Words Can Hurt

By Anne Cohn Donnelly, D.P.H.

Emotional abuse, inflicted by a trusted adult, can shatter a child's self-image and leave scars that last a lifetime.

"Sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me!" Unfortunately, that childhood refrain couldn't be further from the truth.

Think of what happens when some harried and thoughtless adult flings words like these at a child: "Hey, stupid, don't you know how to listen?" or "You're worthless; why don't you find some other place to live?" or "You disgust me; just shut up."

Sometimes it's an unending refrain like, "I wish you were never born," "You're more trouble than you're worth," or "You can't do anything right."

The words may be uttered by any adult - a parent, teacher, favorite relative, even a Scout leader. Coming from a trusted adult, they can hit as hard as a fist, sometimes much harder.

No bones are broken, but the words leave vicious emotional scars. Inflicted repeatedly for months or years, the bruises heal slowly and can shatter a youngster's self-image, turning the child into an emotional cripple for life.

Children pay a terrible price for emotional abuse from parents and other adults. Some live with bursts of rage every day or wild mood swings. Other children get no attention at all, even when they most need a hug or a caring word. Children need to feel cared for and safe. And they need to feel worthwhile.

The many forms of emotional abuse all have this description in common: The victims are children, their personalities have been attacked and sense of personal value is undermined.

They're left feeling unloved, unsafe and not worthwhile.

In the last decade we've learned that emotional abuse is deep-seated, widespread and preventable. This article answers the most-asked questions about emotional abuse, including what it is and isn't, why it happens and what can be done about it. We also offer tips to help adults avoid being emotional abusive, as well as suggestions for talking to children who have experienced emotional abuse.

What is emotional abuse?

Basically, it's the constant belittling, criticizing and pulling down of a child, most often done verbally. This maltreatment, which results in impaired psychological growth and development, includes rejection, intimidation, or humiliation of a child and chaotic, bizarre, or hostile acts which produce fear or guilt.

Is emotional abuse against the law?

Almost every state includes a definition of mental injury in its child abuse reporting laws. This makes chronic, serious emotional abuse a crime and thus a reportable offense.

Such cases are rarely successfully prosecuted, however, because it's difficult, often impossible, to prove that emotional abuse has occurred and that a child has suffered severe psychological harm.

Nevertheless, reporting such cases to the authorities is an important action, because it can result in vital help being offered to the family involved.

Why do adults emotionally abuse children?

The reasons are often the same ones that cause physical abuse. Adults feel isolated, under stress, unable to cope. A lack of knowledge about a child's needs or abilities, extreme expectations of a child and an inability to empathize can lead to emotional abuse.

A troubled childhood characterized by abuse can be a contributing factor, as adults simply repeat behavior they experienced as children. Low self-esteem can also contribute and an adult feeling badly about himself takes it out on someone smaller and defenseless.

Any adult involved in a relationship with a child is a potential emotional abuser. And those with the strongest relationship with a child have the greatest power to hurt.

What sets emotional abuse apart from physical abuse is that emotional abusers are rarely aware of their verbal assaults on a child. They simply never stop to listen to what they're saying or consider its impact on a child.

i.e., when an adult says, "I wish you were never born," what is probably meant is, "What you're doing right now is really annoying me and I've had a hard day and I wish you would stop." But a child can't interpret the meaning behind the hurtful words and may soon come to believe them.

Fortunately, emotional abuse is somewhat more preventable than other forms of abuse. That's because many adults don't understand how their negative actions damage a child emotionally; an increased awareness on their part can result in a positive change in their behavior.

How harmful is emotional abuse compared to physical abuse?

Emotional abuse can be even more harmful. Children can't show their scars right away, so the abuse usually continues longer than physical abuse, much the same as sexual abuse goes on for a long time because a child is afraid to tell anyone. As a result, the scars from both emotional and sexual abuse are often deeper and more hidden and come back to haunt people later in their lives.

Emotionally abused children often grow into adults with low self-esteem or self-worth, who're less likely to accomplish much in their lives.

Antisocial behavior, withdrawal, truancy and other school difficulties and even suicidal tendencies aren't unusual among young people who suffered serious emotional abuse as children. And, of course, those same young people may go on to abuse their own children.

