When the Child Is Blamed
From Dissertation to Essay
One of the most painful things a child can learn is that they are to blame for what happened.
Not necessarily because anyone says so directly.
But because the child gradually comes to believe it.
This conviction may become so self-evident that it follows the person into adulthood, long after the adult who committed the violation has disappeared.
The violation is then no longer only an event.
It has become a way of understanding oneself.
The Child’s Impossible Calculation
A young child lives in a world where adults form the very framework of life.
They provide food.
Protection.
Explanations.
Love.
If the same adult also violates the child, a question arises that the child has no means of answering:
How can the person who loves me also do this?
For the adult, several answers may be possible.
For the child, there is often only one.
There must be something about me.
Thus begins an impossible calculation.
The child attempts to create meaning in something that is fundamentally without meaning.
When Responsibility Changes Hands
Through the work on my doctoral dissertation, this pattern became visible again and again.
The legal and moral responsibility belonged to the adult.
Yet it was the child who carried the feeling of guilt.
This is one of shame’s most destructive movements.
Responsibility changes hands.
Not in reality.
But in the person’s own understanding.
The guilty person may continue life without feeling guilt.
The innocent person may live on with a guilt that was never theirs.
It is difficult to imagine a more profound injustice.
The Child’s Loyalty
Many ask why the child did not tell anyone.
The question may seem reasonable.
But it often presupposes an adult way of thinking.
The child does not primarily live within moral judgements.
The child lives within relationships.
The child needs the adult.
They may love the same person who harms them.
They may fear what will happen if the secret becomes known.
Will the family fall apart?
Will Mother cry?
Will Father be sent to prison?
Will no one believe me?
The child’s silence is therefore not necessarily an expression of passivity.
It may be an expression of loyalty.
A loyalty greater than the child is able to carry.
The Adult’s Gaze upon the Child They Once Were
When people later speak about what they experienced, something strange often happens.
They judge the child they once were with the knowledge of an adult.
I should have said no.
I should have run away.
I should have told someone.
But the child they are speaking about did not know what the adult knows today.
The child did not possess the same freedom.
The same power.
The same understanding.
An important part of working with guilt and shame is therefore to restore the child to their true place within the story.
Not as responsible.
But as dependent.
The Professional’s Task
The person working with someone who carries such guilt must proceed with care.
It rarely helps simply to say:
“You were not to blame.”
The words are true.
But they need time before they can become an experience.
The feeling of guilt is not always the result of logical conclusions.
It may be woven into the person’s entire self-understanding.
The helper must therefore do more than correct a mistaken belief.
They must gradually help responsibility find its way back to the person who actually carried it.
This does not happen through argument alone.
It happens through dialogue.
Through trust.
Through a new understanding of the time when the child lived in a world they had not created.
When the Truth Returns
There are moments when a person suddenly says:
“But I was not the one who was supposed to protect me.”
Such sentences may appear simple.
Yet they may mark a decisive turning point.
For the first time, responsibility begins to move back to where it belongs.
The adult receives their guilt.
The child regains their innocence.
This does not mean that the pain disappears.
But the pain acquires a different moral place.
Perhaps this is one of the most important tasks both for the individual and for professional social work.
Not to rewrite history.
But to restore its moral centre of gravity.
The Child Who Was Never Guilty
Through the work on my doctoral dissertation, this remained one of the most fundamental insights.
Shame and feelings of guilt do not always follow the truth.
They often follow power.
The person who had the least power may come to carry the heaviest guilt.
The person who bore the greatest responsibility may escape it.
It is therefore not enough to ask who feels guilty.
We must also ask:
Who bore the responsibility?
Who had the freedom to act?
Who could have stopped what happened?
Only when these questions are asked can the moral order slowly begin to be restored.
Perhaps this is one of the most important tasks of social work.
To help people distinguish between feeling guilty and being guilty.
Between shame and responsibility.
Between what the child believed—and what was actually true.
For the child was never guilty.
It was the child who carried the adult’s guilt.
For the child was never guilty.
It was the child who carried the adult’s guilt.
This essay was written in a conversation with OpenAI/ChatGPT
This essay is part of the series “From Dissertation to Essay” and is based particularly on the doctoral dissertation’s existential-dialogical discussions of shame, guilt, responsibility, power, the child’s loyalty, and the misplaced feelings of guilt that often follow the sexual abuse of children: Pettersen, K. T. (2009). An Exploration into the Concept and Phenomenon of Shame within the Context of Child Sexual Abuse: An Existential-Dialogical Perspective of Social Work within the Settings of a Norwegian Incest Centre. NTNU.
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