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Deception, denial, deflection – whatever the tactic abusive parents such as my mother was – and as my father was through his compliant complacency — may use, their intent is to find ways to confuse young abused children about the facts of their condition and situation.

I remember a time in my childhood when my mother described a TRUE child abuse case to me and my siblings.  Someone in Alaska had become so furious at their young toddler for soiling its pants during potty training that they had beaten the child and then taken it outside and placed it bare bottomed, in the middle of a freezing Alaskan winter night, on the top of a car hood.

After some period of time they had yanked the child off of the car, ripping all the skin off its bottom.  They took the baby to a hospital where the truth of their crime was then uncovered.

“Now THAT was child abuse,” my mother let us know – particularly me.  She did not make clear her intentions in telling this story, but I think similar tactics are often used to present in the minds of abused children – and even in the minds of adults who were abused as children – the distorted ‘fact’ that we are not abused ourselves.  We are only punished because we are bad children and have to get what we deserve to straighten us out.

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I have written in other posts that I figured out the bare minimum sentence that my mother – and my father through his passive participation in my mother’s madness – would have deserved for the abuse perpetrated against me in my childhood.  Theirs would have been a minimum sentence at 14,500 years each.

So what do we make of the kinds of abuse acts like those referenced below?  Does the abuse we suffered ourselves so pale in comparison to these kinds of cases that we ought not to consider that we ourselves were abused at all?  Are we tempted to compare our history to much worse cases so we can minimize our own history and thus vanquish our own abuse experiences into the oblivion of ‘not so bad’?

I think not.  I believe that altered brain development caused by malevolent early childhood conditions underlies all chronic and sustained adult abuse actions against children.  These evolutionarily altered brains can be extremely dangerous.  In my mother’s case, she was wise enough and narcissistic enough to usually know exactly where the line was that would have brought outside negative attention against her for her abuse actions toward me.

I also have to credit myself with the fact that from as soon as I was old enough to do so, I remained hyper-aware, hyper-alert, and hyper-involved while my mother beat me so that I could make every possible effort to protect my body from devastating impacts against hard objects as she threw me around in the midst of her frequent and extensive physical rage attacks against me.  During her severe attacks on my small body, preserving my life was not my mother’s concern.  Fortunately, it was mine.

I also know that she used food as a weapon against me, but that is substance for another post in the future.  She certainly did not starve me because she knew someone would make her pay for that act.  If she could have done so with impunity, I think she would have – and would have enjoyed doing so.

My point today is that hearing about cases such as these (below) brings to mind that child abuse exists on a continuum of damage caused by faulty brains in faulty human beings.  That child abuse DOES exist at all reflects faults within our entire society.  At no time does denial or minimization of the reality of ANY child abuse help anyone — most certainly not ourselves.

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Carnation-area woman pleads guilty in stepdaughter’s starvation case Local News A Carnation-area woman accused of starving and withholding water from her 14-year-old stepdaughter last year entered a modified guilty plea Friday to first-degree criminal mistreatment. Rebecca Long’s plea came just days after her husband, Jon Pomeroy, 43, pleaded guilty to the same charge. 9/5/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Woman pleads guilty in child starvation case Local News A 45-year-old woman accused of withholding water and starving her 14-year-old stepdaughter has entered a modified guilty plea to a charge of first-degree criminal mistreatment. 9/4/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Couple indicted in Texas starvation case Nation and World A grand jury in Dallas has indicted a couple accused of keeping the woman’s three young children starving in a hotel bathroom for at least nine months. 8/26/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Wash. man pleads guilty in daughter’s starvation Local News A Carnation man has pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal mistreatment, after his daughter was found severely emaciated last summer and told investigators she was allowed only about 6 ounces of water a day. Jon Pomeroy, 43, entered the plea Monday in King County Superior Court. 8/31/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Starvation abuse rare, shocking even to experts Local News …and the 14-year-old victim, but has studied cases of starvation involving children ranging in age from 2 months to 13 years…systematic and deliberate,” Wilson said. Kellogg said starvation victims such as the Carnation girl need far more than food… 10/14/2008 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Pa. social workers charged after starvation death Nation and World By all accounts, there is blame to go around for the 2006 starvation death of disabled teenager Danieal Kelly. Her mother pleaded guilty to murder this week for criminally neglecting the once-vivacious… 5/1/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Vegan couple sentenced in baby’s starvation death Nation and World …sentences on Jade Sanders, 27, and Lamont Thomas, 31. Their son, Crown Shakur, weighed just 3 ½ pounds when he died of starvation on April 25, 2004. The couple were found guilty May 2 of charges including malice murder, felony murder and cruelty… 5/10/2007 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

New mental evaluations ordered for Kent mother in starvation case Local News …found Robinson passed out amid 300 beer cans. Officers also found a 6-week-old and a 16-month-old boy dead of starvation and dehydration. A 2 ½-year-old son survived, apparently by eating uncooked noodles and rice. 3/15/2007 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Lesson In Death By Starvation Business …Red Cross, described the process of starvation. NAIROBI, Kenya – Starving to death…die of illnesses, rather than actual starvation. The victim initially feels hunger…of infection. The body copes with starvation by burning fewer calories, the fuel… 8/27/1992 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

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