Of course, not all emotionally abused children grow up with such difficulties; some turn out just fine. Perhaps along the way some other adult; a relative, teacher, Scout leader, friend or series of friends, helps them understand that they're deserving of love and praise.

They gain a perspective that helps them realize the hurtful words of one adult aren't true. Or, an emotionally abused child may receive more formal help. Therapy, individual or group, can help ameliorate the effects of emotional abuse.

What are the signs of emotional abuse?

Many abused children appear sullen or withdrawn, depressed or listless. They may not smile very often and appear to have little joy in their lives.

These children may be unwilling or unable to trust other adults or even their peers. They may act out their emotional abuse by being emotionally or physically abusive with their peers or with adults.

They can be the bully of the troop or classroom, yelling and hassling others. Or they can be the child who shies away from any challenge or new experience, certain that he will fail, as he so often has been told.

What can be done about emotional abuse?

We can all do certain things to help prevent emotional abuse. We all need to understand that

(1) words can hurt as hard as a fist

(2) children believe what their parents and trusted adults tell them

(3) adults should stop and listen to what they're saying to children (they might not believe their ears!)

(4) angry or frustrated adults ought to take time out rather than taking it out on a child.

As adults we can work to stop using words that hurt and start using words that help. We can also reach out to other adults: friends, neighbors, relatives, who we know are emotionally abusing a child.

We could offer to give the adult some time off, by taking the child for an afternoon. We could be more direct & say "I remember how much it hurt me when my parents yelled at me like that." Or we could find a time to talk directly to the child, assuring him that he isn't alone & help is available.

Finally, if we think that a child is being seriously emotionally abused, if the damage is evident & the adult makes no effort to change, we could report the abuse to the authorities.

Emotional abuse is an insidious, deeply-damaging form of abuse which can harm a child for a lifetime. We all have a role to play in its prevention. (For more information write: Prevent Emotional Abuse, Box 2866E, Chicago, Ill 60690.)

Pause Before Lashing Out

You don't have to lift a hand to hurt a child. Words can inflict wounds that last a lifetime. The next time everyday pressures build up to where you feel like lashing out, try something else:

• Put your hands over your mouth. Count to 10, or better, 20.
• Stop in your tracks. Press your lips together & breathe deeply.
• Phone a friend.
• Say the alphabet out loud.
• Have someone watch the children while you go outside & take a leisurely walk.
• Splash cold water on your face.
• Close your eyes & imagine you're hearing what your child hears.
• Turn on the radio or TV.
• Hug a pillow.

Remember: take time out; don't take it out on your child.

Offer Words That Help

Words can hurt and help. Which ones do you use?

Hurting words slash at a child's self-confidence:

• "You're stupid."

• "What a slob!"

• "You're disgusting."

• "You're worthless."

Helping words show you care and make a child feel worthwhile and secure:

• "You can do it."

• "Great job."

• "You're beautiful."

• "I'm proud of you."

Children, like adults, want to feel safe, loved and lovable. If you find yourself hurting a child by what you say or do, here are some simple rules for turning things around:

• Spend time with the child. Tell him he is important.

• Be someone a child can count on.

This doesn't mean you never get angry, but rather that the child knows you care about him even when you're angry.

• Praise a child's talents, strengths, special gifts.

• Teach children to cope with failure. No one can do everything well. Failures are a part of life and a challenge to do better.

• When a child does something wrong, don't tell a child he is bad. Tell him the specific behavior is bad.

• Help children think about and solve their own problems. Let them know you're available to talk with them about their feelings and concerns.

• Respect their feelings and thoughts. Children are people, too.

Talking to Children About Emotional Abuse

Children need to know there are things they can do to help deal with situations of emotional abuse. Here's a guide for talking to them:

If abuse is from a parent, remember that parents are people, too. Your parents love you, but sometimes they don't know how to show it. Sometimes they're worried or afraid, or just plain angry. Don't judge them too harshly; it's not easy being a parent.

Find a quiet time to talk. Sometimes parents have trouble listening to kids when the family is in a uproar. They'll hear you better when things are calm.

