hazel, it is absolutely never your fault when someone abuses you. that is victim blaming. the problem is with the abuser. with families, dysfunction goes right down the family line manytimes. your parents probably came from abusive & co-dependent families and so treated you the same way. it sounds like there is sexism in your family as well where the men got treated better than the women. i think one of the hardest things to accept is that we didn't do anything to cause the abuse and so there is no way we could have prevented it.