. . . My despair was not the darkness, but the injuries hidden within it.
—LOUISE WISECHILD, The Obsidian Mirror
One evening a number of years ago, I tuned in to The Barbara Walters Special. She was interviewing one of my favorite television actors, Don Johnson of Miami Vice. As he reclined on a couch in his lovely home, Don told Barbara about the joys and difficulties in his life. He talked of past struggles with drug and alcohol abuse and work addiction. Then he spoke of his relationships with women—how exciting and attractive he found them. I could see his energy rise and his breath quicken as he spoke. An air of intoxication seemed to fill the room.
Don said his problem was he liked women too much and found it hard to be with one special partner over a long period. He would develop a deep friendship and intimacy, but then his eyes would wander.
I thought to myself, this man has been sexually abused! His problems sounded identical to those of adult survivors I counsel in my practice. But then I reconsidered: Maybe I’ve been working too hard. Perhaps I’m imagining a sexual abuse history that isn’t really there.
Then it happened. Barbara leaned forward and, with a smile, asked, “Don, is it true that you had your first sexual relationship when you were quite young, about twelve years old, with your seventeen-year-old baby-sitter?” My jaw dropped. Don grinned back at Barbara. He cocked his head to the side; a twinkle came into his blue eyes. “Yeah,” he said, “and I still get excited just thinking about her today.” Barbara showed no alarm.
The next day I wrote Barbara Walters a letter, hoping to enlighten her about the sexual abuse of boys. Had Don been a twelve-year-old girl and the baby-sitter a seventeen-year-old boy, we wouldn’t hesitate to call what had happened rape. It would make no difference how cooperative or seemingly “willing” the victim had been. The sexual contact was exploitive and premature, and would have been whether the twelve-year-old was a boy or a girl. This past experience and perhaps others like it may very well be at the root of the troubles Don Johnson has had with long-term intimacy.
Don wasn’t “lucky to get a piece of it early,” as some people might think. He was sexually abused and hadn’t yet realized it.
Acknowledging past sexual abuse is an important step in sexual healing. It helps us make a connection between our present sexual issues and their original source. Some survivors have little difficulty with this step: They already see themselves as survivors and their sexual issues as having stemmed directly from sexual abuse. A woman who is raped sees an obvious connection if she suddenly goes from having a pleasurable sex life to being terrified of sex.
For many survivors, however, acknowledging sexual abuse is a difficult step. We may recall events, but through lack of understanding about sexual abuse may never have labeled those experiences as sexual abuse. We may have dismissed experiences we had as insignificant. We may have little or no memory of past abuse. And we may have difficulty fully acknowledging to ourselves and to others that we were victims.
It took me years to realize and admit that I had been raped on a date, even though I knew what had happened and how I felt about it. I needed to understand this was in fact rape and that I had been a victim. I needed to remember more and to stop blaming myself before I was able to acknowledge my experience as sexual abuse.
By acknowledging sexual abuse we can save ourselves years of confusion, anguish, and even misguided therapy. Jean, a middle-aged survivor, explained her frustrating sexual history:
I was married at age nineteen for a few years. I hated sex and tried to avoid it. Eventually my husband left me for another woman. I went through a series of short affairs, sleeping with many different men, looking for something, wanting to feel something. I went to therapists. One told me I should look for a man who was equally uninterested in sex. Another told me to get a book on masturbation and a vibrator. I became orgasmic and learned about my body, but I still felt nothing when I was with another person. I tried rebirthing, meditation, and so on, but not until ten years later did someone ask me if I was an incest victim. Now I am on a new path.
Once she had identified the incest, Jean was able to get to the real source of her sexual difficulties. From then on her healing efforts proceeded more effectively.
In this chapter we’ll survey ideas and work with tools that can help you fully acknowledge your sexual abuse. We’ll cover four specific areas:
1. Understanding sexual abuse
2. Overcoming blocks to recognizing sexual abuse
3. Remembering sexual abuse
4. Telling others about the abuse
UNDERSTANDING SEXUAL ABUSE
Understanding the full meaning of sexual abuse can help you determine whether, and how, you were abused.
Although abuse can take many forms (see box below), a consistent thread connects each type of abuse: Sexual abuse occurs whenever one person dominates and exploits another by means of sexual activity or suggestion. Sexual feelings and behavior are used to degrade, humiliate, control, hurt, or otherwise misuse another person. Coercion or betrayal often play into sexual abuse.
The abuse can take a direct, painful, and obvious course, such as in stranger rape. Or abuse can be indirect, perhaps even subtle, such as when a victim is gently fondled by an offender who professes love.
Touch plays a part in many episodes of sexual abuse. But abuse can occur—and cause sexual harm—even when no touching is involved. A person who has been forced to pose for pornographic pictures, or sexually harassed by telephone, has suffered sexual abuse, even though his or her body may never have been touched by the offender.
Expanding the definition of sexual abuse has helped many survivors identify their experiences more accurately for themselves and better convey the damage of their experience to others. “In the beginning of my marriage, nineteen years ago, I told my husband of a ‘sexual relationship’ I had had with my stepfather,” a survivor wrote. “Sexual abuse was not a term in use in 1969, and rape and incest (no blood relation) didn’t seem accurate enough to be honest.” Sadly, for many years, this soft language prevented her husband both from realizing that she really had been sexually abused and from understanding the extent of the damage the abuse had caused her.
COMMON TYPES OF SEXUAL ABUSE
The clinical definition of sexual abuse continues to expand as our society recognizes a broader range of activities perpetrated by sexual offenders. A single episode of sexual abuse may fall into several categories.
Child Sexual Abuse: sexual abuse of children by adults or by older children or peers who dominate and control through sexual activity. Older boys who make girls undress and then fondle them, for example. It can be committed by strangers but most often is perpetrated by adults or older children in trusted caretaking roles.
