INCESTUOUS SEXUAL ABUSE

Effects Of Incestuous Sexual Abuse
~ © Grace Poore, 2002 ~

One of the dangers of providing a list of effects from incestuous sexual abuse is the tendency to pathologize victims and survivors, to label them as flawed individuals. Consequently, attention shifts from the abuse itself to the characteristics of the victim-survivor. The effects of the abuse take on greater significance than the reasons for the effects in the first place. Those who perpetrate this abuse are taken out of the spotlight while those who have been victimized are placed under a microscope.

Nonetheless, understanding the immediate and long-term effects of incestuous sexual abuse can be useful for those who want to be supportive to survivors. Being aware of the effects can and should catalyze families to take incestuous sexual abuse seriously and not minimize the harm that perpetrators do -- not only to their victims but also to all those who are in the victims' social world. Being informed about the effects of incestuous sexual abuse underscores the need to confront silences around this abuse. It is one critical reason for identifying and stopping those who will potentially perpetrate or have already perpetrated.

To name their own experiences women have to question ... definitions, assumptions, justifications. They are caught between dominant discourse and their own experience ... Some women 'forget' because they do not want to see themselves as 'victims.' Shame and self-blame may prompt women to try to forget ... Women also express considerable resentment at having to declare themselves 'victims' in order to counter negative views about abused women ... Women also forget because the effect of abuse is minimized. Particularly if they feel unable to act or that there would be negative consequences ... Women 'forget' to squash the distress and/or outrage so that they are not compelled to act.

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When children do not have language for body parts and what is happening, and adult abusers use verbal strategies to rationalize actions and/or prevent disclosure, children have few ways of making sense of what is happening to them ... Having no words to name and therefore to understand experiences results in suppressed memory ... The un-named should not be mistaken for the non-existent.

[ Liz Kelly, Surviving Sexual Violence, UK: Polity Press, 1993 ]

Effects Across The Age Spectrum

• Many children who are experiencing sexual abuse live with regular nightmares, experience night terrors, have difficulty sleeping, and wet their beds even when they are older.
• Adolescents who are or have been incested may have nervous breakdowns.
• Teenage survivors of incestuous sexual abuse like their adult counterparts may struggle with eating disorders such as bulimia, anorexia, and over-eating.
• Children may be disruptive and aggressive in school as a way to communicate anger and frustration that no one realizes what is happening to them; no one is able to rescue them from their violator(s). Often these children are punished for "acting out" by their parents or teachers -- which compounds their sense of injustice.
• Children may start doing poorly in studies and social activities because going through abuse and having to keep it secret affects their concentration, their self-confidence, and their sense of safety around adults.
• Some child victims of incestuous sexual abuse find school as the only safe place. Doing well in school becomes a way to mask what's happening at home. For instance, many South Asian children who were being sexually violated at home were excellent students and took on leadership positions in school. Adult survivors from South Asian middle and upper class families recall that going away to university was a way to flee from home and the perpetrator. Most of these survivors were no longer being incested but could no longer tolerate the silence and the home atmosphere that contributed to their reasons for silence about the sexual abuse. In a sense, fleeing home made them exiles.
• Other children cope with sexual abuse by becoming extremely withdrawn or anxious all the time. These behaviors may be mistaken by adults as a sign of obedience, natural shyness, or proper behavior for an Asian child. While it may be unwise to jump to conclusions without investigating what could be signs of child sexual abuse, it is dangerous to dismiss clues that your child is giving.
• Teen and adult survivors of incestuous sexual abuse may injure themselves by deliberately cutting parts of their body in places that are not visible to others. This is a way to defy the emotional numbness they had to develop in order to cope with the psychological pain of their sexual violation.
• Across different ages, many survivors of incestuous sexual abuse may rely on substance addiction (alcohol, illegal drugs and prescription drugs) to blunt the pain of the abuse. Physicians and psychiatrists who dispense medications for chronic health problems without getting at the root of the problem may, in fact, be contributing to the deleterious effects of child sexual abuse.
• Teen and adult survivors of incestuous sexual abuse may attempt suicide as a way of ending the horror of their experiences, including the horror of being blamed, shamed, silenced, disbelieved and punished for revealing the abuse. Several survivors of incestuous sexual abuse who attempt suicide do succeed in killing themselves or severely injure themselves from the attempt. Others are institutionalized or subjected to psychiatric drug treatment, which further victimizes them.
• From a young age, victim-survivors of incestuous sexual abuse sometimes cope with the abuse by becoming overly conscientious, super-achievers, perfectionists, or constantly cater to other's needs. This might be a way to rebuild what was taken away from them. It could also be a way to re-invent their identity and hide the shame and self-loathing they struggle with as a result of what the perpetrator did to them. Another explanation by Jennifer Marlowe in Faith Born Of Seduction: Sexual Trauma, Body Image, And Religion (New York University Press, 1995) is that the double existence of "the cheerful type always smiling and affirming everybody on the outside" is a survival mechanism that "provides a way out of the intolerable and the psychologically incongruous situation. It erects memory barriers to keep painful events or memories out of awareness. It functions as an analgesic to prevent feeling pain. It allows escape from experiencing guilt."
• Recurring depression, chronic anxiety, hyper-vigilance, struggles with damaged self-esteem, unresolved feelings of shame and guilt, unexpressed anger, and problems with sexuality are major long-term consequences of child sexual abuse.

