The Sacrificial Daughter

This is the story of two mothers with young daughters who are, sometimes, literally screaming to be heard.

A daughter can give her soul to a father and destroy herself in the process, not to mention destroy her future, her relationships and most importantly, destroy her tender and precious inner feminine self.

I have been working with mothers who have lost their daughters. If not actually lost them in the physical sense (and one of them has!), but lost the connection, lost the love and understanding, lost the female child they had nurtured from a baby girl.

This trend of sacrificial daughters is growing and I have found that the institutions you would imagine would assist, intervene, protect and support the healing of such daughters, are in fact colluding with dysfunctional (at best) and destructive fathers, whose aim is to harm their ex-wives and to support their own egos, bolster their power of influence and control by sacrificing their daughter’s’ soul.

My clients have been the mothers, although in one case I also have met the daughter. Both mothers have been devastated by the loss of their daughter, one a physical and emotional loss, the other an emotional loss.

They are devastated that the daughter’s self, her individual identity, has disappeared, seemingly under the spell of an abusive father.
In both cases the daughters were admitted to the local adolescent psychiatric wards.

In both cases, the psychiatric system has failed the girls and showed an unwillingness to address the issues with the father.
Instead, the system has focused on the mental illness and accompanying symptoms experienced by the girls, finding a diagnosis and relevant medication to treat the girls and, it appears, have little interest in the underlying cause of the girls’ debilitating issues.

Both girls, but one in particular who has had multiple admissions, have been at serious risk to themselves at certain points, expressing eating disorders, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, self-harming and many, many other manifestations of neglect and abuse.

The fact that trauma might be at the centre of these distressing symptoms seems to be denied or ignored or unwillingly dealt with.

The outcomes for both girls have been a diagnosis of a mental illness & an application of medication…

The outcomes for both girls have been a diagnosis of a mental illness (which keeps changing regularly, or where assessments keep repeating because clinicians are looking for a diagnosis), application of medication, and an identity emerging for each girl which is based on the labels applied to them.

Both girls continue to experience spiralling distress.

Neither of these girls, after months or years of interventions, is improving, or finding any peace or solace within themselves.

The girls’ relationships with their mothers continue to decline or, in one case, almost cease.

The devastation of these situations on the girls and their mothers has been absolutely shattering.

The future is grim and the fact that the destructive fathers will continue to control and manipulate their daughters is fearfully inevitable because, it seems, no one seems to want to do anything about it.

CASE ONE – The Pleasing Child

Mel struggled for years with her marriage and the control and abuse from her then-husband. The challenge of three children, their care and needs, made it confusing as to how to navigate an abusive relationship and made the question of whether to leave the relationship or not, highly complex.

After much counselling, and years of suffering, Mel decided to leave the relationship in order to save herself.

She knew that if she stayed, she would slowly die from the toxic effects of coercive control and emotional abuse. She knew that if she was dying inside that her capacity for parenting three young children would be depleted, probably destroyed.

In order to protect her children and ensure they had in fact a mother to care for them, she had to leave.

However, Mel was very aware that the consequences of this decision would not mean the abuse from her ex-husband would cease.

Mel knew she had a fight on her hands and that fight might be years long at best, maybe lifelong.

Mel left the marriage and felt enormous relief however, as expected, the impact on the children and particularly the eldest daughter, Joanne, was enormous.

Joanne, being the pleasing child, the child who sought to win approval from those most powerful in her life, soon was expressing significant symptoms of distress.

Joanne began to challenge her mother, the safest parent to challenge and the parent she had the most confidence in loving her no matter what. Joanne repeated her father’s words and shared his opinions and perceptions. These opinions and perceptions were radically different from the perceptions she had expressed as a girl before the divorce.

Increasingly, Joanne became aggressive, volatile, irrational and deeply distressed. This began a period (ongoing) of repeated admissions to adolescent psychiatric wards over, now, a more than two-year period.

During this time, she saw less and less of her mother. Both parents were fighting for custody/access to the children in court and ultimately Joanne was in the sole custody of her father. Her younger siblings had a 50/50 arrangement between mum and dad.