Incest: the most common form of child sexual abuse. Sexual abuse of children by other family members, including mother or father, step-parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents.
Molestation: sexual abuse involving sexual stimulation to body and genital areas, including penetration. It can happen at any age, by a perpetrator of any age.
Stranger Rape: violence, anger, and power expressed sexually in an attack on a victim. It may involve penetration of body openings (oral, anal, and vaginal) but does not have to.
Date or Acquaintance Rape: sexual abuse, not necessarily violent, perpetrated by someone known to the victim, often a peer in a trusted social relationship.
Marital Rape: sexual abuse perpetrated by one spouse on the other, or by a sexual partner in any long-term committed relationship.
Sexual Assault: physical attack to victim’s sexual body parts, often involving force or violence. This term can cover a wide range of activities and often describes the rape of boys and men.
Exhibitionism or Exposure: displaying the naked body or parts of the naked body in an effort to shock, intimidate, or sexually arouse a victim. May involve premature and/or unsolicited sharing of pornographic materials.
Voyeurism: invasion of a victim’s privacy either secretively or openly with the intent of gaining sexual gratification.
Obscene Phone Calls or E-mail Messages: invasion of a victim’s privacy with sexually suggestive messages over the telephone or Internet in an effort to shock, intimidate, or sexually arouse a victim.
Sadistic Sexual Abuse: sexual abuse in which the offender incites or tries to incite reactions of dread, horror, or pain in the victim as a means of increasing the offender’s sexual arousal during the abuse. May involve use of physical restraint, quasi-religious rituals, multiple simultaneous perpetrators, use of animals, insertion of foreign objects, mutilation, or torture.
Sexual Exploitation: objectification and use of victims, by means of sexual activity or photographic imagery, to gain money or sexual gratification. Includes sex slavery, sex trafficking, and prostitution.
Sexual Harassment: use of gender, status, and power differences to intimidate or control a victim, or to require sexual involvement. May be expressed as flirting and sexual suggestiveness.
Gender Attack: exposure to actions that demean the sexual gender of a victim, often with sexual overtones, such as cross-dressing a child or verbally denigrating a victim’s gender.
Gay Bashing: verbal or physical attacks directed against a victim’s perceived homosexual orientation.
Sexual Violence: acts of violence involving or harming sexual parts of the victim’s body.
Note: Legal definitions of sexual abuse are much narrower and can’t be relied on in determining if an experience was sexual abuse. Unfortunately, in many parts of our country, no laws protect victims from certain types of sexual abuse, such as spousal rape, sexual harassment, gender attack, gay bashing, unwanted Internet pornography, and abuse perpetrated in indirect and subtle forms.
To help you understand the meaning of sexual abuse, and to identify whether you have been sexually abused, consider these four questions. A yes response to any of them can distinguish an experience as sexual abuse.
1. Were you unable to give your full consent to the sexual activity? _____ YES _____ NO
If you were harassed, intimidated, manipulated, or forced into the sexual activity, you were not able to give full consent. If you were under the influence of drugs, alcohol, or medication, you were not able to give full consent. If you were asleep, unconscious, or otherwise not mentally alert, you were not able to give full consent. As a result of age, size, and power differences, children are not informed or mature enough to give full consent to adult types of sexual activity.
2. Did the sexual activity involve the betrayal of a trusted relationship? _____ YES _____ NO
If persons who were supposed to be taking care of you or who were in an authority role used their position to force or encourage you to engage in sexual activity, you were sexually exploited and thus sexually abused. This can occur in situations in which a parent, relative, teacher, coach, religious leader, or therapist compounds the trusted caretaking relationship with sexual involvement. An employer who uses his status to gain sexual favors is abusing his power. (It makes no difference if you initiated the sexual interaction. Caretakers betray trust and responsibilities when they respond.)
3. Was the sexual activity characterized by violence or control over your person? _____ YES _____ NO
Any sexual situation in which you were restrained or bound against your will, physically forced, or harmed constitutes sexual abuse. Humans need to be in control of what is happening to them physically. When this is denied by someone else in a sexual situation, it constitutes abuse.
4. Did you feel abused? _____ YES _____ NO
Finally, for purposes of sexual healing, what matters most is whether you feel you were sexually abused. Your feelings are genuine. They can’t be erased. You need to trust your own feelings about an experience. If it felt funny or exploitive to you, regardless of how others perceive it, it has had an impact on you. That is what counts.
When I treat sexual abuse survivors from the perspective of sexual healing, I keep in mind this working definition: Sexual abuse is harm done to a person’s sexuality through sexual domination, manipulation, and exploitation. Sexual abuse is harm done that robs a person of any or all of his or her sexual rights. When these rights are infringed on in the course of sexual abuse, the victim’s sexuality suffers harm.
During many years of working as a sex therapist, I have identified eight sexual rights that protect us and enable us to develop positive sexual attitudes and behaviors:
SEXUAL RIGHTS
• The right to develop healthy attitudes about sex
• The right to sexual privacy
• The right to protection from bodily invasion and harm
• The right to say no to sexual behavior
• The right to control touch and sexual contact
• The right to stop sexual arousal that feels inappropriate or uncomfortable
• The right to develop our sexuality according to our sexual preferences and orientation
• The right to enjoy healthy sexual pleasure and satisfaction
Perpetrators of sexual abuse can confuse their victims about many of these rights. Perpetrators often objectify and exploit victims to satisfy their own emotional and physical desires, ignoring victims’ rights and often leaving victims feeling powerless. Perpetrators rationalize what they do, ignoring the needs and feelings of the people they abuse. Sexual abuse is a highly self-centered act. And although some offenders may try to convince themselves and their victims otherwise, sexual abuse does not occur by accident. Abusers either intentionally harm their victims or they take actions that they know could cause harm. Either way, victims are robbed of their sexual rights.
