The children who grow up with the survival mechanism of dissociation are blessed from memory of the abuse at the time it happens…and are plagued with it decades later when the memories may begin to bleed through the walls of amnesia. A sizable segment of pedophiles know dissociation inside and out and use it to their advantage. What is better for a pedophile than a child who has no memory of being assaulted repeatedly for years? The gift of dissociation to a child is also a gift to a child predator.
The media has bombarded us with incorrect and sensationalized depictions of DID along with propaganda about "false memories" coming from our most wounded victims of child abuse. Why? Because when the child becomes an adult and begins to remember, she may recall her abusers. We can’t have that now, can we? (I use the pronoun “she” because more girls than boys seem to adapt to this amazing protective cloak.)
What is the typical profile of a pedophile? There is none, right? The community leader is as likely to be a pedophile as much as the man lurking on street corners. So who are the victims of long-term child abuse? Primary targets are children who are born into famili
es where one or more primary caregiver is a predator. Sometimes it can be a primary caregiver outside the home—a daycare for several years where abuse is occurring or a next door neighbor where child supervision is lacking. Easy access to the child is a key component. The common factor for these child victims is that abuse begins so early in childhood that DID has occurred predominantly by age six and almost always by age nine according to leading experts on childhood dissociation. Given this definition, victims of incest are candidates for dissociation depending on age of onset of abuse and duration.The child has no control over whether dissociation occurs. The brain becomes overwhelmed and makes the decision. The “scary” names for this survival mechanism are multiple personality disorder or the more current term of dissociative identity disorder (DID). A child traumatized with physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse repeatedly (especially by someone upon whom the child relies for survival) is unable to hold onto two main thoughts simultaneously: I hate my father/mother/abuser. I love my father/mother/abuser. And so there is a split in consciousness. The child’s mind determines whether this split will be “simply” buried in the mind to resurface later in adulthood as a repressed memory…or whether the split becomes dissociative. If the latter is true, the child continues to create dissociative selves to survive in a very cruel and terrifying world. (Refer to forbidden topic for a more detailed explanation of about DID.)
What happens when a woman in her thirties or older who has just been raped, is terrified, and sounds and behaves as a young child when calling the police and/or when the police arrive at the scene? She might be labeled as crazy and any claims of recent abuse dismissed, including rape, and leave her re-traumatized and re-victimized. The best way to treat the woman would be as one would treat a frightened child—with messages of reassurance and safety. Offering a stuffed animal or toy from the home before going to the hospital, would go a long way. Once the child part has calmed down, the police or hospital staff will likely be speaking to very competent adult. But it is the child alter who will have the memory—unless the woman has been in treatment and has some crossover of self-states (sharing memory). Working with a dissociated person will be covered in more detail at another time.
If a child part recalls the abuse, how do you translate that to something that can be prosecuted? This is a tough one. Right now, most of the judicial system is set up to disregard any claims by someone who is “a multiple”. This means the victims know pedophiles the rest of the community does not. The victims also have details of locations and possibly people and automobiles. Yet most police departments, health care workers (including physicians, psychiatrists, and many therapists) are not equipped with knowledge to help work with such victims.
A very sophisticated knowledge exists and is shared worldwide for a large segment of pedophiles. In my own community, among therapists who do work with trauma and dissociation, we are aware of this underground world through similar knowledge of healing clients. It is ugly and sinister and insidious. And it does not appear that anyone is going after it systematically in our nation (as far as I can tell through research). Some successful attempts have been made in some cities to educate and coordinate resources. Therapists trained to work with DID and survivors who have healed are helping to educate law enforcement (and anyone else who will listen in the community). Some trainers are available through the community resources listed to the right.
Pedophiles know that a dissociated child cannot tell others of the abuse because there is no conscious knowledge of the abuse. Pedophiles take advantage of that dissociation. This is known to survivors worldwide but continues to be dismissed thanks to the media propaganda and lack of correct knowledge. No one in that evil world of child abuse wants either a child or an adult survivor of dissociated childhood abuse to be believed.
Dateline: To Catch A Predator. Police, elected officials, teachers, coaches, at least one rabbi, as well as people of the “typical sleazy pedophile profile” and more were convicted of soliciting sex from a minor. Of course the pedophiles at the top of the ladder are going to support dismissing anything recalled by a victim of their own crimes. This is the Catch 22 of the world of child abuse. The very children most hurt by the pedophile community are dismissed frequently when they claim abuse which allows for further abuse of those children to go unchecked.
One step further. Networks of sophisticated pedophiles exist everywhere. (Sophisticated, for purposes of this article, means: “to have knowledge of how to use dissociation in their favor.”) What happens when a dissociated child—a victim of long-term childhood sexual abuse—becomes an adult? These sophisticated pedophiles who are aware of adults still fully dissociated know how to cause a child part to respond. Even more devious is child parts can be called out with a cue (given to the victims by the abusers in a state of terror) for purposes of sexual abuse, trafficking drugs, and other illegal acts without any conscious knowledge on the victim’s part. I invite you to read this paragraph again. It’s mind blowing.
