Getting at the Root of Sexual Misconduct and Abuse By Addressing Parenting
I started a new thread on a subject board about this topic. Here’s what I said to start it off;
I’ve been thinking about the #metoo thing lately. Originally it went after some obvious abusers. Then it began to go after some who may or may not have been guilty, like Garrison Keillor. It has relied upon the weight of accusation, the great numbers of women who spoke out against Harvey Weinstein, for instance, because the crimes weren’t of the type where there was evidence. There is such a thing as rape evidence, but not when it isn’t collected in the immediate aftermath of the crime. Besides that, history has always regarded that accusation needs the weight of two or more witnesses when testimony alone is all that will give merit to an accusation. That’s why the he said/she said type of allegation has such a poor track record of conviction. It’s too easy to discredit a single witness, and there will only be one witness to such a crime. Accusations can be brought falsely, so you can’t convict someone on the basis of one witness, especially the one claiming harm. Society may have decided for a time that many of the he said/she said accusations can be lumped together, and the sheer weight of the mass of singular accusation merit their being taken seriously, but you have to ask yourself whether that will hold up in retrospect. At any rate, there doesn’t seem to be any room for forgiveness of those who are either being found guilty, or are being tried in the court of public opinion.
As for the difference between a serial abuser and one who does it just once, I would like to remind people that is only down to the fact that a serial abuser will have generated so many witnesses against them that there will be overwhelming evidence by testimony. As long as the two of them have done it, they have committed the same crime. The serial offender will get more time, but there is still a basic sentence based upon a single offense. If a person wants to excuse a one time offense as a crime committed in a state of passion over which the perpetrator had limited control, then I would like to remind that person that it only takes a second to make a mistake with a power saw and cut off your hand. That lasts forever, while the years of prison for being convicted of rape don’t. It took longer to commit the rape. Long enough for it to need some level of commitment to keep it going.
Anyway, I started this thread because of my uncertainty over the attitudes toward the abusers I have been seeing in various places. They are not kind. You might also say they aren’t fair, when considering those who might be falsely accused. Abuse shapes people. It especially shapes them if it happens to them while they are young. I would like to suggest that without forgiveness it continues to shape people because of the way it sticks around, in their hatred and fear. There is an element of forgetfulness in forgiveness, though not to entirely forget so as not to forget the impact of the crime, that allows a person to live a normal life. First you recognize it was done to you, and that it shaped you, then you exercise forgiveness to shed them and it. There is an example of this in our culture today, in the way we forgive our parents. But we don’t often recognize how bad our parents were. We simply forgive them. That might just make us into bad parents in turn, not having shed the bad elements.
I suggested in another thread, and repeat it here, that I think formal education lacks a particular discipline that it should have, the study of parenting. I think there ought to be a school of parenting, like there is a school of management. Our parents are meant to bring us up. They are expected to teach us how to cope with the world. These days kids go to school, but the schools are not expected to teach kids everything. Much about what it takes to become a successful adult is expected to come from our parents. You know, it just doesn’t. The world is full of half-started and do loop adults. Many of our parents would have given us what we need, but they never got it from their parents.
#metoo is meant to point at an overarching issue, that abuse runs rampant and has causes. I would say the number one cause actually comes back to this parenting issue. People have to be taught how to graciously exercise power. They have to learn what it means to have others under them. They should learn from somewhere that to put those people at risk is also to put yourself at risk, not because of the fear of getting caught but because such thinking will distort your worldview until it becomes a solipsistic nightmare.
Obviously, I wasn’t only addressing sexual abuse when I wrote this. That issue seems to taper back to parenting so well that I had to say this. There are, however, all kinds of reason for proposing a school of thought surrounding parenting. Another that occurs to me almost daily is risk assessment. Aren’t parents supposed to teach us something about what is bad for us? If so, then what about how to choose from a selection of things to invest our time and money in? What about how not to cross a busy street in the middle, where you are more likely to die? What is the right thing to do given certain balances of danger and reward? When can you ask others to accept risk?
I’m not suggesting, by the way, that to become a parent you have to get a degree. A school of thought could serve as that resource where you can get that information you need in order to answer those questions you have about your problems with your kids. It’s not about forcing people through the narrow hole of education. It is about finally applying science to something that has plagued mankind for as long as we have been around.
A short aside in addition, there is this thing about forgiveness that is not automatic. You don’t just ‘forgive’ and that brings about forgetting on the level I was talking about. Recently I read about a woman who had suffered abuse at the hands of Larry Nassar and had gone to her church. She got so much advice to forgive instantly that the damage done to her was not addressed. That damage has to be worked through, and recognized. There is real pain there. That’s what I was trying to refer to above when I spoke about an element of forgetfulness to forgiveness. It takes some doing to achieve that. Sometimes it takes justice. When our parents do it to us we often tend to do the same to our own children. Same for when someone else does it to us when we are young and the impact is great enough in our formation that we can’t integrate the trauma in a healthy way. Those people need help, not a cold shoulder. The article mentioned how this especially happens in churches when someone at the church is the perpetrator. Don’t you find it interesting how these same people will excoriate an abortion doctor over a so called victim they will never meet, nor would have if they were never a victim, while immediately calling for forgiveness and turning a blind eye toward an abuser within their midst? Such are the people I was trying to talk to when I reminded them that it only takes a moment for an accident to change your life forever. That’s how serious this is.
growsomeart 