For First Time Visitors

If you are a first time visitor to this blog, I invite you to start from the beginning, especially if you are unfamiliar with the potential emotional impact of long-term child abuse.

Trigger caution to unhealed survivors!

Understanding the Incomprehensible

Children of incest or long-term sexual abuse grow up to be wounded adults with complicated emotional issues. Unfortunately, some symptoms are misinterpreted or often dismissed as "crazy", only serving to maintain a tormented victim status. We, as a society, have the power to change this dynamic. Each of us can make a difference.
Showing posts with label statistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label statistics. Show all posts

Sep 24, 2008

Profile of a pedophile & global reach

John Money (7/8/1921-7/7/2006) was a professor of pediatrics and medical psychology at Johns Hopkins University from 1951 until his death. While there, Money was involved with the Sexual Behaviors Unit, which ran studies on sex reassignment surgery. He received the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal in 2002 from the "German Society for Social-Scientific Sexuality Research", for which he worked. Source: Wikopedia

It is likely you heard of the Jane/John Doe case where John Money performed a sex change operation on David Reimer (then a toddler) advising the young boy's parents to raise him as a boy and disregard feminine proclivities. David Reimer wrote his own story, As Nature Made Him, of his torturous life which ended in his suicide as a married adult.

In a 20/20 interview, David Reimer (who had reversed his childhood sex change operation beginning as a teen) and his twin brother, as adults, independently recalled follow up visits to Dr. Money as children. The brother's presence was requested purportedly to compare developmental stages. The twins stated how they hated the visits and begged their mother not to take them. Not divulging why they hated the visits, their mother told them they had to go. David said in 20/20 that "Money sexually abused him and his brother during superfluous photo shoots."

This was John Money's view of pedophilia (again cited from Wikopedia but feel free to research on your own): John Money was critical in the debate on pedophilia. He felt that both sexual researchers and the public do not make distinctions between affectional pedophilia and sadistic pedophilia, including infantophilia (occasionally referred to as nepiophilia), pedophilia and ephebophilia. For Money, affectional pedophilia is about love and not sex.

The focus of my blogs is intentionally inflicted horror and sexual violence on children. Money's view is just as harmful. A child raised to believe that sexual expressions of love are acceptable is still a child of incest. Imagine what it does to a child's psyche when they believe they "willingly" engaged in their own abuse.

John Money was one of the "prestigious" experts who served on the board of the FMSF. He abdicated his position after granting an interview to a magazine devoted to pedophilia. (Interview: John Money. PAIDIKA: The Journal of Paedophilia, Spring 1991, vol. 2, no. 3, p. 5.)

While this example does not involve dissociation, it is a clear example of how pedophiles are at every level of society including the medical field. Who doesn't believe Johns Hopkins isn't one of the best hospitals in the world? Because of my knowledge of this story and following it for more than a decade, as well as my personal history which includes male doctors, I'm wary of any male in a position of authority. Fortunately, now I have my therapist skills which allow me to be assertive and make logical and instinctual decisions about safety. Most survivors have a sixth sense about a person. Some might refer to this as reading another's energy. Bad people have bad energy. I have no other way to explain this ability at the moment.

If you explore the FMSF website, be sure to look at their Scientific Advisory Board of PhD's. One was a colleague of John Money at Johns Hopkins. There is also a note referring to the Wikopedia information, calling it "hostile and false". Please heed advice to have a statistics expert evaluate the validity of any research funded by any member of the FMSF.

What is most frightening is how far the FMSF has permeated the top levels of society. Elizabeth Loftus, a prolific researcher and member of FMSF, has appeared on Oprah. I'm still waiting for Oprah to address the survivors of sophisticated pedophilia. Recently she has been quite vocal about internet pedophiles for which I applaud her. But I implore you to ask her to give time now to adult survivors and experts in the field who treat the survivors. My requests alone are not going to make a difference.

If you have been primarily entrenched in misleading information about DID and delayed memories, please initiate your own balance of information by following links here and at my related blogs for publications by the experts in trauma and dissociation. It is easy to see the hidden agenda of a group whose main commonality is being accused by their children of childhood abuse or those having an affinity for engaging in illicit activities with children such as in the John Money example.

John Money's reach was global. As a renowned researcher at Johns Hopkins, his research went unquestioned (and unretracted long after David Reimer's story became known). The magazine devoted to pedophilia in which Money had granted an interview was also global.

Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia (1987–1995) was a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal published by the Stichting Paidika Foundation, a Netherlands nonprofit organization. Articles drawn from it are available from a number of pro-pedophile activist websites. Its editor was Joseph Geraci and the editorial board included scientists and authors such as Frits Bernard, Edward Brongersma, Vern L. Bullough, and D. H. (Donald) Mader, some of whom campaigned in pro-pedophile activism. Being a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, Paidika was subscribed to by the British Library and by the Library of Congress. Wikopedia

The past damage caused by the prevalence of skewed and incorrect information about survivors of abuse at the hands of pedophiles can't be undone. We can begin to correct the situation though by allowing the truth to prevail to include embracing adult survivors into mainstream society. Their voices deserve to be heard. Their voices need to be heard to end the plague of pedophilia.


Sep 12, 2008

The unasked questions & statistics

I wonder how many children under 4 died because their minds were incapable of adapting to dissociation for survival? And why are the children who adapt with dissociation later punished by society for having survived?


Child Abuse Statistics in the USA
  • Children ages 0-3 are the most likely to experience abuse. About 1 in 50 U.S. infants are victims of nonfatal child abuse or neglect in a year, according to the first national study of the problem in that age group done by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention along with The Federal Administration for Children and Families.1
  • 1,500 children die every year from child abuse and neglect. That is just over 4 fatalities every day.
  • 79% of the children killed are younger than 4.

Sep 6, 2008

Prevalence of DID & limited resources to heal

Most texts cite the probability of DID as 1 in 100. In grad school I was taught, "It is highly unlikely you will ever see a case of DID; and if you do, you'll want to transfer the client to another therapist who has special training." Let's look at the facts.

Childabuse.com
Sexual abuse most commonly occurs by an individual known by the victim, parent or other family member (intrafamilial). Rarely is the abuser a stranger. Children who become brave enough to overcome the threats and coercion to remain silent may decide to recant accusations of abuse due to fear of retaliation by the perpetrator or other family members. They may also recant out of fear of losing contact with the perpetrator who is commonly a family member or close friend tied to the family by various social means. (The double bind of "I love you"/"I hate you.")

Incest victims are mostly unreported so are not included in the statistic for reported abuse. Of reported cases:

33% of sexual abuse victims are under age 6
33% are 6-12 years old
33% are 12-18 years old.

RAINN Organization* (Excellent website/resource)
In 1995, local child protection service agencies identified 126,000 children who were victims of either substantiated or indicated sexual abuse.
  • Of these, 75% were girls.
  • Nearly 30% of child victims were between the age of 4 and 7.
Survivors' Healing Center
Data from 2002 National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) indicates that approximately 4.6 million children were reported to child protective service agencies as purported victims of child maltreatment. Of that number over 88,000 children were documented as sexually abused.

At the community level, epidemiology studies of adults have found that 15 to 33% of females and 13 to 16% of males were sexually abused in childhood.

Different studies use different methodology for their statistics. The statistic found to be most on target in the community of therapists who treat survivors of sexual abuse, is 1 in 4 women are victims of sexual assault. Even for adults, rape is more often someone known to the victim.

The entirety of incest victims will always be unknown because of the secrecy factor. A statistic cited in this blog's second post is:
Some estimates show 20 million Americans have been victimized by parent incest as children. (Jeffrey Turner, 1996). As cited at the website for The National Center for Victims of Crime.

radKIDS.org
...it is estimated there is one pedophile for every square mile in our country, everywhere from big cities to small rural communities.

Given the enormity of the prevalence of incest survivors and abuse statistics for those under age 12, it is more probable that DID exists in closer to 1 out of every 10-20 incest survivors. In populations such as those seeking counseling through YWCAs and other survivor centers, the statistics are prone to be higher for a therapist to have someone present with DID.

While many therapists claim they have never seen a case of DID, it is more likely the therapist is not trained to identify symptoms and therefore "does not see". In addition, because of lack of training, even if someone did see signs of dissociation, the treating individual might be inclined to treat the person as if dissociation were not present. For those therapists who recommend the patient see someone who does treat dissociation, there are insufficient numbers of therapists in many areas of the country to treat the number of survivors.

Kudos to schools open to education to identify dissociation in children, which is relatively easy to spot in the classroom. Again, however, the societal problem is lack of qualified therapists to treat the child. Part of this unwillingness of therapists to be trained to assess and treat dissociation are the efforts of the media and groups such as the FMSF who have targeted experts in the field for lawsuits and shattered their lives and careers.

On the positive side, excellent training is available through organizations such as ISSTD. Sometimes therapists who first encounter DID are willing to learn as they go. A therapist willing to learn on behalf of the client is how many enter the field of dissociation.

For survivors unsure about whether they might be dissociative, Marlene Steinberg's book, Stranger in the Mirror, has an excellent section of self evaluations. It's a good safe start, although admittedly disarming if you score in the range of likely dissociation. Remember that symptoms may not mean dissociation or DID for you. Symptoms may go with another issue. Don't make any immediate assumptions about yourself until you are able to speak with a qualified therapist.