Acknowledging our own sexual abuse usually demands more of us than simply being familiar with the names and definitions for different types of abuse and knowing, in theory, that we have sexual rights. We may need to challenge specific blocks that have kept us from recognizing or fully acknowledging sexual abuse.
OVERCOMING BLOCKS TO RECOGNIZING SEXUAL ABUSE
It can be difficult to acknowledge our sexual abuse fully when we are blocked in any of these ways:
• Feeling unsure how to evaluate a particular experience
• Feeling confused by the special nature of the abuse
• Holding on to our own personal biases and discounts
By examining these three major blocks to recognizing sexual abuse, we can uncover new perspectives that can help us overcome them.
Block 1. Feeling unsure how to evaluate a particular experience
Survivors may be unsure how to distinguish sexual abuse from other experiences. We may not know where to draw the line or how to evaluate a particular experience.
Identifying sexual abuse can be a matter of degree and circumstance. We may need to look at the full context of an experience to determine whether it was sexual abuse. For instance, a father may take a bath with his three-year-old daughter, help her wash her vaginal area, and snuggle with her in her bed at night, never once sexually abusing her. But the same series of events would be sexual abuse if the father had forced the girl to come into the bath with him when she didn’t want to, if he purposefully hurt her vagina or wouldn’t stop touching it, or if he told her not to tell anyone, rubbed her with the intention of sexually arousing her, or got sexually excited himself.
Nudity, body touching, stroking, kissing, and hugging are natural human experiences. They become abusive when put into an abusive context, where appropriate boundaries aren’t respected. In some situations we need to look at the dynamics of a relationship to judge whether sexual abuse occurred.
When I was about five years old, I used to play with a neighbor named Bobby who was also five. We played house and catch, and went on swings together. One day Bobby said, “Come with me. Let’s go in my dad’s car in the garage.” Happy and excited, I followed. We opened the car door and climbed up on the shiny vinyl seat. Then Bobby said, “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.” He waited for my response. It was okay with me. For about ten seconds we knelt awkwardly on the seat of the car, pulling down our pants and showing each other our genitals. (I think we both were a bit surprised at what we saw.) Then we left the car and went out to play some more. I never told anyone about this episode because I knew it was a secret we shared, and I felt somewhat embarrassed. But I never felt bad about it either. I still don’t. This was child’s play. Perfectly normal.
Many of us can recall a similar experience from childhood. Such interactions are common, healthy expressions of sexual curiosity that are important to developing positive feelings about one’s own sexuality. Bobby and I were similar in age and size. Neither of us felt intimidated or controlled by the other. Neither of us felt pressured or coerced. Neither of us felt we had been in any way tricked, harmed, humiliated, or betrayed. The experience in that car seat was not sexual abuse, neither for me nor for Bobby.
Sexual trauma, such as that caused by accidental injury or medical procedures, can be as upsetting as sexual abuse and can even have sexual repercussions similar to those of sexual abuse, but it may not fit the definition of sexual abuse. If you are riding a man’s bike and someone intentionally shakes the handlebars, causing you to slip and hit your genitals on the crossbar, you may feel as if the person has hurt you sexually. You feel humiliated, your genitals hurt, and you know you were harmed on purpose. What you experienced was abuse, but it was not necessarily intended to harm or exploit you sexually.
In adulthood we may have negative sexual experiences. On occasion you may feel like a partner doesn’t care about your sexual pleasure. You may experience pain or discomfort during sex. You may feel hurt if a partner gets up and leaves abruptly after having sex. But these situations aren’t in and of themselves sexual abuse.
While you may not feel such sexual traumas or negative sexual encounters were sexually abusive, it is important to keep in mind that the path to healing from them can be quite similar to healing from real sexual abuse. You can still benefit from the sexual healing journey.
Block 2. Feeling confused by the special nature of the abuse
Survivors may have difficulty recognizing sexual abuse because circumstances that surrounded the abusive experience make recognition difficult. One or more of the following circumstances may be hampering your efforts to fully acknowledge an experience you had as sexual abuse.
Sexual abuse that was labeled something else. Many perpetrators operate in a state of denial. When confronted they try to defend or explain away their actions. Their denial can confuse you.
Let’s say you’re out on a date and your date suddenly reaches inside your clothes and starts grabbing and pinching. You’re uncomfortable and tell your date to stop. You might get a reply like “Hey, what’s the big deal? Why are you so uptight? I was only kidding around!” You in turn question yourself: was it sexual abuse or was I uptight?
Perpetrators have been known to give victims amazing rationalizations for their behavior: “I’m teaching you about sex so you’ll be a good lover.” “We were just having fun.” “You asked for it because of the way you dressed.” Some survivors believe these falsehoods. As a result they have trouble identifying that they were abused.
Abused as a child by her mother, Liz did not understand for many years that she was an incest survivor. Her mother had given her a false explanation for what was happening.
My mother would come into my room at night with a flashlight and give me an enema. She’d come at night because during the day I fought her about it. She’d also stick her finger in my vagina explaining that she was checking to see if it was growing straight. She got pleasure from inflicting pain. I also remember her sticking suppositories in me, sometimes several at a time. She had lots of these rituals for hurting me. I’d tell her what she was doing wasn’t necessary, and she’d just say she knew better than anyone else.
I did not perceive this as sexual abuse when I was a child. I accepted my mother’s statements that what she did to me over and over again was a necessary medical procedure. Even when I grew older and discovered such sadistic torture was not medicine, I kept thinking she must mean well and is just making a mistake. Mentally, I filed it under m for medicine, instead of s for sexual abuse.
John, another survivor, was also given a false explanation for what happened to him. When he was two years old, John began wetting his bed. His mother’s response was to diaper him. She continued to diaper him until he was thirteen years old. Sometimes she would miss with the pin and stick him in his bottom. The diapering was a humiliating, upsetting, and sexually loaded experience for him. Several years after his mother stopped diapering him, she sexually assaulted him.
