What is child molestation? The following are two examples that show how complicated this issue is, and how child sexual abuse isn't just about rape or even requires physical molestation.
Shira was eleven years old when her father would stay home in the afternoons because her mother took a new job that required working long hours. Her father started drinking beer in the early afternoon, and he began to make uncomfortable rules in the house. She was told that she wasn't allowed to lock the bathroom door anymore. Then her father would "accidentally" come in and look at her when she was using the toilet or taking a shower. Also, her father would walk through the house without any clothes on, supposedly on his way to take a shower. He would stare at Shira and make comments about her already needing a bra. He finally crossed the line in a very clear way when he insisted on washing her back in the shower.
At age 13, Motty's 20 year old brother Shmuel took him to the zoo. Shmuel insisted that they stay at the elephant's exhibit to watch the elephants. It was very upsetting to Motty because the elephants were mating and he didn't understand what they were doing. He thought they were stuck together and hurting each other. So, in a crude and ugly manner, Shmuel taught sex education to a very shocked youngster.Another time, Shmuel took Motty to an art museum, insisting they spend most of their time looking at the nude portraits and sculptures. Shmuel would make comments about Motty's private parts, implying that he was sexually aroused. One day Shmuel took Motty on a hike and convinced the boy to take off all his clothes in order to splash in the stream, and then Motty saw that Shmuel was video taping him..
Many adults think that child molestation must include physical touching of private parts, but the experts define child sexual abuse (or child molestation, which are terms used interchangeably), as any experience of a sexual nature that is imposed upon a child.
I think there should be a name for molestation without touching, for groping, and for rape.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that all of them are forms of molestation, but it is still important to make a difference between watching mating elephants and being raped.
Showing mating elephants in this case, or showing pornography as is more common, is called "grooming".
ReplyDeleteBut what do you call getting the boy to undress and videoing him? Legally, I think it is called "child endangermeant".
But for victims and therapists, we have to understand the grooming process and non-touching victimization for what it is, a form of sexual violation.
Ultimately, it is most important that trauma is rated by the victim. For example, the non-rape molestation by my father was much more traumatizing than the date rape at a later age. The incest abuse was definately life-damaging to my well-being and development. But a mid-life near-death experience caused a serious PTSD episode. The PTSD symptoms were cured by EMDR, while the effects of the incest abuse continue to hamper my joy in life.
Having read alot about trauma in general, I don't think there needs to be a distinction about what exactly happened. More, we need to assess the damage it caused to that person, especially with regard to that victim's resiliency.
I also think that victims tend to discount their abuse by rating it. "If I wasn't raped, it wasn't that bad." I recently was checking out resources in my area for survivors, and the only thing that came up was a rape crisis center. I got a little shock when I called them and they said, the majority of their cases are incest abuse and not specifically rape.
My point being that society lumps us all together, trauma therapists lump us together (because treatment is similar), so why should we separate ourselves, or dare minimize our abuse. Are we somehow more valid only if there was rape?
Shalom,
ReplyDeletePerversion is all around us in the media. There are people with an agenda in Hollywood, on TV, in the Music business, magazines etc. Just like the rat, they have always been with us; but when perversion is taught as part of religion, then we have stooped to the depths of depravity.
"When a grown-up man has intercourse with a little girl it is nothing, for when the girl is less than this (three years and a day) it is as if one put the finger into the eye." The footnote says that as “tears come to the eye again and again, so does virginity come back to the little girl under three years.” Kethuboth 11b.