Wings was founded by and for survivors of intrafamilial sexual abuse. It may mean learning how to create healthy lives and relationships where everyone’s safety and well-being is honored and everyone’s voice is heard. Stopping the cycle in their lives may mean choosing not to engage with their family members who remain fixated in denial and victim-blaming. They often create families of choice with those who do believe and support their truth. Unfortunately, its common for families to side with the person who abused children rather than the person who was victimized, which leads many adult survivors to have ruptured relationships with their families of origin. You can be a Generational Pattern Breakerīeing the “pattern breaker” takes extraordinary courage and requires substantial support from professionals and friends to move through an unsupportive family’s response to abuse. This may make their own children more vulnerable to sexual abuse by those with whom they are partnered or to friends or extended family members who they include in their circle of trust. As a result, unhealthy cycles may arise in their lives, such as a failure to recognize risk-based behavior of others with whom they interact or accepting the belief that those who love you have a right to harm you. While those who are sexually abused may not go on to replicate that exact pattern, they may experience challenges to their mental, physical, emotional, spiritual and relational well-being. However, research does indicate that incest can be a pattern that repeats in a family system over many generations. It is very important to note that most people who are sexually abused as children do not go on to become sexual abusers themselves in fact, that number is very low. It’s more important how things look to others on the outside, rather than how things actually are or feel, within the family.” What is the Cycle of Childhood Sexual Abuse? Women and children should do as the head of the household tells them. These might include: “Children are to be seen and not heard. There may be unspoken rules that set the tone for family life. When abuse has been occurring for generations, there may be thinking errors that many family members have adopted which contribute to this pattern. There is a myth or stereotype that incest is somehow “consensual.” Children and minors can never give consent to adults or other children with more power. They may be facing intense pressure by those closest to them to stay wounde d, h urt and quiet. This is why it is so important to believe survivors who come forward. They may face harmful victim-blaming tactics and be disbelieve d, silen ced or even shunne d. Unfortunately, it is very com mon in this instance that the person who has been victimized is made to feel as if they are wrong for telling the truth. Given that so many children are sexually abused, when they grow up to be adults and form relationships, they may unconsciously engage in or fail to see patterns of abuse until someone in the family comes forward with the truth of what has been happening. This could look like a grandfather abusing his children and his children’s children an uncle abusing his nieces or nephews, a sibling abusing his sister or brother, re-enacting what his father may have done to him. In this way, c hildhood sexual abuse is often passed down intergenerationally. When the physical, emotional and relational needs of all members of a family are not honored equally, and when violence, abuse and objectification are woven into the fabric of what constitutes “traditional” family life, domestic violence (physical and emotional abuse) and sexual violence (of children and adults) often happens within families “behind closed doors.” Examples of Incest Many families who follow strict gender roles where the male head of the household has automatic authority and power “over” his wife and children may be ripe with the conditions for gender-based violence to occur (this means individuals who are deemed less valuable due to their gender or perceived level of power may be taken advantage of by those deemed to have more power or control). This often means children who are in their home or whom they may see regularly at family functions.
Those who sexually abuse children often abuse children to whom they have access. This is called intrafamilial sexual abuse, or incest.Ĭontrary to stereotypes and myths that may claim that incest is “taboo” and therefore rare, if we understand the dynamics of childhood sexual abuse, it is easy to see why it is very common within family systems. As often as 60% of the time, sexual abuse happens by someone to whom the child is related and may depend upon for care. In 90% of cases, childhood sexual abuse happens to a child by an older child, youth or adult, someone the child knows and trusts.