As an ACE activist, I talk to a lot of people about the impact of ACE’s in society. For many conversations, the results are predictable. When I talk or write about the negative impact of aggressive spanking, I am told “I was spanked and I turned out OK.” I am also reminded of the old Testament passage of “spare the rod, spoil the child.” I have abandoned both excuses a long time ago. But I get this as a common defense to spanking.
I also hear an admonition commonly shared to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Even well meaning individuals will agree with the idea of Reagan’s “welfare queen.” You know, the woman who drives a cadillac and pulls welfare. Despite research demonstrating that very few welfare recipients abuse the system, so many object to giving help to children who are being physically neglected because of parental circumstances. For people with depression, they are told “don’t worry, be happy.”
When I talk about ACE’s as I did recently with the Alaska State Suicide Prevention Council, I point out to the prevalence of ACE’s and the need for more research among our Alaska Native population. The original population studied had a prevalence of 6% with 5 or more ACE’s. In 4 of the original 8 ACE categories, more than 20% of the total population was affected. If we apply a percentage to the total U.S. population of 330 million, the results are staggering in their presence. 20.7% sexual abuse prevalence means that over 50 million adults have been sexually abused in the U.S.
Dr. Felitti talks about how society hides or ignores problems. He wrote “It reveals that the primary issues are well protected by social convention and taboo. It points out that we have limited ourselves to the smallest part of the problem, that part where we are comfortable as mere prescribers of medication.”
This article, “Bill Cosby and His Enablers,” discusses how many people become complicit in compounding the problems by ignoring, or purposefully concealing, knowledge that comes into their grasp. I have personally observed how proscribing bad conduct by criminal laws, leads to concealment. Among Alaska Natives, I hear constantly that some don’t want to break up families by revealing sexual abuse. “Snitches” can be shunned, even by their own family.
We need to have a rational dialogue about early recognition and intervention for young people who are already accumulating a heavy trauma burden. We need to help them before they adopt coping mechanisms and allow those mechanisms evolve into criminal activity.
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