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Other Conditions Influencing the Development of Coping Strategies

In addition to the context of abuse-related characteristics, there were other conditions that may influence the victims’ choice of coping strategies. These included family attitudes, beliefs, values and dynamics, and the consequence of revictimisation (Browne & Finkelhor, 1986).

Family Attitudes, Beliefs, Values and Dynamics

Family attitudes, beliefs, values, and dynamics mediate the existence and level of initial empathetic support by family members (Alexander, 1992; Draucker, 1996) as an abused child learns to develop coping skills to handle possible psychological distress at a later stage of their development (Rosenthal et al., 2003; Staller & Nelson-Gardell, 2005).

Only two participants in this study chose to disclose their initial sexual abuse experience. Frazier’s father disbelieved the initial disclosure of his abuse by a shopkeeper, and inadvertently created a level of distrust that made it impossible for subsequent abuses to be disclosed.

This is in stark contrast with Daniella’s self-disclosure to her cousin, after being molested by her uncle. Her confession elicited advice on some protective measures from further re-victimisation.

Subsequent Re-victimisation

An impetus in research identifying rates and effects of adult and adolescent sexual re-victimisation among child sexual abuse victims began with Messman and Long’s (1996) review of literature where support was found for the theory that women sexually abused as children are at an increased risk for further adult physical and sexual assault.

Arata (2002) in her paper indicated that women child sexual abuse victims have a two to three times greater risk of adult re-victimisation than women without a history of CSA, and approximately one-third of victims in her study reported experiencing repeated victimization.

Russell (1986), however, found that 61% to 68% of women experiencing child sexual abuse reported experiencing rape or attempted rape in later life. However, our rates are much higher.

In our study, 8 (80%) females and 6 (50%) males were subsequently re-victimised by men generally, and one woman. The lone woman abuser was an aunt of one of the female participants. Subsequent perpetrators included (a) a member of the immediate family, like a father and/or brothers; (b) extended family members, like an aunt, uncles, cousins, and other relatives; (c) known authority figure to the victim, like a teacher; (d) known people to the victim, like neighbours, a shopkeeper, family friends, and (e) strangers.

Edith would perennially be afraid of her father’s approaches, while Eddy would watch his father cautiously, as he and his brother would wrestle with their father from time-to-time in play, to prevent further molestations (see Table 12).

Initial Child and Adolescent Coping Strategies

Avoidant Coping

Research on children who had been sexually abused had generally concluded that a majority did not reveal their abuse during childhood (London et al., 2005; Nagel et al., 1997), and they commonly employed avoidance and detachment coping strategies (Chaffin et al., 1997; Shapiro & Levendosky, 1999). Avoidant coping normally became the principal coping mechanism into adulthood.

Lean had repressed her abuse so well since her childhood that having to recall them, when she was in the process of filling-in the questionnaires in this study, somatized her, “Emotionally and physiologically I felt that I couldn’t even get up and walk.

I felt immobilized.” Likewise, Jered was able to successfully ‘erased’ memories of the abuse from his mind for seven years, “…there will be a flashback, but I …block it out all the time.”

Amnestic Recall of Abuse Events

Clinical research has also found evidence for the presence of amnesia for trauma relating to childhood sexual abuse (Alpert, Brown & Courtois, 1998; Feldman-Summers & Pope, 1994; Loftus, Polonsky & Fullilove, 1994).

Eight females (80%) and ten males (83.3%) had mentioned that they have sketchy or no memories of certain periods of their childhood, and this had been a cause of concern to them (see Table 13). However, several indicated recall of some enactive or behavioural memory, which were subsequently verified, while others remained unverified.

Cindy had completely forgotten the incident, and did not even know whether she was confabulating the whole episode, when “at about 12 years old, my mom started to educate me about sex. That’s when I started to think back…because at first I was doubtful that it actually happened.” Edith, however, had no recollection at all. “I began to have dreams…of my dad having sex with me.

I freaked out! I don’t remember anything.” Relating her first abuse, Emilia pensively said, “...you know you have some memories. I can’t identify my feelings as a child. It’s this big blank in my memory, and in my emotions.” Like Emilia, Eddy’s recall of his father’s abuse proved sketchy, “I don’t really remember much, but he offered to do something.” Sanjay’s abuse recollections came in bits and pieces in dreams, quite unlike other participants, “…I was playing in the garden, and someone led me to a shed, and everything was pitched black.

I could just see two people. I was not in there, but I was looking at myself in the shed...and his babysitter would take off his clothes and touch him all over.”

Dissociation

As the child attempted to deny the unbearable pain or terror of an abusive situation, it may precipitate certain dissociative mechanisms (Harari, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van Ijzedoorn, 2007; Kluft & Fine, 1993; Ross, 1997). Putnam (1989) viewed it as a form of emotional avoidance, evoked by the individual to reduce the emotional effects of traumatic events (Briere & Armstrong, 2007).

Indications of possible dissociative signs among participants included the surfacing of child-like parts, irregular switching in topics of conversation with accompanying emotional and behavioural dispositions, and headaches following these switches, derealisation, and depersonalisation.

Six females (60%) and one male (8.3%) exhibited some signs of dissociating during the interview sessions. Claire shared her perception that it seemed as though someone else was present when she was intimately involved with her husband, “…I just had this impression that ‘it’ …like I could see ‘somebody else’ over my husband, when we were intimate with each other.” Tiana’s addiction with masturbation became confusing when she speaks in dissociative terms, “I used to masturbate regularly…until I was 15.

From then on, every time there was stress when I sleep…then suddenly, I felt the urge, then someone masturbated me.” Jered was the only male who exhibited some dissociative signs. With a sudden jerk of his head, he became abusive as he changed the topic of conversation, and switched to talking about the abuses he endured as a child.

Expletives and angry language followed naturally from an apparently mild-mannered young man. His close friends commented that his mood swings were rather sudden, and he seemed to be like a different person talking at these times.

The relationship of imaginary companions to Dissociated Identity Disorder (DID) is ambiguous, but distinct identities or personality states have occasionally reported that they first came into being as imaginary companions, and later took on a life of their own when the child was unable to cope with the abuse or trauma (Lovinger, 1983; Mollon, 1996; Putnam, 1989).

Kluft (1994) found that 80% of DID patients’ imaginary companions had gone on to become distinct personality states. Although childhood companions are developmentally normal, in the DID patient these companions persist into late adolescence or even adulthood (Ross, 1997).

None of the male participants talked about imaginary friends when enquiry was made.

However, six female (60%) participants mentioned that following their abuses, they constantly conversed with their invisible friends, or lived in “a make-believe world of their own” whenever distressing thoughts of their abuse surfaced during childhood through late adolescence.

Only one female, Alicia, said that she continued to fantasize this way until she was in her late twenties, when she went into therapy. She claimed that her imaginary friends surfaced after the shopkeeper molested her, “I remember it more from that point on.” Daniella would tell herself bedtime stories, like Thumberlina and Cinderella aloud, when thoughts of earlier molestations came in the night, until she was 13 years of age, “I remembered the books that I read, and I told myself those stories aloud…until I went to sleep.

It stopped when I started working at 21.” Lean also had this fantasy friend whom she would converse with every day until she was 16, and she would go places and do things with her “whenever stress with her school work or flashbacks took place.”

Relevant material of my postgraduate thesis will be summarized in this blog over the coming weeks. Appendices, statistical tables, and bibliographical details are excluded.

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