A Hidden Factor in Teen Suicide
Child protection may be more important in preventing teen suicides and
suicidal impulses than most parents realize. Child abuse can result in
depression and other mental disorders that correlate with suicidal
thoughts and feelings in the teen and young adult years. An additional
factor, typically left unmentioned in literature, is that child
predators may intentionally program their victims to commit suicide.
This article is based on information from abuse survivors.
Child predators plan their crimes carefully. They court the trust of
parents and others to obtain private access to victims. They typically
know how to perpetrate assaults on children in ways that leave no
visible evidence. A key component of their crimes is making sure that
their victims don't report them to anyone. Their methods of influencing
the minds of their victims to cover their crimes are psychologically
sophisticated, suggesting the possibility that they have been trained.
Regardless of their source of information, it is evident that many
predators know how to manipulate the minds of their victims. Instead of
merely intimidating children into silence with threats of physical harm
to them and their families, many predators make the abuse so horrific
that children block the memory of the event from their conscious
awareness, a mental process sometimes called traumatic forgetting.
Predators who use traumatic forgetting as a way of covering their crimes
often supplement it with the verbal assertion "You will not remember
this." Children, while experiencing the intense pain and/or terror of an
assault, are highly suggestible. This suggestible state is analogous to
a hypnotic trance. Statements given during the abuse can become embedded
deep in their subconscious minds and have the effect of post hypnotic
suggestions. Therefore, memory suppression statements such as the above
can further hinder the victim's ability to remember what happened.