can we get real with children

i'm slightly heartbroken after reading this guardian article, 'a year in the life of a foster parent', because... it's something i really wanted to do. want to do. i did know it was that bad. i could tell from the stories i hear at work, the parents i meet and the social workers i meet, that it is that bad. that the system really is that much the opposite of child-centred, that social workers really are that offensive, that judges really are that clueless, that children really are that screwed-over. i knew that if i foster children that i will be powerless in a system that dumps children with me, then with someone else, and never asks them what they need. i knew i could ask them what they need, but i'd be powerless to give it to them.

i guess i'd been telling myself that i only know about the domestic violence cases, and these are only a small amount of all the reasons children are taken into foster care. i told myself that in the other cases, the right decisions might be being made.

the article includes four year old twins who have been removed from their parents due to concerns for their safety. they are placed in foster care, with regular visits to see their parents (it's not made clear whether the visits are supervised and/or overnight, etc). the twins tell the foster carer that they have been severely physically and sexually abused and that they never want to see their parents again. you might expect this to be the end of their contact with their parents, particuarly in this era of hysteria and ultra-caution around childhood sexual abuse paedophilia, right? i've imagined myself as a foster parent, getting disclosures like this and - of course - being able to say "those people will never do that to you again" etc etc. and being able to keep that promise. i don't know what i was thinking. the twins are interviewed and a bureaucratic, police and courts process takes many weeks. then it is decided that they are too young to make decisions about whether they see their parents, and (in a glorious and very typical example of kafkaesque contradictaryness of social care and the CPS) that they are also too traumatised to give evidence in court. therefore no court, therefore no end to their contact with their parents.

and what sticks in my head is - did anyone explain anything to the children? it seems like the foster mother really wanted to, and was traumatised by her powerlessness to protect them. but what could she actually say that was true? not "you are safe now", not "you don't have to go through that again", not "it's good that you've told me this because now i can help you"...

i know fuck all about children or parenting, but it just seems blindingly obvious that they need to be told what is happening to them, and if in doubt about what has happened to them, asking seems to be a good option. whenever i have heard about 'suspected sexual abuse' cases, asking the child concerned has not factored at all. what happens is: abuse is suspected, child is hauled in for medical examination (as if bruises/injuries have anything to do with 90% of sexual abuse!!), evidence is given to police who give it to CPS, CPS decide whether the evidence is over 50% likely to prevail in court... while this is happening (which takes up to a year) the child cannot be given counselling/therapy because it could prejudice them giving evidence in court. when that process is all over (and obviously out of the tiny number that go to court only a tiny number convict the abuser), counselling/therapy is usually conviently forgotten by social care as it is too expensive. when i have argued for play therapy for my clients' children i get the "oh you know, the waiting lists are really long", as if it's not worth getting the children onto the waiting lists at all. and if they do ever get to the top of the waiting list they get like 6 weeks!

all of which is a painful reminder that this society is not interested in protecting children from sexual abuse. and especially not in supporting children and adults who have survived sexual abuse. it's interested in busting paedophile rings, sure, but that focus is on criminalising the wrong kinds of sex, not in articulating what abuse it, and stopping it.

and my final question would be, out of the people i love who were abused by their families, how many of them would rather have gone through the social care (and courts) system, rather than staying with their families?

from correspondence

"i agree that anyone has the right to be defended against accusations, of course. but i think it's really important for both sides to be differentiating the naming/questionning of bad behaviour from an implication that someone is inherently racist, abusive, evil, etc. [...]

to state the obvious, it's important to be able to have ways of talking about perceived oppressive behaviour without a) it being a character assassination and/or b) people framing it as a character assassination in a way that can divert the conversation away from the questionable behaviour and on to a character defence."

precious

i've just watched the film Precious.

(this is full of spoilers..)

"For precious girls everywhere" said the dedication at the end. acknowledging the millions of young women who have been abused. a shout-out to say: i know you are everywhere, we know this isn't just fiction. i thought that was a really important part of the film: i feel the film really honours abuse survivors, shows a lot of compassion in many big and small ways: i felt there were half-hidden messages in the film to survivors. it wasn't a film about abuse, the way so many are: fiction that exploits abuse as a device, while forgetting/choosing not to believe that it is such a common lived experience, that survivors will be watching. this film kept that fact at the forefront the whole time: i thought it acknowledged and honoured the experience of family abuse, and the experience of having survived it.

i felt relief at how it had a good shot at trying to tell the truth of abuse: its degrading inaneness (Precious' mother making her eat the dinner and then cook it over again: this was a realistic example of abuse that is non-violent and difficult and humiliating to describe) as well as its brutality and cruelty, and that it can combine with other bullying, and with bad luck.so many films show abuse in terms of cliches and 'nasty' incidents that in no way do justice to the banal horror of domestic violence.

