal for aiding and abetting the abuse of children or hiding fugitives, do nothing.

Children are the future for us all whether we are parents or not. We are responsible for them.

It costs us dearly to ignore the problem of child abuse.  Just speaking about myself I have cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds in health care and benefits as a direct result of my childhood.  The cost to us all of course is far more important than money but it seems that when one speaks about finances people take notice.

The abuse of children does not happen in isolation.  It happens because we all collude in it.  We do so by being afraid to speak about us suspicions, by not wanting to get involved, by not wanting to stand up and be counted, by not daring to put our heads above the parapet.  We are afraid of being shamed and vilified so we turn away.  We blithely vote in favour of faith schools.  We vote for cuts in childcare provision and social services.  We call for the physical punishment of children to be reinstated.  In fact we expended great deal of energy denying the real problem.

Many of those abused grow up to deny it completely and this enables them to either perpetuate abuse by becoming abusers or they demonise the survivors of abuse.  For example I was conversing with a woman the other day who had the most horrendous childhood and she cannot understand how her brother who was always the “good son” can deny the abuse meted out by their father.  I told her that the reason he denied it was that for him denial was much easier to live with them the true and certain knowledge that his parents did not love him.  For a child no matter what age to accept that he or she was not loved by their parents is truly the most devastating pain anyone can ever feel.  This betrayal and abandonment strikes at the very core of a person and it is extremely difficult to feel and survive intact.  However, it is not impossible and if we are to truly avoid becoming the problem, we must face this daemon and destroy it.  It most certainly can be faced head-on and destroyed.  Once done true freedom will be experienced.  The joy of finally understanding that you were never the problem is liberating.

People treat you the way they do because of who they are, not because of who you are.