'The trauma myth': The child betrayed

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The title [of the book The Trauma Myth by Susan Clancy] refers to the fact that although sexual abuse is usually portrayed by professionals and the media as a traumatic experience for the victims when it happens - meaning frightening, overwhelming, painful - it rarely is. Most victims do not understand they are being victimized, because they are too young to understand sex, the perpetrators are almost always people they know and trust, and violence or penetration rarely occurs. "Confusion" is the most frequently reported word when victims are asked to describe what the experience was like. Confusion is a far cry from trauma. [...]

[Interviewer:] One could argue that your claims could encourage child abusers - or convince them that what they're doing isn't wrong. How do you respond to that?
[Clancy:] Forcefully! As I hope to have made clear in the book, sexual abuse is never OK. No matter what the circumstances are, or how it impacts the victims, sexual abuse is an atrocious, despicable crime. Just because it rarely physically or psychologically damages the child does not mean it is OK. Harmfulness is not the same thing as wrongfulness. And why is it wrong? Because children are incapable of consent.

source: Article < "The Trauma Myth": The child betrayed > by Thomas Rogers; www.salon.com/life/sexual_abuse/index.html?story=/books/int/2010/01/18/trauma_myth_interview; Salon.com (Associated Press); 18 January 2010