I think so, 11by5 - I think we are nothing to them.

Let me add that my goal is that they be nothing to me. I don't want to love or hate or avenge myself or - least of all - forgive. I want to detach from them 100% and put the focus on me and mine: my shattered self in all its parts, and my healing.

Flowergurl- Oh yeah, I also wondered (wished?) that my abusers didn't know any better, and just had a weird way of showing love. I guess you have to ask yourself if they tried to hide it or not. Would someone who thinks they're showing love in a "normal" way try to hide what they're doing?

RichieD- I know how you feel about thinking you may not be totally fair in judging abusive family members, but I don't think we owe abusers any leniency. The way I see it, feeling guilty about that just keeps us in the fantasy bond Donna referred to, and that conflict plays right into our abusers' hands.

I think "selective amnesia" is perfectly rational, but it's a misleading term. For me, it doesn't mean I actually forgot the happier moments or selected to ignore them.. I just put no value on them. It's like sending me flowers after a beating. Those flowers will die but my scars will always be there.

I actually get amnesia, Whistleblower. Those are the times I start to feel more sympathetic to my family. I completely lose the memories, then weeks or months later something triggers the memories and they come back. The only person left from my immediate family is my sister and she lives in a nursing facility as a ward of the state...and says she doesn't remember having a brother.

I've read that this is very common with abuse victims...possibly it's some kind of protective mechanism in the brain. There's no conscious choice involved at all. For a very long time I had no memory of all the bad things that happened during my childhood...the beatings at school, the sexual and emotional abuse at home. I thought my childhood was idyllic.

The memories seem to surface most often when I'm in a secure environment and I don't feel threatened. I have selective amnesia about a lot of things now, things that happened in my adult life. I've been through a lot of trauma. My understanding is that all of this is a normal response to repeated and longlasting trauma.

i've been around soooo many victims of this, it makes me wonder if it ever "doesn't" go on and if all the percentages measuring how often this occurs is wrong. kids are too young and new to this world and trusting to know what is going on. they know if they have been hurt or not hurt. they don't have the words yet to explain any of it. many of them don't recall it because they can't figure it out or have been threatened to never speak of it or tortured if they did speak of it. the other kids around those kids at the time don't understand it either and don't recall it because it doesn't add up to anything for them, just a sense that something happened that should not have -- not until much later. they often know or sense, which adults are dangerous and to avoid them. but if an adult around them has taught them to be around the "bad" adults, they go toward what is familiar or do as instructed. so sad and soooo scary.

my stepfather used to rape his step daughter as a form of punishment but also, before that, simply because he and his weirdo wife felt like it. what made no sense is she had many opportunities to live elsewhere and kept returning anyway. she probably still does. with his own daughter he didn't abuse her until she was 11, but knew his wife and his brothers did since she was an infant, and he never did ANYTHING to protect her. later on he encouraged his brother who had stopped doing this to children at large, to abuse his own 3 daughters. he seemed to think there should be a set age and then incest was "normal" probably because he claims his hooker mother (by choice, not necessity) encouraged this with her own children when they were growing up. however, his mother claims it only went on at their house for a few years and then stopped completely, so why he acted like this for the next 40 years of his life is beyond her understanding. she doesn't take responsibility for any of it. 3 of her sons and two of her daughters became lifelong predators from this. and predators know other predators. what amazes me is how many are "executives" in their work and in ordinary life and insist that the deviant part of their life is normal. NONE of them feel remorse for what they do, so no i don't think they care at all good or bad, for the child they are hurting or killing during what they are doing.

there are cultures that PRACTICE this kind of thing in the middle east as sick as it is. ancient cultures also practiced it. married their own children etc. and then there are clusters within western societies still practicing it -- even if their present day ancestors are members of high end government and educated. i could out a LOT of people writing this, if i felt like it, both here and abroad. some of them join "cults" or groups that practice deviant sex of all sorts as adults and some are born into it and never leave -- or never can leave. i have never understood remaining around that. EVERYTHING is better than a lifetime of enduring that kind of thing personally or as an observer.

if you try to talk to deviants rationally they will insist its a different culture and no one should tell anyone else how to live. when you point out that its pure bullying since the adult is 3 times the size of the child they resent it. like who cares what they resent. there is even a web site of advocates of people raising kids "pedo" style. wth? how did this happen. no one seems to recover from any of it until the predator is dead. and feeling safe, living a normal life is on hold until the predator is dead. answer: kill the predators. the real answer to it, is for child sex abuse to be punishable by death. they have the technology to do that with dna today, so why haven't they? hmmm, maybe because many judges, lawyers, politicians are guilty of all of this themselves and don't want the law changed.

To whistleblower...

"Selective amnesia" describes perfectly the night my cousin raped me. For me it is not a misleading term.

I remember being excited at the prospect of meeting him in the City for dinner. I remember getting on the train to go to the City. I remember walking down the sidewalk in New York on the way to his hotel. I remember going up to his room. I remember sitting in a big overstuffed chair in the living room waiting for him to finish dressing in his bedroom.

But what I remember most clearly is my deep despair and unwillingness to go to his bedroom when he called me in. I also remember feeling/believing I had no choice...and my feet dragged as I forced myself to go.

What I don't remember is what he made me do in that room. My only evidence of wrong-doing was my body speaking to me.

He was elated as we got into the cab to go to dinner. I was in deep despair. I was physically sick to my stomach and could not stand being near him another minute. I told him I was sick and left. I think I just got out of the cab and found my way to the train station.

The next day I got a call from this cousin's brother asking me why I had allowed the abuse. I could not answer because I had wiped the experience from conscious memory except for the events before and after--selective amnesia.

By definition, selective amnesia is a type of amneisa in which the victim loses certain parts of their memory; the part I lost was the actual rape.

