WARNING: Content may be distressing……
Today’s continuing education webinar on PTSD vs. Schizophrenia was both interesting and disturbing. The role of early childhood trauma in PTSD is unequivocal, although the symptoms may not appear until years later. One picture, in particular, made me wince….a mother sitting in a chair with her head cast down, apparently dissociated, perhaps depressed, drugged, or mentally ill and the caption was “picture of a mother who is participating in the rape of her child.” If a mother is detached, mentally ill, substance abusing and/or negligent of a child, and a non-biological male is in the house (or even the child’s father, in some cases), the risk of sexual and/or physical abuse is huge. I have heard more often than I care to enumerate the stories of young girls who were abused while mothers seemed to look the other way or didn’t believe them or took the side of the man over their own child. And, in some cases, even blamed the child for “seducing” the man…..how does a two year old “seduce” an adult male, unless he is a pervert? It took me most of the first hour of the two hour webinar to get that image and its implication out of my thoughts and focus on the rest of the material. I had to go back and review the slides and take the CEU quiz twice because of the distraction. It is still lingering in my mind tonight. And my heart aches for some women I have known who are classic pictures of the symptoms described, either the wounded child or the negligent mother…..they need the healing power that the Gospel can bring to their deep wounds or guilt/shame, as do the men who would perpetrate such a violation against an innocent child in a moment of opportunity when her protector, her mother, is disabled by any number of issues herself. I think I may throw up….. Lord, protect them.