Confusion & the non-offending parent

It has been a while since I have posted...Sorry!

The theme in my office lately seems to be in trying to wrap our heads around childhood trauma within the family system and how a parent who, while is not abusive, also does not protect or intervene.  I find myself aligned with my clients in the confusion around this component of the work.  I too, feel perplexed by the failure to protect and don't know exactly how to categorize this.  As I consider it further, I wonder if the question lies in the answer-meaning this is indeed a complicated aspect of recovery.  How do we think about and recover from the fact that there was someone who could have rescued a child, especially when that person who may have been loving on occasion, but didn't intervene?  How do we juxtapose a loving parent who didn't protect or stop something awful from happening?  Are they abusers or are they victims, or something in between?  I don't have an answer but feel it important to acknowledge the layers of recovery-to think about how we understand what happened and to derive some sort of meaning from it.  These are my thoughts today...