In counseling, John realized that the diapering also constituted sexual abuse. He recalled that at school, one week after the assault by his mother, he disrobed and stuck a girl with safety pins.
Most victims of sexual abuse do not go on to sexually abuse others. Those who do, however, need to accurately identify the abuse that happened to them. Recalling his mother’s abuse helped John to understand why he later abused the girl at school.
Some perpetrators confuse the victim by saying that what they are doing is a form of loving: “Come on, princess. Daddy is not hurting you. Daddy likes to make you feel good. This is how Daddy shows his love in a very special way.” Believing what she is told, the little girl may fail to recognize that Daddy is doing something bad.
Many survivors of sexual abuse in early childhood report that they were unable to correctly label what was happening because they were too young to talk, lacked a knowledge of sex, or had no vocabulary to describe what was being done to them. Their innocence may have left them particularly susceptible to false explanations by the offender.
Sexual abuse that developed gradually and repeatedly over time. Sexual abuse can be difficult to identify when it evolves gradually over time. Perpetrators may “groom” their victims by engaging them over a long time in activities that progress from less threatening and nonsexual to overtly sexual. A mother may have her teenaged son massage her legs every night for months before she slowly encourages him to be more sexual with her.
Perpetrators may find their grooming tactics sexually exciting. Grooming can also give a perpetrator leverage over the victim to maintain the secret of the abuse. “If you tell, no one will believe you didn’t want it. You’ve been doing things with me for a long time,” a perpetrator may say.
Tom, a client, told me when he was five his father would lie with him on the couch watching TV. His father would lie on his back and spread his legs, and Tom would be on his back in the V of his father’s legs, resting his head on his dad’s genitals. After many months of doing this, his father began to get up during the commercials and slip into the next room, where he would masturbate, knowing that Tom was sometimes watching. Months later, his dad made Tom undress and raped him anally with his finger. Looking back, Tom could see his dad had been preparing him as a sexual partner for years before the sexual contact began. He began to understand that all the experiences had been sexual abuse.
Sexual abuse that was indirect, secondhand. Sexual abuse can happen in a secondhand manner. I became aware this could happen when Barbara, a client, told me she feared sex and sexual touch, and was angered by her husband’s sexual demands. Barbara could recall no experiences of inappropriate sexual contact. Taking a closer look at her past, she explained that her stepfather did some things in the home that upset her as a child.
Some mornings when my sister and I were seated at the kitchen table and my mom was making breakfast, my stepfather would come up unexpected from behind our mother, grab her breasts, and begin fondling them right in front of us. We’d get upset and want to leave, and Mom would tell him to stop, but it did no good. He’d keep touching and make us watch.
Even though Barbara herself was never sexually approached by her stepfather, she suffered the secondhand effects of sexual abuse by coming to associate fear, male dominance, and control with sexual activity. Injury occurs whenever victims are exposed to other people who have a sexually abusive way of thinking and behaving. One offender in the family can teach sexual abuse attitudes, contaminating even those who are not directly abused. (In chapter 5 I will discuss in more detail a way of viewing sex, learned from abuse, that I call the sexual abuse mind-set.)
Many types of indirect sexual abuse can occur in childhood. A child might be exposed to degrading pornography, secretive sexual activity, humiliating sexual remarks, and a variety of inappropriate and humiliating forms of sexual behavior. In some families sexual abuse becomes part of the daily atmosphere, lingering like stale cigarette smoke.
Sexual abuse that was masked by sex role expectations. Sexual abuse can be masked by social attitudes and roles that prescribe how men and women should behave. Our culture still defines women as sexually passive and men as sexually aggressive. This can cause us to overlook experiences that are sexually abusive.
A number of months ago, Tina, a seventeen-year-old client, rushed into a therapy session, quite distressed, waving a newspaper clipping of a nationally syndicated advice column. A teenage girl had written to the columnist complaining that whenever she visited a friend’s house, her friend’s father insisted on greeting her with a hug and a kiss on the lips. She also wrote that while she and her other female friends assumed the father was just being friendly, his behavior made them very uncomfortable. The columnist responded to the young girl’s concerns by advising that the next time she sees her friend’s father, she should greet him with a smile, turn her head, and simply request a kiss on the cheek, rather than on the lips. My client Tina said, “I can’t believe that kind of advice. Wasn’t that sexual abuse? Don’t those girls have a right to tell the guy to bug off completely?” Tina was right. This was sexual abuse.
The advice columnist failed to see sexual abuse because she was more focused on encouraging girls to show respect to elders and be polite. After all, this is what girls and women are expected to do. But this man was exercising sexual privilege. He was using his age, size, and position to force the girls to show him intimate physical attention. The columnist’s response suggests the girls forget their true feelings and let him kiss them as a social courtesy. This attitude plays into abuse.
When we reverse the sexes of the people involved, we can see the experience from a new perspective. Imagine a letter to an advice columnist where it is the mother of a seventeen-year-old boy who approaches each of his friends, uninvited, with a hug and then a kiss on the lips. Wouldn’t we automatically cringe, thinking she must want sex with them? Wouldn’t she get to be known as the perverted older woman? If a boy told her to stop, or avoided physical contact with her altogether, would we blame him?
Sex role assumptions can also prevent us from seeing the sexual abuse of boys by girls and women. Like Don Johnson, boys may be sexually abused by women and not recognize that what happened to them was sexual abuse.
Fred, a survivor, was also sexually abused by his baby-sitter. In therapy Fred explained the circumstance:
One night when I was seven years old, I went to bed early because I wasn’t feeling well. My fifteen-year-old baby-sitter got in bed with me and told me I could suck her breasts. She showed me how to put my fingers in her vagina, too. I always thought of this as sexual experimentation. But when I think of a male sitter being sexual with a little girl, I have no trouble defining it as sexual abuse.
