Initially Freud believed them and attempted to stretch his mind to encompass what he called ‘this astonishing thing’: that a substantial proportion of refined, educated Viennese men were systematically raping their daughters, nieces, granddaughters. Nearly every one of his female patients - who were suffering from all kinds of crippling emotional and psychosomatic symptoms - reported that they had been sexually assaulted -as children. To suggest - as Freud did - that their secret desire is to have sex with their fathers is to be totally blind to the evidence.įreud, in fact, has a great deal to answer for. With all the usual sources of love and security undermined, the horrors of home are simply intolerable and the only alternative is escape. In the case of the ‘delinquent’ incest victim, or the girl who goes on the streets to earn a living, it is a question of her having nowhere else to go. And their voices have been ignored for far too long - with terrible consequences.
One in four families means millions of young girls. Perhaps, on reading this, you will be tempted to dismiss the evidence as being too shocking to be true. They indicate that as many as one in 16 families may contain a girl toddler being sexually abused by an adult male. Again, it takes a while for statistics like this to sink in. Research from Denver in the US found that half the victims were under ten and half of those were less than five years of age. Two-thirds of Israeli victims were less than ten years old and one in sixteen of victims in an Indian survey were aged between six months and six years. Other research shows that the abuse can - and does - begin as soon as the girl-child is born. And the figures are similar in the UK and Australia. Kinsey’s 1953 study in the US found incest in 24 per cent of families. And in the overwhelming majority of cases (80 - 90 per cent) it is girl-children that are the victims: sexually abused by fathers, uncles, grandfathers, brothers, fathers-in-law, neighbours, family friends.* In Cairo a survey in 1973 found between 33 and 45 per cent of families contained daughters who had been raped, molested, ‘interfered with’ by a relative or close family friend. Everywhere studies have been done the evidence is the same. In case you can’t believe your eyes, I’ll repeat that statistic: one in four.
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