Dear Tanya

I am 43, single and childless. I had a happy early childhood with my single working mum, a nurse, and my wonderful, loving grandparents. When I was 7, my mother (aged 26) got married and we moved away. I look back on it as going from sunlight to being shut in a dark box.

My stepfather, who was 24, hated children. The beatings started immediately. If my mother did “wrong”, he would beat me in front of her; if I did “wrong”, he would beat her in front of me. I remember trying to comfort her when her face was streaming with blood, and she pushed me away and hissed at me because I could only make it worse.

Within months he started sexually abusing me (from age 7 to 12); I couldn't tell anyone, because we would pay terribly. From then on, as a teenager, I was unhappy and eventually as an adult had a series of breakdowns, based upon the inescapable fact, which hit me like a blinding light, that my mother had known about the sexual abuse (since confirmed) and had done nothing about it.

For the past 11 years, I have been in and out of psychiatric wards. I am now much recovered, thanks to fantastic NHS treatment. However, I live with a moral dilemma. My mother is the only family I have; and in short bursts, I really enjoy her company - she is fun to go shopping with, erudite and knowledgeable. However, within hours, her mean, emotionally parsimonious nature comes to the fore and I want to throttle her.

I cannot forgive her; I want to, because it will make my life easier and because I want a mum. But should I forgive a woman who sexually offered up her own child to save herself?

Charlotte

Your question about forgiveness contains many layers that span so many decades of your life. It is complex and laced with emotions that are as broad as they are deep. To present your dilemma so factually and specifically is extraordinary and, I believe, a testament to the treatment and support that you have had over the years. To read a history such as yours and to then be told that the NHS has helped you through your fragile adult years is excellent.

As I read through your dilemma I had a sense of two people talking to me. The first person is your “recovered” self - the woman who can clearly take ownership of where she has come from, where she went and where she is now. You are now an adult who can look back over years of abuse and take a view that enables you to tolerate the pain while also being able to live a life that your abuser does not now control. You are a scarred yet healed adult.

I also hear a child talking. A little girl who, at the time of the abuse, was so afraid that she was unable to do anything other than take what was meted out. The child who saw blood pouring down her mother's face and so felt protective towards the person who should have protected her. A child who felt in part responsible forthe problems around her, as abused children usually do, and so put up and shut up.

In essence, what your treatment has achieved is an opportunity to heal that little girl. It has enabled her to become an adult who is not helpless in the face of past abuse and who recognises that her child self could have done little other than she did but now needs to move away from the place of abuse and live her life as an adult, with self-confidence.

The problem, however, is that the adult who has moved on in so many ways - and finally accepts who was responsible for the abuse (your abusive stepfather) - now also spots, quite accurately, collusive perpetrators elsewhere, such as your mother.

The dilemma you face is yet another pain that you have to manage. Do you tell your mother to leave your life? Or do you think about why she was unable to protect her child, process this (with or without her) and move on while retaining her as part of your life?

The decision can be only yours. However, here are some thoughts to help your thinking. First, think what you would a) gain and b) lose by banishing your mother from your life for ever. Pros and cons, costs and benefits: let the adult do the thinking. Next, consider the sado-masochistic nature of the relationship that your mother and stepfather had. Why was she so vulnerable to this, such easy prey? Then think about the current dynamic - the two of you have time-limited enjoyment together and then she turns into someone you dislike and link back to the really bad days. Why? Is she abusing you still or perhaps destroying the happiness that you can both share because she feels she doesn't deserve it?

Fundamentally I believe that you can forgive and move on only if you are able to think about your mother's behaviour in the context of her vulnerability. This is asking a lot of you because, taking an objective view of the abuse of children, it seems impossible to forgive brutality even if there are so many ways in which it can be explained. There are many vulnerable people - possibly abused themselves - who do not abuse, or let others abuse, their children.

Maybe the word “forgive” isn't quite right. Possibly this is more about understanding. I wonder whether you have trapped yourself by expecting to forgive when this may not be realistic for you. As a woman who has done so much to understand herself as part of a process of recovery, doing the same for your mother may be as far as it can go for you, but perhaps this is enough to enable some continuing connection. Certainly it would be prudent to limit your times together so that they finish before you experience the more hostile elements of your mother's personality as, I believe, it is then that you are transported back to being a sad and angry little girl. As an adult you can now control the relationship in terms of time spent together and so maximise the positive aspects.

It might be worth having a conversation with a third party - perhaps someone from your previous treatment team. You could also find support among others with experiences of childhood abuse at the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, www.napac.org.uk. I wish you well.

If you have a family problem, e-mail drtanyabyron@thetimes.co.uk

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