Children who dissociate can be trained to respond like Pavlov’s dog. A pedophile preys on children. We have no word for someone who preys on child alters of an adult. Using a dissociated child state of an adult is insidiously disguised rape. It practically guarantees disbelief if the victim tries to report the abuse once it becomes consciously known.
To these sophisticated pedophiles, a child is not precious life to be cherished. A child is an object to be used for their nefarious purposes. Child porn and sex rings prey on children coming into this world as babies and children kidnapped at an early age. They know how to traumatize an infant or young child systematically to cause dissociation, thus ensuring a child who will likely never tell during most of her lifetime. A sophisticated pedophile is assured of having sex for the victim’s lifetime through child alters as the victim ages, unless or until the victim begins to heal and can pull herself out of a very dangerous environment.
Sophisticated pedophiles use mind altering drugs on their victims, wear masks and costumes, create bizarre scenarios, and use other techniques to try to obliterate any believability when the dissociated adult begins to remember. When a young self state recalls the abuse, it
might be “three gorillas in Santa Claus suits” were raping her. And the damning part of this is she likely was. Many child accounts of abuse include a fictional character (cartoon, superhero, Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, etc.) which tends to be immediately dismissed as a lie or creative imagination. The reality is that is how pedophiles operate. To a child, a person dressed as Santa IS Santa or IS a gorilla (whatever frightening or bizarre costume is used). How many times have you seen movies or television stories based on fact where the predator was the ice cream man or someone dressed as a clown or someone claiming to have a lost puppy or kitten? That is the unsophisticated pedophile. They all know how to draw a child in.In addition, through a terrified child’s eyes, a very large person may be viewed as “a monster” (and/or the person may, in fact, wear a monster mask). The mask doesn't have to be scary. It could be a mask of the president. A terrified child (especially one who has been drugged) will believe the person who just molested him or her was the person depicted on the mask.
So why wouldn't organized child porn groups dress up in robes and wear devil masks and provide other surrounding paraphernalia to share their love of child molestation? It's the perfect cover because we all know that children or adult survivors remembering such things are crazy. I ask you to consider the tactic. It is not the place of abuse, but the abuse that needs to be the focus. Children are being abused systematically to ensure loyalty in the form of dissociative parts.
It is uncanny how every survivor of DID, resulting from long-term early childhood sexual abuse, becomes terrified just in the remembering of initial bits and pieces. The fear of telling can be overwhelming.
Fear of telling is instilled in many horrific ways. Remember, to a child (or child part of an older dissociated person), an adult is powerful. To help ensure secrecy, often the child will be made to believe someone's eyes are watching her every move to ensure she doesn’t try to tell. Layers of messages of fear for telling are uncovered in nearly every survivor to include death to self and, worse to a child, threat of death to a loving parent, sibling or pet.
As a nation we need to understand that victims of sophisticated pedophilia recalling child sexual abuse will appear incredulous intentionally. We need to redirect our focus on the abuse and not the surroundings in which the abuse is remembered. Then maybe the premise on which pedophiles build their porn and sex rings and other dirty dealings might begin to crumble.
What can you believe about surfacing dissociated memories?
Trauma is stored differently than ordinary memories. A recent trauma for the United States and some of the rest of the world was 9/11. Take a moment and allow your mind to relive where you were and notice the detail of that moment seared into your mind. Trauma essentially is an act or incident which becomes frozen in the mind along with all or some of the sensory details (images, tastes, smells, textures, sounds). When it thaws, it surfaces with the stored elements in tact. Post traumatic stress is when one or more external sensory experiences connect in the mind to the original trauma. Fireworks or a car backfiring may trigger a memory with gunfire. The smell of something burning might be a trigger for traumatic memories for both police and firefighters. It is a very strong reliving of whatever was stored. Except when your memory of 9/11 or another personal trauma surfaces, you remember the original event.
Traumatic abuse for someone with DID is also captured with any or all of the following: anything sensory (sight, sound, smell, texture), certain prominent details (the weather that day, viewing the trauma in slow motion, etc.). Someone with DID recalls the same frozen details only long after the incident with no original conscious knowledge and sometimes with no context, at least initially. Most with DID never have validation from perpetrators they remember and often find themselves suddenly cast out of their families for daring to make such "false accusations".
The majority of survivors with DID just want to heal. They are disconnected from their families and, if not, disconnection usually happens because they realize how unhealthy their family dynamic was. Family members, unfortunately, usually only serve to invalidate the memories and add further strain on the torturous healing process. Some survivors have siblings remember as well and have the rare opportunity of validation and support.
As a survivor's healing journey progresses, processing traumatic material becomes less invasive to their lives. And the more dissociated parts that heal and begin to share the same consciousness, the more "depth perception" there is to a memory. Since the survivor had various dissociated self states "viewing" the trauma, as the different parts become known to each other, the new perspective will add to the memory. It is in this manner that survivors often realize the tricks that were played on them. While a child self state may have borne the burden of sexual abuse, an adult self state may have been witnessing--seeing the charade of gorilla suits or even fake deaths. A survivor who is safe to heal and goes through the healing process will have a knowing of what happened to them but feel as if it happened to someone else.
