The dehumanization of a generation
The formation of your personality is influenced by the script you receive at birth: it connects you with past and future and your intuition is the tool to follow the trail of the script. At least if your parents are aware of this. The worst is when they try to mold you into their image and likeness, impose their religion, hold expectations you can’t live up to and sooner or later lead to a midlife crisis. Unless you intuitively feel it’s right. That was not the case with me. Worse: a deforming intervention by child protection without professional guidance.
Eleven hundred (1.100) Children are removed from home because, in the opinion of the juvenile court and/or Youth Protection, the domestic circumstances pose a threat to the well-being of the child, both psychologically and/or physically. There is not always a pre-announcement, often there is a direct removal from home on the basis of a court order. Information about the need for intervention comes from a teacher at school, one of the parents, the neighbors, the GP. The why and the consequences are not discussed. The children are picked up and go to a children’s home.(worse: children Concentration Camps) Only much later does a substantiation of the decision come against which the parents do not have much to say. You have lost your children. Lost track, wrong turn!
I can say a few things about that myself. The GP established that I was being sexually abused and passed this on to the Youth Protection Agency. It was not discussed further at home. My father had to leave the house by the juvenile judge and he took his middle class diploma with him. The diploma my mother didn’t have. That marked the end of the store. I came back from Scouting on a Saturday and was met by a lady. I don’t remember her saying anything. There was no bag of clothes ready, no case with a fresh toothbrush and toothpaste. There was no goodbye. She just took me. To a children’s home.
Life sentence and no life jacket. That is certain.
And this is where the alienation begins. Not understanding it. The lack of explanation, as I did not understand my father who muttered that he needed me and hugged me until bleeding. Not my mother, because she didn’t intervene, said nothing, sedated, a strangely dark house with steep stairs, an attic full of old children’s clothes, a boys’ dormitory. Here I learned to cry silently, walked around lost, felt the threat of screaming and screaming children, the screams of the nurse.There was no ground to stand on, no hand on my shoulder, no welcome. Shut up, empty plate, go. Did she know my name? It felt like old dirt and too much. Someone punched a hole in my head with a block of wood. What are we on earth for?, the priest asked at school. To be happy here and hereafter, we boomed in unison. He was referring to the afterlife. Not here.
I felt neither inside nor outside. There was screaming outside, inside it was empty: I felt nothing. The tears came at night, without sound, without breath. Was it all my fault? Why hadn’t I said anything about my father, not warned. Hadn’t my mother seen my underwear, dirty and with traces of blood? Too busy with work and drink. She never said anything. She had cried but didn’t say goodbye. She hadn’t taken me in her arms, didn’t comfort me, didn’t say it’ll be okay. Had I lost my mother? Throughout my life I felt her absence, her reproach. I was my father’s favorite child.
My mother took us home with a lie and hid us there. Watch out for the man across the street. Bend over when you go to bed. It didn’t help. After three weeks, a police force of eight officers dressed in black arrived and after much shouting and a struggle with my mother, were given the key to the secret annex. Then we disappeared in a black Chevrolet from the police to another children’s home. Further away. I was nine when I left. When I turned thirteen, the juvenile court judge asked what I wanted. I couldn’t go home. There was no house. I didn’t want to go to a foster family. Too close to my skin. I wanted to be a priest, so I went to a seminary. There it would be full and I would be unseen. There were 160 boys in the house. I could disappear.
I tore the skin of my hands and used wound ointment, I suffered from psychoses and I manage to sit still in a violent cramp. I hit my head back and forth to go into a trance and feel no sadness. I was there for six years and still ended up with a diploma. Becoming a priest did not happen. The vow of obedience and chastity was the breaking point.I had been banned from talking about home and the events. After all, that’s nobody’s business, they said. It became my habit to ask questions and not answer myself. I was not in the picture and I could not say on official papers what my father did, where he lived, was married and/or was still alive. I knew nothing.
I was approached by men who saw something I didn’t. Something my father thought he saw and I didn’t know. I was incapable of any kind of intimacy. That was a source of conflict. What started so beautifully with my wife, eventually turned out to be a threat. It got stuck on the child in me. The child who screamed and ranted and finally broke, a vicious circle. She said: you talk like a child. It worked out. I sought help and it worked. It became a story.
Maya Angelou is right: there is no greater agony than an Untold story. The silence is unbearable and sickening.
In the Netherlands, hundreds of children have been forcibly removed from their homes because their parents allegedly committed fraud. They discovered at the tax authorities that they do not have a Dutch surname and then they would intentionally display the criminal behavior. It happened to the parents. They demanded the money back that was meant for childcare. Those parents didn’t. The money was legitimately spent on childcare, so they didn’t have the money and the bailiffs started threatening fines and the debts rose to great heights. They had to sell their possessions, their house, car, everything and still the receivables went up. The children were met at school and taken by complete strangers who didn’t have to explain anything. They just had an assignment. The children from 1 family were housed in different places. Without a goodbye, without a story, by complete strangers. Quite apart from abuse by foster parents, if a child is away from home for too long, the child becomes alienated from the parents. You don’t remember if maybe it’s not your mother’s fault and why didn’t they pick you up, why didn’t they know where you were, can you believe what your parents tell you and when you say you want to go home , why can’t they and why are they separated and when will this nightmare end? It keeps rumbling through your head: anger and sadness alternate. To this day, the tax authorities cannot solve the problem. The parents have not received any compensation. Entire families are separated. The Dutch government shows a dark racist side and still has not solved the issue, has not compensated the parents; not for twelve years!
The children are traumatized for life. Just like the parents who have lost faith in the government. I know which route they are going to take.
* if they, themselves are to blame.
*anxiety and depersonalization symptoms
*fear of intimacy
*look back and see if someone is coming for you
*no trust in authorities
*alienation from your parents, divorced parents
*too old to go back to the parental home, the children’s paradise
*check the locks of the house, your cell, your room every night
*drinking/drugs/ suppressing feelings
*you have lost the original script you were born with, to find your script you were not encouraged by your parents, the priest, Jehovah’s Witness, whatever.
*auto mutilation
*depression, with 40 years of disability.
I can’t help but think often about the children’s concentration camps in America and Israel, two civilized countries just like the Netherlands. When I think of the consequences of this deliberately forced trauma on these children, I shudder. When they express their anger, throw stones, want revenge for the pain and sorrow, they are killed. In Kasmir, soldiers aim their pellets at children’s eyes, in China children of Uygur parents are separated and so called re-educated. Children’s hands in the gold mines of Ghana, Africa.
A perverse system.
