Non-abusing mother's perspective of child abuse
The aim of this assignment is to investigate the problems experienced by a mother of a sexually abused child.
Wordcount 3300
Whilst there are many issues around child sexual abuse I will be focusing on the mother's perspective, as I believe any sexually abused child will need the help and support of their mother in order to overcome the abuse.
I will be exploring how mothers can be supported when confronted with child sexual abuse given they are faced with grief and losses of enormous complexity. A mother may experience confusion, conflict and feel threatened from within and outside the family. The decisions they have to make have life-long implications to be made at a time when she may feel disempowered.
I recognise that in many cases the child will blame the mother for failing to see what was happening and not protecting them but as research has shown children love their parents. The blame the child attributes to the mother is often a way the child uses to get through the situation a psychological defence mechanism.
This is one of the reasons why so many perpetrators can get away with it for so long, children are very forgiving. (Humphreys 1997). Further to this I would add that if the mother is not supported the abuse could carry on as the children may forgive their abuser.
It is important the mother is assisted and supported to be responsive to the emotions the child feels, otherwise the child may feel abandoned. Mothers are powerful role models and can exert great influence over the outcome. If a mother is not helped she may experience depression that the child may perceive as weakness. This may lead the child to internalise the idea that all women are weak, and may affect how the child views its own sexuality. If the child sees the mother as inadequate during this period it may have an impact on the child's ability to form and maintain close relationships later in life.
I have decided to use a fictitious case study to explore in depth what are the main issues. The case study is structured in such a way to allow the scenario to be written whilst at the same time putting across views, theories and general hypothesis: -
A mother of two children has discovered that her husband has sexually abused their children.
The mother is shocked at the discovery that the man she has been married to for fifteen years who she felt she knew inside out could do such a thing. She finds it difficult but believes her children.
She is angry but also overcome with guilt and self-recrimination. (Butler-Sloss 1990)
To seek outside help or not? She cannot decide, intervention may mean trauma for the children and investigations that will be humiliating and stigmatising. But she considers the other option, dealing with it herself. She realises her husband is domineering and controlling and that she has little self-esteem upon which to draw strength. Her close family would be appalled, sympathetic yes, but would be unable to help her through it because they would be unable to talk about it honestly and openly, well that sort of thing does not happen in other families, decent families does it?
She weights up the consequences of moving out. This would mean moving from the community her and the children know, If they move out is she strong enough to overcome the poverty and isolation that will ensue? Leaving to face poverty may incur additional guilt.
Because of her age and ethnic background she feels constrained because of the restricted options available to her.
Along with the practical elements to plan it occurs to the mother that she in not qualified to deal with the psychological consequences of the abuse for the children, both short term and long term.
This final issue convinces her to trust the 'experts' and ask for professional intervention.
The social worker seems considerate and understanding and makes recommendations that appear helpful. The husband through legal routes has to leave the family home. But before long it is apparent that the recommendations cannot be carried through for one thing or another not least budget constraints. With the children's names on the Child Protection Register the mother feels stigmatised and her self-esteem is lowered still further
The mother feels increasingly inadequate which impacts on her ability to cope with the children's needs.
At the next assessment the mother does not do very well she is feeling depressed and unsupported, as nobody seems to understand how she feels. Having her parenting abilities called to question further undermines her self-esteem and she is angry and emotional. She feels devalued as a mother and disempowered as a person.
The mother tells the social worker she does not know how to deal with the children there is a barrier between them that she does ...
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The mother feels increasingly inadequate which impacts on her ability to cope with the children's needs.
At the next assessment the mother does not do very well she is feeling depressed and unsupported, as nobody seems to understand how she feels. Having her parenting abilities called to question further undermines her self-esteem and she is angry and emotional. She feels devalued as a mother and disempowered as a person.
The mother tells the social worker she does not know how to deal with the children there is a barrier between them that she does not know whether it comes from her or them, and further does not know how to break it down. The counselling provided for them does not seem to help, as she is not a part of it. The family is fragmented when surely it should be being brought together.
The family is assigned a new Social Worker. The mother feels this social worker is judging her and does not listen to what she tells her. She wonders about the social workers ability to deal with this type of case, she always seems to be looking for the 'appropriate' response and the mother wonders what the 'appropriate' response is and is there only one? The social worker seems to have unresolved issues relating to her own relationship with her mother and constantly refers to them for reference.