Once Joanne was solely in her father’s care her mental health declined further, with many suicide attempts, taking any medication she could find, rushed to hospital many times.

Her sexual acting out became an issue and the behaviour was leaving Joanne at great risk of predatory behaviour from those who might abuse her.

The hospital was given critical information by Mel, however the hospital did not appear to take her seriously.

They chose to focus on Joanne and Joanne’s father and their version of events that ultimately demonised and sidelined Mel.

As Mel’s psychologist, with years of experience in family violence, I wrote to the case manager at the hospital with information about the case and expressed my concern about the family violence underpinning the case that was not being addressed.

The case manager did not call me back. No one at the hospital has followed up on my email. I had raised very serious issues but a reply has never been forthcoming.

The situation continued, however, to be very serious.

I am afraid that Joanne will ultimately successfully kill herself.

At this point, the parents are still fighting over custody and access to the children in the family court, but little progress has been made.

I won’t go into this here, but it is my strong opinion that the family court is most ineffective in dealing with family violence cases, and often contributes to making the problem worse. The family court in my experience, often supports the abusive father and seems to fall for age-old labels for the mother, those being mentally ill, overly emotional, exaggerating or dramatizing her partner’s violence and overall, being the problem parent or the parent who is responsible for the conflict in the relationship.

The family court in this case has been very unhelpful however, the case is ongoing and still to be resolved. We hope Joanne remains alive to see the outcome.

On a final note, child protection has been involved in this case. I made a notification months ago. I believe there have been many notifications made to child protection about Joanne’s vulnerability and at-risk behaviour.

Joanne was allocated a child protection worker. I have had a couple of discussions with the worker who has been briefed to write a report for the case.

I have more confidence that this worker and the child protection system have a deeper understanding of family violence however, this system also has limited willingness to intervene when there is an abusive father, when there is an ongoing Family Court matter and particularly when the presentation of the family allows for a violent partner to express status, power, social privilege and a willingness to abuse these advantages for their own gain.

These cases are very difficult, very challenging and there is much “he said, she said” to wade through, but with experience, and a preparedness to really listen, the truth seeps through the bullshit, and the real situation of family violence is revealed.

The answer in dealing with this kind of complex family violence is intervention, confrontation, a calling out of the violence, and a priority placed on the children’s needs over the abusive parent, taking into consideration they too may be powerless to call out the violence and save themselves.

It is important to note that they are children! They don’t have power, unlike the institutions involved who do. The psychiatric system has power, the courts have power, and the child protection system has power. They are ultimately responsible for making these challenging calls and thus saving children’s lives.

CASE TWO – The Pleasing Mother/Wife

I have worked for many years with Lorraine and have been informed of the challenges to her and her two children about Lorraine’s ex-husband on many, many occasions. Lorraine’s eldest child Jade is thirteen years old. Her younger brother is twelve. The children spend fifty per cent of their time with dad and fifty per cent with Mum.

Jade has become increasingly unwell, her behaviour disturbed and specifically, this has manifested as an eating disorder. Last year this resulted in Jade being admitted to the local adolescent psychiatric unit as she was just 36kg. Jade had begun an extreme version of controlling her food intake and was spending a lot of time running and exercising. Both behaviours were obsessive and out of control and ultimately were threatening her life.

Lorraine had left her marriage due to her ex-husband’s unceasing control and manipulation some years ago. Lorraine describes herself as an easygoing person and a pleaser and she had not easily challenged her ex-husband, nor stood up for herself.

She did, however, recognise that her mental health was declining, and that despite her efforts at good relations, conflict between her and her husband was increasing.

Lorraine had formed an opinion, over the years, that her ex-husband was a disturbed individual, with unrealistic expectations of those around him and that he would never cease to dictate to her how she should be and try and control her behaviour.

Lorraine realised that she was at risk of losing her mind if she stayed in this relationship. Lorraine left the marriage and quickly the arrangement of 50/50 care of the children emerged.

Jade was increasingly siding with her father, repeating what her father said, what he believed and reiterating his opinions and values, particularly about her mother.

