Repeat sexual abuse

How early rapes can beget others

By Eric Fleischauer

DAILY Staff Writer

eric@decaturdaily.com · 340-2435 Thy wretched wife mistook the matter so To slay herself, that should have slain her foe. — William Shakespeare,

"The Rape of Lucrece" As he watched innocent Lucrece end her life because of another's sin, Brutus spoke truth. But the self-hatred demonstrated by young Lucrece speaks of another truth. Rape and sexual abuse so scar the victim, according to experts, that she often is unable to avoid a tragic pattern of repeat victimizations. The pattern is well-known to those on the front lines of the battle against sex crimes. In Decatur, Sue Brantley, director of the Rape Response Advocacy Program, is a part of that front line. "In working with victims for close to 20 years, we often see adult victims who have been victimized as children," Brantley said. "Through the years it has been a very, very large percentage." According to one study, women who have been sexually assaulted in the past are 35 times more likely than other women to be sexually assaulted again at some point in the future . Understanding the reason for the pattern of repeat victimizations, Brantley believes, is a necessary step in the effort to provide treatment that will end it. Melanie Miller, director of The University of Alabama Women's Resource Center, said the tendency toward repeat sexual abuse is part of a victim's survival mechanism. "As a child, their response is to remove themselves from the experience, to push it back so far that it's almost like it never happened, especially if it was not addressed at the time," Miller said. The fact that the child survived the rape causes the woman to use the same survival mechanism — silence — if she is in an abusive situation later in life. The ultimate fear sometimes becomes not the rape but the risk of public humiliation or censure. "They're afraid of not being believed, and they have all these reasons why they don't tell," Miller said. "If someone else is again invading their space or threatening them in a similar way, I think they resort to the only behavior they know." The fear of being blamed for the abuser's conduct discourages previously victimized women from speaking out when confronted with another abuser. "There is the immediate questioning of, 'Did I do something to cause this? Did I lead somebody on? Did I lead them to believe I was open to this? Did I act vulnerable? Why was I in that place? Did I send some kind of message?' Especially for a child, somebody needs to say it is really not their fault at all," Miller said. Issue draws debate The issue of why a woman, once abused, has a greater likelihood of repeat victimization attracts considerable debate in academia. The debate began when Sigmund Freud articulated "repetition compulsion" as a self-destructive but fundamental characteristic of the human psyche. The chairman of the psychology department at Auburn University explained. "In Freud's notion, there is a built-in anxiety that comes from the earlier experience. It in essence draws you back to it," said Barry Burkhart. Applied to sexual abuse, Freud's theory would suggest that a woman once abused will seek out repeat abuse, like a moth returning to an open flame. That's a theory that Burkhart rejects. "I don't think you have to say that (victims seek repeat victimization)," Burkhart said. "You can say that somebody who has been victimized — because of the mental health burden of the victimization, the depression, the difficulty of recognizing and asserting boundaries — is simply more vulnerable." No early reaction Under Burkhart's theory, victimized women do not seek repetition. Rather, there are plenty of abusers in the world. The past trauma and the psychological damage leave some victims unable to stop those abusers early. "They just are less able to take care of themselves," Burkhart said. Even in the first trauma, Burkhart said, a victim who chose silence as a response to rape must fear the potential consequences of disclosure. "What you've learned is how to be victimized. You've not learned how to avoid it," Burkhart said. "You're likely to rely on strategies that aren't effective because you used those strategies to avoid the worst outcome that would have happened, if you told somebody." The issue is not just a footnote in a psychology text. If we are to adopt the best strategy for nursing an abused woman to long-term mental health, we need to understand the mechanism that damns so many women to repeat victimization. The repetition tendency — and how it is best disrupted — is at the forefront of Brantley's efforts in dealing with rape victims. Feeling responsible "I never leave an exam room at the hospital that I don't tell them, 'You are going to feel responsible for what happened. This is something all victims feel. If it was not consensual — if you said no — then it becomes a crime and it is not your fault,' " Brantley said. "We stress that over and over." Brantley senses that this irrational guilt — the guilt felt by Lucrece — is somehow at the core of the repetition issue. Film producer, artist and homeless advocate Ellie Lee explored the issue in a documentary called "Repetition Compulsion," which she produced. "I wanted to add another level to Freud's analysis, another truth, to the repetition question," Lee said. Lee's film dealt entirely with the pattern of repeat sexual abuse victimizing homeless women. The all-important truth Freud missed, she believes, is the source of the compulsion. It may be true that some women are drawn to abusive situations, and it is certainly true that women, once abused, become vulnerable to repeat abuse. Roots in childhood In both cases, however, Lee found the repetition stemmed from the life-changing consequences of childhood abuse. So life-changing were the women's early experiences with abuse, Lee concluded, that they also pushed the women along the path that deposited them in Boston homeless shelters. In her 16 years of working with homeless women, Lee estimated that 95 percent endured traumatic sexual experiences during childhood or adolescence. "Sexual trauma creates a lot of mental health conditions. Many suffer from depression, from low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness," Lee said. Lee said this conclusion should come as no surprise, especially when the abuse came from a person trusted by the victimized child. "I think it's a combination of living in fear from a very young age and not having healthy relationships," Lee said. "Relationships and love become associated with pain and shame, with humiliation and silence." Brantley calls this "peeling the onion." "There's nothing as simple as 'just' a rape, 'just' an assault," Brantley said. "When you start talking to these victims, you will often uncover that there have been previous victimizations, whether as a child or as an adolescent." Playwright Eugene O'Neill used one of the characters in "Long Day's Journey into Night" to explore trauma and its power to co-opt its victims: "None of us can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize it, and once they're done, they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever." Only by peeling the layers back to the initial abuse can we hope to heal the victim. Sexual trauma at any age can damage the victim, Lee said, but in childhood the repercussions are overwhelming. "For kids, there is an incredible sense of isolation, a feeling that they are the only ones going through this," Lee explained. "They think, 'Who can I talk to? I must be alone on this journey.' " The emotional consequences of the abuse play a perverse role in pushing debilitated women toward men who can protect them. But because "their gauges are all off, because they don't know what a good person is," Lee continued, they often seek protection from a man who will provide it only at the cost of more abuse and violence. Like a moth drawn to flame. "They fall prey because they don't have a fully developed sense of self. They can't understand when people are predators," Lee said. Counseling young victims to deal with sexual trauma is a good strategy, said Miller. It is not, however, the best strategy. "Somebody's got to be teaching our sons. If you just teach your daughter, what you are saying is, she can somehow control this. That she can somehow keep this from happening," Miller said. "All she can do is reduce the risk. It's men who need to do the prevention. We need to ask, 'What made him do this?' " Subscribe for only 33¢ a day!