Category: Abuse

Male domestic abuse

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Its so important that male victims of domestic abuse are finally getting more attention in the news. This article details some of the statistics and difficulties men have accessing support due to how limited the resources are to help them.

It also has a link to an program that will be available on iPlayer from tomorrow and I am keen to watch that as well when it is released.

I am affiliated with an organisation, MenCASA which promotes awareness and training in this area for therapists. It also is a resource for clients to use to be able to find a counsellor to work with who will take their experiences seriously.

Sibling emotional abuse

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There are as many types of emotionally abusive relationships as there are types of abuse. Parent to child, partners, friends, work colleagues, but one that doesn’t get a lot of attention is between siblings.

These can be full, half or step siblings involved and while it’s usually the older siblings abusing the younger it isn’t always the case.

Name calling and belittling, being excluded, being made to feel worthless. All this things will have long lasting consequences to the victim. Low self esteem, a need to put others first, a need to never make mistakes.

What doesn’t get noticed though is quite often the underlying message of not feeling loveable. After all, if your own siblings hate you and treat you so badly there must be something wrong with you? The child experiencing this is going to internalise this sort of message very young. They are being abused by siblings they love and look up to.  They don’t have the ability to rationalise that the problem isn’t them.

So they will grow up with this message embedded deep inside as a self concept, even if they never name it.

There is a good chance they will never even realise that their experiences were abusive. After all everyone knows siblings can be difficult and sibling rivalry is normal.So it may well be downplayed and minimised by other members of the family whilst the low self esteem it created has a lifelong impact.

So what can be done to help? The first step is to really reflect on where you are? Do you find yourself always trying to put others needs before your own? Do you find it difficult to be with your siblings or have lost contact completely? Do you jokingly say my sibling always hated me and try and pretend that didn’t hurt!

Starting to explore that relationship can help you look at the current and past situations from a different perspective and give you the insights to change things in the future. It may be a painful experience but hopefully it will be worthwhile.

Abuse

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This article on abuse contains a video click I’ve seen a few times, but each time I watch it I find it distressing.

What impact does neglect and abuse have long term for adults? The cycles of abuse can continue for generations, to work on changing that can be the work of a life time but changing things, no matter how difficult can help break the cycles.

Recognising emotional abuse

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What is emotional abuse?

Do you understand emotional abuse understand what it is? For me in many ways, it is one person expecting another to put them first – even though that could be detrimental to the other person. We all want to be important enough to another person that they want to put us first, it is the behaviour that follows comes with the expectation that can lead to abuse.

Put it another way; we would allow and encourage someone to put us first ahead of what is healthy and necessary for them or what they would really choose to do if they felt they could. Using tactics like manipulation, coercion, threats, emotional blackmail, attacking the sense of self and self-worth of another. To deliberately dismiss their values and their rights, their boundaries and autonomy.

I consider it very similar to a parent child relationship; a child is demanding and expecting of their needs to be met by their parent. However, as they age, hopefully they develop self-awareness and empathy for others and learn they can’t have everything they want no matter what the cost to others.

What happens if they don’t give us what we want?

What impact does that have on other relationships? Can they even see what they are expecting and that their behaviour is abusive? I think is part of why it’s so hard to recognise it sometimes. We have some blind spots with parent child relationships, but also, we might not just be the victim of it but we might also be the perpetrator.

Where is the line that you will or won’t cross?

For example, knowing you want to do something with your partner that they don’t want to do but finding a way to change their mind. Why aren’t you respecting their wishes? What were you prepared to do to get your own way? How much emotional pressure did you use to get what you wanted even though you knew they would be unhappy?

How often have you insisted a friend or family member put your needs first, even though they didn’t want to?

This leads to another question that is very uncomfortable to explore – why? Why can’t we accept someone saying no to us? Why can’t we accept that other people come first at times?

My experiences lead me to the conclusion that there is a great deal of insecurity and fear underlying a lot of this behaviour. Things can be changed, but recognising what is happening is necessary as a first step.

Unacknowledged suffering

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I came across the image below and I found it incredibly powerful.

While it applies to any form of suffering, it is very common for the abuse between siblings to be ignored or dismissed. Society tends to downplay problems between siblings and categorise them as normal family dynamics. They are not always normal though.

Emotional, physical and sexual abuse all have long term impacts on the victim and when people around you act as if nothing bad happened it can be devastating. On top of that you are also expected to remain in a relationship with your abuser by family and friends.

This adds another layer of violence to what has already been suffered.

Domestic Violence

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Unfortunately a few acts of extremist violence have taken place recently. I have been thinking about the response to those events in the general public. The sort of comments I read on social media and how whole communities are being tarred by the behaviour of the few.

However I can’t help but also think about the other acts of violence that occur on a daily basis and don’t get attention. Where is the outrage for those victims?

I am talking about domestic violence, perpetrated most often (but not exclusively) by men.

How many people share posts on Facebook condemning this and calling for their community to do more to stop it?

The data

According to this article during the 6 years to the end of 2016, in only England and Wales, more than 900 women were murdered. That is 150 victim per yearin these two countries alone. How high is the number across the world?

On this website I found these truly horrific estimates for that

An analysis of a United Nations global crime study has revealed that an estimated 43,600 women are killed every year by an intimate partner or family member. This is the equivalent to five women every hour or one woman every 12 minutes.

And this is just the estimated death toll. What about those that aren’t killed. How many are being physically and emotionally abused on a daily basis? How many children are witness to it and also being traumatised.

Compared these numbers with those killed in terrorist incidents in the UK and in Europe in this article.

Over the last 10 years there have been 1.4 deaths per year in the UK due to terrorism

Yet there have been 150 women per year killed in England and Wales alone by current or former partners.

How do you feel about these figures? Are you shocked, or all too familiar through personal experience of how widespread domestic violence is? Please get in touch if you need support for your own situation.

Child sexual abuse

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Ex-school governor who imported child sex doll is jailed

This case really brings home to me how pervasive child abuse is and the ingenuity of the perpetrators.

It has no limits in terms of social economic class and position. Yet there is still I feel a belief amongst some people that it wouldn’t happen in their society or peer group.

In some of the reporting on the allegations against Ted Heath (former PM) one of his friends was quoted as saying something like “I knew him for 50 years and didn’t get a hint of anything like this”. But isn’t that the point! Why would you get a hint if you aren’t part of it?

Abusers are skilled and able manipulator who can hide their crimes from all around them. To assume because you didn’t know about it, then it can’t be true is nonsense.

Abusers do not all fit a stereotype, nor do their victims. Sadly, though by the time the victims do report the damage that has been done to them can make them less credible as witnesses and their lifestyle gets used against them.

I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago which was on trauma and adversity in childhood. Not all relating to abuse admittedly but a great deal of traumatic events children and young people experience are from some sort of abuse. There was a snip-it of info that shocked me, if the adverse experiences were addressed when the victims were young it is estimated that the prison population would be halved and the mental healthcare system would also see a huge reduction in diagnosis.

So when the people do finally disclose what they have suffered why is there a section of the media and our communities so quick to judge them as unreliable? 

It’s time to help them find some healing, not re-traumatise them by attacking them again.