Witness to horror
In entries I've posted here about my adoptive mother and her terrorization by her husband and, perhaps, her sister (see Semper Fi - Sorrowful realization and Semper Fi - The rest of the story), I didn't go into a lot of detail. One thing I finally realized only after I'd posted those two entries is that regardless of whether I was a victim of abuse by either of my adoptive parents or not, I witnessed soemthing which, looking back on it all these decades later, made it glaringly obvious that my adoptive mother was a victim of chronic terrorization by her husband. As far as I know, he never laid a hand on her -- though back then, even more than now, victims of spousal abuse strongly tended to cover up any marks or injuries that came from such abuse, and, when they couldn't, told others that they'd come about as a result of "accidents" of various kinds -- but he didn't have to. He was three or four inches taller than she was, had at least 70 pounds on her, and had a tested IQ 35 points above hers (she had a tested IQ of 95, slightly below average).
Born in 1905 in Los Angeles, living his entire life in communities slightly to the north of the city of Los Angeles, my adoptive father, George William Dingle, was a businessman who came from an affluent family and was a man of the world; my adoptive mother, Phyllis Jane Magor Dingle, born in 1910 in Rawlins, Wyoming, and living there until she was 1914, when her family moved to Southern California, was a housewife, a superb one, but only that. They married when he was 31 and she, 26, and adopted me nine years later. It was a "gray market" adoption, arranged by an attorney, something that was legal then but became illegal later, and my adoptive mother wanted no part of it. But he bullied her into going through with it, and then, once they got me home from the hospital (I was 9 days old when they did so), he took her little cocker spaniel to the vet to be euthanized, forcing her to go with him when he did, telling her, "Because it might hurt the baby." Jane was barren; that little dog was the only sort of child she could ever have had and loved for her own. George got to have his baby, and she didn't. No wonder she hated me! Sure, it wasn't a reason that would have satisfied normal people. But for her, already terrorized into madness by years of cruelty, much of it sexual, it must have been the last straw. However, her fear of him was so great that she didn't dare take it out on him, so, through deferred aggression, she took it out on me. And mentally ill and backward as she was, she couldn't recognize that what she did was wrong. Since he set her up for it, George was responsible for it, not Jane -- she was just the gun he loaded and pointed at me, holding it on me as a threat down the years without ever saying a word to that effect. Why? Who knows. But that's how it worked out. All those years she and I got the blame for what was done to me, and he got away with it, scot-free.
I am legion. So was my adoptive mother. Down the millennia, tens or even hundreds of millions of people must have gone through the sort of hell I did and that she did. Wife-beating, physical and otherwise, is an old, old story. So is chronic child abuse. And frequently both occur in the same households. Which means that the victims of child abuse are frequently material witnesses of the abuse and cruelty visited on their mothers* by the very ones who torment them. I definitely was. The anger and hate my adoptive mother expressed toward me was accompanied by expressions which I now realize were those of someone who was terrified out of her mind -- not of me, of course, because I was just a child, but of her husband and, perhaps, his cronies, as well. That fear might also have been in reaction to George's friends' wives, and, possibly, Jane's sister, Betty. The possibilities are endless, but what is certain is that she was terrified out of her mind by her husband.
To be able to recognize that and report it to others, as I am doing here, is somehow healing. This is the only sort of justice I can bring about for her, letting people know what was happening to her at the hands of her husband over many years, and because it is posthumous -- she died in 1995 -- it may seem futile. But it isn't. Justice is to the community and the world what health is to the body. When harm is done within a community, whether by crime, sin, or accident, when members of that community have been harmed, no matter who by or how, the community itself is thereby wounded. Justice is the process of attempting to heal such wounds. By sharing this information with others via this blog, maybe I will have helped people out there, people reading this blog or those they know or those to whom the URL for this post is passed on. And in doing this, I feel a tremendous weight dropping off my shoulders, one I didn't even know was there. So this is a good thing to do.
If you, dear reader, want to learn more about the things I witnessed in my early childhood or later on, or about my situation then, especially as it may shed light on what other victims of abuse and cruelty have suffered down the years, click on these links to bring up other posts I've made about such things: personal and autobiographical. And if you can use any of this material to help others, please do so -- I want that to happen, very much. :-)
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*Sometimes it is the mother who controls the situation and dominates the household, and the father or other partner who is the victim of spousal abuse. Usually, though, the father or other male partner is the one in control and the perpetrator of the spousal abuse, and the female partner the victim of it. Mostly this has to do with human sexual dimorphism. I.e., on average, men are significantly taller, heavier, more muscular, and stronger than women, and much more experienced in rough-and-tumble and that sort of thing. So the average man has it all over the average woman when it comes to who wins the arm-wrestling contest, and who is most able to control, dominate, and abuse whom. In partnerships that are significantly dysfunctional, this becomes important -- and it is the reason that most of those fleeing abusive spouses are women. This is not to say that there aren't male victims of female cruelty and abuse. There are, and many have been grievously damaged as a result. Both male and female victims of such abuse need all the kindness, care, therapy, andsympathy they can get. Suffering is no respecter of gender, in this matter or any other.
