Session 6: Women Surviving Child Maltreatment: Becoming Resolute in the Face of Evil

Session 6: Panel

Women Surviving Child Maltreatment: Becoming Resolute in the Face of Evil
Chair: Marlin Bates

A narrative analytic study* of accounts given by 29 adult women survivors of childhood maltreatment (physical, emotional, sexual, and neglect) focused on how these women become successful despite their traumatic experiences. Three open-ended interviews spaced over 6-12 months provided a fine grained representation of strategies for success, relationships and interactions that were helpful, evaluations of  therapies and memory patterns. In diminishing the pervasiveness of abuse aftereffects, women faced evils of character annihilation, betrayal, and psychic pain following the wickedness of violence by caregivers, such as parents; non-protection and pretense was perceived in parents allowing others to abuse their daughters. The core concept in thriving survivors was becoming resolute, a complex process, part of which was to “face down death.” To find pleasure and success, it seem necessary to see the wickness and evil of abusers and abuse in an unvarnished way. Women’ survivors’ discernment and decisionmaking about abusive evil(s) are explored in this panel. This panel reports on a comprehensive inquiry based on narratives from women survivors who were asked how they achieved degrees of success which surprised themselves and counter the images of abuse as pathetic, untractable, and doomed to be cyclically replayed. Personalized evil in the terrorizing of a child is contextualized through description of the ubiquitous evil within a totalizing family situation.  Bourdieu, Foucault, Goffman, and Barthes are cited as relevant to understanding evil as diverse threads in survival narratives. The panel will introduce the study , followed by four  papers reporting findings from different perspectives, with illustrative quotes: (a) life trajectories after experiencing the evil of abuse; (b) relational processes that clarify or attenuate evil aspects of abuse, (c) ways of remembering abusive evil (d) secrecy and spectacle: circumventing the impact and longevity of abuse-evil.

This was an NIH study over 4 years by an interdisciplinary team from the disciplines of nursing, psychology and psychiatry.  R01-NR07789  “Women Thriving Abuse Survivors.

Life Trajectories of Women Survivors of Child Maltreatment: Redemptive and Contaminating Sequences
Sandra P. Thomas
University of Tennessee, USA

We used narratives to reconstruct chronologies of women abuse survivors’ paths through life to define turning points, and sequences of events following transitional, pivotal events in life after abuse. Using McAdams’ method for examining life stories we identify intentionally positive actions by survivors, and the sequences that followed. The two types of sequences Mc Adams defines are redemptive (relating positive outcomes, such as better relationships, gaining safety, achievements, etc.), and contaminating. Contaminating sequences are negative outcomes that follow attempts to help or change one’s constricted, traumatizing circumstances, which can reinforce the evil associated with child maltreatment.  The diversity of trajectories in this group of women survivors is well articulated in verbatim quotes, and brief case summaries as exemplars of each type of sequence. The account of one participant may contain several narrations of a key life event, told at different interview points. This informed the trajectory analysis as well, providing ways that abuse and healing are narrated for different purposes, or from different self-perspectives of the participant.  Often the “severity” of abuse as traditionally gauged is not correspondent to the personal perception of damage, and similarly, of the magnitude of evil faced.  Attributions about, and aftereffects of, abuse correspond to evil confronted in recovery, in addition to the evils of traumatic events as actually experienced. Participants demonstrated great diversity in patterns of facing, interpreting, describing and revealing evil as manifested in private worlds of abuse and neglect.

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Relationships and Interactions Mitigating Evil in the Aftermath of Child Abuse: Constancy, Differentiation and Challenge
Catherine Haynes Kingery, Marian Roman & Kim Bolton
University of Tennessee, USA

Through narratives of childhood, adolescence and adulthood in accounts of women survivors of child maltreatment, including neglect, relationships are demonstrated to be central to seeing abuse for what it was/is, and becoming adept at moving beyond it.  Two specific types of relationships were most evident as helpful, thematized as  “no matter what” and “saw something in me. The first category refers to a lengthy healing partnership with a witnessing, constant, non-dominating other (friend, therapist, spouse, sibling) who is not intimidated by the evil of abuse and does not pathologize survivors’ responses in its aftermath. Yet even single, brief interactions with anonymous others could reveal concretely to the injured girl that life could be different, one could be happy, and evil thus does not always “win.” Some participants mimicked smiles and happy demeanors of others they observed even from a distance, as a way of lifting themselves into a life wherein the act became reality for them. Some relationships communicated to the child victim or adult survivor that the self is unique, and valuable, often described thus: “he saw something in me.” Being singled out for positive characteristics, behavior or creativity fostered self-differentiation.  The contrast is evil in the form of being “nobody.” Even a denigrating other, the perpetrator of physical abuse, or an annihilating mother who denies abuse and belittles the child, can move the survivor forward in her trajectory. This is the negative version, perhaps “saw something evil in me.” These relationships often provided momentum forward as the survivor determined to prove evil others’ messages as false. Overcoming evil in the form of connecting with others and remarkable achievements in one’s work resulted from this oppositional, risk-taking response to negativity. Implications for parenting, professional care giving, and school environments will be discussed.

