I discussed before why children keep silent about their attackers, yet there is also another
reason. Because children are conditioned to believe they have no rights in the family home,
they become insecure and have a lack of self-worth.
Getting back to my mother, her abuser seemed to have her best interest at heart, and, I believe
at first he probably did. It is more likely that as he got to know her, he would have found out
how obedient and insecure she was. Thus, the opportunity to evolve their relationship would
have increased over time. When he saw the opportunity to become intimate, he would have
taken it. Most likely reaffirming her mother’s instructions to ‘do whatever he tells you’ What
I am trying to say is, that it was most likely not his first intention to molest his employee. The
opportunity would have arisen as he learnt that there was no accountability and she lacked the
confidence to challenge his actions.
It is most likely that Gran never asked questions about her daughter’s job or her daughter’s
performance. We could make the excuse that Gran had another eight children to consider, and
I strongly think that was part of the problem. However, that was seventy years ago, but in the
twenty-first century we have more successful birth control that allows parents to have the
amount of children that they believe they can handle, yet the problem still exists today. Even
still, Gran should have been checking up on her daughter, even if it was just for her opinion
or concerns. The problem was that there was no open communication between mother and
daughter, or should I say that during their era there was a strong belief that 'children should
be seen and not heard', which leads me to believe there was one way communication, only
from mother to daughter. One of the other things I’ve learnt was that my mother believes she
was not the favourite in her family. I remember she gave a sly comment as to how her oldest
sister was the bully of the family and that my mother’s opinion accounted for nothing. In
other words, her oldest sister was also given adult responsibility to help her mother.
Consequently, my mother was among many of the siblings who were led to believe they were
useless members of the family. These beliefs are a major part of my mother becoming a
victim, and one step in a long process that teaches a child not to trust their own intuition.
I have a friend of mine who has four children, three girls and a boy. It is with them that I have
confirmed most of my assumptions and have realised that this generation is no different than
my grandmothers. I’ve watched and analysed how easy it would be for a man to molest their
children. My intentions are twofold. Firstly to just enjoy their friendship and enjoy feeling
accepted, and secondly to prevent any kind of trauma happening to these kids. Nevertheless,
because of their mother’s victim mentality, I fear it is not going to be easy. My desire is to
prevent these children from becoming a statistic, although I believe that they exist in an
environment where they are susceptible to becoming victims.
The relationship I have with my friends with four children is one where I have known the
children all their lives. To protect the family’s rights, we’ll call them the Smith family.
The Smiths are not a unique case, in fact their behaviour is quite common throughout
Australia. So much so that the last three generations in my own family have emulated their
behaviour, and I know we are among the majority.
Why I chose the Smith family was because there behaviour is on display today, and the
evidence before is better to describe than the assumptions of the past.
To start with I’ll begin with the head of the family, the controlling force behind all the
decisions and that is Mrs Smith. This woman of stature reminds of my grandmother, which
I’ll explain soon enough. But she also reminds of the kind of person who would deny their
role and responsibility to protect her daughters. This woman does not like to be told that
yelling is not only abusive, it is bullying and intimidating. She has a victim mentality coupled
with a controlling nature and therefore tries to control everyone in and around the family,
from her husband and children to her parents and friends. Even though it is common for
abuse victims to want some sort of control, I find it is more the sex-abuse victim who takes
control to this extreme.
To compliment her ability to control, her husband has a subservient attitude as well as being
passive and recluse. He is physically strong and a hard worker, which are traits just like my
grandad. He is a very likeable man who avoids conflict at any cost, and is happy to go out of
his way for others. He does not like to ask for help, although when he needs it, his wife is
willing to ask on his behalf.
I first became friends with the Smith’s because of the way the mother treated her daughter,
singing ‘row row row your boat’, while her one year-old sat on her lap while they pretended
to row together down an imaginary stream. Four children and a decade later, and that has all
changed. Since that once, I honestly can’t remember ever seeing her show any physical
affection towards her children. She will take them to the park, go on holidays together, but I
have never seen her hug any of the children or pay them compliments. She did teach them to
hug each other at least, but as the children hit their teens and the conflict grows within the
family, that has come to a halt as well. I’ve never seen Mrs Smith hit her children, which is
what I was like with my son. My yelling was so intimidating that I never needed to hit him.
Mrs Smith is the same with her intimidating except she never carries out any of her threats to
punish her children, and they’re clever enough to play on it. These children are smart, clever
and have such great potential, yet their mother considers their education is not important, just
as long as they’re going to school. She objects to homework, so if they must bring any home,
there destined to do it by themselves.
The key to her abusive behaviour is two-fold. Firstly, there has to be a sense of loyalty to the
family so that the dysfunction goes unchallenged. Even friendships are based on loyalty to
the controller. And secondly, it is important that everything appears to be normal to the
outside world. The family appearances are of the utmost importance. It is in these two areas
that Mrs Smith is exactly the same as my father.
