When I first started to read about the
standard brainwashing and torture techniques that are used to influence,
control and break people such as political prisoners, some of it sounded
uncannily familiar. I thought immediately of what went on in my family; I was
also reminded of the experiences of the young Jane Eyre, some of which were
based on what actually happened to several of the Brontë sisters.
It is frightening to realise that some
parents and other people in control of children apply these techniques instinctively.
It is devastating to read of such practices
as isolating the victims, keeping them in a constant state of fear and
uncertainty, keeping them torn between fight or flight and unable to do either,
deprivation of food and sleep, constant humiliation, false accusations, making
demands that are impossible to meet, random unfair and unjustified punishments,
force feeding with political or religious ideology and mock executions and then
to realise that they have been systematically applied to children, often in
adapted and modified forms.
For example, where prisoners live in
permanent fear of death and are forced to undergo mock executions, a child
might live in permanent fear of being put in a children’s home and be forced to
listen to frequent threats of abandonment or being sent away. I certainly was.
Like the mock executions, these threats are never actually carried out, but on
each occasion it seems that they will be.