SuzA

Hi SuzA- First, I'm so sorry about what happened to you! I can't imagine the confusion of not remembering, the question about why you "allowed" it to happen.. in addition to the horrible assault. That's horrible.

Well, since I've gotten replies to my post, I'd like to explain my thoughts about selective amnesia. Unfortunately, I do understand what it means because I have it myself. To this day I have no recall of 1 1/2 yrs. of my childhood starting at about age 7 1/2. A deep amnesia without so much as a flashback. Like I didn't exist. I'm sure there are other memories too, that may never be accessible.

Oh- please don't get me wrong :-) I don't feel the term "selective amnesia" is misleading according to strict interpretation. I was referring to how it's a term that sometimes misleads people. It's the word "selection" that seems to do that. For instance, I've often heard people confuse selective amnesia with selective memory in a negative way, that implies someone deliberately lied about their memories.

Anyway, I expressed myself very poorly in my last post, and for that I apologize. Rest assured, I would never suggest that anyone with selective memory due to trauma deliberately chooses what will be remembered or not. To my knowledge, the psyche is what "selects" what we'll remember or forget, without our conscious awareness.

It's ironic that some people want to retrieve memories, and some wish they could forget-

Wow, this is a heavy thread...that's good.

My dad...well, I overheard my grandfather shaming my dad for having produced a girl, and a sickly one at that, said he'd failed.
...There was that, there was dad's hostility towards mom ( mom was pretty mean to him ) and I was a responsibility. I cost him money.

Dad really just hated me, honestly. Got a kick out of degrading me. He rented me for...probably money he ouldn't have fun with, that he would not have to explain to mom...he'd gotten laid off, and remained so for most of the two bad years?

So it wasn't that he JUST did not love me. My mom was emotionally and physically abusive...but she has since gotten help and made amends.
Dad never loved me...to the degree if I tried to climb on his lap I'd get hit. I also think he may have been frotteurizing me before I was six.

...my dad was my abuser...point being.
Now...

If I'd been manipulated into something similar as an adult, with a person who was NOT related to me? It would be abuse. Exploitation. Even if I was an adult who'd started involvement freely.
( and that *does* happen. Drug addiction and/or brainwashing and/or threats can entrap people fairly effectively)

Everyone's abuse and abuser varies though. I can imagine the abuser thinking that what they are doing is loving, when it is actually damaging the child.

I wouldn't think of it as "being daddy's lover" . What he did would be considered abuse. sexual or not it's abuse. My dad sexually abused me and I think of it as just being his play thing to touch and molest. still abuse. Put the shame right back on him

To carry on with the point BlueDragon made about abusers possibly thinking they're doing something "loving"...I understand why someone might think that, but my opinion is that people who abuse children sexually or otherwise know what they're doing. They know it's wrong and exploitive.

The evidence is in the lengths to which they go to cover it up, the way they attack their victim's credibility as a way of protecting themselves.

To put it in blunt words, nobody rapes a child and thinks what they're doing is an act of love. That's my view on this topic...and the criminal justice system seems to agree with that as well.

That said, if others have different thoughts on this, I wouldn't think less of them for it. We're all struggling to come to terms with the things we endured. This is not some lifestyle we chose for ourselves.

its not love. its about power and fear

To RichieD,

Most of the predators in my family had little thought of abuse being wrong--they thought they were entitled.

TW for some

Six or seven members of the family would sit down for lunch almost every day and one uncle would come in, take my older sister's hand--she was six or seven then--tell her it was time for a nap then take her into the bedroom to abuse her.

And, he always left the bedroom door open.

He believed he was entitled to do what he wanted and was assured there would not be any family interference...because almost all the men in my family felt entitled and the girls were easy prey.

This is a very interesting discussion.

I think people can know something is morally wrong and illegal and still feel entitled to do it. I've known men who were somewhat religious but deep down believed God was "one of the guys" (the context was marital infidelity, not child sexual abuse).

To me it comes back to what I said in my previous comment (again, just my opinion): those people who abused us were not thinking about US. They were meeting their own needs and WE as people, as babies or children, did not even make it into their calculations. They did not care about us either way. They were in pursuit of meeting their own needs and we were merely objects in that quest. It was a case of mind over matter: they didn't mind (what they did to us) because we didn't matter.

My own experience of people who had religious or cultural justification for doing things they should not...they all knew exactly what they were doing. People always find justifications for their misdeeds, even ordinary thieves will say they're "evening things out" or taking things from people who didn't deserve to have them in the first place.

It's human nature to justify bad behavior. Everyone in my family was "religious", and the following generations are as well. But there's no substance to it all, they do as they please. Even the rulers of organized crime attend church and give money to religious causes. We should not confuse religiosity with hypocrisy.

I've seen the evidence that the self-righteousness is a fraud. Don't be fooled by it. I do not believe that people who abuse children think it's morally justified.

I'm really sorry that all of you had such awful things inflicted in you as children. No child should have to suffer abuse like that. I'm amazed at the courage and dignity you all bring to this conversation. Not being a member of this group, I'm anxious that i don't inadvertantly trigger, so i apologise if i do.

When talking about your abusers, there is one word that never seems to get used - 'ownership'. I guess it gets touched upon when some of you talk about the abusers sense of entitlement. i have a friend whose sister was for many years a nurse in a children's hospital, perhaps the the last 10 years of her career working with premies. She told me of several times when it became apparent that the father of the child was also grandfather. When challenged, these men sometimes expressed the opinion that the mother of the child was their daughter for them to do with as they pleased. A sense of entitlement it was, but more than that. I think it diminished the daughter, she was less a family member and more a possession to be used. I don't think there was love there, only a sense of ownership. Those men are disgusting creatures who don't deserve the oxygen they consume.

again, I'm sorry if my posting triggers