Timothy Kline: Thoughts and Reflections

Although I have been working my way chronologically through my life with this series, I thought I might digress momentarily, to address an issue that will provide a necessary basis for what I will be relating in Part 6.

Molestation takes away everything you might have ever become.

If a child is confronted with and immersed in what can only be termed as evil (and I would certainly call multiple acts of child sexual molestation, physical abuse, and emotional abuse to be forms of evil) on a scale that most other children never experience, what happens to that child’s psyche? Experts concur that the child’s mind can become fragmented as a result of the mind trying to process what is happening. As a matter of survival, the inner child recedes further inside the mind while the outer child adopts whatever façade is necessary to minimize the threat to its survival.

It is a natural response to unnatural circumstances.

Unfortunately, the consequences of that form of psyche defense is, for one, the child’s inability to later move into relationships apart from the parental relationship. The inner child that would’ve developed under nurturing circumstances into a fully functioning mature individual in the adult world instead becomes locked behind the walls of defense that were mounted out of necessity, making it unbelievably difficult to have and participate in a relationship that requires anything beyond a modicum of cordial intimacy. The child will not even realize it because the defense mechanism is so primal, so core to us as human beings. That is the very reason why child abuse is evil enough in itself, but child molestation is utterly evil.

It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a murder in which the victim lives.

For their own sexual greed and satisfaction, the molestor is willing to sacrifice their victim’s life but just cowardly enough not to physically murder them. It is a travesty of nature, and nearly every culture that has ever existed has for that very reason struck laws to prevent it from happening. But the molestor does not care, or they justify it somehow in order to show that Nature has it wrong, that there are exceptions.

And while it may be true that the molestor may themselves have been a victim of abuse, neglect, or molestation, it still holds true that they are not willing to prevent someone else from becoming a victim in turn. Their own inner child psyche is still in regression, even into adulthood—and like the schoolyard bully, they take what they want. As a result, another child’s psyche is torn by an act of violence against Nature, and must live with the consequences of that violence imposed upon them against their will.

If, then, the molestor is acting in response to their own damaged psyche, which has the behavior of a child at the age that they themselves were violated, should they be held accountable as an adult, or within the confines of that inner child’s capacity?

It is a known fact that when a molestor tries in any way to hide their act of molesting by justification (“you should’ve seen how they were coming on to me”), by threats (“if you tell mommy, I’ll kill you”), or lurid promises of love (“It’ll be our little secret”; “You’re daddy’s little girl”), they unmistakably are aware that their actions are wrong. Their act of hiding their evil is enough to establish that they know it’s evil and yet are willing to go ahead in spite of that.

Unfortunately, if they are convicted in a court of law, they typically are sent to prison where they will likely be raped themselves (prisons have within their culture their own form of justice, and child molestors are likely to discover that early on), further metastasizing their own damaged psyche. Clearly, they need to be removed from society at-large until their issues are addressed, but it is equally certain that there is no such thing as a cure. In other words, they will never cease to be a child molestor, even if those urges are somehow diminished through chemical means, therapy, or a miracle. And it is outside the scope of this blog entry to go into further detail where the molestor is concerned.

But what about the child that was molested? I mentioned earlier that because the natural response to such an unnatural violence is to erect barriers in the psyche to protect the very core of the child’s being, this presents the child with significant challenge in the development of intimacy later on into teenage years and adulthood. How this is manifested will vary from child to child, and is truly unique to the individual, although psychologists have come to recognize patterns. But throughout those patterns, the one common factor that they all share is a hunger for love and affirmation, the very love and affirmation that a child would have received in a nurturing environment, thus allowing them to grow into fully functioning adults in the world at-large.

In my own case, because I grew up through years of abuse and was molested, I have had a tremendously difficult time developing relationships with any level of intimacy. By all appearances, I am a fully functioning adult. My outer child has managed to make the necessary adjustments so as to not “stick out” from society at-large. Even so, it has had to make certain concessions in the process. As a result, there is a sense of lost identity, because my life has always been defined by who is around me. I became what I needed to become in order to fit in or appear normal.

