I have categorized child abuse into three types. Sexual, physical and emotional In this blog we will explore these categories as well as the sub categories. I do realize that I am expanding the circle of what is traditionally identified as child abuse bur I feel that by merely engaging of such a discussion we offer future generations some insight into what can constitute child abuse. Abuse can can be a long term and lifetime relationship.
Traditional Sexual Abuse
On would think that sexual abuse would be quite straight forward but it is not. Traditional sexual abuse is actual intercourse, fondling, and oral sex. Sexual abuse as I have observed, however,can come in many different forms.
Changing the nature of the Relationship
Besides from the blatant physical violation and even rape a seasoned abuser will often engage in a relationship with the abuser that mixes up the nature of that relationship. In my case my middle brother insisted in putting me in the girlfriend role. this role has been so ingrained with me that I actually believed and wanted to live with him and his own family as some sort of sister undercover girlfriend. One will often find this kind of role reversal from sister to girlfriend, from teacher student to teacher lover, from strangers to friend, from priest to boyfriend.
I feel that this is the way that the abuser can justify having an inappropriate relationship. The abuser actually convinces him or herself that the relationship is no longer abuser and abused but a mutual combination of lover and friend.
This is why the relationship with the abused and the abuser can last a life time. As long as the abuser can maintain and nurture a relationship with the abused even if that relationship is not longer physically the sexual the abuser bets on the fact that the victim will never tell. After years of this kind of relationship with age and growth I began to feel culpable and thus guilty and therefore reluctant to label this behaviour abusive. It took me many many years to finally say to myself, "Karina you were an abuse child a really abused child you know it, you can say it, you can shout it. You know what happened, you can recall the incidents you can name abusers".
I remember when this life changing spiritual, physical and emotional moment came to me. I had just finished having a joint at a friends house. I smoke very rarely and when I do it's not much but I do gain wonderful insights. This was just that sort of moment. I was walking down Park avenue headed to 38th to a get a falafel from the greatest street vendor ever and it just hit me. I had arrived I could make sense of this, I could talk about this. I could tell my story in fact I have a story. I was a young child and I was brutalized and traumatized in a systematic practiced manner.
Sexual Innuendo:
There are some abuser who merely hint at a new definition of the relationship from for example sister to lover. They can be flirty, sexually verbal, may show the victim pictures, talk about sexual encounters but never cross the line of sexual contact that would endanger them legally.
My brother used to regularly wake me up in the morning by climbing into my bed press his body over me under the covers, tickling and fonded and then end up taking his finger sticking it in his stinky belly button wiping it under my nose.
My own mother would call him to go upstairs and "wake your sister up."
Traditional Physical Abuse
I define traditional physical abuse as any hitting, slapping, cutting, biting. Anything that in effect leave a physical mark on an individual. This is the definition used to identify the sign but not all signs are so blatant.
Sensory Abuse 1
I call this abuse sensory because it does not leave any marks. In my case for example my mother thought it great sport to heat up her chicken soup to a b oiling point and then place it in front of me with metal spoon and force me to eat it. This would create pain and blisters in my mouth but nothing that anyone could see.
My brothers love to encourage me to eat hot peppers and then laugh as I gasped for water. This is also a practice known a saucing which is when a adult puts hot sauce into a children's mouth as punishment.
Cold sores are also what I feel come under sensory abuse. I had so many cold sores on my mouth as a child that I thought they were a completely normal thing to growing up. I didn't realize till much later separated physically from my brother Michael that my cold sores miraculously disappeared and that they were in fact passed to me through him.
Sensor Abuse 2
This is a kind of cunning abuse usually perpetrated by the mother. My mother for example would continuously buy shoes for me that were one size too small. My whole body withered in pain at the end of each day in school. For the longest time she did not believe in sneakers and keep my feet imprisoned. Strangely and inexplicably I kept up this practice of buying a size six shoe while my feet were actually a seven. I took up where she left off and I was so brainwashed that my foot size was a six I bought size six shoes for years ironically lending my own hand to perpetrate the legacy of my abuse....go figure
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