Monday 2 July 2012

Child Abuse Survivor Stories Reflect True Heroism.

By Laura Gallagher


During the Victorian era Dickens wrote popular novels which performed a similar social function to those performed today by soap operas. His novels often told child abuse survivor stories with lasting literary merit. Although he may often be accused of sentimentality there are deep insights into the truth about the ways that children are treated in families and institutions that are charged with the care of children.

Oliver Twist was an orphan maltreated in the first place by neglect. He was not given either the love or the provision that any individual needs. His mother was abused by society in the first place having been made pregnant and then deserted. Tragically, the neglect that she suffered was passed on to her offspring. This happens still and there are many similar narratives in modern times.

He was abused physically by people who were ostensibly responsible for his welfare and morally by the Victorian form of organized crime when he was taught to be a thief. It is quite shocking to see in many twenty-first century societies reflections of the same practices that existed in Victorian Britain. Children are still used by unscrupulous crime bosses as prostitutes and as light fingered thieves.

In South African towns children are used in burglaries when adults push them through small windows to gain entry to residences. This is precisely how Oliver was used. Teaching children to be criminal is one of the worst forms of abuse because it dooms them to lifelong dependence upon a way of life that is rotten to the core.

In other novels Dickens wrote about physical abuse by step parents and teachers. He showed the atrocity of such behavior understanding much about the sadism that is involved. However, if a child survives such treatment it can recover more easily than is the case with moral corruption. A bad family may not be as bad as no family.

child abuse survivor stories unfold in the twenty-first century as they did in the Victorian era. Many things have changed but some things seem unaltered. When atrocities occur within families which should secure nests cushioned by love the private horrors have peculiar intensity. Those who prevail in such unpropitious circumstances exhibit heroism. Their narratives are worth telling and worth reading about.




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