Things seem as though they are never going to improve, the children are doing badly at school and have lost interest in their hobbies. Extended family members seem to be of the opinion that the problem - the husband - who has moved out means the problem has gone away and life can carry on as normal.
The new social worker just seems to be interested in the mother's experience of a child, how she was brought up what kind of relationship she has/had with her own parents, as if they are somehow to blame for the abuser's behaviour. This questioning does not make any sense to the mother who is fed up of hearing about 'models'. The social worker seems convinced this is a 'cycle of abuse' the mother thinks this is because doing so transforms the mother into a victim making it easier for the social worker to empathise. (Hermann 1988)
Increasingly isolated and lonely she begins to see her husband who is able to manipulate this isolation to his advantage.
The mother begins to doubt her children's allegations and eventually her children are taken into care.
From researching these issues this would seem a typical case scenario and O'Hagan (1989) claims that social workers tend to focus on the event of abuse to the exclusion of the other aspects such as family dynamics, which might influence their assessment of the situation to the detriment of the mother.
The abuse being the primary focus can be epitomised by the social work team manager asking, "do we have a case?" rather than "how are the children/family?" (Scott 1998)
It may be difficult for inexperienced social workers to understand the full implications of a case such as this. Their values may echo wider society's views who cast the mother as a scapegoat because of their own anxieties that she should have spotted the abuse sooner because friends, neighbours etc wonder has there been abuse outside the family? All feel threatened in that their children may have been put at risk.
Humphreys (1997) believes this is because child sexual abuse allegations challenges the notion of social cohesion based around a protective family.
Mothers are accorded blame by some who believe that the sexual abuse has been caused by problems in the marriage that has caused her to withdraw from a sexual relationship with the husband, who begins drinking and sexually assaulting the nearest substitute. (Howitt 1995)
But from a feminist perspective it can be argued that many women withdraw from a sexual relationship but this does not lead to child sexual abuse. They point to the extent of responsibility attributed to women for their children as opposed to the unequal amount by men. (Hooper CA, Humphreys C 1998) And ask why should women be responsible for the behaviour of their adult partners?
Feminists argue that responsibility for sexual abuse be located with the offender. (Hooper CA, Humphreys C 1998) They point to this undermining of the mother of the sexually abused child owing something to the many forms of patriarchal discourses within society.
From a sociological perspective it can be said that the social construction of a family as 'private' with outside intervention avoided results in many women feeling isolated and disempowered at a time when action is needed against their partners.
Despite this statistics show that non-abusing parents - usually mothers are the most frequent referrs of child sexual abuse incidents to the authorities. (Sharland et al 1995, Packman et al 1986)
With more social work intervention using family therapy new constructions of sexual abuse have developed that focuses on the dysfunctional family rather than the deviant abuser. (Lustig et al 1966, Machotka et al 1967) With this intervention the mother's behaviour has increasingly been given greater attention in investigations and assessments. (Humphreys C 1997)
Feminists argue that family systems theories often used by social workers for family therapy for assessments have been gained from clinical settings that do not take into account psycho-social elements.
Humphreys (1997) argues we live in a culture that often puts societal and individual problems onto women as being their responsibility e.g. bonding/attachment problems between mother and child that is given as a cause for delinquency (Bowlby) and lone mother families blamed for many of society's problems through inadequate parenting skills. It is rarely the father's parenting skills that get examined.
Social work intervention uses the terms 'collusion' and 'maintenance' towards mother's behaviour based on a functionalist language that underpins family systems theories but studies indicate that a mother's inability to meet all her child's needs in relation to protection has more to do with conflict than consensus. (Hooper CA 1992).
One of the conflicts being they love their partner and are dependant upon him but want the abuse to stop.
A further conflict is their need to remove their child to a place of safety whilst at the same time their need to keep their child close-by to reinforce their decision to put their child first.
When the mother of a sexually abused child in order to protect the child takes court action to obtain a divorce from their abusing partner, giving the abuse as a reason, Herman (1981) and Ward (1984) argue that paradoxically they are not believed instead they are thought to be using this reason as an excuse and labelled as a 'falsely accusing' mother. Yet prior to the divorce case the same women were accorded blame for failing to protect their children.
The falsely accusing notion is then linked to psychological illnesses and a mother further undermined. But this link has been challenged by Humphreys (1997) who argues that attaching psychiatric labels to mothers in order to discredit them in no way refutes the allegation of sexual abuse.
