trickybeck wrote:
You know in this case, for the people who hold the tenet that "rape is worse than murder," it doesn't really apply in this case.
The child was too young to experience any of the psychological trauma, and won't even remember it. It'd be like raping a comatose patient. So really, he's not such an extraordinary outlier of a bad guy, just a run-of-the-mill child abuser.
I know you're semi-trolling with this, Tricky, but I do feel the need to address the bolded part because you're not the first person who has made this remark, many have made it with absolute sincerity.
While 8 days is too young to form explicit memories that are able to be recalled accurately, yes, it's NOT too young to experience trauma. There are a lot of documented cases about people experiencing inexplicable post-traumatic type symptoms that actually hearken back to events in infancy.
One psychologist I was interviewing for a paper I did in a class I took recalled a case about a woman whose severe claustrophobic reactions in certain situations eventually started to make sense when she learned about something that had happened as her mother gave birth to her back in the 50s. Basically, a poorly trained nurse kept insisting that the mother not push until the doctor arrived, and when the mother began involuntarily pushing the nurse kept shoving the baby back up inside the mother for close to 20 minutes, a very dangerous thing to do which nearly killed both mother and baby. Once the woman's therapy began to focus on dealing with that particular trauma, she finally began to make progress.
Another case involved a man having feelings of suffocation at certain triggers, such as his grandmother's presence/perfume, and the taste of ceremonial wine. Turns out at his bris when he was 8 days old, one of the old-fashioned traditions employed to quiet a crying infant as he's circumcised is to shove a handkerchief soaked in wine into his mouth, which is what his grandmother did.
So yeah, while an infant may not be able to accurately recall a traumatic event, a person CAN still have psychological troubles lingering from trauma in infancy.
In this particular case, I think the biggest problem is that one of this baby's earliest impressions of interaction with a supposed caretaker is going to be one of pain and danger, and the infant likely doesn't have the support system in place to receive enough solid bonding with her caretakers to offset that impression and help her bond properly, so there are likely going to be some pretty intense attachment issues unless she is placed into the custody of a family that will help her form healthy and trusting attachments (for the record, since there were people in the house while this happened, I absolutely believe this baby needs to be removed from that household permanently, because it is clearly not safe for her there.)
Sarcasm is funner when somebody doesn't get it, even in an online setting.