Dusty42 has deleted this message. I no longer feel safe here.

I didn't mean to imply that children aren't "pure" victims, they are.

What I meant is that it sets up in the child the impossible choice to either identify with their victimhood or with the abuser. There's not a lot of other choices. So we tend to think either we're crap or everyone else is....

So then we're very often stuck with dealing with the triangle of victim, victimizer, rescuer. Or at least this is what it seems to me when we look at the effects it has in our intimate relationships.

K.

Hey dusty, he didn't hate you because you weren't good-looking enough, he hated you because he needed someone to hate. You just happened to be there.

K.

Dusty42 has deleted this message. I no longer feel safe here.

Dusty I can't answer that. Only he can. But really does it matter why? It's nothing you did, it couldn't be. It's his twisted mind that made the decision, you were just a kid and totally blameless.

~ptb~

Hey Dusty,

Who really knows why? But we can engage in speculation, and find a satisfactory story that begins to allow the grip of the question to loosen it's hold....

And it seems to me that one aspect of a likely story is that most of us split the concept of Good and Bad -- there are Good aspects of ourselves, and Bad aspects of ourselves. And we tend to project onto others these aspects.

So, for instance, if a person prizes industriousness and hates laziness, and sense we all of both industrious and lazy aspects, there's a need to project the hated parts of ourselves on others, so the white racist hates blacks for being lazy -- he/she says: "I'M not lazy -- THEY are. It's not ME it's THEM".... I'm perfectly industrious, as are all white folk....

So basically, it's a splitting operation about aspects of ourselves that we project onto others.... The Good and the Bad, Love and Hate, Me and Them. Most of us are just mixtures, as is the world around us.

Take care,
Katie

sb just a buncha things that come to mind

1. it was easier to abuse the last one, because at some point there are less people around to interfere with it. husbands go to work, kids go to school, except that last one who is left at home with mom. surrogate husband/intimacy needs issue?

2. abuse being about control: perhaps has something to do with life in general being in squalor and dysfunction. are you aware of any subtle destructive dynamics carried over from unresolved issues of the first marriage?

3. a belief that she could get away with it with 'this particular one'

4. a demoralizing downward spiritual spiral that culminated in a situation of sexual abuse?

obviously, the propensity had been there all along. it would be assumed that others were abused if not overtly, then covertly. it just became convenient to follow thru with the last one.

have you asked the others is they have memories of having been abused?

ron

An interesting point about this case and others that have been documented is that once David was removed from the home the mother turned her abuse on another of her boys who heretofore had been among the "favored" children.

The parent in these kinds of situations is often so mentally disturbed that they must always have a victim even if that victim was once a favorite.

yes singling out just one child seems to be what happens, i think it is because you can keep one child quiet, and maybe they pick the quietest or the youngest or the most vulnerable or the easiest manipulated or the nicest looking or the smallest or easiest to physically control or manipulate or lots of reasons. they are ill people who like to keep prisoners to use whenever they want. and maybe they only want to keep one child because then they feel like all the disgusting things they do are likely to have no consequences because nobody will even find out because they have that much control.

Dusty42 has deleted this message. I no longer feel safe here.