Prologue:
What follows is a poem based on Kid B's experiences of sexual abuse as a child in the UK. At the end of this post is a short commentary by Kid A which explores the trauma theory and social context related to Kid B's abuse.
A poem: Abuse is real
I feel it: The violent flashbacks of sensation and pain all around my back and stomach.
Painful remembrances like being in hospital. Being examined by a doctor like in The Secret Garden movie.
The paralysed child in the movie is examined by his nurse maid.
He also has night terrors.
Abuse I remember:
Stamped on like a football, deflating all the air in it.
Burnt on my chin, scalded, like in The Hundred and One Dalmatians
Cruella de Vil and her long cigarette holders.
Being shown pornographic images as a child.
Made to masturbate an abuser.
Images of a baby being cradled and rocked and then thrown.
Being swept away like Kay in The Box of Delights, or a bit of old rag that was in a jewellery box.
Abuse happened in the basement where I looked to the light for escape.
The light escape was the safe place in my mind
It resembled the place where I used to play as a child high up in the rafters of the attic with my cousin.
I was raped in the basement with my body quite still and rigid and I kept looking for the light source.
The light of the glass roof in the basement, opening out to the garden.
I remember Spiritual Helpers:
In The Box of Delights there was the character Mouse, who would go ice skating.
Kay Harker would say, "Hold on tight to my arm, little Mouse.'
Kay protected mouse against the bandits.
There was a Beaver with a step ladder , helping me out.
And Jo from Little Women who kept burning her dresses in the fireplace.
The abuse was continual. My senses got mixed up.
"Patter cake, patter cake,"
sounded like school children walking into the assembly room.
It was comforting; like eating pancakes as a child.
The Otter's Logic. I remember how the abuse was for me.
It was happening to me as a child.
I only had a child's capacity for understanding
I remember English phrases like: "You're the guest, you'll be served first".
The UK was a place of mundane etiquette,
while beneath the facade was extreme violence towards children.
Fear of grease on my hands. This reminded me of my abusers.
Chocolate, used as a means of control.
Chocolate brownies were drugged to enable one abuser to rape me.
Nausea was associated with chocolate for me.
When I was crying out for help, I cried in German, as if calling to my mother.
I kept crying out for help but no help would come.
Salvation came in the form of a hummingbird.
It came at intervals, but it felt like I kept being dragged back into the underworld.
When the help came, it felt like a rushing upwards towards the light.
I held onto my hummingbird and let it guide me through.
Kid A's commentary on Kid B's poem
Kid B's poem begins with a traumatic flashback. Such states are commonly experienced by abuse survivors. A flashback does not always take the stereotypical form. Often, as with Kid B, they are physical and not easily attributed to the original cause. As Kid B writes:
I feel it: The violent flashbacks of sensation and pain all around my back and stomach.
Many readers will have heard of the flashback state — where a person re-experiences a moment from the past. The classic example being a combat veteran who hears a car backfiring and finds himself suddenly, experientially, back in the Vietnam war. However, this type of flashback is not the most common sort.
More commonly, abuse survivors experience emotional flashbacks. An emotional flashback is where the survivor is aware that they are in the present (everything looks the same as it did before) and yet, emotionally they are back in the time of the abuse. The survivor may appear anxious, confused or disorientated. Often a survivor will erroneously attribute these symptoms to an object in the present: A difficult work environment; the screaming of a baby next door.
While these triggers can, in themselves, be unpleasant, the survivor is often experiencing not only the stimulus in the present, but the associated stimuli of the past. In other words: emotions from the past can connect themselves to triggers in the present.
This can be a very difficult psychodynamic territory to navigate.
Kid B also talks about being shown pornographic images as a child. Introducing a child to pornography is a common method used by abusers to 'groom' a child. Sexual imagery is sometimes the first step in an abuser's repertoire of coercion. The objective an abuser has in showing a child pornography is to desensitize the child to later acts of sexual violence and to normalize their later abuse. As Kid B writes in her poem:
Being shown pornographic images as a child.
Made to masturbate an abuser.
Kid B also talks about being burned. This is another common tactic used by abusers. Burning a child can create trauma-induced splits in the psyche, creating a fractured recollection of events and sense of self. This suits the abuser's aim of disorientating the child and reducing their credibility as a witness.
Burnt on my chin, scalded, like in * The Hundred and One Dalmatians* with Cruella de Vil and her long cigarette holders.
The 'spiritual helpers' in Kid B's poem are a common psychodynamic phenomena created by the child (or perhaps literally manifest; we do not know the subjective mechanism) that sooth and comfort the psyche under unbearable duress. As psychologist Donald Kalsched observes, "Some individuals have had miraculous life-saving encounters with beauty, often in nature, or sometimes even at the brink of death. Some have had experiences of angelic presences which have literally saved their lives."
Salvation came in the form of a hummingbird. It came at intervals, but it felt like I kept being dragged back into the underworld. When the help came, it felt like a rushing upwards towards the light. I held onto my hummingbird and let it guide me through.
While these encounters sit uneasily with our Western medical model, their healing influence should not be discounted.
Finally, Kid B reflects on the British predisposition for 'manners' while underneath this facade lies a corrupt social system in which the needs of children are ignored, and many are abused. She describes the UK she grew up in accurately as:
A place of mundane etiquette, while beneath the facade was extreme violence.
Indeed, the crimes of British colonialism alone demonstrate the UK's national propensity for violence mixed with a veneer of politeness. It is also a country whose national broadcaster, the BBC, facilitated Jimmy Saville's abuse of more than a thousand children on BBC premises. Having never confronted the historical reality of its crimes, the UK blindly repeats trauma on each generation. Kid B is just one of the millions that the UK has abused.