Splintered Lives - Barnardo's

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This latter form limits the pain, trauma and confusion that full knowing would involve.
Whilst effective in the short term, maintaining disassociation over the long term means
that people are trading an integrated functioning of the self in order to keep at bay what
is understood (often subconsciously) as an overwhelming threat. The 'treatment' of
individuals following traumatic events involves enabling them to recall the events, and
their feelings at the time. Where this support is not available disassociation continues to
be used, in order to avoid recalling the events. Like many other defense mechanisms,
however, disassociation can break down resulting in a crisis for the individual. It is often
maintained over time through using drugs and/or alcohol to keep threatening thoughts,
emotions and memories at bay.
Most children who have been abused over time will have developed forms of
disassociation, and they may become so skilled at it that they can endure instances of
further abuse without 'feeling' anything. Work which is aimed at re-connecting
experience and emotion is profoundly threatening, since it is asking the child or young
person to give up their survival strategies. For long-term rehabilitative work to be
effective, workers need to begin from a realisation of what a profound and scary thing
they are asking, and work with building on the strengths of the child and developing
new, more positive, coping strategies. This is long term work which requires patience
and creativity (see Briere 1992 and Herman 1994 for discussions of this approach in
relation to adults who have been abused in childhood).
David Finkelhor's (1986) conceptual framework explaining the impacts of sexual abuse
of children is well known within the field. The model is based on four "traumagenic
dynamics": traumatic sexualization; stigmatisation; betrayal; and powerlessness. Liz
Hall and Siobhan Lloyd (1989) add to this "enforced silence". This framework can be
adapted, by including the additional issues which might pertain where sexual
exploitation is involved.
Traumatic sexualization:
This is the outcome of inappropriate sexualization of children at ages where they are
neither physiologically or psychologically able to cope. The facts of assaults combine
with distorted information given abusers to justify their behaviour. Children are
frequently told to 'keep the secret' and rewarded in various ways for doing so. For
children and young people who are repeatedly abused sexual activity becomes
something to be endured, which is shameful, which reflects badly on them, and
possibly something to be traded for things they do want, such as affection, presents or
money. Where these later survival strategies are used there is likely to be a heightened
sense of being responsible and to blame for what has happened. In the case of sexual
exploitation it is also likely that there a multiple abusers involved, and many forms of
abuse.
Stigmatisation
There are a range of negative meanings which the child rapidly learns to associate with