Abacaxi Mamão

I wrote a post about sibling abuse in early March 2006, just over a year ago. It was precipitated by a New York Times article on the same topic and assisted by the fact that I had written a paper about sibling abuse when I was a senior in college. The paper was for a Women's Studies class called "Women, Violence, and the Law," and it was one of the best that I wrote in college.

Since last March, it seems like not a week has gone by that someone hasn't reached by blog by Googling "sibling abuse" (currently the 28th hit), "sibling abuse statistics" (currently the 5th hit) or "sibling abuse blog" (currently the 3rd hit). This regularity indicates that interest in this topic is likely to continue, so I wanted to offer something real to people who come here looking for information. I feel like it's a waste to have done all this research and then not share it with people other than my professor. (Note: I think I wanted to be her at one time. She was a great teacher and a cool person on many different levels.)

I've been tempted to share my whole paper here, but part of me doesn't want to because I think I had some original ideas that I might actually want to use for something someday. What, I'm not sure, but something besides this blog. To compromise, I'm sharing some of the research and statistics that I uncovered, but none of my creative thought.

This is essentially the first half of the paper.

Children and Violence

• In 1998, 20.5% of all violent crimes were committed against children under the age of 18.¹
• From 1976 through 2000, more nonfatal acts of violence were committed against minors than any other age group.²
• Approximately fifteen percent of all violent crime is committed by children.³
  

Children and Sexual Assault

• Two-thirds of the victims of sexual assault reported to law enforcement agencies from 1991 through 1996 were under the age of eighteen; of those, more than half were under the age of twelve.
• Fourteen percent of all victims of sexual assault reported to the authorities were under the age of six.⁴

Sibling Abuse: Definitions

• Only one book had been written about sibling abuse before 2002.⁵
• "Sibling abuse is defined as a narrowly as a situation in which one sibling hits, bites, or physically tortures a sibling⁶ or as broadly as hitting, biting, slapping, shoving and punching; tickling to excess;…injurious or life-threatening behavior such as choking or being shot with a BB gun…teasing, name-calling, belittling, ridiculing, intimidating, annoying, and provoking. Children also destroy personal possessions or torture and kill pets to get an emotional response from their victim….unwanted touching, indecent exposure, attempted penetration, intercourse, rape, or sodomy between siblings."⁷

Sibling Abuse: Prevalence

• According to one 1994 document, 3% of children are "dangerously violent" towards a sibling. This excludes "slaps, pushes, kicks, bites, and punches" which are much more prevalent. When these lesser forms of violence are included, "more than 36 million individual acts of sibling aggression [occur] each year." The author concluded that "it appears that sibling abuse is the most common and the most overlooked form of family violence."⁸
• The percentage of siblings who abuse each other varies depending on the study, but all agree that it is quite common. According to a project of the Iowa State University Extension, "As many as 53 of every 100 children abuse a brother or sister."⁹
  
• According to other studies, 80% of children have hit a brother or sister, and more than 50% have engaged in extremely violent behavior against siblings.¹⁰
  
• A survey of twelve-year-old students found that of those who had siblings living at home, 10% were beaten up by their siblings and 4% said that siblings had either threatened them with, actually used, a gun or knife against them.¹¹
  
• Two-thirds of American children between the ages of fifteen and seventeen "assault a sibling at least once during a year, and in over a third of these cases, the assault involved an act with a relatively high probability of causing injury (kicking, punching, biting, choking, or attacking with a knife or gun)."¹²
  
• A news release from the American Psychological Association notes that 65% of participants in one study reported having experienced "very severe physical abuse, such as being kicked, bitten, hit with a fist or choked at the hands of their siblings." Seventeen percent of respondents had been injured by a sibling, four percent seriously enough to have seen a physician as a result. Despite this, only twenty one percent of respondents felt that they had been physically abused by a sibling, although thirty two percent reported having been emotionally abused as a child.¹³
• Some might say that such behavior is so common that it is not to be considered violent at all.¹⁴ Perhaps one reason that more people report having suffered emotional abuse rather than physical abuse is because siblings tussling on the floor, or a brother chasing his sister around the house, are common images that we all accept as part of our childhoods.
  
