Footnote on the Abuse Excuse
This quick follow-up on the relationship between psychopathic behavior and childhood abuse provides some references on the research mentioned in an earlier article on predatory aggressive personalities.
Editor’s Note: This is just a quick follow-up with some references on the research mentioned in Dr Simon’s previous post. See “Understanding the Predatory Aggressive, Part 2”.
With respect to the brain differences in psychopaths, especially regarding the issue of responding to emotionally-laden concepts, there is now substantial research. Several studies by Christopher J. Patrick, et al such as in Clinical Science, Fall 1995, “Emotion and Temperament in Psychopathy,” and “Emotion and Psychopathy: Startling New Insights,” in Psychophysiology, 31, 1994 initially noted this phenomenon, and follow-up studies by Levenston, Bradley, Lang, and Patrick have replicated the findings. Recent studies such as “Anomalous Perceptual Asymmetries for Negative Emotional Stimuli in the Psychopath,” by Rodney Day and Stephen Wong, Journal of Abonormal Psychology, 1996 lend considerable support, too.
With respect to the issue of whether most sexual abusers abuse victims, the conclusions come from an analysis of statistics and research results compiled by the Center for Sex Offender Management, in the US Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs. The statistics overwhelmingly indicate that most victims of abuse never abuse others, and that most abuse victims are women whereas most perpetrators are men. In addition, offenders who are told they will be polygraphed greatly reduce their reports of being victimized themselves and greatly increase their reports of predatory offending. The conclusion, therefore, is that despite popular perceptions, there is no reason to presume that most sexual offending has its roots in past sexual victimization. The results of a recently completed study of sexual offenders in Arkansas, USA are also relevant. Of the nearly 9,000 registered offenders, a sample of 1700 offenders revealed that fewer than one third of the offenders reported anything in their histories even suggestive of sexual victimization at the hands of others. I think the overwhelming consensus in the empirical research is that while the strongest correlate to sexual abuse is physical abuse in childhood, it still doesn’t occur in the majority of cases.
6 Responses to “Footnote on the Abuse Excuse”
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My 30 years in one neighborhood showed me that 2 boys from 2 different families who were sexually abused, did end up abusing others, their own siblings first, then neighborhood children. How did I know? One of the 1st grade boys who played with my son came over one day and through conversation told me that he was no longer allowed to play with ‘Jimmy”. I asked why and he eventually told me that ‘Jimmy’ made him do things. And so it comes out that ‘Jimmy’ had taken several 4-6 yr old boys including his younger brother into the woods over a 6 mo period and abused them by forcing them to perform acts on him. He was 13, and it turns out he was abused by his father.
One of the boys Jimmy abused, a different neighbor boy, wound up abusing his sister, then another neighbor girl, both gradeschoolers. Very sad.
I don’t know about the stats. What would be the point when any and all boys and girls who’ve been sexually abused have to live with garbage for their whole lives.
In highschool I volunteered with my class at a local boarding school for teens and learned that many kids who’ve been sexually abused wind up with eating disorders, self mutilation tendencies and suicidal.
What I would like to see, and what I will acitvely look for, are the studies done to show statistics regarding the male population of young abuse victims and their rate of abuse of others.
Here is one site: http://www.jimhopper.com/male-ab/#last
http://www.jimhopper.com/pdfs/Lisak_(1994)_Male_Survivor_Interviews.pdf
Very interesting information referencing work done from the 1980′s on.
I guess my point is that abuse victims evidently can and do feel abused in the long term, and that this should not be minimalized by the medical and psych communities with stats which show that abuse victims don’t necessarily become abusers themselves.
The fact or idea that most victims of sex abuse do not become abusers apparently takes nothing away from the fact that they continue to suffer with anxiety, anger, attachment and identity issues, among others.
Hi Mia,
Many thanks for your comment.
While I appreciate the point(s) you’re making — that victims of abuse suffer, regardless of the statistics — I think you may have missed the point that Dr Simon was originally presenting.
