Tag: family scapegoat

The genuine pain and trauma experienced by children and adult children stuck in the family scapegoat role is invisible, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Scapegoat abuse (which is actually a form of systemic bullying) is a particularly aggressive form of child emotional abuse in that the power-holders in the family system – most often one or both parents – view a particular child through a lens of constant negativity, projecting all of their own repressed toxic shame onto their child.