Write a note. Make a list of what bothers you. Giving your parents a note telling your side of things may be easier than trying to say it directly. And if you can't write it down, perhaps a brother or sister, aunt or uncle, grandparent or other trusted adult can be your goodwill ambassador. Find some way to let your parents know how you feel.

Talk to someone you trust. Sometimes another person can help you see things more clearly. Maybe a relative, family friend, teacher, or clergyman can help you sort out your feelings. Remember, you're not alone; there's help out there & people do care.

If the abuse is from another adult, talk to your parent about it. Enlist his or her help in doing something about it; you don't have to solve this problem all by yourself.

Helping Children Resolve Emotional Hurts

By Naomi Aldort

Dahlia was running around the house screaming and crying. "I hate her! I hate her! I will never play with her again!" Finally, her steps slowed and she told her father what had happened.

He listened attentively. When she stopped, he asked, "Is there anything else?" Dahlia added more details and resumed crying bitterly. Father listened. When Dahlia stopped talking, he acknowledged,

"It must hurt to be teased like this by your best friend Tina.

Dahlia accepted her father's embrace and support as she sobbed some more in his arms. Then as suddenly as the storm of tears began, she was finished.

She got up and cheerfully announced, "Daddy, did you know that tomorrow Tina and I are going together to the beach? We're building a log house there with Adam and Tom. I'll tell Tina before we go that I won't ruin her work again and sure she'll be nice to me."

Why was this encounter so successful?

How did Dahlia get over her upset so completely and become aware of her responsibility in the matter on her own?

There were 3 main ingredients in her father's reaction that worked:

1) Attention or acting attentively

2) Respect

3) Trust

He gave his daughter full attention and took her seriously as she poured out her feelings. He respected her by not intervening with words of wisdom, advice or help.

He validated the feelings she expressed. And he trusted her to do and say what she needed in order to lead herself toward resolution of her emotions.

In other words, he followed her lead and supported her as she resolved her own upset until her cup of anguish was "empty" and she was ready to get back into life. Some may be surprised that not only did she recover her spirit, but also admitted her own cause in the matter and made a commitment to "clean up her act."

It would have been so tempting for her father to inquire, "What did you do to cause this?" or to make a suggestion such as, "Maybe you can get together and talk about it."

But his trust and support gave Dahlia the power to generate her own insight.

If words of validation bring on a wave of fury in your child, remember silence.(giving silence is found on the giving page) The child needs to be listened to and giving the gift of silence is often the best way to show love.

True validation with no hidden judgment or advice helps the child to express her feelings thru crying, which leads to emotional recovery. Sometimes it may generate rage, which when freely expressed will unleash the pain as well.

Even though a dramatic expression of emotions may feel uncomfortable to us, to the child it's a healthy way to release the pent-up emotion.

I've more than once listened to vows of hate and anguish between siblings who screamed, "I'll never play with him!" I said nothing but "Oh" at the very end and was always rewarded with the sound of laughter ringing from the playroom within minutes.

When hateful feelings are expressed in the validation of silent listening, the child can move through the emotion and experience love and happiness.

Parents often pose this question about their child's chosen form of expression. "Yes," they say, "but what if the child is being destructive or hurting someone in his anger & anguish?"

First of all, we need to consider what destructiveness is. The opportunities for children to heal themselves from emotional hurt are many & abound in everyday life for every child. If the action is safe for everyone - let the child do it!

In fact, a parent can increase the value of a safe aggressive act by supporting the child in feeling powerful. Most children's agonies come from feeling helpless, controlled & powerless.

One day when one of my sons was 4, he emptied his chest of clothes onto the floor with glee. I responded with a dramatic, "Oh No!" which gave him the sense of power he was looking for. I reorganized it only so that he could repeat the "therapy."

I trusted in his need to do so & in the usefulness of the process. After 2 months of this game & other safe "power games," the behavior disappeared & with it a lot of jealousy-related stress & disruptive behavior.

The same is true in regard to children's aggressive games with each other. Often what shows up as a fight with a victim is really a very effective therapy for all involved. When no one's really hurt, staying out of the way is best. Again, trust is the rule. If things aren't safe, someone will come seeking assistance.

When a baby is involved or we're otherwise concerned, we can follow our instincts to glance & check on them to make sure they're safe, but we should stay unseen when possible.

