Loss of Innocence
Closer Look at Child Sexual Abuse
By M.D.dela Cruz Tan
PUBLISHED: JANUARY 2009

Steve M. was five when his father first had sexual relations with him.  He doesn’t recall specifically when things actually specifically started (“I think it was a few days after my birthday,” he says), but he can recall how his forced himself on him (“And then in me”).  “It’s not anything you are likely to forget ,” he says now, over 30 years later.  “I can remember every detail – from when he drunkenly entered my room, to telling me ‘It’s what fathers do to show how much they love their children,’ to making me do things I didn’t want to, to hitting me when I refused to do (what he wanted me to), and to keep my mouth shut about everything that (he did to me).  Everything is in my head.”

When he turned eight, his father told Steve M. things will get better.  “I thought he’d stop.  That was, for me, what was better – what was best, even,” he says.  Instead, it got better for his father, who, at that time, added a new “player” in his “games” with his son – “his brother, my uncle,” Steve M. says, outlining “what I was made to do then – and to think I thought I already had things badly.”  Among others, he had the wooden pole of a broomstick pushed inside him, not too long after “my uncle loosened me up after he drunkenly pushed a beer bottle inside me.  By then, more than just my body, I was already feeling numb inside.”

He was in his teens when Steve M. ran away, “not wanting to be a part of what was happening,” he says.  “That wasn’t living for me; that was hell, and I didn’t want to be a part of it.”  And by doing so, Steve M. is, in a way, one of the “lucky” (“If it can be called that,” he says) to have “taken the action to cut the link,” especially since many continue to be victims of child sexual abuse, what “shit I had to go through growing up,” he says.

PAIN IN HIDING

For a while, Steve M. blamed his being “fucked up, including my being gay to what happened to me,” he says.  “Maybe I was turned gay?”  Alas, and this is unfortunate, child sexual abuse – that “form of child abuse in which a child is abused for the sexual gratification of an adult or older adolescent,” as Wikipedia.org describes it, while also noting that the abuse can occur when an adult exposes their genitals to a child, asks or pressures a child to engage in sexual activities, displays pornography to a child, or uses a child to produce child pornography – is not entirely uncommon. 

It is estimated that approximately 20% to 25% of women, and 5% to 15% of men were sexually abused when they were children (e.g. Julia Whealin, Ph.D. in Child Sexual Abuse from the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder of the US Department of Veterans Affairs, 2007; David Finkelhor in Current Information on the Scope and Nature of Child Sexual Abuse from The Future of Children, 1994; the Crimes Against Children Research Center; and the Family Research Laboratory).  Interestingly, “most sexual abuse offenders are acquainted with their victims: approximately 30% are relatives of the child, most often fathers, uncles or cousins; around 60% are other acquaintances such as friends of the family, babysitters, or neighbours; strangers are the offenders in approximately 10% of child sexual abuse cases.  Most child sexual abuse is committed by men; women commit approximately 14% of offenses reported against boys and 6% of offenses reported against girls,” Wikipedia.org states.

Understandably, under the law, "child sexual abuse is an umbrella term describing criminal and civil offenses in which an adult engages in sexual activity with a minor, or exploits a minor for the purpose of sexual gratification.”  The American Psychiatric Association (APA) states that "children cannot consent to sexual activity with adults,” and, as such, “condemns any such action (since) an adult who engages in sexual activity with a child is performing a criminal and immoral act which never can be considered normal or socially acceptable behaviour.”

The interesting thing is, it is generally accepted that child sexual abuse occurs frequently in Western society [i.e. Navalta, Carryl P., et al (2006), Effects of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Neuropsychological and Cognitive Function in College Women from The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 18:45-53].  In fact, as noted, “child sexual abuse occurs frequently in Western society (with the) prevalence estimated to range between 10% in the UK and up to 62% for females and 16% for males in the US.  The US Department of Health and Human Services reported 83,600 substantiated reports of sexually abused children in 2005, (with) the total number of incidents that were not reported is even larger.”

Not that the Philippines, as a developing (not developed) nation is without child sexual abuse cases.

The Human Rights And The Causes Of Poverty In The Philippines: Country Report 2001 (preda.org/archives/research/creport/a.html) cited a study conducted by Ricardo Zarco, as commissioned by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), that looked at the situation of child abuse in the country.  Zarco, who interviewed sex offending detainees in police stations, as well as convicted rapists at the National Bilibid Prisons, found that the perpetrators are all male, aged from 30 to 59, though “the perpetrators seem to be getting younger.”  With the majority having elementary education, they are also able to get skilled employment.  And since “most of the offenders are known to the victim, the abuse takes place within the territory of the offender – the closer the relationship between the victim and the offender, the more likely the abuse will be committed more than once.”

Seventy-seven percent of the offenders, and 90% of their victims actually come from lower classes – though, as Steve M. says, “I am proof it happens to upper classes, too.  It’s just that nobody talks (about it openly) (See Table 1, with the figures growing since 1994).”

Table 1: EXTENT OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

Source: Dorentino Z. Floresta, Provincial Prosecutor and Special Prosecutor on Child Abuse Cases

RUINED FOR LIFE

In child sexual abuse, there are different kinds of sexual harassments – e.g. sexual assault, defined as an offense “in which an adult touches (including penetrative) a minor for the purpose of sexual gratification” (A. Vachss, 1989); sexual molestation, an offense “in which an adult engages in non-penetrative activity with a minor for the purpose of sexual gratification (The Prosecution of Child Sexual Abuse in Idaho – July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007); sexual exploitation, “in which an adult victimizes a minor for advancement, sexual gratification, or profit” (S. Hobbs, KPVI.com); and sexual grooming, the “social conduct of a potential child sex offender who seeks to make a minor more accepting of their advances, for example in an online chat room” (US Department of Education, ed.gov).

Irrespective of the kind, nonetheless. The effects leave a trauma that, for the likes of Steve M., are hard – if at all – to erase.

“Everything bad that happened to me, I blamed to the (sexual abuse),” he says.  “For becoming gay – that maybe (my father, and then my uncle) made me like sexual contact with men, so I became homosexual.  For not wanting to be close to other men – that maybe they’d want something more from me, something I didn’t want to give.  For my hatred of my mother – that maybe she knew what was going on, but didn’t do anything to stop it.  For my failed relationships, including my separation with my wife, and (eventual) loss of touch with our children – that maybe I’d become my father, and do to others what he did to me, so that staying as far away as possible may be the only way to not become like him.”

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