#subiysu

I don't see anything illogical about this situation necessarily, but I do suggest that you be really careful in the way your narrative handles and comments on this situation. You can totally develop a society where the sexual view of a gender is skewed and very different from our own, but if your narrative appears to be saying things should be this way or that way, you could be angering or isolating readers.

For example: you can have a racist or sexist protagonist without the narrative itself being racist or sexist. Does the story condone the bad situation or behavior?

As far as a logical punishment, I don't know exactly what that would be; you haven't given enough information. It would entirely depend on what the general social consensus is on the severity of the "crime" if a woman being social could be considered a crime, which would be strange.

But once again, it all depends on what commentary your narrative is making about this set up. I just warn you to be sensitive and careful.

Europe is a big place and I’m not an expert on child protections services.

 I realise that there’s this perception in the New World that all of Europe is rather wealthy but… there’s a big difference between a place like Sweden and a place like Macedonia. There’s also a difference between which places people ‘count’ as European. Are we including Russia here? Even the bits that are closer to Japan then Poland? Are we including Turkey? How about Israel? Cyprus? Including the north?

 Without parameters this isn’t really something I can look up and it’s far enough from my core area of knowledge that I can’t rattle off differences in different countries.

 I will say that in my experience you can find horror stories in every country. For instance; do you think your perception of child protection services would be the same as that of a First Nations person? Consider the history of colonial authorities using ‘child protection’ as an excuse to separate families and raise children away from their cultural heritage. Consider the history, and present, of forced sterilisation against minorities in Western countries.

 It’s very difficult to compare these things across countries because different countries use very different systems to report problems and may put the same abuse/problem in different categories. Researchers are also guilty of this.

 A lot of poorer European countries have had problems setting up orphanages that do a good job for children. Especially disabled children. But so has Japan, one of the richest countries in the world.

 Abuse in this sort of setting does arguably meet the legal definition of torture. However it is studied separately. Which means that it doesn’t typically come up in the sources I consult and the textbooks I read. And because I personally struggle to read about child abuse I tend to avoid the topic unless I need to research something specific for my own writing.

 It’s also not clear this question is for your writing, pet, and the blog is for writing advice.

 If you want to find out more about this issue you can start by deciding on a country, or at least an area, of interest. Looking up charities that work with children in those countries is a decent place to start. But you’re likely to struggle to find answers without learning the local language/s and interacting with local news sources.

 Luckily if you’re interested in Europe there are a lot of options for learning languages: even relatively minor ones like Welsh have good, inexpensive online courses.

 Wrapping up, it’s important to remember that whatever country you are in, whatever you are researching there will not be a monolithic view of authority figures. The opinions of the most vulnerable people in society, those most likely to come into contact with government officials, often differ drastically from those of us with privilege.

 Europe is not a monolith. We have our religious, ethnic and racial minorities. We have our displaced, marginalised indigenous groups. And I can’t summarise all that history for an entire continent in order to give you context for today. That context is necessary for understanding the view of authority, especially authorities who can take children, in any society.

 I have a post on approaching research here. Without specifics, without context, without parameters, that is the best I can do.

Available on Wordpress.

Beyond what I could google I have no idea who this person is so keep that in mind as you read my answer. Also keep in mind that I am a pacifist and as such opposed to the death penalty. Which means my first instinct when I googled this guy and found he was France’s longest serving executioner was ‘Why?’ XD

 But I’m not here to dictate my personal taste or tell you what you should write in your stories. I’m here to help you portray torture and human rights abuses more realistically and respectfully. And hopefully give everyone a deeper understanding of these difficult topics as we go.

 The truth is that you’re unlikely to find one set recovery time for something like this because there is a lot of individual variance. Some children might be able to go through this one day without having lasting mental health problems. Others could develop PTSD in the same scenario. A third set might develop other serious mental health problems that are obvious to those around them and a fourth set might develop serious mental health problems that other people don’t notice or understand as mental illness.

 You might have seen me talk before about how torture survivors are a varied group and we don’t really understand why they develop different symptoms. We know the symptoms they could develop in quite a bit of detail but we don’t understand why particular individuals get particular symptoms from that list.

 That statement holds true for trauma survivors generally.

 Sometimes in a specific scenario you can say ‘this symptom is more likely’ but nothing is guaranteed. And as writers that gives us leeway to choose the symptoms that fit the character and story.

 Generally speaking trauma symptoms are more likely when someone is hurt or otherwise physically involved then when someone watches something traumatic. But witnesses can still develop trauma symptoms, including PTSD.

 Trauma symptoms are also more likely when someone has gone through multiple traumatic experiences. So this set of several different things happening in a day makes it a bigger overall risk.

 There’s a mounting body of evidence that says even low levels of violence against children have a profound negative effect. Most of the research I can link to focuses on younger children, especially toddlers. But the essential upshot is that a child who is hit will be less intelligent, less healthy, more prone to mental illness (including addiction) and less happy as an adult. This is compared to children who are never hit.

 And stuff like this makes it difficult to discuss things like recovery times. Because in one sense the recovery time is ‘never’: this child is beaten by his parents, therefore the damage is already done and he will be effected for his entire life.

 It’s probably important to discuss historical and cultural context in this scenario as well.

 There is no evidence that the legality of a punishment effects trauma responses in any way. Knowing that this is legal, even feeling that it is ‘right’, will not stop someone developing mental health problems when exposed to violence.

 But it may well effect how people express themselves and what these mental health problems look like.

 Thinking about this scenario I keep remembering the way torturers insist that their ‘work’ is important, essential. Even when they acknowledge that their health problems come from torturing others. They talk about how ‘hard’ what they do is and how isolated and unappreciated they feel. It’s a bizarre, self-obsessed sort of regret; they refuse to acknowledge the effect their actions have had on others while obsessing over their own pain.

 And stuck in a lifetime of the kinds of scenarios you’re picturing? I think that’s a likely outcome. I think severe mental health problems, and possibly given the era physical health problems, are likely.

 With that background, with this sort of thing happening all the time around a child, it’s almost impossible to estimate the effect of one day, one incident. Because these things are cumulative.

 I think that a child who’d never been exposed to violence before and is not exposed to violence again for the rest of their life could still come out of the scenario you’ve put forward with life long mental health problems. Although a minority could be lucky and make a complete recovery.

 But we’re not talking about one incident here. We’re talking about a family whose profession is violence.

 Which means that overall, over this character’s life, I’d expect mental health problems similar to those seen in torturers. Which you can read about here.

 And that makes me hesitant to give a recovery time. Because even if this character could recovery in a month, six months, a year- that wouldn’t matter if he’s exposed to more violence during that time.

 I think the best way to treat this is to pick 1-3 long term symptoms from the list I’ve linked you to and show this character developing those symptoms over time.

 We tend to have a rather extreme view of trauma survivors, painting them as either completely incapacitated by what they survived or superhumanly unaffected and resistant. The truth is somewhere in between.

 Recovery doesn’t mean that mental health problems vanish or that they have no effect on someone’s life. But people do improve. They learn to live with their conditions and they can go on to achieve incredible things.

 That recovery depends on being in a safe, supportive environment. It means being away from further sources of trauma.

 And based on everything you’ve said, based on the history and setting, I don’t think your character would get that.

 Which means that I think he would decline over time, gradually and without recovery. Not because of one day or one incident, but because these incidents would never stop.

Available on Wordpress.