There are many other examples of safe aggression as well as activities that can easily be redirected to safe ones. Tearing books can be directed to a pile of old magazines, painting walls to art work on paper.

A simple need to break things can be redirected to making kindling from the wood pile outside or breaking some useless material we intend to throw away. When it's safe it isn't really destructive.

Contrary to the concerns of many parents, children distinguish well between the support of an emotional need & blanket permission to destroy. They'll not become destructive or disrespectful of valued property.

The opposite will result. Letting their need pour out freely & safely will allow them to be peaceful & respectful of possessions we care about & yet remain clear about the distinction between what can be broken & what shouldn't.

Our fears aren't only unfounded, but also get in the way of helping our children.

A real destructiveness is one that's unsafe or too difficult to repair. In these cases, guidance & special attention should be given to the source of the problem. A destructive behavior signifies a great pain & need.

It's when they behave the worst that children need our love the most. A child needs to know that expressing anger thru words, tears, screams, or safe aggressive actions is fine, but hurting others or destroying things is absolutely not acceptable & needs to be stopped.

The destructive child needs our help in dealing with his source of pain. He needs our compassion, love & lots of time. But first, the aggressive unsafe act needs to be stopped immediately, without hurting or insulting the child.

This may be very difficult at times since our own pain drives us to anger despite ourselves. We need to treat ourselves with the same compassion we do our child. Like the child, we can't allow our anger to hurt another & at the same time we need an outlet to our self-expression.

In my work w/parents I've found that yelling actually doesn't help us deal w/our pain - it's a cover-up. When we do control our impulse to yell or punish & respond compassionately, we sometimes are fortunate to feel the pain & even cry.

Another factor is the modeling to our child. Children lose control just like adults, but more easily & have less experience in handling themselves when upset. When we respond to their out-of-control behavior in a gentle & loving way, we're showing them by example a model of self-control & compassion they can emulate.

Children look to us for reassurance that when they grow up they'll be more able to control their own impulses. Seeing us out-of-control toward them is therefore very discouraging & disabling - especially on top of the personal hurt this causes them.

If we can't control our pain-based impulses how can they?

When we stop an unsafe, out-of-control act in a gentle manner, we send our child a triple reassurance:

1) "I can count on my parents to help me when I lose control."

2) "When I grow up I'll be able to control myself & act w/compassion like my parents do."

3) "My parent sees my need. I'm not bad; it's my action that's wrong. I'm loved & lovable & like them, I'll learn to express myself freely but safely."

It's therefore best to stop an unsafe act gently & clearly. A child needs a reminder that feelings can be expressed but not acted on. An aggressor can be lovingly removed from the act, hugged (when receptive) & told: "I see you're very upset, (angry, scared). I'll help you vent your feelings safely & resolve your needs."

When there's a victim, we should tend to him first, w/out scolding the aggressor. The aggressor will benefit from watching our compassion toward the hurt child & is likely to feel remorse. Scolding or punishing the aggressor, on the other hand, takes the opportunity for developing remorse away from him.

Instead, he may feel rage & self-hatred.

When Lennon was 4 1/2, he became very annoying & sometimes aggressive toward his I 1/2-year-old brother, Oliver. Since this was a new behavior in our house, we didn't think much about it initially & just brushed him off w/orders to stop it - in a stern voice.

Two weeks later, when alone w/Lennon, I expressed my love for him & told him what a wonderful person he was. I was shaken by his response: "You don't love me. I'm terrible."

"Why?" I asked anxiously & he answered: "Because I hurt Oliver." A child who was never punished & had always been a cheerful delight was wilting in front of my eyes w/jealousy & was developing a low self-image.

That day I started hugging him every time he disturbed or hurt Oliver. I know this sounds like a reward - but only to us grown-ups. A child who hurts isn't experiencing himself as being bad. He's experiencing a deep pain, loneliness, lovelessness & loss of control.

I responded to his cry for help & love by giving him what he needed. My initial reaction was based on fear & was therefore counter-productive, When I ordered Lennon to stop disturbing his brother - then & only then were his feelings of being "bad" internalized & reinforced.