the film also portrayed the difficulty of telling the experience of abuse (Precious at first mutters the facts to the social worker person and then takes it back), and the consequences of telling, so the viewer is invited to think about how near-impossible it is to tell such things, let alone to professionals. it also had a good go at showing the ineptness and sickening cheque-wielding too-much-power of professionals.

later the film showed Precious being believed and supported by her teacher and classmates after telling them, which i felt was a whisper to survivors: tell the truth, it will bring you freedom and friendship. this was a feel-good moment for me: a part in the movie that felt too-good-to-be-true, but that gave the character a break, a relief from the harshness of the rest.

immediately after the film, though, i was was riled, feeling that the film had followed so many discourses of abuse in blaming someone other than the perpetrator and the structures of oppression around all of the characters. like so many discourses, i thought, it blames the mother, ignoring her own abuse and curtailed choices at the hands of Precious' father. the mother is judged by the white social worker type near the end, for having "allowed the abuse to happen", and media discussion of the film seems to have leapt to demonise the dysfunctional, abusive, black single mother. nowhere in the film is the abusive father actually blamed for the abuse, or the mother's own situation described as abuse. this film handles child abuse so well in so many ways, yet manages ultimately to make it a woman's fault??

while i realise it happens in social care offices and law courts everywhere, to me it absolutely beggars belief that any viewer (or social worker character) could blame a female character for the fact that her male partner abused their three year old child on a pillow next to her. the man is responsible for his actions. a man is responsible for his actions. right? no one else. and he was also in control of that situation. what if the mother had fought him? what if she had run away as soon as possible? these may not have been realistic choices. i am not saying the mother bears no responsiblity at all for this 'failure to protect' (as it would be called in uk law), and the mother is wholly responsible for her own physical and emotional abuse of Precious, but the pain of her situation as a mother must be acknowledged, and i initially thought that the film brushed over this, painting the mother as the primary abuser, as if it was too painful for this survivor-focussed film to also look at the ways in which the mother was also surviving. the father wasn't given a voice in the film, to sound as outrageous as the mother does, as defensive, as much living in a self-justifying fantasy world. it bothers me that the mum is given so much space in the film to be crazy and hateful, while the father is only glimpsed in a flashback, and somehow escapes responsibility in the eyes of the social worker type who passes judgement, and thus potentially in the judgement of the viewer.

i don't necessarily think that the mother was portrayed as a monster in the film, she was human and realistic according to descriptions of abusive mothers i've heard, rather she was portrayed in a way that was too easy for reviewers/journalists to demonise in the absence of anyone else being judged in the film. i hope that blaming the older generation of women for the abuse of this generation is not the only way forward. i hope that some people can look at the bad choices mothers made and allow that their choices were so often so much more limited than those of fathers. setting daughters against mothers is the ultimate divide-and-rule and reviewers of this film seem to have fallen for this tactic. abusers are responsible for their abuse. Precious' mother is responsible for her own abuse of Precious but not her partner's. only he is responsible for that.

what didn't sink in til later, though, was the fact that Precious herself rejects the social worker's judgement at the end, standing up to tell her "you can't handle any of this", takes her children and leaves smiling. i think now that this is an acknowledgement of the complexities that can't be spelled out and fixed in a two hour film, that the social worker and her judgement are useless. Precious has to leave her mother and step away from the toxic pain of her family but we don't know who, if anyone, she blames. Precious has the last word.

talking about control

there is an amazing post over at The Curvature about how people refuse to acknowledge any possibility that someone they know could perpetrate abuse:

"It puts the men that do such things in the realm of mythical creatures rather than living, breathing, and yes, complicated, human beings. If we do not know them, it is not our concern. If we do not know them, they don’t really exist. If we do not know them, we do not have to be afraid. If we do not know them, we do not have to feel responsible for the difficult work of changing our culture."

changing our culture. the change that needs to happen is for people to develop an understanding of control. for children to be brought up with an understanding of control. how it operates.

i've been aware this week of the resistance i come up against when i mention that someone in my community displays controlling behaviours. even my feminist friends are uncomfortable with me labelling someone as 'controlling'. they think i'm being the hypersensitive domestic violence worker whose mind is twisted to be suspicious of all heterosexual men (there's a little truth in that, but..!). perhaps i'm not explaining myself well enough. i don't mean "X is an evil, controlling, potentially violent, devil-man that we'd better warn our straight female friend Y about, in contrast to angelic, enlightened queers like you and i, who she'd be much better off with if only she'd escape her hetero false consciousness."

no: everyone is capable of control, and we will each take it as far as we decide to. our decisions about how far to take it are affected by our socialisation and what external sanctions exist against this behaviour (disapproval from our peers; prison, etc).

so when i say "i think X is quite controlling and Y might have a hard time as his partner" i mean: "i've seen and heard examples of X's behaviour that add up to a pattern of trying - and succeeding to some extent - to control Y. if he's given free rein by everyone just to continue, Y's life will get harder, because control always increases as far as the controller chooses to take it, and this choice is partly based on the reaction of the community. i think we should keep an eye on this situation, try and support Y where possible and try to show X that we do not think his behaviour is acceptable."

if we all had the understanding and vocabulary to discuss control then people like Y would be so much safer because it wouldn't be so dramatic, so taboo, to ask "is X ever controlling in any way?" and talking about someone's attempts to control another person would not be the same as demonising them.