In general, when control is coupled with verbal abuse, the children will tend to try everything
within their power to please their abuser and gain their acceptance; it’s irrelevant if the
parent’s demands are right or wrong. Every child seeks to feel love and acceptance by their
parent. If a child doesn’t feel loved, they try to find ways to receive it. They become over-
submissive and seek praise with every task they complete. When they still feel neglected,
their attempts to gain acceptance evolves into unconditional loyalty. Whatever their parent
asks for, will be done with the hope that they receive a reward of approval and admiration.
Unconditional loyalty is not gained by a simple request, it is developed over the years to
become a family lifestyle and carries well over into our adult life.
When I was in my fifties, I refused to go to my mother’s because of an issue that my family
would not deal with. It was two of my older brothers who demanded I put my grievances
aside and still play the devoted role. They were still doing the bidding of their dead father,
who had taught them to demand loyalty to the family, unconditionally.
The greatest and most important commodity within the family home is love, such as being
accepted when a child makes a mistake or is being foolish. Love covers these things.
But children also need to be nurtured. Nurturing feeds the child’s soul and spirit, which helps
it grow into a healthy adult. When nurturing is replaced with intimidation and manipulation,
it puts children in a position where they become insecure and vulnerable.
Approval is a large portion of nurturing and both Mrs Smith and my grandmother have made
approval, performance based. This struggle for approval, their insecurities and unconditional
loyalty, are key factors as to why children become victims of sexual predators; and worse
still, love is absent from the home.
When I say love, I don’t mean the emotional stigma that love is a feeling and needs to be
spoken from time to time. I mean the sacrificial love from a parent where a child’s opinion is
considered, and above all, the child’s complaints are important and dealt with correctly. A
child needs to feel valued and needs to know they have rights as an individual. In a
dysfunctional family, the children belong to a family that demands their loyalty. They are part
of a small community rather than unique individuals within that community.
But in an abusive family, love is replaced with loyalty and that loyalty is to the controller.
This form of manipulation is to control the children. When children constantly seek their
mothers approval, it is usually the oldest child who is given adult responsibilities. These
responsibilities vary depending on the gender of the oldest child. Girls usually get such tasks
as to care for and motivate the younger children. Even though the oldest child accepts the
task, it is because they receive tiny grains of emotional food from the approval they receive
by their mother when the task is done. However, these young girls will resort to violence to
reach their goal and consequently, their role with the other children in the family is strained
and conflict and resentment develops between the children. The oldest child learns her bully
tactics from these situations, which she will take with her to the next generation. As for the
boys, it is irrelevant whether he is the first born or not but I will deal with his tasks in a later
chapter, however I find the unhealthy mother-son relationship is where all the real problems
begin.
Since I do have my concerns about my friend, I have taken special notice lately as to how she
interacts with her own parents. It turns out that it was her father who is the yeller in her
childhood. Now that she is thirty-ish, she is yelling at her children as well as yelling back at
her parents in order to control them as well. Because her husband is passive, she has become
the ultimate power over all her family and friends; in other words, she has become a law unto
herself.
However, as most mothers, she likes to give, and often does to both her husband and children,
but her generosity has a few floors in it. Since she controls all the money, she looks generous
to everyone else because she buys all the food and gifts, plus organises all the outings,
birthdays and holidays. She uses that generosity to offset her abusive behaviour. That way
she doesn’t seem all bad, but hay; nobody is perfect and someone has to do the budgeting.
I only say that there is a problem because she is spending more money on herself before
anyone else. She is the priority in her family. For example she went on a trip with her mother
to see a music concert in another state, while leaving the rest of the family behind. That in
itself is not such a major dilemma, except that the kids ran out of basic food item and the
father had no money to buy anything. They would not have starved, but I don’t see why the
kids had to hungry either, so I bought some food. However, she did bring them all back some
terrific gifts to draw their attention away from her neglect.
Her four children’s ability to receive approval and acceptance is performance based. And
since they are virtual slaves to all the house work and because they have never been taught to
clean up after themselves, clean-up day is almost every day and every task is daunting and
met with complaints and arguing. Holidays are used as blackmail material to gain
performance, especially silencing any backchat or negotiations. I have since learnt that the
kids complain about cleaning their rooms because they are isolated during the task. In other
words they have to clean their room on their own, and it takes hours. It is more like solitary
confinement, which is an horrific punishment when you’re struggling for attention in a large
family. When I visit, I sit and talk with them in their room why they clean up, and their happy
with that. I could understand better if their mother was an invalid, but she is quite an abled
bodied woman.
However, I have major concerns when the thirteen-year-old girl gets dressed after her
shower, and then gets dressed while her nine-year-old boy to be in the same room. To be told
that it is acceptable is when the children’s rights to privacy are neglected. The house rules
include shower doors are to be left open, the youngest boy is allowed to come and go into the
girl’s bathrooms and bedrooms at will. When the girls have complained to their mother out
the boy, they are told to stop being stupid, as he is just a child. Consequently, their basic
rights are being ignored and the girls loose all confidence to complain. We don’t have to look
very far to find out why the girls have lost their will to rely on their awareness to perceive
when something is not right.