Rather, it means that there's more to the cause than meets the eye. We need to search, or seek the help of someone who can help us do the detective work into our child's soul. Our love & compassion are our greatest assets in these emotional adventures.

We may find it difficult to put our own emotional reactions aside - our anger, our upset & our unresolved problems from our own childhood. These are real obstacles to helping our children. When reaction seems unavoidable, I remove myself from the scene (not necessarily physically), take a breath & "time out" for myself.

I try to get in touch w/the trigger of my emotions & cry, or just calm down enough to be able to attend to my child, keeping my ego out of the way.

When validated & listened to, children unload emotional upsets in their own creative ways. It's important to allow crying to take its full course (while giving the child our full attention) & to develop attentiveness to tantrums & rage expressions.

Being noisy, giggly & screechy are also emotionally beneficial. Other than moving ourselves to a different room, or asking the children to keep their play in another room (or outside) - these have no "cure".

Rather, these behaviors are the cure & the child's way of healing many of life's upsets. Children are simply magical at directing their own dramatic moments. We can trust them & learn from them.

When we face behavior in our children that's upsetting to us, we have two choices. We can respond from our own fear (which may lead to words & acts that invalidate) or we can empathize w/the child (which is a response of love).

Although sometimes parents may need a counselor's assistance w/children, developing trust & the ability to listen & validate can go a long way toward a harmonious family life & emotionally healthy, self-reliant children.

We have to ask ourselves:

Nothing, however, stirs up more passionate outrage than sexual abuse. Witness the media coverage of the current scandals in the Catholic Church. When defrocked priest John Geoghan of Boston was sentenced to 10 years hard labor for one incident of fondling a 10 year-old boy at a public swimming pool, the punishment was generally viewed as perfectly fitting the crime

(Geoghan is alleged to have committed far more heinous acts w/ many other children, but at the time of sentencing, these hadn't been proven).

Death itself is often considered the only appropriate punishment for child molesters, who are viewed as so despicable that they draw the violent contempt of even the most sociopathic criminals while in prison.

When it comes to the sexual abuse of children, something seems out of balance in our collective scales of crime & punishment. The California judge who heard the case of accused child molester Jerome Wilhoit told his courtroom during Wilhoit's arraignment that if someone had molested his own daughter, his attitude would be, "you touch her, you die."

The trial was on the front page. The fact that Wilhoit wasn't only acquitted on all charges but later judged to be "factually innocent" didn't quite make it to page one.

We all remember the infamous case from the 1980's involving the McMartin Pre-School, a case lasting 6 years, costing the State of California 15 million dollars & in which over 400 children were interviewed by so-called "experts."

The defendants were acquitted on all counts. And who isn't aware of the danger posed by satanic cults that kidnap & use children for dark sexual purposes? No one, except perhaps for the FBI who has yet to find hard evidence of the existence of even one of them.

I realize that for every instance of a false accusation based on false memory, there are dozens of cases of unreported abuse & that the advent of child abuse reporting laws in the 1970's & 1980's were an important victory for child protection advocates & for feminists seeking to bring domestic violence of all kinds out of the patriarchal closet in which it had always been hidden.

Nevertheless, I think that the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Obviously, child molestors need to be apprehended & punished & treated whenever possible - in order to protect their current & future victims. But our collective outrage at sexual abuse so dwarfs our recognition of other forms of childhood trauma that such outrage begins to look like more than a simple concern for the real victims of the pedophile.

For example, if you ask most psychotherapists to describe the most common & devastating traumas they see in the lives of the children they treat or in the childhoods of their adult patients, sexual molestation wouldn't usually be at the top of their lists.

In statistics released by the Department of Health & Human Services in 2002, over 60% of the officially reported cases of maltreatment of children involved neglect, while barely 10% involved sexual abuse. In my own practice, I see the damage done by neglect & other forms of emotional deprivation much more than I do the trauma of sexual abuse.

"Neglect" is a simple label for a complicated situation. It doesn't only refer to the absence of a parent but to the presence of a disturbed attachment as well. At the least, children require consistency & empathy.

By virtue of either psychological or social pathology, many parents can't provide a secure & protective connection to their children, systematically ignore their children's emotional cues, resort to violence or shaming as forms of discipline, or use their children to mirror & remedy their own attachment needs.

