Physical Abuse

  ***** Reading this may be offensive or triggering for some readers***** 
Continue on at your own risk.

It's been a while since I have dreaded writing a post.  Why continue?  One of the first things KavinCoach taught me to do was to remember enough that my body memories make sense.  He explained, if I don't know what happened, I don't know what I am fighting.  If you don't recognize abusive behavior, how do you stop it?

Books on physical abuse were assigned to me to see how I would react reading about abuse since I had no memories of my own.  The first book I read was A Child Called It.  (Listed in my resource books.)  I read the entire book before my next appointment.  When KavinCoach asked me what I thought...I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Bad things happen to kids, what do you want me to learn from it?"  A Child Called It is a book written by Dave Plezer, an abuse survivor in the 1970's, when reporting child abuse was still rare.  KavinCoach watched my total lack of reaction to a description of brutal beatings, starvation, stabbing, and other acts of physical violence done to Dave Pelzer.  Most people are aware of the very noticeable bruises, broken bones, and belt marks.  There are other more subtle ways of physically abusing a child... spankings, punched in areas of the body not seen, hits in the head where hair covers the bumps and bruises, grabbing and twisting arms, pulling hair, then there was the realm that I existed in that would be classified as torture that never leaves a mark.  Unseen pinches.  Pokes. .... the list goes on and on and on and on....... Unfortunately, many places require pictures of the bruises to prosecute.  Most kids are too terrified to show.  Or they looked at the bruises on my legs and my mother told everybody how clumsy I was.  Along with the abuse, the world was told, it was my fault.  Kids believe that what happens to them is their fault.  The body heals....memories fade....years later someone grabs an adult in just the right place and they freak out.  This happened to me the first year I was working at the University.  I was working in the computer labs.  One of the students thought it would be funny to startle me by grabbing me from behind.  He grabbed my wrist.  I froze.........an eruption of rage so powerful that in that moment I felt I was capable of killing this idiot student.  I froze to keep myself from acting on the thoughts screaming in my head.  I was breathing heavily.  I had to go to my office to be alone for awhile to finally contain the massive reaction.  Nothing in my memories at the time gave me a clue why I had such a massive reaction.  My mind didn't remember being bound but my body did.  I spent the next several years learning to wear bracelets and anklets to teach my body to stop reacting so extremely.  (This process is called desensitization. http://www.pe2000.com/desens-what.htm) Over the first few months I learned a lot about body memories, physical violence, and my childhood.  The bruises are all gone.  The scars are mostly invisible.  My body never forgot.  Only my mind did.  I stumbled on problems at doctors appointments as they poked and prodded me for examinations.  What I thought were bizarre reactions that had no basis in reality, I finally learned were body memories from a bizarre childhood.  The abuse I experienced was not as obvious as A Child Called It.  However, I still had to recognize, acknowledge and accept what happened to me.  Some would ask, what did you do wrong to be treated like this....I was born.  People look for a cause and effect.  Many, many children are brutalized for no other reason than the adults in their life can.  Stiffer laws are stopping some.  Taking kids out of brutal homes.  Trying to give them a chance to see that life does not have to hurt.

I had a friend that one of her kids was learning about physical abuse at school.  She had been beaten as a child herself.  When she back handed him for sassing her, he told her not to abuse him.  She went postal and doubled up her fist and beat him with a volley of punches.  Then she panted, "Now, you have been abused."  I feel deeply saddened that this woman did not recognize that even though she hit her children less than she was hit, what she did, still wasn't OK.  Brutality does breed brutality if the person chooses not to change.

There was another woman that told the world how rotten her husband was.  But she was the one that gave me a fat lip when I tried to bring the children in out of the snow.  She was using the kids as pawns in a terrible argument with her husband.  Children are human beings that deserve respect and protection.  


In the United States, it is now required by law to report child abuse.  Unfortunately, in parts of the world, a child belongs to the adults like a piece of property and treated as they wish.  Children die from the physical abuse they suffer.  Adults live in fear barely able to live as the results of brutal childhoods.  I am not the only one that has suffered from physical abuse.  I can't stop the world but I can open up and share that just because I had a brutal childhood that does not mean I have to become a brutal adult.  At some point, every person, makes a decision.  I chose to stop the violence in my home.  I wasn't perfect.  I realized that I had made an improvement when my daughter read the book A Child Called It.  She couldn't finish reading it because she could not imagine any one doing those things to another human being.

Those affected - gender, economic background, race, religion, nothing seems to be an indicator...it can happen anywhere to anyone... I was raised in a 'good' neighborhood.

Signs to look for:
Bruises and other injuries in different stages of healing
Frequent visits to ER
Intense fear of the child around certain people
Remember, not all the symptoms will be present and sometimes the child will protect the guilty adults.
This is a web page with an extensive listing of signs of abuse:
http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/signs.cfm