Infant and peer bonding methods in state care have great consequences for those that underwent this in (early) childhood. Yet, the state and mental health care makes the individual responsible for the inhumane methods used in state children's homes.  It is a bitter reality that this particular mechanism — in which the state first destroys healthy development and then punishes the victim’s survival mechanisms — is still shockingly little recognized in the mainstream legal system and politics. It is a form of torture with lifelong consequences, leaving victims with shame as many of them have no explanation for feelings they possess. The state and mental healthcare exploit this by emphasizing the psychopathology of the individual, while they themselves are the cause and to blame for what unfolds in later life.

What happens with peer - horizontal- binding in state care?

 

1. Fellow sufferers as surrogate attachment

Children will use each other as the primary source of safety. Because teachers need to be "cold" and comfort is forbidden, babies and toddlers seek physical closeness together. This is reflected in:

Touching and clinging: Babies who reach for each other in their beds or crawl against each other.
Shared comfort: If a child cries and the leader does not intervene, you often see that other children stiffen or try to touch the child.

 

2. The role of "random infants"
The binding to other infants in the department becomes a form of collective attachment. Without a fixed face (mother) the child attaches to the group or to the environment. However, the risk is that these tires are extremely fragile: if another child is placed away, the remaining child experiences this again as a traumatic loss, without an adult being there to cope with this.

3. Psychological consequences
- When horizontal bonding is the only form of contact in a loveless environment, specific damage images arise:

- Attachment disorder (RAD): Because the leaders do not offer comfort (even in blood or pain), the child learns that adults are unreliable. This leads to a deep distrust of authority.
- Emotional flattening: To survive the pain of the lack of comfort, children turn off their emotions. They don't cry anymore (hospitalism), because they know it doesn't work out.
- Precocity (precociousness): Children sometimes try to take care of each other (one baby who gives the pacifier to the other), which is a roller reversal that is too heavy for their development.

- Stagnation in frozen emotions (as regression) and sexuality

 

The "emotional death" environment and trauma
The explicit ban on consolation in case of injuries (such as the example of a  barbed wire cutting into a child's face) is a form of institutional neglect. The child learns that his physical integrity and pain do not matter. This often results in a disturbed body image and an inability to indicate own boundaries later in life or receive empathy from others.
In short: horizontal bonding is not a healthy choice in these cases, but a desperation strategy to prevent psychological death.

SEVERE CONSEQUENCES

One of complex consequences could be for sexuality and the body perception, which is highly taboo and personal. 

When, after that early, chilly institutional phase (childhood and toddlerhood) there is no bonding with adults, e.g. by violence and abuse, the child never gets the chance to make the natural transition from horizontal survival bond to a healthy vertical attachment (with a safe adult).

Here are the reasons why e.g. sexuality and connection can then remain "stuck" in that early stage:
1. The "Frozen" Development

Sexuality normally develops on the basis of a safe foundation. If that foundation (security by an adult) is lacking and is replaced by violence, a survival mechanism occurs in which the psyche "freezes" at the point where it was still somewhat safe. That point was the horizontal bond with other babies or toddlers. In the victim's experience, that remains the only form of 'closeness' that was not accompanied by the threat of an adult.

2. Sexuality without Object Relationship
Since there has never been a healthy bond with an adult, the child does not learn what a "different" is like an autonomous, loving human being. Sexuality does not become something between two adults, but lingers in the atmosphere of childhood:

Purely physical: It is limited to the basic, almost instinctive need for skin contact (like babies in a home crawling against each other).
Pre-sexual: Adult sexuality is overshadowed by the early childlike need to "not be alone."

The Result: Sexual Apathy or Regression
The result is often that there is "nothing in its place" sexually. There is a vacuum. The person may be physically mature, but the sexual energy is either completely suppressed (because it is associated with the violence and betrayal from adult caregivers), or she remains focused on that early, horizontal need for comfort that has never been fulfilled.
In this tragic dynamic, the person is a prisoner of the first environment. The residential setting is the only "home base" that the psyche knows, however terrible it was. 

Other consequences are lack of basic trust, confused perceptions of the world and relations, being detached from society and hatred towards institutions that position themselves as callous authoritarian institutes, problems with authority.

The State

The Fixation on 'Sexual Abuse' as Distraction Maneuver
The state often has a narrow definition of abuse. Abstaining from comfort to a bloodied child (as with the barbed wire) is in fact a form of heavy psychological and physical abuse, but is often dismissed as "the pedagogy of that time." However, when the traumatized person later gets stuck in his own sexual development, the state acts repressively. This is a form of secondary victimization: first they destroy the child, and then they punish the adult for being broken.

The inability to understand 'Frozen Development'

The bureaucracy does not understand that for someone who has never known vertical love, the horizontal bond with fellow sufferers (babies/toddlers) is the only reference for love. In the eyes of the state, this is "perverse" or "inappropriate," while for the traumatized it is the only "safe haven" in their memory. The state punishes the survival strategy for refusing to see the context of the trauma.

THE STATE AND LACK OF RESPONSABILITY

Even after the Commissions Samson and De Winter, the state refuses to look at the most vulnerable victims- those of the youth care system that had no parents and family, no support, no social life-  as victims of institutional trauma makes the government remember  its own darkest failure.

Society and politics like to embrace themes that are about "proud" or "freedom. like LGBTQ, rights for autistic people to participate... which in itself is perfect. " But  trauma, like infant bonding, emotional neglect, violence and humiliations and social isolation, and sexual stagnation — is “ugly,” raw, and confusing. It doesn't fit into a shiny campaign. Because this trauma often leads to social isolation or “difficult” behavior, the government finds it easier to marginalize or punish these people than to provide the complex care needed.

And than there is the lack of a powerful lobby.
Vulnerable people who are stuck in early childhood trauma often do not have the energy, the resources or the social network to make a fist in The Hague. One survives day by day. Groups that are successful in their lobby often have a strong joint voice. However, the "random infant's trauma" is often a lonely trauma, leaving the political pressure.

The moral blind spot
There is a huge hypocrisy: the state flaunts human rights, but has a double morality when it comes to the consequences of its own policy. One finds it easier to invest in things that play "now" than to clean up the messes of the children they abandoned decades ago.
The result:
The government presents itself as inclusive, but that inclusiveness stops among those whose pain cuts too deeply and whose recovery demands too much from the state treasury and national conscience.