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Trauma of Father/Daughter Incest

As a writer and former child-abuse victim, Laura Davis states, "All sexual abuse is damaging, and the trauma does not end when the abuse stops. If you were abused as a child, you are probably experiencing long-term effects that interfere with your day-to-day functioning" (Bass & Davis, 1990, p. 252). This research will examine the trauma of child sexual abuse, specifically incest between fathers and their daughters. The incest victim goes through a similar pattern of dealing with victimization, and often even the longterm effects experienced are similar. Some of the more common feelings and emotions of incest victims are shame, guilt, anger, confusion, and denial.

Most studies group incest with all sexual-abuse victims so statistics on incest are hard to find; however, the number of incestuous sexual-abuse cases is either rapidly rising or being disclosed more oftenmore than likely both:

In 1986, all of the nation's child protective agencies recorded 83,000 complaints against people responsible for the child's welfare. By 1990, the number had leapt to 75,000. Because many cases of abuse still go unreported, the actual number of victimswho come from all social classes, races and religionsis probably much, much higher (Darnton, 1991, pp. 70-71).

A typical case study in daughter-father incest victims is former Miss America 1958 Marilyn Van Derbur Alton. She has experienced many of the emotional and identity problems associated with typical psychological assessments of incest victims. Dissociation was Van Derbur Alton's initial reaction to handling her father's systematic sexual abuse of her from the ages of 5 to 18:

I don't remember how or when I split my mind. I do know that the terror of the night caused me, at some age, probably between five and six, to dissociate into the day and the night child. The day child knew nothing of the night child's existence. It was only during my recovery that I understood wh...

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Trauma of Father/Daughter Incest. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 21:25, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1696523.html