Author Archives: Amy Herdy

A reader shares his experiences as an abused child.

Hi Amy and Brent,

As an abused child myself,I was bizarre to read the chronicles from Mr. Bren’t childhood. For years after being beaten,sexually and emotionally abused it was clear to me that society is in part to blame for ignoring obviously beaten child when they are right in front of their face in either a school setting or the emergency room. But getting discovered can lead to heightened abuse a home far from the police station.

After coming to school with a bleeding broken nose my second grade teacher turned me over to the nurse whom phoned the police. Well they pretended to be my friends and got me to tell the truth. Within hours i was back home with my abusive step-dad madder than hell that his secret had been exposed. From the time I was 8 I never trusted another adult and began to live in my own world.

Wonder why most of the abused don’t come forward? They have usually through this before and realize that they end up right back where they came from;the absers are angrier and can’t wait to take their sickness out on you,in this case a small child who weighed 60 pounds. #2 Uprooting them and being put into foster care puts an already timid kid into a place where you have no protection. Although homelike sucks it is the one they know. I’ve met several persons at support groups whom have been placed in foster care,only to be sexually or physically abused. 3. Call it Stocholm syndrome but although it sounds sick it is common for the childeren to love these maniacs. They begin to see bad attention as any attention,sadly they learn to love their abusers. 3.)My step-father who beat me constantly,knocking me unconcios etc…was never taken to court in anyway. It was the 70’s when sadly children were seen as their property and statistically unless you kill a strangers white child no one really wants to get involved to help these children. The cops in my case had several photos of my numerous interactions with them.

A friend of mine in high school finally had enough abuse and shot his father to death. We always thought that had his father done these things to a neighbor or a stranger he would have been in jail. But it seems that you,as a child,have no rights in the eye of the law. Often when you do try to get help the athoraties are dubious to interceded the confines of a family home.

Anyway, I grew up angry and alone until we moved to a different state and my abusive stepdad left my mother who was six months pregnant. Then I turned into a bully and stated to be a monster. Then one day it just stopped less than a year later. Instead I turned to drugs and alcohol to numb my pain which I didn’t stop until I was 35.

Amy you are right! Lots has to change in dealings with children of abuse. We need a revoulution in how we handle these cases or not be suprised when people like Brent act out. After years of someone four times  your size beats you almost daily you come out damaged . Who knows if Brent’s dad didn’t knock something loose in his head?

Thanks for this forum

Best,Troy

Clearly, his choices landed him in the situation where he is now–and yet I wonder what factors affected those choices.

There is no doubt in my mind he does not function like most people, and he would often tell me of “blacking out” and waking up to find himself in the midst of attacking someone. There is a common pattern to these blackouts, such as what he described to me in a letter dated earlier this month, on July 9:

I had another seizure thing about an hour ago. It’s not so bad ya know accept for the stupid headache that comes at the beginning. The headache is like, Blinding. Sudden Burning intense pain. The rest is easy peasy because its a Euphoric Confusion and some numbness in my jaw and tongue with odd tastes and smells and my favorite part the eyeball dance as i now call it. Wow Dude! Thats some Good Shit Man! Ok the end of em suck because that confusion is real bad. Like who am i, where am i type shit.

A friend of mine sent me this interesting story that ran on NPR about the brains of sociopaths. According to the expert, people with little activity in the orbital cortex, which is an area in the front of the brain behind the eyes, have little impulse control. This can affect their moral decision-making process, and as a result, dark behaviors can take over, such as ones linked to violence and rage.

In some people, the article says, the orbital cortex doesn’t work properly. The reasons? Maybe they had a brain injury. Or maybe they were born that way?

It’s been more than 25 years, and I still haven’t forgotten it.

I was eating dinner at a crowded Wendy’s restaurant when a woman seated nearby with a child suddenly reached across the table and slapped him, hard. He was about 8 or 9. He started sobbing, which only made her angrier, and so she began to scream at him to shut up. Then she slapped him again. She looked practiced at it. He cried quietly, his head down.

Everyone stared.

None of us did anything.

I couldn’t eat anymore. I started shaking my head, and the guy I was with–and I would later wonder at his own history that prompted his perspective–saw it coming and started saying to me, “Don’t you do anything. Don’t you say anything. It will only make it worse.”

I stood up, unable to finish my meal, and threw it away. Then I walked over to her and quietly said, “If you keep this up, someday, someone will report you.”

I felt disgusted with myself as I said it because I knew it wasn’t going to be me.

Then I looked at the little boy, who had lifted his head and was staring at me with wide eyes, and I said to him, “This is not your fault.”

I now know so much more than my 20-year-old self, and I know that bystander intervention is a complicated, complex situation that can indeed make things worse if it’s done with anger and blame and an attitude that leads to more violence.

But I also know I will never again stand by and watch someone being hurt.

How many opportunities did people have to help Brent Brents when he was still an abused child, before he was a predator?

How many opportunities do people have to speak up about suspected abuse in some way, and yet they do and say nothing?

It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to be this way. There are lots of resources out there to guide folks through the process of being a Good Samaritan, and not simply a bystander. We can try to diffuse an escalating situation with humor, we can ask others to help us for moral support, we can leave the area and quietly and safely call 911.

This guide, for example, focuses on child abuse.

And this one focuses on adult violence intervention.