The complex survival skill of dissociation held by a survivor of long-term childhood trauma (and possibly long after childhood) should be honored. Yet, we deny it. We invalidate it. “We” meaning our society as a whole.
Why doesn't a child tell when abuse is or becomes known?Pedophiles use coercion and terror tactics leveled at the age of the child or the dissociated child alter. A child state may have been told crocodiles would eat her if she calls out for help while being molested or thinks to call the police for help. Were there really crocodiles? No. But she believed that and is terrified of that “fact”. Numerous children who have reported abuse have stated the bad touches came from police officers and firefighters. This is done intentionally to create distrust of anyone in a position to help. When a child or an adult survivor tells that police, or firemen, or gorillas, or Santa molested them and is not believed, the perps know the attempts to tell failed. The child or dissociated child self is again at the mercy of the perps with no recourse. This is the cycle from the time the child is trapped in this world of pedophilia. Victims have nowhere to go for help.
The most frequent fear to first come up as initial memories surface is the fear of telling under threat of death. The bravery faced by survivors in overcoming fear after fear seared into the memory fragments and, later, the "bigger picture" of what happened for a single stored trauma, is amazing, let alone years of memories bubbling over and being processed. The reward for healing becomes ostracism by society. It's a lonely road to travel. After making the transition from victim to healed survivor, silence must still be maintained to be accepted as part of the new life she makes for herself.
You can be sure that the same fear tactics and level of terror is perpetrated on children not yet dissociated. I had the privilege of working with a young boy exposed to organized pedophilia while in the birth mother's custody. Fortunately the abuse become known after, what is believed to be, less than two years. He consciously remembered most of the trauma. No dissociation. Just his personal memory. The child was the first conscious client I had to convey the tactics reported by adults recalling childhood abuse. Pedophiles use the same techniques worldwide. You have to wonder how many children are "lost" in working on a new traumatizing technique that doesn't work. My young client was lucky to have an open minded judge who made the right decision for the child's welfare. (Read more this child's story at Believe the Children,"Little Boy Saved".)
What you don't know helps ensure the foundation of this insidious crime
My attempts to involve law enforcement on behalf of survivors with DID have been dismissed. No agency is willing to devote resources to follow up on such unbelievable stories. How can this happen? The perps cue a child part to open the door. “We’ll kill you if you don’t open the door.” No breaking and entry is evident so the victim must be lying about the attacks. Such victims of multi-generational abuse may begin at birth if born into the hands of a predator. It's worse if the predator is part of an organized ring. This type of abuse is global and invisible. (Visit the ISSTD website for more information on the global issue.)With the internet, pedophiles can share their tactics and honed trauma-inducing skills in seconds along with long proven multi-generational tactics. We know the extent of organized pedophiles only from those caught and reported on the news. Anytime we hear news of a child porn sting it is international in scope. And the "safe haven" for many group meetings is behind the guise of people in robes at a real or perceived-to-be-real graveyard along with satanic paraphernalia. How long are we going to let children remembering such abuse continue to be victimized without our seeing the perfect organized pedophilia set up?
It is my feeling so incensed at this situation that has inspired me to write…to share…to ask the good guys of society to look behind the well funded media-based fear and lies and see the reality. I don't expect you to believe this concept without questioning it. I urge anyone who was sufficiently interested to read this far to look into what the known experts of dissociation have to say. If a single police officer, rape crisis worker, physician, psychiatrist, therapist, or community leader educates him or herself and models for others in their profession and community, the ripple of healing will have begun for our society.
Many resources are available on dissociation. My favorite initial source is ISSTD which has information geared toward each segment of society: survivors, social workers, therapists, educators. Please go back and read the basics in Forbidden Topic if what is written here has overwhelmed you. At the very least, consider the possibility. What if it is true? What would that mean to you and your family and your community?
And if you are questioning what I've said, why isn't the same questioning being applied to proponents of "false memories" which causes society to immediately dismiss the existence of DID and the memories of those abused. Why is there fear a child/adult child will remember abuse if the parents are innocent? Something doesn't make sense.
The world would have you believe that survivors of abuse who remember such atrocities as "satanic cults" have distorted memories that cannot be believed, wild imaginations, or magical therapists who implanted a lifetime of memories into a person's head. Let's drop the charade of the cults. Yes, organized pedophilia uses that as a cover so that is what survivors remember. That's why it is the dirtiest secret behind child abuse. If we, as a united nation against child abuse, figure it out, they will no longer have free reign over our children.
It takes all helping arms of a community to come together to begin bringing down the walls these child predators have been hiding behind very effectively for generations. No one wants this in their back yard. The good people of the world do not want it on this planet.
Please visit Know Dissociation for further information.