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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

That's seriously awful.

I'm glad you have a sense of humor because that seems like one of the helpful reactions that could arise from such a nightmare.

> They would often bring me in front of the school's psychologist and he would make me cry in front of them, always blaming me, never once asking me what was going on at home.

It's remarkable how institutions (the school psychologist in your case) often re-inflict the trauma that is going on at home. It's their job to protect the child, but often they do the opposite, and it's worth asking why. I experienced this myself, though in a very different context—everyone's story is unique of course.

Good for you for surviving, and best wishes for growth and healing.

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> It's remarkable how institutions (the school psychologist in your case) often re-inflict the trauma that is going on at home. It's their job to protect the child, but often they do the opposite, and it's worth asking why. I experienced this myself, though in a very different context—everyone's story is unique of course.

I think the simplest explanation here is Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crud. This goes for members of institutions as well, even if they aren't overworked, underpaid, and undertrained as so many are.

On top of that, abusers are often charming and highly skilled liars and manipulators. To get away with it for an extended period of time it is necessary to convince the victims that institutions won't help them, so performing abuse in front of a representative of the institution can be a ploy to reinforce their power. If the school psychologist had been likely to challenge the abusers, they likely would have picked a different authority figure (teacher, principal, &c.).

The abusers really can go from threatening a six year old with what sounds like credible threats to making the adults laugh within seconds without any visible whiplash.

And the will to deny is extremely strong; to believe the child one has to revamp one's beliefs about society in a large and risky direction.

They genuinely believe that everything is justified; even if they hide what they are doing from public view. "I do this because I care about you, other parents would have given up a long time ago". The hiding is also blamed on the child, claiming that he or she is the one that would destroy their reputation if words got out of what he or she did and what the extend of what the parents had to do to "remedy" the situation.

Thank you for the kind words!

In my experience, and not only with that instance, power defers to power. An unruly child's pleadings will never prevail over his parents that are really good at making themselves appear as victims (http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-miss...). Or as famous lawyer Gerry Spence said, "the gentleman of the bar is there for the other gentleman of the bar".

Also, let's not deny it, I was not a nice and adults would not be nice in return and I would respond in kind. I was a reflection of what was going at home. This makes other adults not want to be nice at all. I can't count the times where I was told "oops, we forgot to bring one for you" or something along those lines.

> It's their job to protect the child, but often they do the opposite, and it's worth asking why.

It seems pretty simple to me why. If we were talking about a job in tech, there would be 10,000 snarky responses about how it was obvious that this project manager or that maintenance developer was just protecting their job. Same here. Rocking the boat as a guidance counselor or anything like that just invites complaints (warranted or not), and in those roles they're judged by the school administrators on how many (or few) complaints are received. Same as teachers, I think. And though I've read no stories from school psychologists, teachers who get even a few complaints find themselves unwelcome in that district.

Maybe my speculation is wrong in this regard, but if so, I can't see the flaw in it.

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