Child Abuse and Trauma Narratives from a Crisis Home Report

change stories midstream without apparent loss of continuity or confidence. He learned the power of a claim of abuse, and used the threat of it to control his environment. Damon talked other children out of their candy allotments, cheated at games and stole clothes from other children’s lockers. Debbie, age eight, was the eldest of four children. Her mother was a street prostitute with an expensive drug habit. Debbie was thin, restless and worried. A self-appointed mother from the age of four, Debbie felt responsible for the care and feeding of her brother and two sisters. With a history of physical and sexual abuse by a series of her mother’s boyfriend-pimps, Debbie spent most of her time cleaning and recleaning their small apartment and worrying about obtaining enough food for her brothers and sisters. Her mother was often gone for one or two days at a time, and food supplies were not dependable. On several occasions, Debbie was caught stealing food from all night grocers. The investigative social worker reported that Debbie had learned to sell oral sex to the men who loitered behind a neighborhood bar. She used the money to buy food. For several days after admission to the crisis home, Debbie was anxious and sleepless. She worried endlessly about the welfare of her sisters and brother despite reassurances that they were in caring foster homes. She checked on them as frequently as allowed by phone. In a playroom therapy session, wielding a rubber knife, she pointed to a scar on her left forearm and told a story about the time that she cut herself with a kitchen knife and fed her blood to her infant sister when there wasn’t any food in the house. Debbie kept her room very tidy, did all her chores and sometimes those of other children. Even after several months in residence, always-busy Debbie didn’t have even one close relationship with any of the other children or members of the staff. Despite the superficial differences, there are subtle and pervasive similarities among the personality styles of Alicia, Grace, Damon and Debbie. Like overgrown and tasteless cabbages, pale and four feet across, growing from seeds over-treated with gibberellin or auxin plant hormones, the inner lives of these prematurely big little people are relatively empty of stable interpersonal objects. The pantheon of indwelling companions are either malignant, absent or both. There is a deficiency of internalized significant others with qualities we more healthy neurotics paste onto 35 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013535