The exception is with children. I do not and apparently cannot relate to children below a certain age. I know this from experience especially through my own children, although there have been countless other occasions where I was around infants, toddlers, and young children, and felt lost and unable to relate on any level with them. It wasn’t until my own children reached 12 years or so that I could suddenly relate to them.

Because of that inability to achieve intimacy within a relationship, my being a father has been a road strewn with many bad memories due to my own inability to cope with the responsibilities associated with good parenting. I have both my mother and my molestors to thank for that. I can only hope that in doing what I could figure out to do, my sons will go on to do a better job than I did in raising them. If they are not able to, I must share in the responsibility for their failure to be able to do so.

I have often used the term “survivor of abuse and molestation” in describing myself, because I am. But it in no way is meant to imply that because I have survived such a life, that I overcame those things. That would not be true. I continue to carry the memories and live with the consequences of those things every day, even though it was by another’s choice that they be willfully imposed upon me when I should have been nurtured, protected, and loved. Who I could have become in this life was murdered all those years ago. I am all that remains now, for better or for worse.

It is an unimaginable thing to come to terms with the realization that the guilt that I have borne all these years really was never my guilt, but that of my abusers, those who murdered me in order that they might not have to face their own evil. I think this is the one most difficult realization that a survivor of abuse and molestation must make. We become somehow convinced that we are bad, that we have reason to feel guilty and worthless—even as we try to overcome those feelings of guilt and shame through whatever means we can avail ourselves of—whether it be drugs, alcohol, sex, our jobs. Others turn to the other end of the spectrum, devoting themselves wholly to their church, to religion, to their family, to a benevolent cause. Whatever the case, it is through those things that we try to find escape, peace, acceptance, love, and a sense of worth. And for a time, we do. But the gnawing doesn’t go away. The craving never really is satisfied, and we devote ourselves still more into our “addiction.” And the cycle repeats itself endlessly, always with the same results.

I think it’s safe to say that there have been countless times that I had wished my abusers dead. Because I wanted to believe that with them dead, I could be rid of this rage, guilt, and shame. Yet I know that this will be with me the rest of the days of my life, whether my victimizers are dead or not. In my particular case, the first man who molested me died in a drunk driving accident. The second man eventually contracted AIDS from one of his partners and died. My mother, of course, remains alive and devoted to her ego-centric lifestyle.

But even though my molestors are dead, nothing has changed for me. I did not find the resolution that I had hoped for in their death. That alone is enough to convince me that neither will anyone else find it in the death of their own abusers and molestors.

To others who, like me, have been forced to live a life in the wake of abuse and or molestation, I can offer little more than a compassion with the struggle. Nobody that has not themselves underwent what we have will ever be able to offer that because it is so unimaginably heinous. This is not to say that they won’t try to extend compassion, and we must never downplay their efforts to do so when done out of sympathy rather than pity.

Even so, as I work my way back through my life in this online journal, on this matter I have come to one realization. I can better see now why God allowed me to suffer through such traumatizing events in my childhood. I can now better understand why I was not protected as Christianity would have me believe I would be if I accepted Jesus as my Savior and had faith. If I had not, I would never have been able to give the testimony that I am giving now. If I had not, I would never have been able to feel utter compassion for someone that has lived with abuse and molestation. If I had not, I might never have come to know what it means to truly love, even when I do not feel loved or worthy of love.

In my lifetime, I have known rage, bitterness, resentment, even hatred. I have known what it is like to be emotionally emasculated by an abusive mother even as she physically assaulted me, day after day, year after year. I have known what it feels like to be overpowered by someone and forced to satisfy their perverse sexual lust at the expense of my own childish body. I know these things because I have experienced them, and whether or not I admit it, these have made me who I am today, as well as forever stolen from me whatever I could have become.

But in the midst of it all blossomed this power within me that could not be stifled and can only be described as Love. It has enabled me to be more sensitive the needs of others, to sense what they are feeling even when they are not saying it. It has enabled me to care and to sympathize in the absence of these things from my own life. And so much more.

If I had not gone through what I did, I might never have learned how to be sensitive, caring, and compassionate with others—not in any real sense of those words.

Even so, it does not make things better for me. It does not take away the things that I carry inside me nor the things that I find myself saying or doing when I am not paying close attention to myself. But it does make all those things more bearable. And that, at least for now, must suffice.