• When violent sibling rivalry becomes incestuous or homicidal, few would still characterize that behavior as normal. In addition to the studies cited above, studies have established that sibling incest is more prevalent than parent-child incest or than any other kind of child sexual abuse.¹⁵
  
• An even scarier statistic is that 10% of all murders in families occur between siblings, and that 1.5% of all murder victims are murdered by their siblings.¹⁶
• Even in the case of sibling incest, which might seem more obviously abnormal, "there are no universally accepted criteria that distinguish abusive sexual contact from normal sexual exploration among children."¹⁷

Sibling Abuse: Indicators and Risk Factors

• Specific indicators of sibling abuse that differentiate it from normal sibling rivalry
  
  • the age difference between children
  • the frequency and duration of the abuse
  • power dynamics in the family generally and between specific siblings
  • physical size difference between siblings
  • the same child always perpetrating the abuse or being abused
  • coercive techniques employed by the abusive child.¹⁸
• Fairly well-established risk factors for sibling abuse:¹⁹
  
  • Many people feel that emotional and physical inaccessibility of parents is a serious risk factor. Such parents are not affectionate with their children, are uninvolved in their children's day-to-day lives, and do not interfere when violence erupts.²⁰
    
  • Some suggest that either parental over-involvement or parental neglect can be risk factors.²¹
    
  • Some feel that poor parenting leading to emotional dysfunction and "children's competition for a limited amount of parental attention and finite family resources" are the main causes of high levels of sibling aggression, leading to sibling abuse.²²
    
  • Others blame parents who increase the competition between their children by "playing favorites," labeling, comparing, or excluding certain children.²³
    
  • Other risk factors include families that tend to be secretive and socially isolated, that do not "encourage open communication either inside the family or with persons outside the family" and "family communications that include a double message toward sexuality."²⁴
• Boys perpetrate sibling abuse more often than girls. According to two separate studies, "[b]oys display more assaultive behavior towards siblings than girls"²⁵ and "families with sons only consistently have more sibling violence than families with daughters only."²⁶
  
• One study reported that "[g]irls were more likely than boys to be abused by siblings, especially girls with older brothers."²⁷
• Data indicates that "sibling violence is initiated primarily by brothers," although "the support [for this] is not as overwhelming as one might expect….At all ages girls were less violent than boys, but the difference was relatively small."²⁸

Sibling Abuse: Long-term Effects

• All evidence discounts the idea that sibling abuse is innocuous and that children "bounce back" from such abuse. There are many serious long-term effects of sibling abuse to the abused sibling. They include low self-esteem, repeat victimization at the hands of another abuser (often an intimate partner), major depression, sexual dysfunction, and the inability to become intimate with or trust people later in life.²⁹
• Some victims of child abuse have flashbacks for years afterwards, or exhibit other symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In addition, "alcohol, drug, and eating disorders…have been linked to sibling abuse in childhood."³⁰

The one editorial comment from the paper that I will include is this:

Many of the reasons given for the lack of action in stopping sibling abuse are eerily similar to the excuses that used to be made, and sometimes continue to be made, about the impossibility of stopping spousal abuse. One of the more horrifying ones is the idea that it is "normal" or "okay" for a sibling (or husband) to physically or emotionally abuse another (or wife). Many parents feel that violent relationships between siblings are normal regardless of the patterns that may recur or the suffering of one child at the hands of another. Many parents feel that it is a mistake to intervene and that getting beaten up is, so to speak, just a part of growing up.

Clearly, I do not share these beliefs.

The rest of my paper dealt with some legal issues surrounding sibling abuse, and possible legal approaches towards stopping this horror. It was really interesting. Writing it made me buy some PSAT books and even take a practice test or two. It didn't make me apply to law school, though.

I have an extensive bibliography, too, which I will post separately. The bibliography will help you understand the footnotes, below. Also, I'm sure that more up-to-date research exists, but since I am no longer in school, I don't have the luxury of pursuing it. Also, I apologize for some of the wacky citations. Since I am no longer in school, I no longer have to worry about proper form, so some of the citations are APA style and some aren't. Also, I cut and pasted a bunch to pull this out of a long paper, and in some cases, added Internet-based sources for things that I may have found elsewhere, so it's a bit of a hodge-podge. I think it's all there, though, and all of the footnotes should, please God, work.

I also have to apologize for some of the shoddiness of the academic work. I wrote this paper while I was writing my senior thesis, and so this background part, presented here, got especially short shrift. It looks like I did a lot of citing secondary sources that cite primary sources, rather than going straight to the primary source. I am fully aware that this is never a good way to go.

______________________________________
Note that a lot of these links are PDFs, so don't click unless you want to start downloading a PDF.

Labels: mental health