Private Family Matter

Educate: It is a place for survivors of child violence and sexual predation to learn they are not alone. Horrific violent crimes are committed on the bodies and minds of our most innocent and vulnerable citizens worldwide; it is an epidemic that is totally preventable.

Harmful Survival Techniques: A child will respond to violence or sexual predation often through self destruction.  This may begin by huffing, snuffing or puffing and move quickly to ingesting chemicals to further mask shame or block physical pain.  Unfortunately this self medication will quickly lead to addictions. Another response is to turn rage outward and harm others.

Perpetrators: Perpetrators of violence are often raised in violence; encouraged, prompted, forced to be aggressive.  It becomes a "learned behavior" an accepted way to handle stress or conflict within the family.  Bullies and perpetrators of domestic abuse are examples.

Secrets:  Secrets exposed to truth no longer have power.  

Healing: Even by sharing anonymously, healing can begin immediately.

Share: Join an existing blog or request a new one.  Participate in a survey or develop one of your own.  If you can't find an example of your experience post your own.  Blog at "My Experience"  and give your inner pain a voice.

Empowerment: Work for change, within yourself or within your own community. Perhaps your healing process will include working on a global initiative. You will be surprised where your healing path takes you.   

Abuse is a misused word to lump all acts of child violence into one category.  Not anymore!  We need to recognize that certain acts of sexual, mental or physical contact with a child, 13 years or younger could lead to permanent, life altering injury or death.  Injuries that require surgery is not abuse but arrrived at through various methods of brutality or torture.  Hitting the body of an infant is not abuse it is torture.

 "Brutality" is used to describe physical acts of violence where the child

• Beaten to unconsciousness
• Physical sprains or strains, pulled muscles
• Temporary physical injury
• Injuries that require stitches
•  

• Instills fear or terror
• Bends, warps or twist the mind
• Brainwashes (Stockholm syndrome)
• Withholds mental health services
• Permanently alters or destroys the core of a child's Being
•  

• Continues to beat an unconscious child
• Injuries which require a doctor visit, emergency room, hospitalization or surgery to correct
• Withholding medical treatment to protect perpetrator from prosecution
• Temporary injury such as broken bones
• Permanent physical damage such as loss of vision or hearing, brain damage
• Coma
• Death

"Sexual torture" is used to describe

• Pedophilia, all forms of sexual contact with a child, birth though 13 years old is torture
• (a child should be free to play and have fun, not become a sexual toy for others)
• "Touching a child's genitals, through clothing, or the breasts of a female child" 13 and younger, is considered child sexual assault in the United States.
• Incest (sex with relative) which is incestuous pedophilia
• Teen 14 and older having sexual contact with a child 13 and younger is teen pedophilia
• Incestuous pedophilia may also include homosexual or lesbian contact
• Financial Exploitation includes prostitution, sex videos, internet exposure
• Rape or sexual assault
• NAMBLA (National American Man-Boy Love Association) a group of men who believe little boys (our most vulnerable citizens) would rather have sex with them than play video games, ride bikes or play. They hope to convince the public and pass laws that allow them to target sexually undeveloped little boys
• Sexually transmitted diseases (HIV, AIDS, STD's) in children, birth through 13 years old
• Secret STD which renders child sterile
• All pregnancy or abortion at 13 years or younger
• Marriage at 13 years or younger

Recapture Your History

Key Elements in all Child Violence Use Child Timeline Form

Who:

• Relationship child has to perpetrator
• Number of perpetrators
• Kin or Non-kin

What:

• Name a specific traumatic event or multiple acts of trauma

When:

• Time of year; season, event
• Length of time traumatic events took place
• Age at time or age range if there is a long history of violence
• Dependent status as minor child 13 or younger
• Captive as abducted or kidnapped

Where:

• Location where violence or trauma took place
• List multiple locations

How:

• Psychological
• Physical
• Sexual
• Withhold medical care, food, prescriptions

Why:

• Lack of parenting skills
• Jealousy
• Groomed for planned assault
• Casual opportunity
• Manipulated or convenient
• This question may never be answered
• Keeping Secrets:
• Prevents tattling
• Prevents healing
• Forces child to live with pain, shame and fear of discovery
• Suppressed rage will vent in other ways
• Spends precious energy keeping secret and not in learning
• Impairs learning abstract processes
• Fear inhibits all forms of healthy growth
• Response to child brutality, torture or sexual torture:
• Creates a chiult
• Produces addicts
• Harm to self; addictions, cutting, high risk behaviors
• Harm to others; pets, arsonist, drug dealer, bully
• Creates a dangerous violent criminal
• Creates a dangerous violent sexual predator

It is NEVER too late!

Healing:  allowing your  chiult to speak

Name it

• Ask yourself, "What would happen now if I told someone"?   Say the word outloud.  Give it a name.  Sex Abuse.  Violation.  Rape.  Incest. Physical Injury.  Physical Pain.  Hurt.  Terror.

Face it

• Say out loud, to yourself, another person or shout it to a tree, exactly what happened
• Fill out a Child Timeline Form
• List all acts of trauma in your life

Heal it

• Find inner peace, through formal religion,  Spirituality or meditation or dancing in a meadow
• Write about your experience
• Publish a book or write a screen play
• Become an advocate for children's rights
• Introduce legislation to change existing child protection laws
• Show up in court at pedophile sentencing
• Protest lax child abuse laws

Forgiveness:

• It is not necessary to forgive in order to reach healing
• It is strictly a personal journey 
• It may never happen nor does it need to
• Forgiveness may come naturally as you move through the healing process
• You need not yield to family pressure to forgive a family member
• It is a personal road, based in part on the level of pain endured, years needed to heal, the need to forgive or reach forgiveness

It is during the formative years that innocent children suffer the most, their developing minds bent and twisted by unbearable mental manipulation, their bodies permanently crippled and their spirit forever altered from who they were born to become. 

Although there are countless examples for each category, the list will never be complete.  Violent people think up new ways to brutalize and torture children, calling cruel acts discipline, or justify vile acts through warped religious interpretation.

Because most forms of child violence remain secret, a traumatized child never heals. As a result of physical and/or sexual trauma, a child remains frozen at the emotional age when the trauma took place.  This creates a "chi-ult", a child-adult, mentally a child but physically an adult.

Private Family Matter hopes that by sharing experiences, we will unlock these deeply kept secrets so they lose the power to destroy.

We will never have world peace until we stop abusing, torturing and brutalizing children.

STOP!  Violent crimes against the world's most innocent,
helpless, dependent citizens!