The Different Types Of Human Darkness
But not an exhaustive list...
This is not going to be a good post. It is going to be the first post that is delving into the different types of human darkness there is. I will be not only using examples, but I will be discussing those examples with clarity. These are things that happen all around you, and you have no idea. You have no idea how widespread human darkness reaches, and how prominent it is in society. So, this is your tap out warning. If you don’t heed it, I don’t want to hear about it. Read at your own risk.
Some examples will be things that I am personally aware of and have observed personally. Some will be things that have been in the Western media, and others will be cases that likely many of you have never heard of, as they will be international. In the cases that I know of personally, I will be careful with details, because they come from first-hand accounts given to me by survivors.
In the public cases, I will provide you links in case you want to do more research on them. Sometimes the personal accounts and prominent cases will overlap. Those will be the child abuse cases as there tends to be significant repetition in what people do when the victim is someone that they are related to, or they have direct control over, such as a parent or stepparent, versus the treatment that a child slave might receive by someone who bought them. The abuse tends to differ, but not always. This will not be a short post, and it will probably be broken into parts. There is a lot to cover.
Do you know what a target child is? If you have done a lot of reading and research regarding horrific outcomes of child abuse cases, you probably know the concept of one, but perhaps not the term. It is one my friend uses, and it refers to a child in a family that, for whatever reason, is the recipient of atrocious treatment. It can come from both parents, it can come from one parent, and sometimes it involves the siblings of the target child as well. There tends to be a pattern to this type of abuse, and it can range in severity. There are plenty of examples of target children that you can learn about if you are interested.
Timothy Ferguson is a recent case, and many of you may already be aware of it. He is the fifteen-year-old boy whose mother tortured him with hot sauce, but that is the least of what she did. She was not alone in this treatment, either. His brother also, enthusiastically, participated.
Dave Pelzer famously wrote the book, A Child Called It, which details his life as a target child. His main tormentor was his mother, but his father was in the home, and couldn’t be bothered to intervene. His siblings were also recruited to assist in his torture. Out of all the victims listed, dave is the only one that survived his abuse.
Target children will usually have a theme of abuse that they are inflicted with. It often begins with emotional abuse that will devolve into torture. There is something in human nature that dictates that once someone is considered subhuman, they can be treated in any way that their tormentor can imagine, and humans, while individually are very imaginative, have a pattern that they tend to utilize.
Control is usually where it starts. Where they are, what they eat, where they go, what they wear, how to speak, when to speak, what to say, etc
Physical abuse that escalates. Punching, kicking, use of weapons or implements to cause more injury.
Control over the ability to go to the bathroom
Not allowing showers or baths
Forcing the person to be dirty
Forcing them to wear filthy clothing
Removal of access to food
Control over what is allowed to be eaten
Believes the victim is faking their dire state
Forcing the person to eat things that are not edible such as a cup of salt, or disgusting rotten food like spoiled meat and moldy vegetables blended together, or may cause injury,
If the person vomits, forcing them to eat that vomit
Imprisonment
Removal of personal items, either of luxury such as books, or necessity, such as clothing
Forcing the person to be naked
Forcing the person to do horrifically degrading things such as being hosed down in the yard
Forcing the person to sleep somewhere degrading, such as the yard, the garage, the basement, the attic, a closet, under their bed, chained to a toilet, etc.
Causing the person increasingly severe injuries
Restricting food to the point of extreme starvation
Forced exercise
Hair cutting/shaving
Ice baths
Forcing the person to do housework, yard work, or anything else that they can force their slave to do. This gives them free work, an action rife for criticism, and something to punish the individual for as there is never a chance for the person to do the job well according to their abuser.
The further the person is abused, the more the abuser sees the person as less than human, This seems to cause disgust, despite the fact that the abuser has inflicted this condition on the person. The disgust inspires further sadism, which makes the abuser more creative in their punishments and torture, which further debases the victim in their eyes, which keeps the cycle going.
Sexual abuse is quite common as well, and often it is beyond what you could imagine.
The reasoning for death in these situations seems to be partially due to the victim never being able to meet the expectations of the abuser. The goal posts move constantly, and the lack of perfect obedience is punished. The victim can never do enough to make the abuser happy, and their lack of ability to do so causes anger and rage in the abuser, and thus the abuser ups the stakes continuously.
I have known a number of target children for reasons that I will explain below. Sometimes they had siblings, sometimes they don’t. Regardless of the number of people that are in the family, it is rare that anyone tries to step in and stop it. Had they not been rescued, the outcome is death. Many of the boys that I have known that were rescued, their time on this earth was very limited. They have had to spend years building themselves into a body that is somewhat healthy, and much longer than that to drag their minds out of hell. The physical damage is severe, the mental damage is catastrophic.
One of the boys that I knew, he isn’t a boy anymore, he’s a grown man, and for this we will call him, Toby, told me something once that I thought bore mentioning. His father was extremely mentally ill. I have no idea what he had, and I don’t think Toby has any idea either. His father kept him in a three-foot by three foot closet when he wasn’t abusing him, and he suffered all manner of abuse. He never knew his mother, and has no idea what became of her. He was rescued, which is how I met him.