The family has a flexible routine where meals and bed times are dependent on the mothers
need for entertainment. Parties are for the whole family and bed time is for whenever they get
home in the morning. Evenings are determined by how busy the mother has been during the
day. Dinner can be two or three hours late on regular occasions, and bedtimes are determined
by the movie that is currently playing or whether the mother wants her privacy. She did try
and implement a bedtime routine once but it got in the way of what she wanted to do.
My other concern is that her girls are also becoming abusive, like their mother. It’s a common
dilemma with large families when the oldest child has been given adult responsibilities. The
concept is to help the mother cope, so a thirteen-year-old gets to perform the mother’s tasks
to motivate and discipline the other children. This role change is so common, it occurs in
most family as well as my friends.
I remember when I was growing up, my oldest sister was the authority in our house. When
she was a working girl of twenty, one of us younger kids stole some money from her. She
lined us all up in the lounge room while she held dads belt in her hand. She demanded a
confession or else all of us kids would get the belt around their backside. No one admitted to
the crime and therefore we all received a belting, except one. Number five child received
twice the punishment because he was the one that she believed was guilty. We found out
thirty years later that it was the seventh child who stole from her. The problem was that my
sister was allowed to apply abuse rather than seek the truth. It’s no wonder it goes horribly
wrong.
The downside for my sister is that forty years on, we all still resent her. She has always been
the bully in the family and only gets on with those who are passive, which in my family is
only a few. So when I see my friend’s oldest daughter yelling at her siblings, I can only
cringe because I can see the conflict that it is causing now, as well as the potential that it may
continue later in life. Sadly, it’s not her fault, a thirteen-year-old should not be parenting. And
in the case of my family a twenty-year-old should be parenting babies, not policing teenagers.
Loyalty has its place, but when it contradicts the law or any moral behaviour, it becomes
unconditional loyalty, and that is dangerous. But then so are family appearances. Mrs Smith
is not as big at keeping up appearances as most, but there are many who do.
When I was little, I remember my dad saying that he didn’t care so much how we behaved at
home, but when we were out, we had better behave, or else! We always had to look as if we
were a happy family, no arguing, use manners, and above all, only speak when you’re spoken
to.
As children, my parents sent us off to Sunday school while my oldest sister would teach the
Bible to all the kids. Strangely enough my oldest sister has an issue with God, who
abandoned her, while her father did whatever he wanted to her. The Church is a great place
where 'keeping up appearances' is practiced and perfected.
I dated a girl for about nine months. It was nine months of hell for us both. She too had a
victim mentality, not that I knew what that meant at the time. She was sweet at first but soon
changed after I stood up for myself. Her controlling and bully nature soon shone through.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not innocent here either. I remember one incident where I
manipulated her because she was making me wait before having sex. The relationship didn’t
last long after she had an affair with my sister-in-laws brother, a subservient and a pacifist. So
although I do not have any contact with her, she is still involved in my oldest brother’s life.
It’s a relationship of clashing control freaks. I think it’s great as they deserve each other. Ten
years on and where do I find her, but in a church I visited out in the country. I didn’t notice
her, but as soon as she saw me she would not let me out of her sight. She introduced me to
people but did most of the answering for me. It was obvious that she had never changed as
she was still controlling and still wore jewellery as if gold was a lifelong requirement. When I
left I was happy not to go back their again, however I was surprised to get a phone call from
her a few days later. She asked me if I would like some counselling since that was her role at
the church. I thought, ‘why not’, God knows I need it, but I stipulated one condition; anyone
else but her. I never heard from her again.
I was wondering what she was after and then I thought to myself that I could give her some
details about my brother that would make her head spin. And then I realised, a councillor
knows all the problem of all the members. What a powerful position to be in, and if I gave
her details of my brother, she would finally have ammunition to gain control over his
pigheaded attitude. And the Church has put her in that position, not because she is a
Christian, but because she knows when to listen, and knows what authority want to hear. If
she had allowed me to speak at church, her fear was that I would tell them what she was like,
and that she dabbled in the occult. This means that she is one powerful control freak with a
victim mentality and has a demon spirit for company. She is what the Bible calls a 'wolf in
sheep’s clothing'.
I have also noticed families who dress really nice and sit in pews together as a family, never
budging an inch. This kind of loyalty makes me wonder why the children are not acting like
normal children, preferring to stay with their parents rather than go to children’s church. It’s
as if the parents don’t want them associating with other children in case they accidently
expose the family secrets. And in saying all that, Churches are not the only source for hiding
family secrets. I can also see many other families with the same behaviour traits every day in
shopping centres and over our neighbourhood fences. But I’m glad to say I see healthier
families as well.
~ 9 ~