Keep That Uncle Away From Daughters and Sons….
“Why did she suffer and not the abuser? Because her mother chose for the victim to suffer and left the predator free to wander.”
“Why did she suffer and not the abuser? Because her mother chose for the victim to suffer and left the predator free to wander.” – Jaseena Backer, a psychologist wrote on Facebook
“I kept my daughter away from her uncle since then.” “Keep that uncle away from all daughters and sons should be the way,” was my reply to a client’s mother a few years back when she told me about the sexual abuse of her daughter by the father’s brother.
A client of mine was battling trust issues with men in her twenties and it was traced back to her teenage years. She was intimidated by the uncle and hushed by the mother and she ended up with insecurities.
Why did she suffer and not the abuser? Because her mother chose for the victim to suffer and left the predator free to wander. If the mother had called out abuse many more girls would have been saved and her daughter wouldn’t be traumatized.
The victim is then declared a survivor. Survive what? The abuse?
What my current female clients say about childhood sexual abuse…
1. I was too scared to open my mouth.
2. What’s the point in telling my mother that my father abused me? She worships him.
3. Nobody will believe my brother forced a blow job because I was the black sheep of the family and he was the rank holder.
Now from the male clients….
1. Nobody believed a boy could be molested by another man.
2. I would pretend to sleep so that the pain didn’t increase.
3. Initially it was hurtful but later I enjoyed it. Now as an adult, I can’t have sex with a woman.
The narrative is still unaltered. Victims don’t complain and predators walk the streets freely. If victims attempt to complain, then they are silenced to save someone’s face and predators walk around with his face.
One in every three rape victims in India is a child. The seminal imprints of sexual abuse on a child’s psyche are profoundly traumatic. And most of it goes unnoticed and thus untreated.
When I spoke to a client she was trying to painfully extricate herself from nightmares of being sexually abused by her step-father that she deliberately hid from her mother not to cloud her happiness. This kind of family behaviour marks the brazen impunity with which people with authority can dodge such crimes while leaving indelible scars on one’s childhood.
If a child isn’t able to use words to express the ongoing trauma, please decipher her/his body language. The psyche of a traumatised child needs holistic and sensitive healing while the sexual predators need to be exposed publicly. We shouldn’t brush aside such a depraved side of the society unattended to.
Though peripheral to the plot of the movie, it was in Mira Nair’s Monsoon that Naseeruddin Shah gave an ear to the victim and punished the predator on the spot after years. That’s what we adults need to do.”
– Jaseena Backer (psychologist)