Born in 1905 in Los Angeles, living his entire life in communities slightly to the north of the city of Los Angeles, my adoptive father, George William Dingle, was a businessman who came from an affluent family and was a man of the world; my adoptive mother, Phyllis Jane Magor Dingle, born in 1910 in Rawlins, Wyoming, and living there until she was 1914, when her family moved to Southern California, was a housewife, a superb one, but only that. They married when he was 31 and she, 26, and adopted me nine years later. It was a "gray market" adoption, arranged by an attorney, something that was legal then but became illegal later, and my adoptive mother wanted no part of it. But he bullied her into going through with it, and then, once they got me home from the hospital (I was 9 days old when they did so), he took her little cocker spaniel to the vet to be euthanized, forcing her to go with him when he did, telling her, "Because it might hurt the baby." Jane was barren; that little dog was the only sort of child she could ever have had and loved for her own. George got to have his baby, and she didn't. No wonder she hated me! Sure, it wasn't a reason that would have satisfied normal people. But for her, already terrorized into madness by years of cruelty, much of it sexual, it must have been the last straw. However, her fear of him was so great that she didn't dare take it out on him, so, through deferred aggression, she took it out on me. And mentally ill and backward as she was, she couldn't recognize that what she did was wrong. Since he set her up for it, George was responsible for it, not Jane -- she was just the gun he loaded and pointed at me, holding it on me as a threat down the years without ever saying a word to that effect. Why? Who knows. But that's how it worked out. All those years she and I got the blame for what was done to me, and he got away with it, scot-free.
I am legion. So was my adoptive mother. Down the millennia, tens or even hundreds of millions of people must have gone through the sort of hell I did and that she did. Wife-beating, physical and otherwise, is an old, old story. So is chronic child abuse. And frequently both occur in the same households. Which means that the victims of child abuse are frequently material witnesses of the abuse and cruelty visited on their mothers* by the very ones who torment them. I definitely was. The anger and hate my adoptive mother expressed toward me was accompanied by expressions which I now realize were those of someone who was terrified out of her mind -- not of me, of course, because I was just a child, but of her husband and, perhaps, his cronies, as well. That fear might also have been in reaction to George's friends' wives, and, possibly, Jane's sister, Betty. The possibilities are endless, but what is certain is that she was terrified out of her mind by her husband.
To be able to recognize that and report it to others, as I am doing here, is somehow healing. This is the only sort of justice I can bring about for her, letting people know what was happening to her at the hands of her husband over many years, and because it is posthumous -- she died in 1995 -- it may seem futile. But it isn't. Justice is to the community and the world what health is to the body. When harm is done within a community, whether by crime, sin, or accident, when members of that community have been harmed, no matter who by or how, the community itself is thereby wounded. Justice is the process of attempting to heal such wounds. By sharing this information with others via this blog, maybe I will have helped people out there, people reading this blog or those they know or those to whom the URL for this post is passed on. And in doing this, I feel a tremendous weight dropping off my shoulders, one I didn't even know was there. So this is a good thing to do.
If you, dear reader, want to learn more about the things I witnessed in my early childhood or later on, or about my situation then, especially as it may shed light on what other victims of abuse and cruelty have suffered down the years, click on these links to bring up other posts I've made about such things: personal and autobiographical. And if you can use any of this material to help others, please do so -- I want that to happen, very much. :-)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
*Sometimes it is the mother who controls the situation and dominates the household, and the father or other partner who is the victim of spousal abuse. Usually, though, the father or other male partner is the one in control and the perpetrator of the spousal abuse, and the female partner the victim of it. Mostly this has to do with human sexual dimorphism. I.e., on average, men are significantly taller, heavier, more muscular, and stronger than women, and much more experienced in rough-and-tumble and that sort of thing. So the average man has it all over the average woman when it comes to who wins the arm-wrestling contest, and who is most able to control, dominate, and abuse whom. In partnerships that are significantly dysfunctional, this becomes important -- and it is the reason that most of those fleeing abusive spouses are women. This is not to say that there aren't male victims of female cruelty and abuse. There are, and many have been grievously damaged as a result. Both male and female victims of such abuse need all the kindness, care, therapy, andsympathy they can get. Suffering is no respecter of gender, in this matter or any other.