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In Reply to: What did you see? posted by Blondie on November 25, 2003 at 21:23:18:
These are good questions. I will answer frankly.
"Failure to report a crime is a crime."
Oh I saw crime alright, only I wasn't aware it was a crime. We lived so isolated for years we didn't have a clue. I saw toddlers spanked hard. I saw a father throw a fit at his child. One time I saw a father tell his 2 or 3 year old child he didn't want him anymore, and locked him out and left him standing at the gates crying. I saw paddling. Because I grew up with the same kind of treatment, I didn't know the world had moved a long and progressed to where such things were either illegal or bordering on illegal. Problem is, with my own abusive background, and TF teaching and showing me by example that it was normal to hit a child to solve a prolem with violence, I actually bought the idea for a good few years. I've since changed my mind very strongly. Did my conscience bother me when I saw any of that? Yes it did. Why didn't I do anything about it? Because I was taught "sapre the rod spoil the child" and all those verses.
I was once approached on a Saturday nite dance by a 14 yr old. I was shocked speechless, turned her down, and thought "oh that broke my bottle" because I was taught to believe she was doing just fine and I wasn't. Weeks later I found out she had gone off with some other full grown adult, because the creep bragged to me about what she did for him. Still, I had no idea that might be illegal, because the film Blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields was circulating around even in TF. I just couldn't help but think what a creep the guy was though. It was too over-sexualized for me. Still, over-sexualized or not, I thought it was only me that was too old fashioned. I was under the idea that if the parents allowed it then it was legal after age 14 or something like that. I had been having sex before legal age myself, so I didn't think anything more about it.
Did I know of "My Little Fish?" No, because I had come and gone from the group at about that time, and it's just one of those publications I never saw, and no one said, "hey you have to read and follow this." It was more like one of those things that people compartmentalized as "oh that's so radical of Dad" and nobody cared about applying it in their own lives. I honestly never saw that publication leading to any sort of child abuse that way. I never saw a parent or a nanny perform oral sex on a child! Nor did I hear about it. I think home shepherds were instructed to destroy or censor those pubs pretty soon after they got out, because I honestly never saw that lying around in the lit trunk or anything.
How much abuse did I see or hear about through the FG "grapevine". I could say probably none, because if we were so clueless as to believe that what we did wasn't abuse, we never talked about "hey do you know about this and that abuse that happened?" More like I'd find out someone's child had been dealt with for something, and the child was in the voctory or not yet in the victory and whatever other crap it was. I never heard about some "uncle" doing something to some child.
Well, I left while most children were still pretty young. The oldest were young teenagers at the most.
That was then. What about now?
Looking back I realize it was abuse. It was already abuse even in the eyes of the "system" which we had been taught to ignore. I regret taking in that abusive training about how to deal with children. I realize EVERYTHING TF taught me about child rearing was WRONG. I can't find one single good thing about what they taught me, as a young inexperienced parent, about how to discipline my children.
