I am going to try to do something that may upset a lot of people: to attempt to begin a "scientific" examination of sexual abuse. If you think that trying to do such a thing is too horrible, that one should only condemn, not try to understand, then do not read on. It can really be frightening.



But you are curious, aren't you?

What is "science"? The definition in my dictionary that I like best is this: "Knowledge of facts, phenomena, laws, and proximate causes, gained and verified by exact observation, organized experiment, and ordered thinking." According to the dictionary, the root of the word "science" is the Latin "scire" which simply means "to know."

Why does sexual abuse take place? Why does the abuser need someone weaker on which to practice his (or her) trade? What does the abuse "accomplish" for the abuser? What need does it attempt to satisfy?

Please try to set aside for a moment (not deny) the fears that arise when trying to think about such things. Try to think it through. What happens? Why is it happening?

Well, what happens is that an apparently more "powerful" person inflicts sexual hurt upon a weaker, inexperienced one. It seems that the "abuser" needs to do this. It accomplishes for the abuser the satisfaction of a need to express "love" and at the same time to inflict pain. Why would someone need to do both at the same time?

Maybe the real object of the affair is not the actual victim, but somebody else. The actual victim is chosen because he or she is weak and cannot successfully fight back. The "real" object of the attempt to "love" and simultaneously inflict revenge is seen as too "powerful" to attempt to do this to.

But who do I say is the "real" object of the attempt? Someone in the abuser's past who was the object of an attempt to love, but who rejected and repelled the present abuser's efforts when that abuser was young, who denied the love/sexual nature of the attempt because it was seen as too "bad." A parent or other figure seen as a needed love object. Someone who denied love or inflicted abuse him- or her- self.

So abuse or lack of love propagates itself. The person afflicted by intolerable frustration MUST somehow find satisfaction of the need (or feel that he will die emotionally), and since it seems that it cannot be satisfied directly it is satisfied indirectly, through punishment of someone else.

I contend that it is more effective to understand why something happens if you want to make it stop, than to condemn -- as necessary emotionally as that seems to be. Well, condemn, express outrage, fear, a sense of hurt; that's OK too. But if you also understand, you might be able to do something about it.