Block 3. Holding on to our own personal biases and discounts
Survivors may have trouble identifying experiences as sexual abuse because of personal beliefs that discount, minimize, or assume responsibility for the abuse. Even when we know something bad or inappropriate happened to us, we may have trouble identifying the significance of the experiences as sexual abuse.
Some survivors find it hard to let go of their established false beliefs even when, intellectually, they know better. These beliefs may serve a psychological function. We may wish to protect our image of the offender as a good person, like the survivor who said, “Grandpa was a wonderful grandpa. He took me fishing, read me stories, and watched me perform in school plays, when no one else did. He could never have done anything intentionally to hurt me.” By denying what we know to be true, we may avoid the pain of feeling betrayed or not remember how upset we were by the experience. These strong needs can keep us from acknowledging abuse.
Our biases and discounts may include:
But I offered no resistance. While shouting, screaming, talking, and fighting back can sometimes prevent or stop sexual abuse, the reality is that in many instances resistance is not effective. When I was date raped, my offender was so quick and crazed that I instinctively felt that resistance would be futile and harmful to me. Because I chose a tactic of not fighting back, it made it difficult to acknowledge I had been raped.
Children, and many adults, do not use force to deal with an overwhelming threat. When we see the offender is older, bigger, or more powerful, we may naturally decide our best option for survival is to play possum. When we have no place to run, and if no one hears our cry for help, we may have no choice but to submit. In addition, sexual abuse can happen so suddenly there is no time to struggle. Abuse is abuse even if you didn’t fight back. Submission does not mean consent.
But I liked it at the time. Some victims adjust to sexual abuse by using the experience to obtain attention, affection, favors, or rewards. During the abuse they may actively cooperate and may experience emotional or physical pleasure from it. The abuse may meet emotional needs that weren’t being met for them any other way. But this creative way of coping does not lessen the abusive nature of what occurs. The activity still ignores the victim’s long-range best interests, carries social stigma, and teaches exploitive sex. The tremendous secrecy and guilt that accompany abuse can cause the victim to feel psychological strain and stress.
A gay survivor who had been abused by an older brother said his recovery work made him aware that teenage boys seldom, if ever, “seduce” older men. He told this story:
I hear gay men who are pedophiles justify their actions with comments like “I seduced this kid” or “This teenaged boy seduced me.” When I was a teenager I tried to seduce my uncle, who was molesting my sister. It didn’t work, which I thought was unfortunate at the time. But looking back today, given how I think now, if he had sex with me I would classify it as sexual abuse. He was an adult and would have been responsible for his sexual relationships. It would have been up to him to know the difference between healthy and unhealthy sex. Just because I was gay and wanted to have sex with my uncle didn’t make it okay.
But my body responded. Our bodies are sensitive. Most sensitive are the nerves in our sexual parts. When these are stimulated, through thought or physical sensation, nerves respond. Sexual responses can be automatic. A male teenager might see an offender’s erection and automatically become aroused himself, or a girl may suddenly find her nipples harden when stroked by a rapist. High stress and anxiety can themselves trigger sexual responses. Abuse is abuse whether or not you responded sexually.
But it was no big deal. Survivors of repeated sexual assaults may become desensitized to sexual abuse. Abusive activities begin to seem “normal” and expected. A survivor of repeated childhood molestation described her reactions after a recent attempted rape:
It was a gorgeous day. I went into a restroom at a park, and a guy grabbed and started fondling me. I told him I had a boyfriend outside with a big white dog. He let me go. Later my boyfriend said he was surprised at how I downplayed the experience. My thoughts were, but this happens all the time. Later I realized I had built up such a tolerance to sexual abuse that I couldn’t see it when it happened to me.
Some survivors minimize the abuse because it did not involve overt sexual conduct, result in penetration, or culminate in orgasm for the offender. Many studies show that attempted intercourse and “incompleted rapes” have similar impact on the victim as when the assault is “complete.” A little sexual abuse is sexual abuse.
Survivors may be operating a double standard when it comes to recognizing the seriousness of their abuse. They may feel more compassion for a close friend who has been abused than they do for themselves, even if they experienced similar abuse.
Once survivors learn to stop minimizing abuse, they may feel a weight lift. A survivor who had been molested by her grandfather as a child explained:
Once I overcame my denial of the abuse I had to work through another barrier of minimizing it. I’d tell myself, “It wasn’t that bad. He only touched my chest. I was the one who made it out to be sexual.” But the denial made me feel crazy and depressed. I learned that fondling a girl’s breasts under the shirt is sexual abuse. My depression went away when I put the responsibility on my grandpa, the offender. It’s the only way.
But my abuse wasn’t as bad as other people’s. Your experience is valid for you. There is no benefit in comparing how badly you were hurt to the experiences of others. Individuals respond differently to sexual abuse. We all have different strengths, tolerances, and supports. One victim may be just as traumatized as another whose abuse lasted longer and was more painful. If you have been abused—no matter how bad compared to others—your sexuality has been tainted by the experience. The harm done to you is real and matters.
But it was my fault. No one is responsible for the abuse except the offender. Blaming yourself for the abuse may be an attempt to gain some sense of control or influence over what happened. Believing we caused the abuse counters our feelings of helplessness and powerlessness: If I think I caused it, it means I could have stopped it. No matter how you behaved, you had a right not to be sexually abused.
Survivors may feel they deserved what happened as punishment for being bad or misbehaving. If I had just stayed out of his way, my uncle wouldn’t have touched me, a survivor might think. If I hadn’t been drinking, that guy at the party wouldn’t have raped me, another might assume. Tragically, the false view that victims can “cause” the abuse continues to be perpetuated in our society, confusing victims even more. In the media and in the courtroom, victims of rape, especially female victims, are further victimized by suggestions that they “asked for it” by their clothes or their lifestyles. Releasing ourselves from these false and hurtful societal messages can help us identify experiences as abuse.
