Madrid (EFE) consulted by EFE, although they remember the resilience of minors if they have adequate care.
The psychologists José Antonio Luengo and Diana Sánchez point out that everything they know about this case is from the news, without knowing the age of the minors or if the situation has taken place for a long time, although “it is what is intuited”.
If the data that is known at the moment is confirmed, these are eight children who have been living in a situation “not of neglect, but of absolute abandonment”, of indigence, fear, lack of material and psychological resources that cause “a hole in the soul”, considers Luengo.
“The worst thing that can happen to a child when they are small is that everything they have read comes together,” says Sánchez, physical deficiencies -they say they were malnourished-, emotional, affective and that, in addition, they have been carried out for those who should care for them.
Sánchez adds that what “disstructures the psyche the most” is that all this “is done to you by a person who is expected to take care of you and the children expect their parents to take care of them and protect them from external damage.”
Luengo adds that when minors “what they experience is pain, lack, helplessness, harassment and they have not experienced anything else, they may come to think that this is normal.”
learned helplessness
Abuse maintained over time causes “learned helplessness”, in which the person learns not to defend himself because when he has done so “it has not helped him at all”.
Thus, he recounts how in the ten years that he was Secretary General of the Office of the Ombudsman for Minors in Madrid, he saw how children separated from their parents because they had suffered abuse said that they wanted to continue with their parents because it was the only reality they knew: “That is what harder of all.”
When situations of continued physical and psychological neglect by the main attachment figures occur, “trauma is usually generated in children”, with problems in evolutionary, social and cognitive development, says Sánchez, from the Official College of Psychologists of Madrid. .
In those years what is called the “attachment style” develops and when it is without organization “what we have seen, on many occasions, is that personality disorders develop that remain throughout life.”
The eight siblings from Colmenar Viejo are going to have to follow a “long and continuous psychological therapy to be able to counteract the effects” of what they experienced, Sánchez considers.
The psychologist indicates that a rapid intervention must be made at the care and psychological level, and recalls that children “are very resilient, they learn and develop capacities.”
The consequences of the abuse -indicates Luengo- depend on several factors, such as the time in which they are suffered and the age of the minors, since an experience of 14 years is not the same as that of 4.
The “advantage” of the children of Colmenar is the support between siblings in the face of what they have experienced
For their future, the psychologist has highlighted the advantage of the support that the eight brothers can give each other, since he has been convinced that they have taken care of each other and although the experience that lies ahead will also be hard, they will no longer be in abandonment.
The case of the children of Colmenar Viejo (Madrid) became known this Friday, although it was on March 29 when the parents were arrested for alleged mistreatment of their eight minor children.
The parents, he a 45-year-old doctor and she, 44, are released under precautionary measures, according to sources from the Civil Guard.
Parental rights of minors have been provisionally withdrawn from both of them, from those who have a restraining order and who have been admitted to a first reception center in the Community of Madrid.