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Responses to Traumatized Children pp 203–227Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Responding to the Protection Needs of Traumatized and Sexually Abused Children

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Abstract

Child sexual abuse1 has been described as soul murder due to the serious and lasting damage to the child’s emotional, neurological and physiological development that results from the overwhelming impact of trauma which includes both fear and pain (Strong 1998: 65). However, the word ‘trauma’ comes from the Greek word meaning ‘to pierce’ which Bentovim explains as a piercing of the protective layers of the mind (1992: 24). Victims of such overwhelming trauma tend to live in a world of continual and unpredictable danger, alone and powerless without means of escape. Van der Kolk (cited in Strong 1998: 95) equates the abuse as more pernicious than that affecting prisoners of war in that the abusers are often the people who are supposed to protect and nurture the child. Frampton (2004: 218) in a graphic account of his childhood in residential care noted that the gleam had gone from a child’s eyes when they had suffered abuse at the hands of those employed to care for them. He described trying to reach out to his abused friend: ‘We all peered inside but the watchman’s lamp had gone out.’ Like him I ‘pay tribute and marvel at how out of so little, so many children are able to shape reasonable lives as adults’ (2004: 290). Therefore this chapter aims to highlight both the extent of the suffering of sexually abused children and the nature of such trauma.

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Authors
  1. Liz Davies
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. London Metropolitan University, UK

    Amer A. Hosin (Senior Lecturer in Applied Psychology) (Senior Lecturer in Applied Psychology)

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© 2007 Liz Davies

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Davies, L. (2007). Responding to the Protection Needs of Traumatized and Sexually Abused Children. In: Hosin, A.A. (eds) Responses to Traumatized Children. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230625808_11

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