The Providence Journal has a more detailed account of the RI state investigator’s interviews with Prata, Arnold, and her daughter. Both adults freely volunteered that they did have sex many times with their daughter present, because they didn’t believe in hiding anything. They said she was often sitting on the bed watching when they had sex, but they did not include her in their activities and she was free to leave whenever she wanted to. Rebecca, the girl’s mom, also talked about how her first husband and mother in law made fun of her for not knowing much about sex when she was first married, and did not want her daughter to experience that.
The interview concluded with the investigator asking Prata if he understood that he had done psychological damage to the girl. “No,” Prata said.
No?
While this is very unusual for modern day America, it used to be the norm in most cultures centuries ago, and still is in many places. Families would live together in small spaces, and sex would not be hidden from anyway. Why are we so sure that it causes “psychological damage?” Personally, I’m convinced that hiding is what causes the damage.
Then there’s the double standard when it comes to violence. Logically, I can’t see any reason why someone would argue that witnessing happy, consensual sex could possibly be worse than witnessing physical violence, but how often do parents “allow” their children to witness someone hitting someone else? How often do parents actually encourage their sons to fight? And how often do parents get charged with “child abuse” for it?
Arnold & Prata were arrested at the beginning of 2005, and have been barred from contact with Arnold’s daughter for the past two years. Now, they’ve been charged with neglect, and have pleaded Not Guilty.
The investigator interviewed the daughter, too. The girl said “she saw her mother and Prata having sex more than once and in different rooms.” She apparently at some point thought Prata was hurting her mother because of the sounds her mother made, so she “asked her mom if David was hurting her, and her mom told her no.”
The girl said her mother and Prata never touched her or tried to include her in their sexual activity, according to the report.
The girl told the investigator “she was afraid that her mom and David would go to jail and she did not want that to happen.” The interview ended when the girl picked up an Etch A Sketch and “would not engage further,” the investigator said.
From that snippet, which is all we have to go on, it sounds to me as though the girl is very troubled by the questioning, and by the prospect of the two going to jail, so much so that she froze up and didn’t want to continue. But what little information they provided about her conversation on the actual substance of the accusation suggests that she took a rather matter-of-fact attitude towards it, and did not seem troubled.
I’m not at all convinced that seeing sex is harmful, but there are some things that happened here that I am quite sure can be harmful to a young girl:
- Being cut off from one of her parents involuntarily.
- Being questioned by the state for evidence against her parent.
- Seeing the official spotlight shining on her home life.
- Being told by adults about how “wrong” this was, and that it should’ve been hidden from her.
- Seeing her parent go to jail and knowing it was partly through what she said.
These are extreme measures, justifiable only in situations of real abuse. So what I wonder is, will someone interview the state, and ask if they “understand that they have done psychological damage to the girl?”
I’ll state right now that I may not have all the details to correctly judge what is going on here, I can only go by what is reported in the press. It may be that there was reason to charge the couple with abuse, that is not being included in the articles.
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However, this is a two year old situation, and the Providence Journal’s article quotes a lot of the interview transcripts. Based on that, I figure that if there were important information to justify these actions, either the ProJo or AP articles would’ve at least hinted at it.
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So, I’m going to take them at face value, and assume there’s not much more to this than what we can glean from the articles. Based on that, what’s on trial here is simply the fact of letting a child voluntarily witness consensual sex, and the point of contention is whether that is or is not inherently abusive.
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As long as that is in fact what this is about my, commentary applies. If more information comes out and we learn there was real abuse, my commentary still stands as regards the situation we’re seeing described now, but might not apply to the actual case in question.
(Sadly, for the girl and adults, though, this is much more than just an interesting question.)
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Jared Diamond’s Why is Sex Fun? is about evolution and human/primate behavior rather than a marriage manual. He points out that our species is unusual in that we tend to have sex in pairs and in private. There are many primate species more promiscuous and more public about their sex acts than ours.
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Given that, it is a big step outside the norm to say, “We don’t believe in hiding it.”
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What traumatizes or upsets children seems to have a big cultural component. For example, in our culture, there is no question pedophilia causes trauma. We are not Universal Human Beings.
I agree that children may have a tendency to be over exposed to violence. But let’s not compare apples and oranges, at least for the moment.
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In your comment you imply that what the girl wittnessed was not “real abuse”. It was real abuse.
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First, there is the matter of age appropriateness. What lessons does the little girl really learn by watching two adults have sex. Might this not give the girl the impression that at her age, 9, or even later at 13, that having intercourse is OK? I could easily see this potentially leading to unhealthy (mentally and physically) young age promiscuity.
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Might it not make a 9-year-old more susceptable to rape from an adult? if the boyfriend propositioned the 9-year-old for sex, might she not get the false impression that “this is what mommy does with him, so it must be OK for me to do it with him”?
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Does it teach anything about the fact that sexual activity is a very strong emotional act and shouldn’t be entered into lightly?