But in such cases the example of the 'normal' passive mother of the victim is contrasted to the combative mother in court proceedings in order to further discredit the mother and undermine their claim of abuse.(Bresse et al 1986)
I would argue that there would be many reactions by a mother to child sexual abuse and that passivity and combativity are just two of many types of behaviour mothers may display at any time singularly or combined with other emotions. Nobody is able to define what a 'normal' reaction is for another person in that type of situation.
Whilst some social scientists have tried to produce a scale to measure true or false allegations made by mothers e.g. Gardener (1987) these have been criticised and condemned e.g. Conte (1988) states of Gardener's scale that "it is probably the most unscientific piece of garbage I've ever seen in this field in all my life"
The mother-blaming argument that states abuse happens through lack of supervision making the child vulnerable proposed by many in this field does not hold up because it can be argued that all children are vulnerable to adults to some degree and no child is supervised all of the time.. Whilst there may be some children who are more vulnerable with less supervision not all are sexually abused, and some children are sexually abused even though they have close supervision.
Some mother-blaming can be subtle and is often located in two areas:-
Firstly wife-blaming - attributing responsibility to women for the sexually abusive behaviour of their partner, the argument that men are unable to control their sexuality so women must contain it. Hildebrand (1989) notes that therapeutic work based upon family systems theory requires women to 'acknowledge how their relationship with their partner along with the structure and organisation of the family, may have contributed to the sexual abuse.'
Secondly, mother blaming can be linked to the amount of responsibility attributed to mothers in relation to the welfare of the children - usually sole responsibility characterised as a powerless responsibility due to economic dependence upon their partner.
Historically, social work practice in this area has been primarily concerned with child protection, with the parents held responsible. This usually resulted in removing the child from the home. When Messages from Research was published and the Working Together policies introduced a distinction was made between abusing and non-abusing parents. (Reid 1989)
Whilst this is a step in the right direction it they do not go far enough in that the policies refer to gender neutral parents without acknowledging the problems a woman may experience once child abuse is discovered in the family.
The acceptance of the sexual division of labour as unproblematic results in women being expected to protect their children from violent men with little help from state agencies and risk losing their children if they fail. Furthermore legislation still puts the onus on the woman for removing abusers from the family home.
To this end I would advocate for government policies that reduce the economic dependency of women on men and the associated disadvantages of lone parenthood.
In my view mothers in these cases as in the case study do not have suitable options available to them, whichever option they choose they loose out.
It seems to me that empowering social work should ensure the mother and child have separate social workers to address their individual needs because if the mother's needs are not met I do not believe she is able to meet her child's needs effectively. For instance the mother would need her self-esteem rebuilding (Sanderson 1990) so that she can remain strong when the child needs her and social work intervention has ended otherwise the mother seek help elsewhere e.g. from the abuser (Conerley 1986). The Cleveland Enquiry found that mothers who had their own social worker could act more supportively towards the child and with less hostility to other professionals acting on behalf of the child (Richardson S et al 1991)
I have realised that it would be a natural reaction to feel angry as a social worker in this type of case but these type of feeling need to be explored and dealt with if sensitive quality work is to be undertaken. Having an understanding of some of the issues highlighted in the case study could facilitate a better outcome for the family rather than just debating the opposing theories between feminists and family therapy ways to consider how the social, individual and interpersonal interactions relate.
But exploring the issues raised in this assignment need time and money and recent research suggests that this area is being neglected (Farmer and Owen 1995). But Messages from Research when emphasising the need for practitioners to focus on contexts, which may be harmful to the child rather than on abusive events, may be helpful.
Research and theories in this area when analysed reveal their limitations at understanding, and offering solutions in such complex situations. Generalisations and stereotyping should be avoided, mistakes as in Cleveland investigated so as to inform future practice and I would argue for sustained ongoing support for both mother and child.
It has proven difficult to maintain the focus of this assignment given the many issues that become evident once the subject is explored I feel I have only given an overview of a complex thought provoking subject. Which means for practice there are no simple solutions, no practice guidelines to underpin practice, therefore understanding and applying social work values and ethics are even more crucial than ever.
I have learned that if we ignore the strength of the mother we lose the best resource a child has of overcoming the effects of sexual abuse.
REFERENCES
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BA Social Work