The Changeling - a True-Story Film - Assignment Example

The Final Exam I recently saw the movie, "Changeling" with Angelina Jolie and this brought up many memories for me. It was based on a true story and she could have been telling my life story. In 1979, the father of my two children kidnapped them after a visitation weekend. They were no where to be found and I went through much anguish to find them. There were no "Amber Alerts" at that time so after the police could not find them I had to keep pursuing any leads I found on my own. In the movie, Angelina Jolie portrays Christine Collins, a woman who lost her child in 1939 to a kidnapper. In the movie, Christine gets her son back but he is not really her son; he is an imposter. The police did not believe her when she told them it was not her child and they thought that she was mentally ill. They decided that she was delusional and an unfit mother. I had a very similar situation happen and it was two years before I found my boys. I also found that the police department was incompetent when it came to finding my children. I felt that it was a situation where they figured if the father had them, the boys were okay and this was not really a kidnapping. My ex-husband was able to disguise the boys and keep them out of sight for all of those years. The way this relates to our modern day culture is that there are thousands of children who are lost or missing each year. According to Klaas Kids Foundation, the majority of kidnappings happen because of a family member. These account for 49% of kidnappings while only 24% are done by strangers. It is difficult to imagine that parents would kidnap their kids but sometimes this is done because one parent wants to hold power over the other one. According to the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children (2009), 1,634 child victims have been found by the Child Victim Identification Program (CVIP). Part of the reason why some children are found is because law enforcement agencies are able to send "Amber Alerts" so that people will be looking for the missing child. Although the movie was based on a true story it is an excellent example of what happens when a mother is not listened to directly. I found that I was disempowered just as Jolie's character was in the movie. This was a difficult situation because there was no one to turn to and no one who would believe that her children were taken. I too had the same situation as I attempted to find my children. In both the movie and in my situation we had to survive to look for our children. We had to keep hope in our hearts that the children were safe and we could not listen to people who would say otherwise. A phrase that I like in Campbell's book seems to tell something of what it is like to have to hold on to the idea that your child is safe even when you fear that they may not be safe: "…every failure to cope with a life situation must be laid, in the end, to a restriction of consciousness" (Campbell, p. 121). There seems to be something that happens to a mother when her child is taken away that cannot be explained perhaps it does have to do with their own consciousness. We hope that we have a psychic link of some sort to our children that will help guide us as we are working through the multitude of feelings that we have while we are looking forward to being reunited with our child. Today there are several sources for a parent to use if a child is missing. They can call the FBI and they can go through a variety of channels to get the information out to the world. The Child Abduction Center is one of the resources that would have been great to have when I was looking for my children. This website has up to the minute reports on all children who are missing and they list the Amber Alerts as they come out. The computer has given life to child abduction and has created people who care about it all over the world. Some families are still trying to recover from the abduction of their child and the children often have problems forever. On the website, there is a short video presentation that gives a very strong idea of what happens to a child when they are abducted by a family member. The adults on the video talk about the things that happened to them while they were with their parent. Some of the children were sexually and emotionally abused, they were kept in isolation, they were not treated well by the parent who abducted them and they say that the scars from this situation never go away. One woman said that "just because you are with a parent it doesn't mean that you are safe" (The Child Abduction Center, 2009, video). This is very true. The children never forget what happened and they often have to go to counseling in order to straight out their lives. Faulkner (2006) calls this behavior "child abuse" because children who have been abducted have a variety of problems. These children are more likely to show a variety of psychological problems and they have problems with other people. Some of the effects these children have include: 1. Depression 2. Loss of community 3. Loss of stability, security, and trust 4. Excessive fearfulness, even of ordinary occurrences 5. Loneliness 6. Anger 7. Helplessness 8. Disruption in identity formation; and 9. Fear of abandonment. (Faulkner, p. "Impact of Child of Parental Child Abduction" Section). Because one parent has traumatized the child (children) they learn to mistrust anyone around them. Many develop a "learned helplessness" that creates problems for the entire family. When thinking about child abduction it is a good idea to look at the family and think about what the family represents. When a child is small, they are supposed to learn that they can depend on their parents for everything. The parent is the authority figure and no matter what, the child is to obey what the parent tells them. In any situation where the parent presents themselves as the authority, the child will adjust to whatever feelings they have and often will stuff those feelings until they feel they are safe to express them. Campbell speaks to the psychoanalytic aspects of the family by stating that the father is seen as masculine and the mother is seen as feminine. This is something that anyone would accept. He goes on to state that "the repression of the emotions and feelings relating to the mother … has in virtue of this association, produced a tendency to adopt an attitude of distrust, contempt, disgust or hostility towards the human body… (Campbell, p. 113n). Although Campbell is talking about the perception of the female in the Hero type, it is important to think about the fact that many children are abducted by their fathers. When they are returned to their mothers they often have these feelings of distrust, contempt, disgust or hostility. If they have been sexually or physically abused, they may also come back "home" with worry about their bodies, with shame or with disgust in what happened to them while they were away. Since the mother is the first one who is present, they may take these feelings out on her. Faulkner says that this is very true for the child because when they are with the abductor, they often will be told that the other parent will harm them should they ever go back. This is a way to alienate the child and keep them under control. This comes about through brainwashing and programming by the parent who has the child. This can cause more problems than a divorce (Faulkner, "Parental Alienation and the Overburdened Child" Section). In the end of the movie the mother finds out that her child was killed and this is a very difficult situation for her to face. In my situation my children were alive but they had to go through many changes to accept the fact that I was there for them and that I would be a part of their lives. They also had issues of abandonment because they thought that I had left them. Child abandonment is not something that is easy for anyone to deal with and when it is a parent, it pits parents against each other. The children have no idea what to do and they are not always safe. References Campbell, J. (1968). The hero with a thousand faces. NY: Princeton. Child Abduction Resource Center. (2005). Child abduction: How bad can it be? (short video presentation) Retrieved May 27, 2009 from http://www.globalmissing.com/ USAmissing.htm. Eastwood, C. (Director). (2008). Changling. [Motion Picture]. United States: Imagine Entertainment. Faulkner, N. (2006). Parental child abduction is child abuse. Paper presented to United Nations Convention on Child Rights, 1997. Retrieved May 29, 2009 from http://www.prevent-abuse-now.com/unreport.htm. Klaas Kids Foundation. (2008). What to do if your child disappears. Retrieved May 22, 2009 from http://www.klaaskids.org/pg-mc- mcstatistics.htm. National Center of Missing and Exploited Children. (2009). Statistics about missing and exploited children. Retrieved May 22, 2009 from http://www.missingkids.com/ missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=2810. Read More