I’ve just come across your long article entitled “Fighting Sexual Abuse with a Dose of Self Hate” dated 26th June 2009, and I would like to respond to it as follows.

You wrote:-

“Sexual abuse, like no other trauma, eclipses this natural unfolding with an impact of such magnitude that is rarely appreciated….”

Maternal rejection is the WORST trauma a child can experience. After that, the exploitation of the abandoned child (however it is manifested) is INEVITABLE!

You wrote:-

“In the infant’s tiny mind an inner knowing is forming – “I have made this happen.” ”

Why do you assume that ALL children think/believe this? I was born to a woman who did not love me, yet I didn’t think like this as a child. On the contrary, I looked around my given environment as a small child and I wondered what was going on; I certainly didn’t blame myself for all the sadistic madness that was so normalised in the 1950′s environment/culture I found myself in! NB: I spent the next 50 years trying to understand it. Now I do.

You wrote:-

“Now put yourself in her tiny shoes and fast forward to a time when the same apparently loving father is gradually beginning to express his ‘love’ in a sexual manner involving you in sex games… You have no escape…”

Are you, perhaps, reflecting on your own mother here?

You wrote:-

“Drunk or sober, day or night, he has access to you. Your reason for living has been reduced to being a sexual object, a sex slave. Once again, and in both examples of fathers, the belief holds – “I have made this happen.” The same interpretation will be formed if the attentions are those of a grandfather, uncle, sibling, neighbour or babysitter.”

The only people who believe they are the ones who believe they were somehow responsible for the physical, sexual or emotional violation of themselves as children are those who were raised by very abnormal parents, i.e., people whose mentality was shaped by religiious dogma, e.g., Roman Catholicism. Ireland is full of such people to this day!

You wrote:-

“You are now a teenager, perhaps at this stage no longer being actively abused, you now live a secret life besieged by guilt, shame, depression and self-loathing. School life becomes meaningless. Recreational drugs and alcohol bring anaesthesia.”

What about all those so-called normal Irish peoplr who don’t indulge in drugs and alcohol, but instead, continue in the abnormal footsteps of their parents, i.e, those who shaped their mentality; who lust after power, who want to be “someone important”, to be “successful” (read, MATERIALLY successful)? In other words, a so-called adult who is still looking for approval (Love) from their fucked-up parents?!

You wrote:-

“Frequently, early sexual abuse can be of such overwhelming intensity that the immature mind buries it beyond awareness in the deepest recesses of the unconscious. However, this powerful energy cannot be fully sealed off. The mental turmoil within may see you engaging in complex obsessive-compulsive thoughts and rituals – hours scrubbing your body in the shower, frequently washing and changing your clothes, engaging in checking routines and endless mental scrabble, without knowing why. The imposition of order and self-discipline quells your anxiety. You may withhold food through calorie counting and starvation rituals, and engage in self-mutilation practices for release of tension.”

I was horribly abused, both physically and psychologically as a child myself, and yet I don’t know how to count calories – nor am I interested in “counting calories”. Nor do I engage in self-mutilation – though I have to admit I tried to kill myself several times; not because I hated myself, but because I could not stand the pain of living, or rather, merely existing – as so many others do in our so-called (White Man) civilised world!

And on you go…

PS. Is your colleague, Aine Tubridy, a sibling of Ryan Tubridy = the “talking RC/Corporate Amerika clone” on RTE 1 radio, by any chance?

You write admirably of the inner turmoil suffered by victims of sex abuse; you know very precisely what the victims all know and have often been telling us over the last many decades. And everyone should know about this, public, professionals and politicians. So what is being done to stop this carnage? Why is it still going on? Can you perhaps even point out signs that things are changing? Even 6 weeks after the Ryan Report? Even on the eve of our Government leaving their offices for 9 weeks for their holidays, amidst laughter, smiles and banter in their last exchanges? How does it feel to “know” all this, and admit that nothing is changing? How about UNCONDITIONAL CONDEMNATION?