Victims of sexual abuse often doubt their own innocence in circumstances in which there has been seduction, manipulation, or no weapon, or if the abuse took place in their own home or a place they went to willingly. Jean, an incest survivor, entered therapy distraught over a sexual relationship she had had with a former female therapist. Their sexual affair went on while Jean was still attending weekly sessions with the therapist. Even though the affair so confused and upset Jean that it led her to terminate the therapy, Jean felt uncertain she had been sexually exploited. To overcome this false belief, Jean had to learn that every therapist has an ethical and moral obligation not to have sex with a client. Even if she had actively seduced the therapist, Jean would not have been responsible for the affair. It was the therapist’s responsibility to prevent the affair from taking place. By releasing herself from fault, Jean was finally able to acknowledge that the therapist’s actions constituted professional misconduct and sexual abuse.
Recognizing that an experience was sexual abuse can be hard to do, but denying it also takes great mental energy. When we are finally able to overcome our biases and discounts, we free up our mental energy to channel into healing.
REMEMBERING SEXUAL ABUSE
About half of all survivors experience some memory difficulty. Survivors may have absolutely no memories of sexual abuse or only incomplete memories. We may blank out details of events but can recall feelings such as anger, powerlessness, or fear. “I don’t know where I was or who I was with, but I remember feeling terrified that my genitals were going to be hurt and then feeling ashamed,” a survivor said. Others may forget emotions and recall only the events that transpired. A client once told me about her incest so unemotionally that she sounded like a reporter on the evening news. It wasn’t until she could recall emotions that she really felt she had been victimized and could acknowledge the abuse.
If you persistently sense you were sexually abused and have no memories of it, it’s possible that you were. Memories can remain dormant for many years. Suspicions about sexual abuse don’t arise out of the blue, for no reason. Suspicions can be agonizing and painful. No one likes the idea that he or she might have been harmed in the past, perhaps by a loved one. When people have continuing suspicions of sexual abuse, it’s often because something did happen to them.
Memory loss has a reason
Memory loss occurs for many reasons. We may have been so young when abused that we were unable to form thoughts or put our feelings into words. If we could talk, we may have lacked a vocabulary for the adult types of sexual activities that went on. It’s harder to remember an event when we have no words available to describe it. Similarly, abuse can be hard to recall if it occurred when we were unconscious, asleep, or under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.
Memory loss can be an important way of coping with abuse. If Dad is doing something we feel strange about, something that might change the way we think of him, we may unconsciously decide it’s better to forget the abuse. Victims of extremely violent and bizarre abuse may suffer traumatic amnesia, in which the shocking, violent nature of the abuse causes absolute memory loss of the event.
Memory loss protects us from overwhelming or continuous psychological strain after the experience. Sexual abuse is often confusing, painful, upsetting, shame inducing, and humiliating. We may have no one with whom we can talk openly about it and no opportunity to resolve our emotional feelings. Some people we talk with may discount our experience or blame us for it. We may convince ourselves that if we forget about it, we can get on with life.
Memory loss also protects us from painful feelings that are indirectly related to the abuse. A survivor might fear that remembering would bring up other issues—Why didn’t my mother protect me from what my father was doing? She must have known. Didn’t she care?
Most of the survivors I talk with who suspect they were abused but have little recollection wish they could remember more about what happened to them. “Not remembering my past is like being dead and not being able to remember my life,” a woman told me. Another survivor commented, “It’s hard for me to accept there may be parts of me I’ve forgotten—things which happened to me that I don’t know about.” As we pursue healing we may want access to these locked-in memories.
Memories can’t be forced
Recalling the specifics of sexual abuse is not essential for sexual healing. But if memories do return, that can help the healing process. Remembering sexual abuse may enable us to acknowledge abuse more fully and to direct our healing efforts more efficiently.
Survivors often remember abuse when they are ready to and no sooner. Robin, an incest survivor, began to recall her abuse when she felt stronger, more assertive, and secure in her life. Her memories emerged gradually. “I didn’t let myself know more than I could handle. I feel grateful to the part of myself that kept this repressed until now,” she said later.
Remembering takes time and energy. As one survivor said, “If I could put as much time into remembering the abuse as I did into forgetting it, I believe I could remember a lot more.”
You’re likely to find that memories will surface simply by your proceeding on this sexual healing journey. Sexual healing encourages thinking about sex and sexual abuse, which in turn can stimulate recollection.
When we pay close attention to our sexual reactions and thoughts, we can often discover a link to past sexual abuse. One survivor’s fear of getting anything gooey on her body led her to remember her grandfather ejaculating on her when she was a little girl. A male survivor traced his fear of men touching him on the shoulders to an early experience of being forced to orally copulate his uncle. As upsetting as these discoveries are, they do help to solve the mystery of why a strange reaction or thought existed in the first place and to bring the memory of the abuse to the surface.
For Bonnie, a thirty-three-year-old married client, clueing in to her sexual reactions and behavior led to a profound memory. When Bonnie entered therapy she suffered from several sexual problems common to survivors: She was not orgasmic, hated touching her genitals, and avoided sex with her husband. Bonnie had no recollections of sexual abuse, but she did have a sense that something could have happened between her and her father. It now seemed curious to her that as a teenager she had insisted on having a dead bolt for her bedroom door.
One day in counseling, Bonnie shared that on a recent morning she had screamed uncontrollably after seeing a strand of pubic hair in the bathtub and that soon afterward she dreamed that she was six years old. In the dream, her father gave her some balloons, then he put her on the bed and began touching her sexually. Bonnie woke from the dream as her body convulsed in a sexual climax. She knew that the dream replayed the event that had really happened with her father years ago. Because her first orgasm occurred during the abuse, Bonnie had avoided having orgasms ever since. “A bug doesn’t go back to the heat once it’s felt the fire,” she remarked. But once the specific memory of abuse was out, Bonnie was able to begin the slow process of learning to experience orgasm free from associations with abuse.