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Would it not be easy in the mind of a 9-year-old to conflate the ideas of sex and love? The only way a man will love her is if she has sex with him?
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Does it teach anything about the consequences, physically or emotionally, that accompany sexual relations?
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Does it teach anything of the intimacy and privacy that is associated with sex?
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Would you want to watch your mom have sex with some guy?
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I am not well versed in child sexual abuse, so my comment may no be as articulate as I would want. Perhaps looking into some literature on child sexual abuse might change your opinion.
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Also, “it is acceptable in other cultures” argument is a fallacy. In other cultures, and in the American past, it’s common practice for a 20-year-old man to marry and impregnate 13-year-old girls. We now understand that it is unfair to the child given the power disparity and the fact that 13-year-old girls are not biologically ready for a healthy prgnancy and child birth.
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Again, my knowledge of child sexual abuse is very vast, but I can’t see people who determine the standard for CSA (psychologists, physicians, social workers) finding this sort of behavior acceptable. Perhaps someone with a professional background working with CSA survivors could elucidate this further?
My knowledge of child sexual abuse is not very vast.
It seems to me that almost nothing you suggest is actually a negative consequence of this act. Which is not to say that you don’t make a lot of points, but your only fear appears to be: that a 9-year-old girl learns about sex.
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I don’t know if you realize this, but a lot of 9-year-old girls learn about sex.
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Now, all of your worries revolve around the idea of what it doesn’t teach. When sex is appropriate, what sex means, and so on. Do you think that everyone who doesn’t teach their children about sex (and I mean beyond “don’t do it”) is guilty of child abuse? Maybe they are, but if that’s the case there are a lot of people who should go to jail well before this couple.
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You’re also assuming that this couple hasn’t taught their child the consequences, and maybe they haven’t. But there are millions of parents in America who haven’t either.
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Your only comment that appears directly related to this act is
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Me? No. This girl? Obviously doesn’t care. This is nature vs. nurture. Is it natural to be grossed out by watching your parents have sex? This girls reaction doesn’t support that thesis. Should it be? I don’t see why.
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Here’s what I feel you’re saying:
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Exposing a child to sex without teaching them the negative and positive consequences of sex is wrong.
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To which I can only add:
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Welcome to America.
It is not the topic, it is the method.
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Teach kids about sex as soon as they are old enough to ask questions. I started learning at 7 when my mom was trying to have more children. (And no, not by the method in question, thankfully.) I think I saw the “Miracle of Life” around 10ish.
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Yes, a thousand times yes, teach children about sex using proper pedagogies.
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The couple can teach the child all they want, but it is also a matter of what the child is capable of learning. Again, this is where age appropriate sex discussions play a role. I mean, you can talk to a child about topics like suicide, euthanasia, the existance of God, etc, but you can’t expect them to digest ideas posited by Pascal or Kierkegaard or Russell. And just because you provide certain sexual information doesn’t mean the child is capable of fully digesting it.
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Actions speak louder than words. The parents can say “don’t do this untill you are old enough”, but if she sees her parents having sex, the message is loud and clear.
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You say that I suggest almost nothing of negative consequecne. Do you disagree that the child watching a man having sex with her mother might give the child the false impression that it would be OK for her to have sex with an adult, possibly that man? What about the fussion of the idea that you can’t have love without sex? These are not ideas that I pulled out of thin are, these are problems that confront friends of mine who are survivors of CSA.
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You mention the girl’s reaction indicates that she doesn’t care. I don’t think we can extrapolate the girl’s real feelings from the article. Child Sexual Abuse victims often resort to cognative dissonance, supressing their real feelings in order to protect themselves and the adult. Often, young people who were abused via touching, intercourse, etc will tell authorities they were willing participants. This is ludicrous given the power disparities adults wield over children. Children often “consent” to things that are not in their best interests.
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This is dangerously innaporpriate way to teach children about sex.
Your strong conviction is supported only by weak hypotheticals. Whether this situation is actually harmful depends on how your “what if?” questions are answered.
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You’ve raised important questions, yes. But you’ve made no argument whatsoever. It’s entirely possible that teaching sexuality with the combination of discussion and demonstration could be superior to discussion alone, or the absence of either as tends to be the case all too often in the US.
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Regardless, isn’t it best to reserve one’s opinion until the facts are in instead of blindly concluding that something is harmful?
But can anyone show evidence of a time when sexual activity is intentionally performed by an adult in the presence of a child is acceptable, let alone beneficial?
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I don’t think it is wild conjecture on my part to say that clinicians who deal with Child Sexual Abuse would see a case where a child sits on the bed and watches two adults engage in sexual intercourse as healthy or teaching behavior.
Our statutory scheme and our DSS are so totally out of control, see a post I did a couple of days ago:
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http://www.bluemassg…
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After all, what is needed here? I would say at most a “parenting class” as to the privacy needs or norms of society – not a huge overblown response and criminalization – at least based on the publicly available information.