Some social critics like James Kincaid have suggested that we romanticize the sexual innocence of childhood in order to deny our awareness of the nuances of erotic desire that do exist between adults and children. Since the time of Freud, the sexuality of children has been hotly debated.

Most experts - and many parents - would agree that children are sexual beings, that they have the capacity for sexual pleasure, even if they don't always understand how to regulate it. And there's equally no doubt that adults sometimes have sexual feelings for children.

Any parent who has watched a son or daughter come of age is aware of how powerful this pull can be and to what lengths both parties go to avoid this embarrassing tension. Certainly there can be no doubt about the sexual energy inherent in adolescence, since it's constantly exploited by advertisers who use images of nubile girls and boys to sell everything from jeans to Pepsi.

Since our consciences are especially intolerant of incestuous forms of sexuality, the scene is set for us to externalize the conflict and direct our punitive judgments at the pedophile rather than our own impulses. We defensively sanitize and desexualize ourselves and our children in order to reassure ourselves and others that we are free of any desires even remotely connected to childhood sexuality.

Nevertheless, I don't think that this theory of guilt and projection adequately explains the vituperative intensity of our society's hatred of the pedophile. Instead, I think that our defense of childhood virtue and innocence is so extreme because it bundles with it all of the ways that we, ourselves, feel - but can't acknowledge feeling - afraid, rejected, unfairly taken advantage of, betrayed, subordinated to the self-interests of others and helpless.

At the deepest level of our psyches, we can't compassionately face our own innocent victimization and instead, project it onto the picture we create of the sexually virtuous and naïve child.

Both our innocence and its denial began in our childhoods and continue throughout our lives. We were innocent as children in the sense that our familial environment impacted us more than we impacted it. In spite of the fact that children bring temperamental and genetic givens to the family, the power relationships between parents and children are unequal.

Parents have an awesome power to define what's real, what's moral and what's possible. They help us acquire strengths but they also inflict, wittingly or unwittingly, psychological injuries.

And yet, as children, we take responsibility for what befalls us.

We resist acknowledging our own innocence. It's said that people would, by and large, prefer to be "sinners in heaven than saints in hell." For this reason, abused children often report that they provoked their parents' violence and adults often qualify accounts of their own early beatings w/the caveat that they were "difficult" children.

Thus, even as children we can't let ourselves feel innocent because then our caregivers would have to be guilty and that recognition is intolerable. It would mean that we're not protected, that the attachment necessary to our psychological survival is absent or even dangerous and that the beings upon whom we helplessly depend might, at times, mean to harm us.

It isn't even necessary that these perceptions be objectively true -children often think ego-centrically and assume that their parents' behavior is always provoked by or in response to them - because it's the subjective experience of parental failures and pathology that's frightening and leads to self-blaming.

And yet American society isn't actually a meritocracy in which limitations on our social and economic standing reflects a personal failure any more than our suffering as children resulted from being "bad."

Our society has a class structure, as well as racial and gender biases and thus our self blame is as misplaced in public life as it was in our early familial life.

While we may not be able to view ourselves as victims deserving of protection, we have no trouble affording this status to sexually innocent children.

The child molester, after all, is doing something so unnatural, so forbidden, that even the most harshly zealous advocate of personal responsibility has to admit that these particular little victims didn't deserve what they got.

We can identify more easily with the sexually innocent child and feel the correspondingly appropriate protectiveness because, unlike our own victimization, there's no doubt whatsoever that sexual abuse of a child by an adult is undeserved.

In other words, we develop an enchanted view of the sexual innocence of childhood in order to locate a part of ourselves in a place that is finally above reproach.

As opposed to the intimate violation of trust and betrayal inherent in the sexual victimization of a child by an adult, the corrosive effects of rejection and neglect, as well as the traumas of social deprivation, seem to be more general and abstract.

As a result, it's easier to distance ourselves and mute our awareness of the equally horrible suffering and truncation of psychological growth attendant on these non-sexual violations.

Instead, we can deny and minimize it by thinking such things as "well, I had it tough, too, but managed to survive," or by cynically dismissing problems of attachment as the type of issues about which 90% of New Yorkers talk with their psychoanalysts.