I have a friend that works with severely abused young people. I have known this person since I was fairly young, and he has done this work the entire time that I have known him. When I was much younger, I was with him one day, and he stopped by a hospital where one of these young men was recovering.
I trailed behind him as any young person does, somewhat annoyed to be in a boring hospital and wishing we could go do something much more fun. We got to the room and we went in. There was a young man that was recovering from horrific injuries. I won’t go into detail as it would disturb many people.
He really wasn’t opening up to anyone, and his ability to speak really wasn’t known beyond very basic words. Then my friend said he had to go talk to the doctor, and he left me there. Never being one for things like that bothering me, I started talking to him like he was anyone else. He was to me anyway, so why not?
After a bit, I teased him a little for not talking to me, and teasing him saying that I know when I am not wanted, he laughed. I teased him a little more, and he talked to me. I was the first person he spoke to, and for a while I was the only person he would speak to.
My friend got into a rather amusing habit of depositing me in rooms with mostly young men who didn’t want to open up, and they always did with me. Anyway, the kid above was Toby, and he, after he was released into aftercare, told me that he thinks of all the kids that were like him that are in the cold earth, left there because no one ever knew that they existed. That they died alone, never having a kind hand placed on them, that every touch brought pain and fear, and no matter how much they hoped for that to change, those hands brought them to their graves. He wondered how many are like that, how many are under basements, in gardens, in the woods, or a lake. He also said that wouldn’t have been his fate. He knew he wouldn’t leave the closet if he died, that he was happy that someday, he would have a proper grave.
That is a very intense thing to consider at his age (well, in fairness, no one is sure of his age, but rather the age that was assigned to him). He was and is an amazing human being, but he struggles deeply with many issues, confined places and the dark being two of them. I know a lot of stories that I could share, but Toby has allowed me to use him as an example.
“Sometimes,” he says, “The torture only lasts a few months. Sometimes, it’s years. It doesn’t matter, though. It could be a moment, it could be a lifetime, and the scars will run as deep. Those of us that were there longer, we learned to cope. Those that had shorter times, they didn’t. I think they’re worse off than I am.”
This is a pretty common mentality among these people that were fortunately rescued. Someone else always had it worse than they did. It’s partially because they want to support those around them, but it is also partially a deflection. It could have been worse. There is nothing to complain about. Complaints brout them pain, so they are quashed without a second thought.
This sort of abuse is much more common than you think. When it shows it’s ugly face on the news, it is shocking to everyone that doesn’t know that. To those that do know, the sense of not getting there in time often rings hollow in their minds, because often if it’s on the news, the abused is already dead.
Human darkness takes so many forms, and this is one of the more tame versions of it in some respects, but in others it is the most cruel. It is one thing to create harm in the world using strangers, it is a far different thing to torture your own child. Often, these children are blood related, so that is no protection from being a target child. Others aren’t. Others are stepchildren, that the biological parent either won’t intervene for, or they actively support the torture. Some are given over to the abuser by a parent, believing that their child will be safe while they find a way to handle the problems that are preventing them from caring for them themselves. Still others are slaves, bought for this exact purpose. They live and die in in this human darkness with no one ever knowing their names.
Next time we will get into a different form of human darkness. I will try to break these posts up with more cheery ones inbeween. Otherwise it might be a real drag.
One last thing to leave you with when it comes to these target children. There is a game called Silent Hill Homecoming. In this game there is a character called, Wheeler. He is the town sheriff. You will travel through parts of the game with him, and he also speaks to you on the radio. You get to know this character pretty well and he is an affable dude. As the game progresses, he will be kidnapped and tortured by a cult.
He looks pretty bad, right? Well, you as the player, you get a choice here. You can choose to use one of your health kits to save him, or you leave him to die. It affects the outcome of the game.
Why would I bring this up when speaking about target children? Because throughout these children’s torture, every single day, either through deliberate consideration, or due to doing anything, there is a choice being made. Even when they are really damaged, and their recovery is unlikely, a choice could be made to stop. To help them. To get them help. This is always an option, but that isn’t an option that is ever taken. I have never once heard of this choice being made. That victim might get better, and it is likely the abuse would never be known about unless someone saw the scars.
Just like it is a choice to save Wheeler, no matter the dire condition that he’s in, it is a choice to stop the abuse. A person can make this choice, but they don’t. It doesn’t matter if the child staring back at them is their own, or not, they will continue to harm them until they die. In these cases, unless external intervention happens, the target child will almost definitely die. It is inevitable. They will then move on to another child, if they have one available to them. Even if that child helped them abuse the dead one, it doesn’t matter. They will just put that one into the crosshairs, and the cycle will repeat, and the darkness continues.
Thank you for this difficult post.
You really are something.
This topic is perhaps my raison d'être, having witnessed severe cases of child abuse both as a teacher and a nurse. Even in less severe instances, the damage to victims and society is incalculable. I first read about your experiences with this in one of your articles, and I commend you for your openness in discussing these issues. Awareness can lead to early detection and prevention, potentially saving children from ongoing harm. The well-being of countless children and our society depends on our willingness to confront these painful realities. Thank you.