DR UBALDINA NORONHA
In the last week, Goa has been shaken by two sexual crimes against four-year-old girls. The outrage is understandable. The demand for arrest, punishment and safer public spaces is necessary. India has seen this collective wound before, when the Nirbhaya case shook the country.
Yet as the headlines fade, another group of invisible survivors remains: The parents of the abused child. Nirbhaya’s parents experienced something no parent should ever have to live through: The knowledge of what was done to their daughter. Parents are forced to absorb unbearable details of violence against someone they loved. For parents, such details invade sleep, alter thoughts and change the way one sees the world.
We rarely ask what happens inside the mind of a mother who hears, for the first time, the graphic details of what was done to her little girl. What happens to a father who must sit through police statements, hospital corridors, questions from the media and the unbearable knowledge that he could not protect his child? What happens to grandparents and siblings who must carry the shock while pretending to be strong for everyone else?
Secondary traumatic stress
These recent cases have brought this reality painfully close. These incidents are not just crime stories. They are family catastrophes. A parent’s sense of identity is bound up with keeping the child safe. When that protection fails, the parent may feel shattered. Worse, when the abuser turns up to be the other parent, someone within the immediate or extended family, or a friend.
For parents, there is usually a before and an after. Before, there may have been ordinary worries: School fees, a child’s fever, a birthday, or a small quarrel at home. After the disclosure or discovery of abuse, nothing remains ordinary. Parents begin to live in a state of alertness, constantly scanning for danger, replaying events, asking themselves what they missed and how they could have prevented it. This is not weakness. It is the mind trying to make sense of an unbearable violation.
Psychology calls much of this ‘secondary traumatic stress’, the emotional distress that can affect a person indirectly exposed to someone else’s trauma. It can include intrusive images, nightmares, anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, emotional numbness, avoidance and a changed sense of safety.
Experiences of
traumatised parents
A mother may be haunted by images she cannot erase. A father may feel rage so fierce that it frightens him. One parent may want to talk constantly; the other may go silent. One may blame the other; another may blame themselves. Guilt, however human, may be misplaced. A parent who did not know, could not foresee, was careful and yet was unable to prevent a crime is blameless.
Research on parents of sexually abused children consistently finds distress, anxiety, depression and secondary traumatic stress. It also finds that poor emotional regulation and lack of support can worsen the symptoms. There is another painful truth: parents may have their own earlier wounds reopened. A disclosure of abuse can reactivate memories of past violence, sexual trauma or family secrets. The family is then dealing not only with the present crime but also with old pain that suddenly returns.
Helping traumatised parents
A traumatised child needs specialised, sensitive care. When parents are exhausted, frightened or emotionally overwhelmed, they may struggle to respond calmly to the child. This is why society must stop treating parents only as witnesses, complainants or guardians of the legal criminal case. A parent’s untreated trauma can affect communication and the family’s ability to rebuild safety.
The Goa State Commission for Protection of Child Rights has rightly directed that the child receive medical assistance, psychological counselling and support during treatment and investigation. That is essential. But the same principle must extend clearly to parents and caregivers.
They need to be seen as survivors of a violence that entered their home through no fault of their own. Parents need justice, but they also need compassion, counselling and practical psychological support. And perhaps a chance at healing may begin there, when a parent is no longer left alone with their pain.
(The writer is Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, St Xavier’s College, Mapusa)