Trusting our memories
When memories of events and feelings do start to surface, trust them. They may not make sense initially, but when many are added together you can get a better picture of what happened to you. As one survivor explained:
The process was like finding pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, each in a separate drawer, and fitting them together to see a picture I had never seen before.
For another survivor, specific memories of incest came back in a sudden vision during a group therapy session. She recalled, “I had a vision of my father lying on top of me, kissing my face. I started crying in disbelief. After that, the vision kept coming and more was revealed.”
Though most people are relieved to recall past abuse, be prepared that you might also feel upset, even extremely frightened or angry. You may temporarily experience sexual problems caused by the upsetting sexual nature of the memories.
Hank was surprised when, eighteen years later, he remembered the emotional feelings that accompanied being seduced by an older woman when he was sixteen years old and a virgin. An entry from his journal shows how the process of writing helped him to understand his feelings:
I was surprised, almost shocked, to find myself feeling bitterness, regret, sadness, and a sort of crazy or helpless feeling of having been persuaded to do something I really was not sure I wanted to do. It’s hard to believe that these feelings have been repressed all this time. She started hugging and kissing me, then she told me to take off my clothes. I felt like I had no choice, like I had to do it. I’m confused as to whether this was rape or something close to it. Something was wrong. I didn’t feel I had a right to consider whether I was really ready to go all the way sexually. We had a two-week affair. Then it was over. I never felt close to her or able to be myself around her. This is so sad that in writing about this I start crying, something I never did before about this experience. She got pregnant by me. I said I couldn’t be much of a father. She insisted on raising the child herself with her husband, which has had a deep effect on me over the years. I have always had trouble trusting and being intimate with women.
No matter how difficult the process of remembering is, remind yourself that you are stronger than the things that happened to you. You survived the abuse, and you can survive the memories. And the memories can help you heal.
SEXUAL HEALING APPROACHES TO REMEMBERING
Although memories of abuse often surface naturally when survivors are ready to handle them, some survivors feel stuck. They may want to make a more active effort to facilitate remembering. Survivors can attend ongoing therapy sessions to create a consistent setting where memories can unfold. Having professional and personal support can help survivors feel safe and understood, which is so important to remembering. Survivors can use a variety of methods to help them remember, such as hypnosis, investigating their past by talking with relatives, or looking at old picture albums, floor plans of old homes, memorabilia, and so on.*
If you feel ready to investigate your memories of sexual abuse, the following exercises may help you. These exercises consider sexual clues and activities directly. What you recall may cause you to feel unsettled, uncomfortable, perhaps even temporarily fearful. Go slowly. Seek support. Give yourself a safe opportunity for your memories to return. Don’t try to force recall; memories will emerge when you are ready to handle them. Recording what you learn in a journal may help you.
1. Reflect on your childhood. Were there any periods in your childhood in which you displayed any of the common signs of sexual abuse, such as insomnia, nightmares, bedwetting, excessive masturbation, regression to more infantile behavior, explicit sexual knowledge, behavior or language unusual for your age, depression, withdrawal, frequent genital infections, severe headaches, unexplained gagging, self-cutting or mutilation, recurrent abdominal pains, eating problems, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide attempts, truancy, change in school performance, limited social life, running away, overtly seductive behavior, attention-getting or delinquent behavior?
Were there times in your life when you were particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse? Was there anyone in your past whom you feared or consistently avoided? Was there anyone in your past who had the opportunity, interest, and inclination to perpetrate sexual abuse?
2. Think about your earliest sexual experiences. Who did what, when, and how? Were these experiences, in reality, sexual abuse?
3. Pay attention to the feelings, images, and thoughts that come up for you during and after sex. Take seriously any strange or irrational reactions you may have. Are you strongly drawn to, or extremely afraid of, certain sexual activities? Are you upset with stimulation to certain body parts? Do you avoid certain types of touch? How long have you had these feelings? Under what circumstances did they originate? How might these activities relate to sexual abuse?
4. Pay attention to your sexual dreams and sexual fantasies. Are there repeated themes that pertain to power, control, humiliation, or violence? Do you have recurrent dreams or nightmares that involve sexual abuse?
As feelings and memories surface, keep in mind: You are the most important judge of your past. Unless they participated in or witnessed an experience, no one—no family member, friend, therapist, or doctor—can tell you for sure what did or didn’t happen to you. Be patient. Keep an open mind. Trust your strong emotional, physical, and sexual reactions. Honor your “gut” feelings.
While remembering sexual abuse can facilitate sexual healing, recollection is not a requirement for recovery. Regardless of your level of recall, you can move forward and develop healthier sexuality.
* See the Resources section for books on general recovery from sexual abuse. In particular, Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, The Courage to Heal; Laura Davis, The Courage to Heal Workbook; and Mike Lew, Victims No Longer.
TELLING OTHERS ABOUT THE ABUSE
“Your secrets make you sick” is a popular phrase in Alcoholics Anonymous. It applies to sexual abuse recovery as well. Secrets usually maintain our shame and damage our important relationships. While we can know inside that past experiences were actually sexual abuse, our acknowledgment of sexual abuse is not complete until we share it with others. Sharing with others often liberates us from the past.
Even though it can be an important step in sexual healing, many survivors hesitate to share the secret of their abuse. They may have to overcome old injunctions to remain silent and not to tell. They may need to resolve worries and fears about what others might think of them. And they may need to come to grips with the reality of what happened to them on a new, deeper level.
If you know you were sexually abused, perhaps you have already shared your abuse with others or perhaps the idea of sharing is new for you. By exploring some of the reasons adult survivors hesitate to share, you can gain an understanding of what might block a deeper acknowledgment of your sexual abuse.
“I don’t want to be seen as a victim”
Sharing that we were sexually abused means admitting to ourselves and others that we were once victims. This can be hard to do. Few people like to think of themselves as victims. Our society places a great emphasis on self-determination and independence. We don’t like to see ourselves as having been in situations that went beyond our control, that we were powerless to change, and that led to our exploitation.
