Child of Rage
In the Documentary “Child of Rage” a six and-a –half year old girl named Beth was severely traumatized when she was one year old. She started her life in tragedy when her father would sexually molest/abuse her. The result of his actions on Beth caused her to become unattached from people around her, including her brother, John, and he adoptive parents. She developed a consciousness that enabled her to hurt or kill without remorse. The results of Beth’s abuse caused her to have uncontrollable rage, which she took out on herself and her brother, John. As the documentary says she is a child,”…who cannot love or accept love,” (Child of Rage, Gaby Monet, 1990).
During Beth’s therapy sessions with Dr. Ken Magid, a clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of severely abused children, she admitted to wanting to hurt her family. She wanted to stab her parents in their sleep. Beth said that the reason she wanted to do this because she did not want to be around people, she did not like people. It was mentioned that the sexual abuse that Beth had experienced as a younger child caused to commit inappropriate sexual acts, mainly against her brother, John. She would also begin to masturbate at inappropriate times and on a regular basis. Along with
Signs of incontrollable rage inside of Beth started to show when she killed three baby birds, stuck pins in the household pets and John, pinch, squeeze, or kick John’s penis, would get up in the middle of the night and punch John in the stomach, and finally continuously hit John’s head on the concrete floor in the basement. As time went on without her getting the proper treatment her violent tendencies escaladed.
Dr. Magid thought, for the wellbeing of the household, Beth needed to be temporarily separated from her family. So Beth was sent to a home that was run by an expert at raising children with early attachment disorders. At this home Beth began to develop a sense of right