The situation of a child being maltreated in the US is thought to be a neglectful, chaotic family, in which abuse is ubiquitous among family members, including physically and sexually brutalizing parents. Secrecy surrounding abuse is well-documented, however, and this requires organization rather than chaos. Commonly, a perpetrator operates through non-protective parents and other adult bystanders. The evil of secrecy and deception may be disrupted by disclosure, but this  shred of truth is subsequently distorted in spectacles of denial, blame, and temporary fixes. For children, “reality” and its names are arbitrated by adults around them. Families where abuse occurs are often enmeshed, and isolated from the outer community, often through incredibly powerful deception:  a public facade of “normalcy”, even “perfection,” to outsiders. As injurious as  assaults are accusation of the child herself, and invalidating projections that all is well, while the actual dynamics are dramatically opposite. The child is trapped, mentally  “imprisoned.” Environments where adults and children interact safely and respectfully are not imaginable to the child. Secrecy about abuse events is well-documented, but this is the tip of the iceberg. Closure, isolation, deception and denial of the child’s physically based perceptions sets the stage for an adult woman who may still be caught in doubt about her own perceptions even in the present. This may be the most pernicious evil associated with child abuse. However, in the cases of women who become successful, resolute, and self-directed, we see a pattern of glimpses into possible fair and safe “worlds,” through reading, going to church, even eating dinner with a friend’s “normal” family. The interplay of relationship and reflection allows for windows, and finally doors onto the plane of a new perceptual experience: that there is a world beyond totalizing abuse, deception and invalidation.

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Strategies: Countering the Effects of Childhood Abuse
Tonya Broyles and Catherine Haynes Kingery
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

This study is a secondary analysis of a NIH funded study of survivors of childhood maltreatment, who now consider themselves to be successful, effective in their current environments as adults.  The purpose of this secondary analysis was to identify strategies that female survivors of childhood abuse have used to counter the negative effects of abuse and neglect, to understand as well as to move out of abusive contexts and dynamics.  It was not the goal of this analysis to make judgment of whether the strategies were “good” or “bad,” only to report the strategies contained within the narratives of the participants.  For the intent of analysis, a strategy is defined as an action or thought process whether intentional or unintentional that assists in countering the abuse or the effects of the abuse in childhood or adulthood.  Thus far, an in depth analysis of 25 of the 27  women who have completed 3 interviews has revealed 12 categories of strategies that survivors of childhood abuse have utilized.  Each category is supported by quotes from the participant. The larger categories include: Therapy, Disclosure to Others, Confronting Abuser/Family, Minimizing the Abuse, Helping Self, Vigilance, Hazardous Behaviors, Boundaries, Empathy, Religion, Purposeful Interactions With Others, and Purposeful Cognition and Emotions.   Many of the larger categories are further delineated into sub-categories.  This analysis has yielded many unexpected strategies.  Within the categories of “Boundaries” many of the participants reported innovative strategies they had utilized as children to take control of the situation and actually stop the abuse themselves.  Within the category of “Helping Self” most of the participants reported bibliotherapy as a strategy as they described themselves as “voracious” readers.  While one may expect bibliotherapy with self-help literature, many of the participants in this study reported fiction and novel type literature as their choice. Finally, within the category of “Purposeful Interactions With Others” many participants report seeking out roles models out of their family of origin to imitate.  Interestingly many of  these role models include brief interactions with acquaintances, and observation of strangers who appeared to be happy.  The aforementioned list of unexpected findings is by no means exhaustive.  This is only a brief insight.  Today the idea of “life strategies” has been popularized by our culture.  This study specifically examines those “life strategies” that have been used by female survivors of childhood maltreatment, a significant moral adversity, and a situated societal evil.

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