Claudia Jones (Damned by despair, 6 May) argues that women who allow their partners to abuse their children do so "because they are in utter despair" due to the lack of love they have experienced in their lives, and that "unless we can understand that despair ... we will not be able to address seriously the problem of child abuse".
I am a survivor of intra-familial sexual child abuse, and I find her sympathies misplaced. Few abuse survivors would disagree with her that "we are not training ... enough social workers" qualified in child protection work.
Similarly, I agree that the idea "the child is best with the natural family" needs to be questioned where the child is known to have been abused by an adult family member, and I'd support her view that it is "time to fund a significant expansion of our non-medical mental health service staff", not least for those of us dealing with the after-effects of abuse.
But the starting-point for any discussion should be that there is no acceptable level of child abuse. The real victims are abused children - it is we who have to overcome the devastating effects of being raped as a child by a parent or other caregiver who we thought was supposed to love us.
When this is compounded by another parent who allows the perpetrator to get away with the abuse, the damage to the child's self-esteem is incalculable. The trauma to which we were subjected leads us to suffer from depression, difficulties in forming intimate relationships, loss of family, terrible flashbacks and many other wounds, from which it is a lifetime's work to recover.
Researchers estimate that at least 10% of people were sexually abused as children. Incestuous abuse of children by parents is known to be far more common than anyone would have believed 20 years ago. Intra-familial abuse is not confined to economically marginal households: it also occurs in outwardly respectable families.
My abuser was my father; when I disclosed the abuse to my grandmother as a child, my mother insisted that the police should not be called and told me never to speak about it. My parents were both Catholic school teachers. They continued to live together as a married couple until my father's death. Today I am on a journey of healing and have recovered a sense of my own self-worth, but it has been a long and rocky road.
I want to see a world in which it is unthinkable for an adult to inflict the pain of abuse on any child - and for another adult to stand by and let it happen. This cannot come about if we give the message that mothers who tolerate the abuse of their children by their partners are to be pitied or condoned.
The overriding responsibility of any parent is to do everything in their power to protect an abused child from further suffering. When there are reasonable grounds for suspecting abuse, it should be immediately reported, and carers should take action to keep the child safe without delay.
• The writer is an incest survivor who is actively recovering from the effects of the abuse he experienced response@guardian.co.uk
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