Finding out about the abuse your abuser suffered.

***Triggers***

Both of my parents were abusive to me from an early age into adulthood. My mother used to purposely mess up my room, lie and tell my father I hadn't cleaned it, and then encourage him to beat me. My father was very violent often and some of the beatings have left permanent issues. If he wasn't beating me he was telling verbally and emotionally abusive telling me things like, "It's your fault if you get raped." In response to me wearing t-shirts, or my cheerleader uniform.

Anyway, I had to stop speaking to everyone in my family. It was the only way I could even begin to process everything that was done to me. I moved to another country and cut all ties.

Recently, after several years of not speaking to them, I decided to find some closure and contacted them. I wasn't sure what I was looking for. They've been verbally rude and verbally abusive at times, but I feel much stronger and able to ignore any b.s they try with me. I have not seen them in person, but have spoken to them a few times over the phone.

Today, my father told me somethings about his childhood. His mother is dying and he is feeling overwhelmed. He told me his father used to tie him up on a tree when he was little and beat him. These beatings often caused him to pee blood. My father went through kidney failure and a kidney transplant 9 years ago. I don't know if those horrific beatings took a toll on his body, but somehow it feels related.

When he told me about some of the beatings I was shocked. I asked my mother if she knew and she told me that when they first got married my dad would wake up with night sweats screaming and crying.

I felt my heart drop as they told me all of that. My dad brushed it all off saying "It's fine, I'm fine. It's over now", but I could hear the sadness of his "inner child".

I have compassion for the little boy he was. I understand that none of what he did as an adult can be completely excused by his childhood, but it just feel so awful to know what happened to him.

His mother, who's on her death bed has no remorse. None what so ever. It's an awful situation.

Now that I know some of my father's story, I guess I now see where all his rage and anger was coming from, but I don't know how to organize or sort through all this emotion now...it feels so strange. I keep feeling like the wind has been knocked out of me when I think about what he told me today.

Anyway, has anyone else here learned about their abusers childhood? If so, how did it affect your point of view and opinion towards them?

I do not know many details about my parents' childhoods, but I do know each was traumatized. I will likely never understand why neither of them could later take a good look at their own errors, own up to them and try some corrective action, yet I do understand they were raised in settings where nothing from behind closed doors was ever discussed or shared with anyone. My grandmother had once told my mother she had something from the past she wanted to talk about, but she never came through on that even though my mother had later asked her about that more than once...and I think that silence was part of what kept my own mother quiet about her own stuff. When I was young, my dad used to call his father "Daddy" and almost never missed giving him a weekly phone call from a quiet corner of the house, but I have no idea what they might have been talking about. In my dad's case, however, I think the worst parts of his childhood took place in the streets and alleys where he was often bullied and abused quite badly by others his own age. Overall, I am no closer to perfect than either of them and I hold no grudges or complaints other than occasionally wishing someone before my own time had been the first (rather than myself) to begin trying to break our family's Dysfunction Syndrome (my term).

I have knowledge of what my parents endured.
I have no sympathy. My parents are both educated and affluent. They are not stupid. They could have gotten help.

I have learned of the abuses my parents suffered. it helped me understand why they were the way they were and why they did the things they did. No, it wasn't an excuse for their behavior. Their acts were and will always be criminal. But it helped me to understand. They didn't do those things to us because of us. They did those things to us because of them. Because of their life experiences.
It was that understanding that was the most helpful for us.

Abusers are reacting to whatever was done to them as children, and take out that anger on someone else. Frequently, they seem to not be conscious as to what happened; their abuse has nothing to do with the abused, and everything to do with the abuser. Sadly, as children we do not know that and take on THEIR blame and shame.

Hurt people hurt other people.

Over time I have learned about things my parents went through in their childhoods. It's sad to sit and listen because things slowly come together in what they tried to do in spite of the things they lived through that "hurt" them.

Oddly enough often the educated can be even worse in that these so called titles simply give them a sense of deserving the power to make judgements and be critical instead of these individuals understanding their own "faults" that can be hurtful. AND, being affluent can serve to an individual being more disconnected from then actually being in a position where they can actually "relate" to challenges and actually have the ability to "respect" how someone is accomplishing in spite of significant challenges. The ability to respect "value" can be absent/lost and that can end up causing a lot of harm.

I know my father was abused. It didn't give him the right to hurt me and my brother, though. He's been gone for a while now.