A man I once treated was neglected in foster homes from birth to age 2, when the real trouble began. His adoptive father hated him. He was yelled at, beaten, thrown out to agencies, brought back, cursed, ignored, insulted, and belittled until he was farmed out permanently to a boy's home in his early teens.

His adoptive mother, living in terror that her husband might kill both of them, kept her mouth shut and even remained living with the man long after the boy had grown up.

To this day, the young man has told no-one but his therapist that when he was four he would wake up from nightmares about something hard and slimy under his blanket. When he awoke and felt the mattress, he wondered where the substance came from and what it was.

All of his life, he was tormented by his uncertain sexual identity. Even as this book was being written, he wondered whether he was bi-sexual or homosexual. But there is one thing he knows for sure: He has full-blown AIDS, and in his mind, it's all his fault.

Love of money has been called the root of all kinds of evil. But child abuse is a root that runs deeper, spreads farther, and holds a specific, predictable consequence: the loss of personhood and often of life itself.

This author, when presenting a continuing education class on domestic violence for a medical center in Jacksonville, Florida, began his remarks with this statement: "Domestic violence begins at four."

Abuse at the hands of a partner in early adulthood does not arise out of a vacuum merely by the poor choice of a mate, whether you are a man or a woman. Rather, maltreatment from this stage on is the natural outcome of a type of brainwashing that begins early and receives reinforcement many times over through the years.

It is during the early years that humans acquire their first ideas about who they are, and, unfortunately, they believe these falsehoods for the rest of their lives. Victims are initiated into a pattern of abuse, including self abuse, not in adulthood, but in childhood.

As a matter of fact, every one of us comes into adulthood with a second-hand opinion of who we are. When a little child is called brilliant, stupid, beautiful, ugly, hopeless, helpless, good, bad, a blessing or a curse, the child has no choice but to accept these assertions as "gospel." What other source of information does he have? He can absorb only the information which is available to him.

These messages are communicated just as well or better by what is unsaid. The glances, the pauses, the scowls, the smiles, the visual forces, speak indelibly though without sound. The impressions the child receives that define who he is are permanent. They are like initials carved in the bark of a young tree that only enlarge as the tree grows.