Shattered Trust

• Loss of trust, difficulty forming attachments to significant others, and difficulty maintaining romantic or intimate relationships are also the result of incestuous sexual abuse. If the child sexual abuse was accompanied by a home atmosphere that was violent or a relationship with parents/guardians that was fearful, survivors have even greater difficulty forming trusting relationships with intimate partners because they fear being abandoned or unloved by their partners. However, one study of incest survivors shows that trust and attachment difficulties were overcome when survivors experienced consistent, long-term emotional support from family members, and had partners who "buffered" the effects from the betrayal of trust, which is at the core of incestuous sexual abuse. These survivors had also been in successful therapeutic situations.
• For some survivors of incestuous sexual abuse, there are problems having sex or the desire for sex. Sex and sexual intimacy feels threatening and re-traumatizing. Three theorists have this to say.

• According to Janet Jacobs in Victimized Daughters: Incest And Development Of Female Self (Routledge Press, 1994): "The expression of sexuality becomes the arena in which the survivor may feel she is truly fighting to reclaim her self; for it is here, in the realm of the senses, where the evidence of what [is] termed 'soul murder' becomes most apparent ...  In part the shame of incest is the shame of experiencing pleasure at the will and domination of another."
• According to Judith Herman in Father-Daughter Incest (Harvard University Press, 1981): "The physiological process of arousal and orgasm may be compromised by intrusive traumatic memories; sexual feelings and fantasies may be similarly invaded by reminders of the trauma. Reclaiming one's own capacity for sexual pleasure is a complicated matter; working it out with a partner is more complicated still."
• According to Liz Kelly in Surviving Sexual Violence (Polity Press, 1993): Some survivors have difficulty distinguishing between love, sex and affection because incestuous sexual abuse "involves a confusion of these areas." Many survivors cope by "exerting mental control to limit the impact of the abuse ...[but are] unable to simply switch back on physiological sexual responses, despite feelings of attraction and relative safety ...even in relationships with other women."

• For some survivors of incestuous sexual abuse, the problem is not inability to have sex but indiscriminate sex with multiple partners which, in several cases, results in unwanted pregnancies and the increased risk for sexually transmitted diseases. According to Liz Kelly in Surviving Sexual Violence (Polity Press, 1993), this is "an attempt to keep control in relationships with men by not getting emotionally involved" or to use sex "to get revenge."
• Complicating trust and sexual intimacy issues are physical and medical problems associated with intra-familial and extra-familial child sexual abuse -- such as painful intercourse, chronic pelvic pain, painful menstruation, problem pregnancies, multiple spontaneous miscarriages, or inability to get pregnant.

Flashbacks

• Survivors may be unexpectedly triggered by smells, sounds, places, someone who looks like the perpetrator, or certain actions by an intimate partner. These triggers remind survivors of the abuse because they represent some aspect of the violation and the perpetrator. Flashbacks can be mildly distressing or severely traumatic if they cause memories to surface.
• Survivors can also suddenly remember repressed memories. This could happen at a family function where the perpetrator is present, at the death of a parent or the perpetrator, during pregnancy or the birth of a child, while having sex with an intimate partner, or in the midst of a crisis that has nothing to do with the abuse but brings on a feeling of powerlessness and vulnerability.

Re-Victimization In Adulthood

• Survivors of child sexual abuse show high levels of physical abuse and marital rape by their intimate partners. This is not surprising considering that in 50% to 70% of domestic violence cases, the husbands also rape their wives.
• Different researchers have found that between 16% and 72% of women who experienced sexual abuse as children (particularly sexual abuse that also involved physical violence, and vaginal or anal penetration) were sexually abused later on as adults in situations of acquaintance rape, marital rape, and stranger rape.
• Women who were sexually abused as children were three times more likely to be in prostitution, which also increased the probability of sexual assaults.

Intergenerational Effects

• Significantly more boys than girls who have been sexually abused as children become perpetrators themselves. Some studies indicate that young male victims of child sexual abuse turn around and victimize even younger victims as a way of regaining control over what is happening to them. If, 20% to 50% of juvenile male perpetrators also have been victims of sexual abuse, then ignoring the sexual abuse of boys guarantees the ongoing sexual abuse of children across gender.
• A 1999 study in England shows that mothers of child sexual abuse victims were more likely than mothers of non-abused children to have a history of child sexual abuse. Some mothers who are survivors of incestuous sexual abuse refuse to believe that their own children have been abused and do not intervene to stop the abuse. Some mothers are unable to believe that their children have become perpetrators of incestuous sexual abuse and do nothing to stop it. No studies have been done to show how fathers respond to their children being abused or becoming abusers. No studies have been done to show how many fathers of child sexual abuse victims themselves have a history of child sexual abuse. And no studies have been done to show what kinds of interventions fathers make when their children are sexually abused, or what role fathers play in silencing victims and suppressing the truth about perpetrators within their families and social circles.

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