Dr Simon was not talking about whether victims of abuse suffer, he was talking about the assumption that if someone is an abuser, then they must have been abused themselves. He was also noting how easy it is to prey on people who make this assumption, by letting them believe that an abuser somehow has an excuse for abusing because they were probably abused themselves. In fact that belief appears simply to be false: most abusers probably were not abused.
In other words, the statistics do not back up the charitable assumption that if someone is a perpetrator of abuse, they can probably blame it on having been abused themselves.
I take it this is a completely separate question from the awfulness of being abused — Dr Simon was talking about the perpetrators, not the victims.
All the best,
Greg
Hi Mia, Greg. Your wonderful comments have given me good food for thought for any future articles I might submit on issues related to sexual abuse. Having worked with sexual offenders and their victims for many years, and having just completed a USDOJ-funded project to examine and revamp our state’s efforts to manage the risks of sex offenders, I have also had to rid myself of some misconceptions over time. One thing I have never changed, however, is my victim-centered approach to the whole issue, knowing full well the kind of trauma such abuse can induce.
Greg, you are right about the point I was trying to make, but I probably picked a poor example to illustrate how predatory aggressives use their acute awareness of the attitudes, emotional capacities, and conscientiousness of most people against them. Knowing what we think and what we tend to believe, they tell us what they think we want to hear and in the process we get duped. We have to really stop and think sometimes before we even get an inkling that we might be being played for a fool.
Mia, let me see if I can clarify just a bit. It is not at all uncommon for young children who have been exposed to sexual activity early (i.e. “sexualized) to display problematic sexual behavior with others. In fact, this is often the “red flag” that indicates the possibility that they have been abused. Rarely however, will you find these victims after they have become adults turning into predators against children. This is not to say that it can’t happen. Sometimes it does, usually for some very complicated psychological reasons. But it usually doesn’t. And most abusers don’t even report having been victimized, although interestingly enough, a higher proportion of the more serious and INCARCERATED offenders do report abuse in their childhood.
Now about the example I gave and why I’m skeptical and how I think it demonstrates how predatory types take advantage of us:
The person I referred to claims that as a young boy he was molested by a much older priest. All the things he said about the purported abuse were completely along the lines of reports just about anyone would be familiar with had they been keeping up with all the headlines regarding the clergy abuse scandals lately. What he didn’t say is how his exposure as a child to sexual activity with a much older man let him to have a life-long sexual preference for teens (this is the kind of thing you really have to think about). This man also never admitted true solicitation or engagement with his victims (for all the accountability he says he now takes, he certainly doesn’t want to incriminate himself). His intercepted emails and reports of others, however suggest very strongly that he was for years a true predator, selecting victims carefully and grooming them deftly. His predatory appetite was apparently legend among his colleagues, all of whom kept silent. Most of his victims will probably not come forward because he sought out heterosexually-oriented young males who might be too ashamed to acknowledge sexual contact with a male. The news interview he granted appeared more like a PR effort than a confession. It’s purpose seemed to be to paint him as a victim needing your sympathy and understanding, to buy into the notion that he has accepted responsibility and is repentant, and believe he is certainly no threat to anyone. The record, however, suggests he was every bit the most cunning kind of predator. This was the point I was trying to make. How predators among us thrive is that we never see it coming. We see them as almost anything else – even victims – because we never really stop and think very seriously that they might be simply trying to paint a picture that we can more readily accept.
I recall a study some time ago in the attachment literature which found that whilst it was true that most male abusers were not abused themselves, there was a large proportion of them whose mothers had been abused. Do you have any information about this?
Hi, Lisa. I don’t know of many recent well-controlled studies addressing your question. There was a study suggesting what you allude to done at Boston City Hospital and reported in the journal: Pediatrics, Vol 84, No. 3, Sept 1989. The sample size of this study was, however, quite low and the methodology not very pure by today’s standards.