Family Affair Documentary: Child Abuse Case Analysis

Introduction

The documentary Family Affair was written, narrated, and filmed by Chico Colvard ("IMDB," 2010). The film offers a retrospective look at events that took place within his family over a period of several decades. The four siblings featured in the film are the children of a Black veteran named Elijah Colvard, Jr., and his wife, a white German Jewish woman he met while stationed in Germany. The children were raised as "army brats," moving from base to base and from state to state during their school years. Chico and his three sisters — Angelika (Angie), Chiquita (Chici), and Pauline (Paula) — lived with both parents for many years, until an accident brought long-kept family secrets into the open.

In 1978, when Chico David Colvard was just 10 years old, he obtained his father's gun and accidentally shot Paula in the leg. While she lay in the hospital, their father threatened Paula, who was so traumatized that she begged Angie to tell their mother about the incest. It was the first time their mother became aware of the abuse. The subsequent investigation exposed family dysfunction that included repeated incestuous relations between the father and the three daughters, physical and mental abuse of all four children, and domestic violence toward the mother.

On several occasions, after the mother reported domestic abuse to the police, her husband was incarcerated; however, each time he was released, he continued to abuse family members. The mother asserted that she had not known about the incest for many years. The daughters explained that the father devised elaborate plans to get the mother and other family members out of the house — leaving only one targeted daughter behind — and coached the girls to lock the door after they departed and alert him when all was clear.

Years later, Chico brought a camcorder to a family Thanksgiving dinner, and the idea of documenting the interactions he observed took shape. The fallout from their dysfunctional childhood continues to affect family members in their adult lives. When Chico visited his mother after a 15-year separation, she told him that she had learned his father had been sexually abused by his own mother and had contracted syphilis from her ("IMDB," 2010).

Presenting Issues

The three sisters are engaged in a process of coming to terms with their past and working to forge a redefined relationship with their father. Chico has not achieved a similar mindset and is confused by his sisters' apparent complacency and their willingness to avoid addressing the proverbial elephant in the room (Steele & Alexander, 1982). When the family gathers for the holiday, members interact as though little of consequence has occurred. Capturing this unsettling quality of behavior is one of the reasons Chico feels compelled to film his family.

Over the years, Paula has suffered a series of serious health issues in addition to those associated with being accidentally shot. She experiences bouts of guilt and has not been able to resolve her feelings about failing to follow through on a plan she and her sister made to expose their father's abuse to their mother (Steele & Alexander, 1982).

Angie, considered the prettiest of the three daughters, was her father's favorite. She became pregnant by her father and had an abortion at the age of 14. She later married, bore a son, and divorced her husband while her son was still an infant. She was afraid to touch and hold her newborn son for two weeks out of fear that she would behave toward him as her father had behaved toward her (Steele & Alexander, 1982). She subsequently lost custody of her son when she voluntarily placed him in her husband's care while undergoing cancer therapy.

Reported Abuse and Its Impacts

Chici suffers from schizophrenia and takes medication to manage her symptoms (Widom et al., 2007). In most respects, she is able to function as a parent to her son, Delton, and her daughter. However, she expressed concern about frequent anger directed at her daughter and admitted to striking her. Brief clips in the film show Chici requiring her children to wait on her — fetching her medication and water, cooking, and bringing her food. Chici's overall demeanor is notably flat, with little evidence of positive interactions or warmth toward her children. These parenting behaviors may reflect some combination of cultural norms, socioeconomic factors, and Chici's underlying mental disorder (Widom et al., 2007; Zickler, 2002).

The daughters provided testimony to the courts when their mother reported the incidences of incest to the authorities. Court records contain handwritten testimony describing sexual relations between the father and his daughters that were categorically sodomy and intercourse, including vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and digital penetration (Conte & Schuerman, 1988). The father is believed to have ejaculated during intercourse, a finding substantiated by evidence that the girls became pregnant and had abortions. The court report states that Elijah Colvard sexually abused his daughters on a weekly basis (Conte & Schuerman, 1988).

The long-term effects of child sexual abuse include an increased likelihood of substance abuse, psychiatric disorders, and perpetuating the cycle of abuse within one's own family (Finkelhor & Browne, 1986). Research conducted by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse determined that "women who experienced non-genital sexual abuse in childhood were 2.83 times more likely to suffer drug dependence as adults than were women who were not abused" (Zickler, 2002).