(and yes this is an example of a straight couple that i've used and yes queers control one another too.)

trying out control

I had an amazing conversation yesterday with my colleague about control in relationships. I think about this stuff all day every day, keep thinking i’ve got a handle on it, then something else will come and disrupt what i think i know. Hence this blog, to try and order my ramblings...

My colleague has been through extreme domestic violence in the past, years ago. She’s been in relationships since. She started telling me about her new relationship and the little signs of control he’s started trying out, tiny intimidations, tiny put-downs, things that would seem like nothing, or even complimentary, to many people, but to her (and me) are huge flashing danger lights. He questions her about where she’s been out to with her friends. He’s ever-so-slightly sarcastic when he asks if men were there. He gently suggests that a pair of jeans are inappropriate. He leans in to whisper things to her when they are in public places. No violence, no abuse, no way, but he’s testing. How many people think this is unacceptable? How many people can see, clear as day, how if he succeeds in eroding her confidence at this stage, succeeds in having her change her jeans, he will chip away at her further, the control will increase as far as it can. Do you think i’m being dramatic? How do we talk about this?

My colleague and I agreed that either of us, at less confident times in our lives, would not have identified these behaviours as signs of a controlling person, even in the years we’ve been doing this job. Although we both felt that this behaviour was unacceptable, neither of us thought that it was grounds to instantly end the relationship, only to be vigilant – to measure his behaviours and her self-confidence, and to put her self-confidence at the centre of it all. If she notices she is changing her behaviour then the control has started.. but of course this is so difficult to measure and by the time you admit something like that to yourself it can be too late.

She did say ‘all men are like that’, and unwilling yet to come out as not-as-gay-in-fact-as-i-might-have-somehow-implied-sorry-to-be-so-confusing i kind of let that one slide. I didn’t know how, in the five minutes we had before people arrived for the group, to start talking about how women and genderqueers and whoever else try out control and often succeed, and how some men don’t, how to relate it back to my own relationships with people of different genders and the different kinds of control we’d tried to enact on one another.

My colleague said how unsettled she was by the fact this man was good and kind, respected, friendly; ‘you can’t spot them’. I said to my her ‘they don’t all start out evil, do they?’ and we looked at each other, acknowledging the pain of this. The pain of letting in the idea that we all use control, that abusers are human too, that there’s no such thing as evil. All of us, at some point in our lives, will try out controlling the people around us. When we are toddlers, for a start. And whether we find there are benefits, rewards, for this or whether we swiftly have to find other, healthier ways of relating, depends on the response of the people around us. If we kick off and get what we (think we) want, or if we kick off and the people around us recoil and condemn us. At any age, from the terrible twos to our first teenage relationships to lifelong friendships to... And we generally find that there is a lot more scope for control and/or kicking off to get results in the context of an intimate relationship. Kicking off in the queue at the post office will get us shunned or the police called: there are sanctions against this. Kicking off to someone we’ve been seeing a few months, who is invested in the relationship, might get them to change their behaviour in the interest of preserving the relationship. Result, reward, we get our own way. And there are so many ways to 'kick off', other than being violent or aggressive...

Oh god, again, so much more to say! Another time..

secrets and complexities

sometimes the support groups feel like entering another dimension. this is when i really love my job. hearing secrets shared and shame demolished. hearing what really happened, what we're not meant to hear. the simple act of creating a space where it's possible to tell the truth, the power of that bowls me over some days.

someone told us about holding her boyfriend underwater. because she knew he was just about to get her. i got leathered for it afterwards like but.. how pure her power was, for those minutes.. i had control.

these acts of resistance don't exist in normal discourse, can't be written in the magazines: already it's too complicated for the victim to fight back against the monster. so many lives contain these untold moments where the power dynamic was flipped. and yet the fact that she was violent in that moment has been used against her ever since by the abuser, eclipses everything he's done to her before and since. and our failure - as friends, family, community, media - to articulate what was really going on here: a moment of resistance against prolonged, calculated abuse of power, leaves her with a burden of shame and guilt that becomes weightier every time we refuse to engage with the complexities of that moment.

"The survivor's shame and guilt may be exacerbated by the harsh judgement of others, but it is not fully assauged by simple pronouncements absolving her from responsibility, because simple pronouncements, even favorable ones, represent a refusal to engage with the survivor in the lacerating moral complexities of the extreme situation. From those who bear witness, the survivor seeks not absolution but fairness, compassion, and the willingness to share the guilty knowledge of what happens to people in extremity."

Judith Herman, in Trauma and Recovery.