Witnessing Child Abuse: A self-examination of the thoughts and feelings

I was walking down the street just this afternoon today, I passed a woman with a child who couldn't have been younger than 8. I did not hear the entire conversation, just her mother saying "Right that's it I am not going to talk to you anymore." A spark of anger lit up within me the moment the mother said this, I thought "what a disgusting way to speak to your daughter." My anger increased and sadness grew in me when the child immediately began to cry, she was obviously very hurt by what her mother had said to her. I felt so sorry for her. Then the mother begins to chastise her for crying "Don't you start doing this now!" But the girl continues to weep and bawl. My anger and sadness increase hearing the mother say this, I thought "what a despicable human being for actively ignoring and putting down her child's emotions like this." Then the mother says "You're going to get a smack if you don't stop." My anger really rises hearing this, the mother begins a countdown "3, 2. . ." But I turn immediately and tell her "Oi, there's no need to threaten her with violence." Before I could even finish my sentence this woman was shaking her head at me, shaking her hands, she didn't want to know.

It was at this point that I just felt so horrified, at this point where this woman was shaking her head at me triggered a flash back to my own childhood, of my pain and my suffering that was inflicted on me being ignored and minimised, yet being in so much need of being heard. This is my instinct about the matter because it seems to have been the most shocking, 'traumatic' part if you will of the whole event for me. All of my emotions around this event are so intense, it is hard to pick out what is traces of my own traumatic childhood and what is out of sympathy for this child and anger towards this woman. It was tragic to watch her walking away. I felt an intense desperation, but desperate for what I am not sure, desperate to be heard seems to be the only answer, "what can I do? How can I help? How can I make this vile b*tch listen to me?" I thought to myself in anger.

I felt even more anger when I realised that this woman could predict what it was I was going to say, as she began shaking her head at me before I could even finish my sentence, she knows she is evil but wants to ignore this fact. It is so enraging because if she knows she is evil but still continues to treat her child in such a disgraceful manner it only makes her all the more despicable.

I was at such a loss.

An examination of this is important to me because I believe that my own childhood trauma was brought to surface from the moment I heard this woman telling her daughter she was not worthy of being spoken to, to the moment she told her daughter she was worthy of physical cruelty and to the moment in particular where she disregarded my words as unimportant.

It is liberating to understand that some, if not many, of my intense feelings around this event have their roots in my own history. What I think I find hardest to accept is that this child is in a prison, alone, frightened, sad and most likely full of despair, but I cannot do anything about it, and no one else is going to do anything about it. It is an important reminder of the sympathy I need for myself; in the same way this child has no one, I too was very alone, frightened and full of despair as I grew up.

Sometimes I wonder, if I were fully healed, would I have the desire to confront these evil people in the first place? Are they really going to change? Is one person speaking out really going to help this child in and among all the years of torment and abuse they are suffering? On top of the fact that I think it is rare that the child actually hears me say anything to the parent. Perhaps I am just reliving the abuse I suffered by attempting to be heard by all these abusive people that really just don't want to listen, in the same way no one wanted to listen to me when I was growing up.

Maybe the anger I have towards my own parents and the sadness I have for my inner child is simply projected onto these situations, and I'm not spending enough time really placing the sadness and anger where it belongs. . . In my own life, a large part of me certainly thinks that this may be what is happening. Though whether or not this means it would be a good idea for me to stop speaking out at this stage I do not know.