Extreme right-wing politics was a favourite topic of her ex-husband, so Jade too began expressing extreme right-wing views. Also, extreme hygiene routines were favoured by her ex-husband, so Jade began expressing extreme hygiene beliefs and behaviours and subsequently attacked her mother for her “unhygienic standards”.

These ranged from methods of brushing teeth, use of socks as shoes (unhygienic if stepped into more than one room), cat behaviour and washing required thus.

These “differences” had become intolerable and unmanageable and were clearly informing Jade’s growing obsessions and OCD-like behaviour. These behaviours resulted in much arguing and conflict between mother and daughter with Jade clearly indicating she prefers her father to her mother.

Jade expressed hostility and a lack of respect for her mother’s differing views and put her mother down with patronizing comments. Although typical of a growing, adolescent daughter, what is different here is the voracity that Jade expresses her support and commitment to her father’s values and beliefs and the superiority that goes along with these.

Lorraine was losing the daughter she had had, and the relationship was becoming more distant and superficial. Interestingly, Jade’s eating disorder resolved, and she was discharged from hospital, only for the problem to re-emerge once out of hospital as a self-harming issue. This was accompanied by sexual acting out, using explicit photos of herself, that left her unprotected and in danger of more abuse.

Meanwhile the hospital was investing strongly in seeking a diagnosis.

The hospital was investing in assessments of Jade, to confirm a suspicion of ASD (Autism Spectrum disorder). They were struggling to confirm this diagnosis but continued to pursue it.

I received a phone call from Jade’s case manager. The case manager proved to be a very young worker who seemed unsure about what I was raising and did not show an understanding of family violence in general. The young worker seemed to express a powerlessness to intervene or take on board anything I was saying.

Mother-Daughter Relationship Anihalated
Both of these girls, to varying degrees, have lost their relationship with their mother.

Under the spell of their powerful and influential fathers, they have preferenced him and their relationship with him and sacrificed their mother and the mother-daughter relationship. I have termed this phenomenon that of ‘sacrificial daughters’.

They have been sacrificed by their fathers so that the fathers could express their power and have their rather large and overpowering ego needs met by their daughters’ devotion and undying support of their beliefs, in particular their fathers’ beliefs surrounding their mothers.

In this situation, the father maintains control and has all the cards, and the girls have lost much of their own autonomy or individuality. They have lost their mother in terms of their valuing of her, their understanding of her, and to a great extent their love of her.

There are many examples of this situation in our patriarchal society (See my blog article on Patriarchal Daughters) and many patriarchal daughters.

Patriarchal daughters often succeed in terms of being privileged by the patriarchy, however, they often loose the most precious of relationships, or at least the primacy of the relationship, and that is with their mothers and to some extent, they lose relationships with other women too (with the exception of other patriarchal daughters).

The cost of being sacrificed to maintain the privilege of being favoured by the father, the patriarchy, is incredibly high. Women may lose their very lives to protect this privilege. At a minimum, they lose their relationship with the inner feminine.
It is because our culture is patriarchal, and that largely our institutions and the individuals within those institutions are blind to the dynamic of misogyny, that patriarchy co-opts its supports, and this is how this power dynamic exists and thrives.

Sadly, and at great cost, the power of the patriarchy accompanying the huge loss of our sacrificed daughters (and many others) is not conscious.

This dynamic, these archetypes, exist unconsciously, driving our behaviour, our policies, our governments and our relationships and the cost is enormous and is devastating to all.

It is very difficult to be the messenger of such dynamics in this culture and to meet head-on the denial and rejection of such a painful message. The status quo is powerful and does not want to give up its control.
But the alternative?

This is the story of just two of so many young girls and their mothers, who are, sometimes, literally screaming to be heard.

What will we do….?
Will we continue to ignore and refuse to face this pain as a society?
Hold on to our destructive and death-creating beliefs?

Or

Open our ears to their screams…..and try to save our children and ultimately, thus save ourselves.

Here is the Alternative.

We wake up to what is happening, taking step one, just one step outside the status quo, away from the patriarchy.

Things will change when we speak the truth.

Do you have the courage to do this? I believe you do.