Ideals about "personal responsibility" are often promoted nowadays as antidotes to the ethos of the Sixties and Seventies in which people allegedly looked for handouts, expected government to take care of them, blamed the dominant culture for every injury, slight, or disadvantage that befell them and if they could afford it, leapt onto the couches of their therapists blaming Mommy and Daddy for everything.

However, my experience as a psychologist teaches me that people usually shift into a blaming and complaining mode when they're trying to feel less guilty, less responsible and less self-blaming.

People complain about and attack institutions that discriminated against them, not in order to absolve themselves of personal responsibility, but to counteract the corrosive effects of self-blaming.

Most people have such an ingrained sense that they're responsible for their own suffering, such skepticism about their own legitimate claims of innocence and victimization, that blaming "the system" and demanding restitution of some kind is a progressive and liberatory step - even if sometimes hyperbolic - toward a more balanced view of the causes of their condition. Unfortunately, the ideology of self-blame and meritocracy still haunts us.

The hyperbolic responses that we see toward sex with children are important to understand and modulate in order to develop a clearer and more socially-critical picture of the damage done to children today.

While these exaggerated responses aren't universal but only a tendency (after all, if we all suffer from self-blaming & if the demonization of the pedophile represents, in part, a displacement of our own disavowed innocence, then why doesn't everyone join in vengeful drum-beating around this issue?), they're crucial for the Left to confront because inflammatory rhetoric about sexual predators is increasingly part of a more general attack on sexuality by the religious Right.

Judith Levine's recent book Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex, brilliantly analyzes this movement in all of its incarnations: 

• Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America's Culture and Family Institute in Washington, D.C., condemned it as "very evil."

• Tim Pawlenty, majority leader of the Minnesota House of Representatives, labeled it "trash" and demanded that the press halt publication.

• Nationally syndicated conservative talk shows including The Dr. Laura Schlessinger Program and Michael Savage's Savage Nation railed against it, despite the admission by Dr. Laura that she only skimmed the book.

• The editorial board of the Lancaster New Era in Pennsylvania declared, "This is a sick book and the Univ. of Minnesota is sick for publishing it."

The attack on Levine is only one of many attacks on writers and researchers trying to openly discuss youth and sexuality. The religious Right is creating a panic about children's sexuality and an insistence that women and children need special protection because they're "naturally" averse to sex of any kind.

In the guise of protecting children, programs are advanced that attempt to re-impose a conservative puritanical morality that views sex as dangerous and only valid in the context of a heterosexual marriage.

The propensity in the general population to panic about the vulnerability of children and to be receptive to the Right's repressive solutions, isn't a result of stupidity or even sexual intolerance. It has to do with our own collective attempt to organize and give meaning to feelings of anxiety and helplessness that result from living in a world in which we have little power, feel disconnected from others and resigned to our fates.

The threat of sexual promiscuity among our youth and the danger of sexual predators lurking around our children's playgrounds gives us a focus for our fear and an outlet for our outrage.

The Right capitalizes on this wish and says that the fault lies with the sexual liberation movements of the 1960's and 1970's, including

• the women's movement

• the gay rights movement

• the sex-education movement

It promotes the myth that if we could only go back to the days when everything was safe, predictable and under control (including women, gays and rebellious teenagers), all would be well.

We have to counter this ideology by addressing the sources of the popular panic over the sexuality of youth. Children are being abused in this society every day, but not primarily by pedophiles.

Children do deserve our protection and empathy, but adults deserve it too. Exploitation in any form is morally unacceptable and we can't privilege its sexual forms in decrying it.

Pedophiles do need to be incarcerated and treated, but so do the white collar criminals who are causing far more harm to far more people, children included. Children and particularly adolescents are sexual beings and they need to be taught how to protect themselves and enjoy themselves.

We have to stop demonizing sexual pleasure and start embracing its healthier forms and helping our kids learn how to do so as well.

On a deeper level, of course, we have to begin a conversation about the underlying anxieties that continually lead us to find scapegoats for our own pain and suffering, whether it's the pedophile, Saddam Hussein, communists, "bra-burners," or homosexuals. We have to ask ourselves:

What do we hate or fear so much in ourselves and in our culture that we have to project it onto others and then demonize or attack those others?