WE ARE ALL ABUSERS!

It is quite amazing how otherwise highly intelligent people get so hot under the collar and completely lose their marbles when the matter of sex with children raises its ugly head. I've had cause to think a lot about the matter of how adults should be relating with children, because at different stages in my life I've personally known two men who felt the desire for sex with young boys.

These two helped bring home to me the fact that adults who feel sexually attracted to children are not monsters but people with particular problems, and regarding them with hostility, condemnation or disgust is merely a sign of some of our own problems. What they really need, as we all do, is compassionate loving thought and understanding. Only with true understanding can any problem even begin to be addressed. It was brought home to me that there are many people who feel such attractions who are highly responsible people who recognise that they could never fulfil their inner urges in real life, and who interfere with no-one. These people don't make news, so the public image of adults attracted or aroused by children is inevitably based on the irresponsible element who seek to gratify their urges without clear thought about the consequences of their actions. The real issue here for Joe Public, then, is not a person's inner sexual attractions, but the matter of outward responsibility and use or misuse of power. And that's true no matter whether the person's sexual attractions are for women, men, boys, girls or dead sheep!

In truth, if we stand back and take a broader view, it's possible to see that we are all to some extent abusing each other and shirking our true mutual responsibility, indulging in all manner of power games and negativities for our own gratification, admittedly very often by mutual consent. Every time I put another person down in any way, even in a way that that person likes, or I resist the positive changes that she needs to make in her life, I'm abusing her. Much of what adults do to children, or indeed to each other in marriage, although socially acceptable and 'normal', is abuse. We deny a child's innate sense of responsibility. We deny a child's intuitive intelligence and ability and enthusiasm for learning in his own unique ways. We tread on their sense of uniqueness and personal greatness, telling them they're nothing special, are stupid, ordinary and all that. We want them to be whichever way makes us adults comfortable and happens to conform to our own belief systems.

Or, to satisfy our own egotistical urges, we drive a child to try and succeed in some material way - to get good marks for school exams, or to develop for a particular career. The development of most children is channelled for a career, not for their actual needs or their special gifts, which latter usually get buried at an early stage. Children are taught that they're bad if they happen to make their parents or other adults feel uncomfortable. It's truly amazing how much harm apparently 'normal' and supposedly decent parents regularly wreak upon their offspring through just trying to keep themselves comfortable without a thought of how they're restricting the development of their precious ones. That's all child abuse. We are all to some extent child abusers.

You think I'm overstating my point? Well, let's take one little example: what is your response to a child crying? Do you use one way or another to stop the crying? Maybe you use a 'nice' way, like cuddling and jiggling and trying to distract the youngster's attention with something nice - but it's still abuse, because, provided any immediate cause of the hurt is removed, the child at that point actually needs nothing less than to cry fully and hard until (s)he stops naturally. That needs warm, aware, appreciative attention so that the emotional healing process of crying can continue to completion. To stop the crying that is needed, however nicely done, is abuse. Want another example? You stick a youngster into religion - into Sunday school, for example? Or you deny them spiritual growth by stuffing materialism in some form down their throats? That's all abuse too: trying to constrain their awareness and get them hooked on some belief system, whether it's theistic or atheistic.

We certainly need strong judicial measures to stop child abusers from carrying out their harmful behaviour. However, what we don't need - and indeed it only feeds the negativity and lack of compassion in our cultures - is the personal wishing of harm upon the offenders. Let the judicial system do its work. If it isn't working well, then it needs improving.

If you must spend energy in condemnation, then let that condemnation be of the behaviour, not the person. The vigilante and lynch mob mentality has no place in a civilized culture. Those of us with children naturally have especial cause for a certain caution about possible child abusers, but having children is no justification at all for our wishing harm upon anyone whether or not they are child abusers. Many people have heatedly argued at me to the effect that because they have children, their angry and even murderous attitudes are justified and the likes of me don't know what we're talking about. That is really primitive, unaware behaviour, which helps nobody - and such parents are being horrendously bad role models for their children, who will pick up those attitudes even if they are not spelled out for them.

If we feel angry about some offender, then that is because we already had that anger stored in our mind so that it gets restimulated, and the need is to heal the original cause of that anger (which may well originate from previous lifetimes) and clear it completely from our mind and energy system. Stored anger and harsh negatively judgemental habits, whether recognised or not, are a potent cause of cancers, so for our own physical health, quite apart from lifestyle and ethical considerations, it is important to clear every bit of the stored anger out of our systems. Then we are not only healthier and better able to enjoy life, but also are able to apply our minds with much more clarity and wisdom.

I've been amazed and disquieted to find that even some supposedly highly developed healers who seem otherwise to have all the right ideas and awareness, lose their marbles at any suggestion of compassion and understanding towards those who have sexually abused children. They hang on to the idea that their uptightness over the issue is 'natural' and therefore cannot be worked through and released - and imply that there's something very wrong about my own view of compassion towards such people. So, especially for their benefit, I quote (with his emphatically expressed permission) from somebody who was himself so abused and, far from being irreparably damaged, has actually used the experience to positive advantage. This gives the lie to the ubiquitous idea that forgiveness must exclude child abusers.

...I am now realising that there are no "bad" lessons in life, knowing that this awareness gives one strength to carry on. For instance I'll give you an example. When I was three my father raped me and then threw me down a flight of stairs. It's something that I'd had hidden in the depths of my mind for so long, then last year things started to happen to me and I started to come to terms with the past (always painful!). I went to a sweat lodge ceremony in July. In the ceremony you thank your ancestors and parents for the past and the way you were brought up. 

Well, I learned from that that one of the ways I was going to grow and move forward was to acknowlege that my father had brought me up the only way he knew how, and that for him to move forward in the spirit world I had to forgive him of the things he did. I can't say it was easy but over a two week period I did forgive him, and I couldn't believe the results. I felt a huge weight come off my shoulders; I felt like I was free, it was and is wonderful. And what's even more wonderful is that I feel my father can now get on with things and feel free at long last. See what I mean - even from bad comes good, and even when feeling low all one has to do is remember that we have Spirit with us and that every thing that happens is for a reason.

-- Ian Dixon

Ian specifically asked me to include his name here, to demonstrate that he is not ashamed of what happened, and to play his part in punching holes in the cruel taboo that is placed by our cultures upon the subject.

So, when it comes to the widespread judgemental and usually hostile attitudes towards those regarded as child abusers, it should be understood that those attitudes are themselves part of the problem. There is a very apt saying attributed to Jesus:

How can you look for the splinter in your brother's eye and not notice the stick in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, "Let me remove the splinter in your eye", when you do not see the stick in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the stick from your own eye, and then you can see to remove the splinter that is in your brother's eye.

Hear, hear!