IN A PROGRAM broadcast on French television (France 3) in March 2004, a number of people who had been victims of sexual abuse in their childhood were given an opportunity to tell their stories. Most of them had come to terms with this abuse in a variety of different therapies, or at least asserted that this was the case. The facts they referred to were shattering. In most cases it was not the parents who had perpetrated these acts of abuse on the children but people from outside the family, pedophiliac priests, teachers, friends of the family. Accordingly, the blame relating to the parents was indirect. At least they had not committed these deeds themselves. But there can be little doubt that they made them possible by averting their eyes. Most of the victims expressed disappointment at their parents’ attitude, and this is in itself a major step forward in comparison with the way in which most programs on this subject do their best to play down or cover up the matter.
But here again it was the psychological expert who did everything he could to camouflage the truth. Whereas the legal expert gave a truthful account of the concealment practiced by the courts, the child psychiatrist taking part attempted to contextualize the significance of the facts presented by the victims and even to turn them inside out. He was at pains to focus on the role of infant fantasy, thus chiming in with the Freudian tradition. The former victims would have none of this. But he even went a stage further. After hearing about the damage child abuse had done to the subsequent lives of the victims, driving them to drug dependence, delinquency, and severe illness, he said quite calmly and reassuringly: “Luckily, most victims do not turn into perpetrators themselves, they do not take the experience of abuse out on their own children. Probably less than 10 percent actually do that, the other 90 percent become wonderful parents.”
This statement by a child psychiatrist who ought to have certain knowledge of the truth from his own practice, that is if he were only to admit it, was extremely shocking. The question that posed itself was what statistical basis this man had for his assertions. In reality, the opposite is the case, hardly 10 percent manage to evade the danger of repetition, and only if they achieve conscious awareness of their childhood sufferings. Most parents beaten in early life beat their own children and pretend that it is all for their own good. Many of them abuse their children and insist that in this way they are giving them love, just as they heard the same assertions from their parents and others involved in their upbringing. Others cannot prevent themselves from beating their children even when they know in principle it is wrong. How can a child psychiatrist not know that? I believe that what prevents him from facing these facts is the fear of discovering his own denied and repressed history and of feeling the pain it caused him. This is compounded with another fear, that of standing alone if he speaks out in favor of the truth instead of falling in with the general trend toward denial. Perhaps he wants to please his colleagues, or his own parents, or himself. To do so, he betrays the little child he once was by professing this blatant untruth in front of millions of viewers. Unfortunately, his expert status will mean that he is taken seriously. This is one of the many forms in which people pass on the deception they have experienced to others, indeed to a huge audience, without accepting the responsibility for their actions or the reasons behind those actions.