Adult women survivors of intrafamilial child sexual abuse and their current relationship with the abuser.

Abstract

This article examines the adult perceptions of women survivors of intrafamilial child sexual abuse and their current relationship with the family member who abused them in their childhood. Twenty Jewish Israeli women were interviewed in depth between 2008 and 2009. Interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data analysis produced 2 interrelated continua with regard to the presence of the perpetrator in the women's life: a continuum of his actual daily presence in the woman's living space, ranging from complete absence to a continuous presence, and a continuum of his experiential presence, ranging from a high level of intrusiveness to encapsulation and total dissociation. The 2 continua are discussed and implications for practice are suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record

Incest Survivors’ Life-Narratives

“…Our findings are in line with stories of intrafamilial CSA survivors who describe the dialectics between the sexual abuse, including its emotional ramifications, and the process of coping (Anderson, 2006; Eisikovits et al, 2017; Grossman et al, 1999; Morrow & Smith, 2005; Negrao et al, 2005). This study contributes to the holistic understanding of a survivor’s life orientation, which can be used to understand how she constructed her progressive versus regressive life-narratives.…”

“…Incest victims tend to describe feeling as though they have remained under the abuser’s control even after the sexual abuse has stopped (Lorentzen, Nilsen, & Traeen, 2008). Adult women survivors of interfamilial CSA are always on the alert, and they relentlessly struggle to contain the perpetrator and relegate him to the background in order to be able to give meaning to the abuse and to cope (Eisikovits, Tener, & Lev-Wiesel, 2017). Briere and Runtz (1993) refer to the effects of CSA as psychological toxicity.…”

“…Coping with the presence of the abuser, be it a physical presence or a psychological one, has been addressed in Eisikovits et al’s (2017) qualitative study of 20 survivors of intrafamilial CSA, 10 of whom were abused by their biological fathers. The authors discovered that “.…”

“I Love and Hate Him in the Same Breath”: Relationships of Adult Survivors of Sexual Abuse With Their Perpetrating Siblings

“…Despite the long duration and often lifetime implications of SSA, relationships between adult siblings involved in SSA as children have rarely been studied. According to the broader literature on survivors of intrafamilial sexual abuse, the abusive relationship sometimes continues well into adulthood (Eisikovits, Tener, & Lev-Wiesel, 2017; Lin, 2010; Middelton, 2013; Welfare, 2010). In other cases, a virtual relationship is maintained without daily contact but with continued vivid presence of the perpetrator in the survivor’s experience (Dahan, 2007; Eisikovits et al, 2017).…”

Educación sexual ¿tarea para los padres?: Abordaje desde una perspectiva crítica a la política educativa contemporánea de Puerto Rico

“…Tener (2018) señaló que las reacciones familiares o sociales negativas no pueden abordarse de forma aislada, sino que deben considerarse en el contexto de la tendencia social a evitar y colocar tabúes en los comportamientos, actitudes y formas de pensar que amenazan el orden social (p. 3). De acuerdo a Eisikovits et al (2017), la literatura empírica sobre la relación diaria entre las mujeres adultas sobrevivientes del abuso sexual intrafamiliar 14 y sus agresores sugiere que el tabú es uno real (p. 217).…”