Today I am going to talk about a very difficult topic. Those of you who read my blog regularly know that I do not shy away from the tough topics. Today’s topic is definitely a tough one: orgasms during rape and sexual abuse. Most people don’t want to think about orgasms during rape and sexual abuse, much less talk about it, but you need to be aware that this happens if you are parenting a child who has been sexually abused.

The ugly reality is that most children who are sexually abused or raped on a regular basis experienced an orgasm, anywhere from one time to multiple times, while they were being sexually abused. As you can imagine, experiencing an orgasm while being abused is confusing at best to an abused child. It causes the child to question whether he really liked the abuse after all and whether the abuse was his fault.

You, as the adoptive or foster parent, need to know that experiencing an orgasm during rape or sexual abuse is both normal and common.

Most people have heard of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). When they think of OCD, they think of an adopted child who must lock the door three times or keep the objects in her room in a particular order.

OCD is common in abused adopted children. OCD is an anxiety disorder, and abused children frequently struggle with deep levels of anxiety. One way that abused children manage their anxiety is through OCD symptoms. By controlling things that most people do not care about, they feel like they are taking control over their own lives. This is very important to an abused child whose life has been out of control.

One manifestation of OCD that many people are not aware of is called “hoarding.” Hoarding is when an abused adopted child must stockpile a whole bunch of a particular item. If anyone tampers with the stockpile, the abused child can become agitated to the point of having a panic attack.

I have an issue with hoarding pens.

On her blog, Julia wrote a blog entry entitled Adoptees, How Can Adoptive Parents Help Alleviate Identity Issues in Their Children? In the comments, AmyAdoptee wrote the following:

There is this young boy on the ranch. Abuse situation. Honestly his "birth" mother's rights should have been terminated years ago because she gave him an adult dose of meth. However I see in him a sense of loss. Even though logically he will understand why her rights were terminated, he will still mourn what might have been or even what should have been.

I would like to focus on this sense of loss in this blog entry.

All abused children feel a sense of loss, whether they are ultimately adopted into a loving home or not. I was never removed from my abusive home, although I should have been, and I have had to work through an enormous amount of loss. Being forced to stay connected to my biological mother/abuser only made the loss greater, not less.

The loss is about what should have been.

If you are parenting an abused child, you might notice that your abused child does not enjoy Halloween as much as other children do. While your abused child might enjoy the candy, other aspects of Halloween might be very triggering for your child.

Abused children rely upon being able to read facial expressions to determine whether they are safe. Their abusers would get a particular look on their faces before they harmed the child. As a result, most abused children are masters at reading faces and are hypervigelent about using this skill.

Of course, wearing masks and disguising faces is a big part of the fun of Halloween. This is not fun for the abused child. Masks succeed in hiding the facial features of the people around the abused child, which leaves the child feeling extremely vulnerable.

If you are parenting an abused child, do not wear a mask for Halloween. Make sure that your abused child can easily read your face at all times. This will be extremely reassuring to your child as he ventures out on Halloween night unable to read the faces of the people around him. At least he will know that he is safe around you.

On FosterMommy’s blog entry entitled Just How Bad Can Life Be With An Adopted Traumatized Child?, John wrote the following comment:

Another issue is the idea that surely a two-parent family is always best. Some children, particularly boys, may not be able to accept a Mom in their lives, due to damage they have suffered. Putting a child like that in a 'surely better' home sets the family up for failure and the child also.

Many in the adoption community believe that a two-parent home is best for all children. This is not necessarily case. If a child was repeatedly abused by members of only one gender, the child might never be able to let down her guard while living in a home with an adoptive parent of that gender. However, if the child is adopted by a single parent of the opposite gender, the child might have a much better chance of feeling safe in that home.

You also need to consider the health of the marriage.

**Update -- A reader told me that the video link was not working. I have fixed the issue. You can now view the video **

I recently posted a powerful video on organized pedophilia. I don’t know how many of you have watched it, but I cannot get through it without tearing up.

The same person has put together a shorter video (under four minutes long) on dissociation and dissociative identity disorder (DID). If you are parenting a traumatized adopted child, you need to watch this video. It will help you understand how your adopted child’s mind works.

The video is intended for people who do not understand DID and dissociation. The video is not graphic, so you do not need to worry about having horrible sights burned into your brain.

Please let me know what you think. Does this help you understand DID and dissociation a little better?

Last month, I shared that the Senate was considering Senate Bill 1738, which would provide funding for law enforcement to track down child predators who upload child pornography to the Internet. I am happy to report that the Senate passed the Protect Our Children Act. This means that law enforcement will now have the resources to break up more child pornography rings and rescue more children.

Unfortunately, the majority of children who are abused are being abused by their parents or other close relatives. So, as child pornography rings are disbanded, we will likely start filling our foster care system with children who have suffered from all sorts of horrors. Those of you who are fostering children or adopting children out of foster care need to know about severe forms of child abuse, such as animal rape and child pornography.

An online friend of mine has put together a powerful video that talks about the missing child abuse statistics.

Most people are unaware that there is a strong link between repressed anger and experiencing anxiety and depression. If you are parenting a traumatized adopted child who is exhibiting signs of anxiety, depression, or both, it is very likely that your traumatized adopted child is repressing anger. Until your traumatized adopted child processes his or her repressed anger, all the Xanax or Zoloft in the world is not going to fix the problem.

Anger is a very powerful emotion that must be expressed. When a child experiences trauma, whether through abuse, neglect, or another source, anger is a normal response. For the child living in an unsafe environment, there is no safe place to express the anger. So, the child stuffs the anger back down inside of himself.

That repressed anger does not just go away. If the child refuses to turn the anger outward, then the anger will turn itself inward. Anger turned inward manifests itself in the form of anxiety, depression, or both.

Last week, FosterMommy wrote an interesting blog entitled Attending Support Group Combined With Training. In that blog, she mentioned a form of self-injury called “picking”:

Anxiety can cause picking the nose, ears, scalp, or any other orifice even to the point of bleeding and including self-mutilation.

“Picking” is a form of self-injury, but most people do not identify it as such because it is minor when compared with cutting, burning, head-banging, and other forms of self-injury like breaking your own bones. Picking is quite common among traumatized adopted children.

Last week, FosterMommy wrote an interesting blog entitled Attending Support Group Combined With Training. In her blog, she covered an interesting topic – how traumatized children exhibit physical manifestations of their anxiety.

Here is an except from FosterMommy’s blog:

It is interesting the way anxiety manifests itself in children who have suffered trauma. Anxiety leads these children to develop odd self-soothing rituals … Masturbating, even in school, can be brought on by anxiety. Anxiety can cause picking the nose, ears, scalp, or any other orifice even to the point of bleeding and including self-mutilation. Poor school performance, especially on exams, running away, enuresis, encopresis, thumb-sucking, hording, eating, not eating, and vomiting are more examples.

FosterMommy is absolutely correct about this, and her list is far from exhaustive.