Coping with childhood abuse

meritaten

I feel so sorry for your OH - at least this has all come out and you ALL can start dealing with it. You have made a start by getting MIL to at least consider and believe some of what happened.
This took place a long time ago and to your OH I bet its as fresh in his mind as if it happened yesterday! it isnt going to be resolved overnight, and it will need a lot of patience on YOUR part and some superhuman diplomacy skills with his parents. Do not forget that they are of a different generation with different parenting skills. It sounds as if they are entirely unaware of the horrors OH went through - so please be gentle in enlightening them.
I do hope your OH resolves these issues - tho I suspect it will take a lot of time and perhaps some family disagreements.
wishing him and you and his adoptive parents all the best.

Worriedstepmum

I truly thank everyone for their contributions to what I know is a very emotive subject.

The parents are 90 and 84 years old and I think are more terrified of spending their final years without one of their children in contact than confronting their daughter for what she has done. Reading things today, it is quite plain that the sister suffers from narcassistic personality disorder, will never admit what she's done and will never change.

The good things that have come from this weekend are that my OH is ready to talk about these things, know I believe every word and will support him and for the first time ever he's ready to talk to a professional about it. His next meeting with his psychiatrist is soon - they wanted the meds to kick in properly before starting the sessions to get his "brain ready" for the therapy. Clearly that medication is working because in 10 years I've never seen him this emotional. I've never seen him cry before and he's been doing that for most of the weekend.

I am beyond disappointed with his parents' initial reaction but am hoping that once it sinks in - and they start to be more aware of the vicious things that the sister still says (she can't help herself) - they start to come round. We will see.

In the meantime we will concentrate on us and getting my OH the therapy he needs to get closure on this and move on.

I am also very lucky that I have my employers have signed up to the Employee Assistance Programme and I can phone them anytime for confidential and free advice and to book counselling sessions for myself if I need them. I think I might get the number tomorrow and give them a call.

Loulou2010

i've been where your OH is and i too have aspergers. like your OH i got this diagnosis later on in life.

i was abused in every way from the age of about 3/4 til early adulthood. the trigger for me was having my ds. i thought i had "dealt" with my past but in looking back it had just stopped happening and i hadnt dealt with the confusion about the abuse, the guilt (yes i feel guilty for my parents abusing me ), the jiggled up memories etc. i had put a lid on it and blocked it out and tried to get on with life the best i could. going through a fairly truamatic childbirth brought it all back for me. nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks. two yrs or so later i saw my abuser again. his son was critically ill in hospital and we both visited at the same time. i tihnk there was a part of me that believed he had changed, that he was sorry but all that happened was he raped me and i miscarried my unborn baby. he died not long after from a heart attack.

my mother physically and emotionally abuse me. she knew what my stepfather was doing to me and allowed it to happen. it was around this time, 3 yrs ago i confronted her for allowing it to happen to me. i had two other siblings who lived a fairly normal and happy childhood. i wanted to know why she allowed it and didnt try to stop it. why she joined in. i guess the guilt of knowing what she had done and allowed to happen, was too much for her to bear and she committed suicide a few weeks later. i wanted answers that i felt only she could answer. she died before i got those answers. i doubt very much that if she had lived then i would have got them.

i would say to your OH to think carefully about more confrontation with his parents. they already show that they are unwilling to be seen going against their daughter. deep down they may believe him but in fear, old age or a need for a quiet life, whatever the reason, they dont want to accept it. your OH will need to accept whether this may well cost him his family. my siblings no longer have contact with me as they blame me for my mothers death yet know the abuse i suffered. unfortunately there are no winners in this kind of situation.

ETA : if your OH really does want to confront them again, i would advise waiting til his therapy is underway and talking it through with his therapist who be able to guide better than any of us

Worriedstepmum

Thank you so much Loulou for your post. I am so sorry for what you've been through. We have agreed tonight we will not mention it again to the parents. For them the subject will be closed. We will concentrate on OH getting help, closure and being happier. We know we can't force anyone else to believe him or do anything about it, we only have control over our own actions and where we go from here.

poet123

I think that a distinction needs to be drawn between abuse and sibling bullying. Abuse is perpetrated by a person in a position of power, a seven year old child does not fit that description. Obviously, the child on the receiving end cannot make that distinction at the time, but as an adult they can, and now this has come out they should be encouraged to see it in that light. It is not helpful or accurate to use the term abuse in its accepted context.

As for the parents as Meritan says they are of a different generation, if they had seen what was going on they would not have seen it as abuse but as a naughty child taking out her jealousy on a new addition to the family. They clearly should have done more if your OH is as traumatised as it appears. However, I would be hesitant at believing that his Aspergers is related to the issue. aside from the fact that maybe it prevented him from fully communicating his distress to his parents at the time.

I feel sorry for all concerned here, his parents and your OH. I think that the most helpful way forward is to try to get him to the perspective that she was a spiteful, jealous and possibly damaged child herself (? her background prior to adoption) and that she behaved badly. His parents would not have seen her behaviour as anything other than "naughty" and that he is attaching such words as abuse to it so many decades later will come as a shock to them.

sjc3

Worriedstepmum wrote: »

Yesterday my OH started to tell me the things she used to do to him which included undressing him and whipping him with a riding crop, and trying to push his head into a water boiler. There were numerous other things but not many that were in front of other people.

Everyone clearly has differing ideas on here as to what constitutes abuse. In my mind the actions quoted above go beyond that of just a naughty seven year old.

poet123

sjc3 wrote: »

Everyone clearly has differing ideas on here as to what constitutes abuse. In my mind the actions quoted above go beyond that of just a naughty seven year old.

I think you are correct, but go back 50 years and that behaviour from an adopted child (with attendant unaddressed issues)may not have been seen as anything more than naughtiness by the adoptive parent. It was bullying in the extreme form, but they would not have attached the term abuse to it.

Ms_Chocaholic

I haven't read through this entire thread and sorry if I upset you at all, but I don't think you can whole heartedly blame the sister for her behaviour and, although I don't want to lay the blame entirely at your husband's parents, they are equally and more so to blame in terms of lack of supervision of the children and managing the behaviour of the older girl.

ValHaller

poet123 wrote: »

I think that a distinction needs to be drawn between abuse and sibling bullying. Abuse is perpetrated by a person in a position of power, a seven year old child does not fit that description. Obviously, the child on the receiving end cannot make that distinction at the time, but as an adult they can, and now this has come out they should be encouraged to see it in that light. It is not helpful or accurate to use the term abuse in its accepted context.

I am not so sure. A 7 year old on a 4 year old? That looks like perpetration by a person in a position of power but not authority. Authority was vested in the parents and their neglect means that authority is implicated too.

I think it diminishes what OP's OH suffered to downgrade it from abuse to sibling bullying. If it started at the outset of the adoption, the sibling relationship was not properly bedded in. As I see it, the elements of misused power and the complicity of authority make this abuse.

Worriedstepmum

I do agree that the parents let her get away with things that they shouldn't and she should have been disciplined over her behaviour. She was treated as "special" unfortunately. I should just add that the physical abuse was taking place up until my OH was old enough to fight back. The whippings were taking place when he was about 7 and she was 10 and the parents just assumed it was from him climbing trees and rocks. He has also told me that when she stripped him to whip him she would walk round to the front and do things that confused him and he now knows were entirely inappropriate. He doesn't want to talk further about that. The incident with her pushing his head into a boiler ended when he managed to punch her in the face to get her off him and resulted in him being punished for hitting her.