History and Context

Abuse has a long history. It is not a modern invention.

Incest

“Paternal incest has been known and recorded in all periods of history and in all types of civilizations. It seems to be a universal phenomenon which does not recognize any historical, geographical, racial or social boundaries. ”(Lukianowicz, Incest, Brit. J. Psychiat. 120, 301-313, 1972)

Infanticide Molech, one of the gods of the Canaanites, demanded child sacrifice. See: John Day, Molech : A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament (Cambridge University Press, 1990) ISBN: 0521364744 The history of child sacrifice is not however just an ancient phenomenon.

“The history of infanticide in the West has yet to be written.., but enough is already known to establish that, contrary to the usual assumption that it is an Eastern rather than a Western problem, infanticide of both legitimate and illegitimate children was a regular practice of antiquity, that the killing of legitimate children was only slowly reduced during the Middle Ages, and that illegitimate children continued regularly to be killed right up into the nineteenth century.” Lloyd DeMause, The History of Childhood (Jason Aronson; New edition, 1995) ISBN: 1568215517

Although the early church fathers opposed infanticide, their opposition, according to DeMause:

“often seemed to be based more on their concerns for the parent’s soul than with the child’s life. This attitude can be seen in Saint Justin Martyr’s statement that the reason a Christian should not expose his children is to avoid meeting them later in a brothel: ‘Lest we molest anyone or commit sin ourselves, we have been taught that it is wicked to expose newly-born children, first because we see that almost all who are exposed (not only girls, but boys too) are raised in prostitution’” Lloyd DeMause, The History of Childhood…The Untold Story of Child Abuse (Peter Bedrick Books, 1988)

DeMause’s points to church records which show typical ratios of boys to girls of 156 to 100 (in 800 CE) and 172 to 100 (in 1400 CE) as suggestive of on-going infanticide.

Childhood Sexual Abuse Infanticide is, of course, only the most extreme form of child abuse. The history of attitudes towards other forms of abuse is also mostly a story of avoidance. A relevant example in recent times concerns the ways in which Freud’s early observations on the etiology of ‘hysteria’ in women was denied, avoided and neglected. In 1896 in The Aetiology of Hysteria Freud wrote

"I therefore put forward the thesis that at the bottom of every case of hysteria there are one or more occurrences of premature sexual experience."

Shortly after it’s publication, Freud recanted this view and suggested that women imagined and longed for the sexual experiences which he had previously thought were at the roots of the hysteria. He looked at it and then turned away from the painful truth. It was not until World War 1 that people with symptoms almost identical to Freud’s ‘hysteria’ were again paid attention to. In this case it was men. It was not called hysteria but rather "Shell shock" or "Nerves". Although commonly explained as a kind of personal failure ("moral invalids", "malingerers", "cowards"), the symptoms were very similar to those exhibited by "hysterical women". It was not until the 1970′s and the emergence of the American feminist movement that a connection was made between the effects of violence experienced by women in rape, sexual abuse etc and the effects of violence experienced by men in combat. The focus on violence rather than sex was an important reframing of the issue.

Bottom lines:

It took a hundred years in American culture for the psychological trauma of sexual violence to be recognized as real. It will probably take that long in other places.
It is possible to forget what has been learned. If people stop speaking, things revert to old patterns. It takes energy to sustain awareness.
Social change related to abuse issues requires a political base in addition to awareness, understanding and personal support.

Recommended reading:

Lloyd deMause. The History of Child Abuse The Journal of Psychohistory 25 (3) Winter 1998

Child Abuse—A History – Overview