Damaged children who turn to lies

We have heard of yet another story of a male relative being falsely accused of the sexual molestation of a minor. According to reports, a teenage girl made up a story that her grandfather had raped her several times “in order to get back at her father and his family.” The accusation was made three years ago when the girl was 13, and her grandfather, a pensioner, was 68.

In almost every single case of this kind, the false report happens because children are caught up in the often brutal tug-of-war between separated parents. In this case, according to the report in The Sunday Times, “The pensioner used to mind the girl for a couple of hours a day while her father, who was separated, was at work. …the girl had fabricated the story because she was fed up with her father’s discipline and wanted to live with the mother instead.”

I look around me at all the generous, doting grandparents who are willingly giving up their free time to help out with childcare when marriages break down (and even when they don’t) and it sends a shiver down my spine to think that one false, glib accusation from a disturbed child could ruin their lives forever. Because in order for a child or teenager to come out with such an appalling, destructive lie, there definitely has to be something seriously wrong; some kind of damage to this child’s psyche for him/her to go to such lengths in order to get their own way. Why else would a child wish to cause such extreme emotional havoc within a family?

Teenage rebellion is to be expected even when parents stay together, but when children “act out” in these ways, there is something deeper than normal pubescent angst. The damage is almost always a result of what these children have experienced because of marital strife and discord. At times the behaviour is a call for attention and a cry for help. Perhaps all they have known are screaming, yelling parents, whose vicious arguments go for the jugular, hurling insults, past hurts, indiscretions and incidents into each other’s faces, dredging up episodes from the past and laying them out bare like bloody weapons for the umpteenth time, not caring, not even one iota that there are pairs of tiny ears listening and absorbing all this hatred and spite. Then, exhausted by their own turmoil, the parents retreat, perhaps triumphant at having bludgeoned one another into a quivering mess; they lick their wounds, re-group and get on with their lives until it is time for the next round of warfare.

Honestly, what do parents think? That children can un-hear or un-see all these episodes? That seeing the two people who brought them into this world tear into each other like snarling wild animals is something that they can just file away neatly into a filing cabinet in their minds marked “NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU”.

On the contrary, of course, it has everything to do with them, and it is one of the reasons that people advocate separation/divorce for those who simply cannot live under the same roof without constant fighting, pointing out that ultimately it is better for children to have two separate, relatively peaceful households rather than live in one continuous war zone. Can you imagine, as a child, going home every day with your stomach clenched like a tight fist, not knowing what kind of atmosphere you are going to find? Can you imagine dreading the sound of the key turning in the lock as one of your parents comes home, because you know that is the signal for the air to suddenly become electric with tension?

The problem, of course, as so often happens, is that the fighting does not stop with the divorce decree. Sometimes two people are so locked into their mutual loathing of each other that they just cannot let go of the vicious circle which was their marriage. For those who remember LPs, it’s like when the needle in the record player used to get stuck and we were forced to listen to the same phrase over and over again. Hence the expression, “you sound like a broken record. What is worse is when a mother/father speaks of the other parent to their children in tones of utter contempt. The result is that one parent effectively manages to poison the image of the other parent forever in the child’s eyes, sometimes even way into adulthood.

Ultimately, divorced parents have to take responsibility for what kind of people their children become and not be in denial when something is clearly “off”. If they could only acknowledge that perhaps their child has been scarred by the trauma of a break-up, there could be earlier intervention before things seriously unravel; before a child resorts to concocting an outrageous lie in order to get their own back for having been thrust into situation which they did not choose, and devastating a whole family in the process.