Boys do suffer: to end child abuse you have to take charge and leave the place of spectator

Faced with child abuse, the bystander effect (Bystander effect) consists of believing that someone with greater abilities, power and knowledge will deal with that situation that alters the comfort zone and that comforts us, but in reality saves us the discomfort of dealing with.

In reality, the only prohibited action is not to act in the face of the pain of others, especially in the face of children, whom we say are privileged and of whom, since we prefer to imagine that adults suffer the rigors of life and have a happy life, no talk.

On Tuesday, April 25, the International day against child abuse. It is an event that seeks to make visible, raise awareness and reflect on the manifestations of violence suffered by boys and girls, as well as promote good treatment in the upbringing of the little ones. The date was instituted by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with the aim of raising awareness about the need to eradicate violence against children and adolescents, since it affects their very existence.

These days we find out that the Tutelary Public Ministry (MPT) of the City of Buenos Aires presented the campaign ‘Let’s stop reproducing abuse from generation to generation’, a very interesting proposal, since it reproduces in this formula, at least, what actually happens in the area of ​​psychic trauma, the repetition and transgenerational trauma, issues sometimes little exposed, but with terrible consequences, which we will talk about.

Abuse is sometimes visible news only because of the appearance of media cases but whose public light is usually ephemeral. For example, this week the case of a television producer who managed or participated in a child abuse network was known that, “tempus fugit” time is running out, is already at his home and his lawyers request the prescription of the cause. This type of crime is no longer an exception, but rather a million-dollar business established for years, with increasingly complex logistics, as we see in the course of the different cases.

However, they insist on showing them as isolated cases, and relating them to psychopathology, seeking to believe that it is limited to a “mental illness” of isolated individuals and not a criminal organization emerging from a society that subjects entire populations, children in particular, to the worst forms of abuse.

The victims remain and have been silenceddue to the silence indicated by the word childhood itself (those without a voice), however they begin to speak and shout their pain that begins to be manifest from the awareness in a stage of maturity.

Some say that “boys do not suffer”, which implies a phenomenal proof of the cynicism of a society that coined or rather repeated the phrase “the only privileged ones are the children”, when they were those lacking all privileges.

For this reason, it is auspicious that we can talk about these issues and what structures or organizations deal with them, what laws exist, although we know that many times they are not applied, and perhaps at some point the awareness, particularly that which is being achieved by the media about it, be installed.

We have the possibility of doing something, of not letting the issue be reduced to contingency and making it our own from our place of action.

We already talked about the power of the stigmas of mental illness and one area where the stigmas are most powerful, be it in either of its two forms or areas of the Gauss curve, that is, in denial or in exaggeration, is in the psychopathology. Psychic suffering in childhood may or may not manifest as a form of pathology, but it will inevitably mark adult life.

Sometimes we exaggerate or deny, trivialize, both ways are the ones that exclude the sufferer.

In recent times we have witnessed through the media the case of Lucio Dupuy in La Pampa, which showed how the preventive action failed: lucio is dead. This case, which touches on an extensive series of issues regarding childhood, will perhaps become an emblematic milestone, sadly, of criminology, particularly victimology.

From this terrible case and as is inevitable after the fact, the law was quickly promulgated. pike law. This, as well as many others, transformed crimes against sexual integrity in general and against children in particular, into public order crimes, that is to say that They are the responsibility of all of us and mandatory reporting.

Something that did not happen with Lucio, who was attended by countless instances in which perhaps by the famous bystander effect (as called in experimental psychology) everyone looked and no one understood that he had to act. For example, there was already a law that forced doctors to act, to protect the minor at risk, and boy was Lucio. Now this law compels us all to act.

Lucio did not survive his martyrdom, which indeed was, let us not be confused or forget. Several others survive in his body but not in his soul, in his psyche and that cost is something that weighs on all of society.

The forms of child abuse are endless, from the munchausen syndrome by proximity in which a father or mother or person responsible for the child (hence the proximity/proxy), generates clinical pictures in the minor (that is, mistreats/torture) and thus subjects him to medical treatments to adopt this, the role of victim, until reaching the different and multiple forms of abuse.

The terms are mixed up, perhaps inadvertently confused, perhaps not, but the reality is that the issue of child sexual abuse and all the forms of crime with which it is related are growing and at the same time seeking to be normalized. Childhood sexuality is overwhelmedviolated explicitly but also indirectly and with much broader repercussions.

The multiple forms of child abuse they have a simple but eloquent central feature: there is an absence of care, of protection, of those who neither have the capacity to provide it nor have a voice to demand their rights, or defend themselves. Hence, it is we adults who should not in any way accept any form of negligence in the function that is our responsibility, not because we are parents but because of the simple opposite of theirs, we are those children of the past, perhaps protected, perhaps not, and in that awareness of one’s own past there should be a social awareness to protect, even those we once were.

Finally, we previously referred to the costs of mental illness and in this particular case of negligence, of passivity in the face of the suffering of the other, even if it were due to the economic costs for society. Perhaps one area where this aspect is most evident in this “cost” is in child abuse, its forms and especially its unfathomable consequencesso different from one person to another, indicate entire lives that have been definitively altered.

We have seen directly or all through the media people who, just in their adult stage, are able to shout their pain, to testify to it, the recent case of Lucas Benvenuto and his complaint against the driver Jey Mammon, he can be an example , but there are countless similar cases that can only open up in adult life, when the scars are already chronic.

The list would be endless but it covers all situations and social conditions. In child abuse, it is worth remembering, as obvious as it may seem, we are talking about a being who has his whole life ahead of him and of whom nobody knows if he could be the next discoverer of a cure for a disease that saves the world or simply a person who can develop his life fully. The loss of opportunities will remain forever unknown.

What is observed from the clinical field when we care for child victims of abuse, and especially in adults who, after several decades of life, can only address that painfully kept memory, is how much could have been if someone had acted, if someone had left the complacent comfort.

* Dr. Enrique De Rosa Alabaster (MN 63406) specializes in mental health issues. He is a psychiatrist, neurologist, sexologist and forensic doctor

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