Regardless of what we would like to believe, we do not always have control over what’s happening. Acknowledging we were once victims is an important acceptance of our human vulnerability.
Although survivors didn’t have control over the abuse in the past, they do have control now over how they respond to it. Believing that we have to remain silent about something confusing and painful that happened to us can be another form of victimization. “I had to acknowledge I was a victim before I could see myself as a survivor,” one man said.
“I’m embarrassed and ashamed of the abuse”
Sexual abuse is an intimate offense. It’s hard to talk about our sexual encounters with others. We may not be used to sharing anything so personal. Most of us would rather admit that someone stole our car or punched us in the face than share that, against our will, someone touched us on a private body part.
Abuse that was perpetrated by a family member can create further emotional difficulties with acknowledging what happened. Lynne Yamaguchi Fletcher, a survivor, poignantly describes this challenge in the November 1992 issue of Sojourner Magazine:
Incest is so much more than the violation of a body by another body. . . . It is a betrayal based on the lie “I love you—but I’m going to do this anyway.” To admit that you’re a survivor is to admit that you weren’t loved. There are just no words to describe the agony of that. It’s not something one admits lightly.
The fact that sexual abuse involves sexual feelings and body parts can also contribute to a tendency to maintain silence. Survivors who feel ashamed to discuss these intimate injuries need to remember that they did nothing shameful themselves. If we had faced breast or prostate surgery, we would have sought the support of our loved ones and discussed our experiences. We should not hesitate to ask for the same kind of support now.
“I’ll be seen as less of a man”
Men survivors often have an especially difficult time revealing their abuse histories. One male survivor recounted his experience:
The very hardest part of recovery for me was coming out and saying that I am a sexually abused person. I didn’t know until two years ago that men and boys could be raped. We’re not supposed to be victims.
Our society gives boys the message that men should be able to stand up for themselves and fight off danger. They’re also told that if a man gets hurt, he should go it alone instead of seeking help. A boy or man may worry that sharing the abuse would mean he had failed at being able to protect and take care of himself.
Males are also taught not to show their sensitivities and emotions. A man may fear that sharing the abuse would be like opening a floodgate—dammed-up pain and emotions would come gushing out. He may fear he would be overwhelmed.
Men may also hesitate to disclose that they were abused because they worry about their sexual image. Our culture presents sex for males as an adventure, something they should feel excited about at any time. Male victims may doubt their masculinity because they didn’t experience sex that way in the abuse. Because most abuse of males is perpetrated by other males, heterosexual male victims may worry they will be seen as homosexual if others hear the details of what occurred. Gay men may wonder if the abuse made them gay.
Men have to challenge some of these limiting social views of masculinity that restrict their humanness. Sharing that one was sexually abused is not a sign of weakness. On the contrary, being honest with yourself and others requires a tremendous amount of courage and strength.
In recent times, a number of men, such as Tour de France winner Greg LeMond, actor Todd Bridges, star hockey players Theo Fleury and Sheldon Kennedy, Olympic gold-medalist Greg Louganis, Massachusetts senator Scott Brown, boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, and CNN news anchor Don Lemon, have made their abuse histories public. Since one in six males is estimated to have been sexually abused as a child, these disclosures are helping men overcome unnecessary shame and emotional isolation.
“I’ll lose social status as a woman”
Women survivors have a different set of social injunctions to overcome. Women may worry that when they share the fact of their abuse, they will be seen as sexually loose or damaged. Our society has set up these fears. Rape laws, for instance, were written originally because husbands and fathers wanted a way to protect the value of their wives and daughters. Women were seen as property, vulnerable to damage by other men. But times are changing. This view of women as chattel is becoming outmoded. In recent times, many prominent women have stepped forward and publicly shared their sexual abuse histories. Talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey, Florida senator Paula Hawkins, dancer Cheryl Burke, former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur, and numerous actresses, including Kelly McGillis, Ashley Judd, Mackenzie Phillips, Mo’Nique, Teri Hatcher, and Queen Latifah, have joined other women in overcoming shame and breaking silence to disclose past sexual abuse.
Since nearly half of all women are sexually abused in their lifetimes, a woman who openly acknowledges having been abused need not fear being alone. When I give lectures and conference presentations, I often share a little about my own sexual abuse history. Although I used to fear that people would think less of me, my experience has been quite the contrary. Invariably, when my presentation is over, several people comment that they appreciated my ability to openly discuss that I am a survivor.
Sexual abuse does not lessen a woman’s worth or a man’s maleness. Like robbery, sexual abuse is a crime against you, not an indicator of who you are.
“I was told not to tell”
If the perpetrator who abused you is still alive and around, it can be an additional burden. You may fear the offender would hurt you if he or she was to find out you had shared the story of the abuse with anyone. It may be difficult to trust even a highly confidential, private relationship.
Survivors may remain irrationally afraid of the offender for years. I call this the “Santa Claus is watching you” phenomenon. Given that many offenders were authority figures, some survivors may imagine the offender has special power to control their lives: He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.
Survivors who have felt this way need to remind themselves that they are not powerless. They have support now that was probably lacking when the abuse occurred. It is offenders who have a lot to fear—socially and legally—from survivors who are no longer willing to keep sexual abuse a secret.
“I’m afraid of other people’s reactions”
Sharing about sexual abuse is risky. We can’t predict how others will react. Although social awareness about sexual abuse has increased in recent years, many people may still respond in negative ways. They may not believe it really happened, say you were to blame, question why you didn’t do anything about it sooner, or convey the impression that they believe you were somehow irrevocably damaged and made worthless.
A survivor told what it was like to share about her abuse with a partner whose response was upsetting:
I began having memories of the sexual abuse while I was dating a man I didn’t know well. I would tell him I had a new memory and what it was. He didn’t understand why I wanted or needed to dig up the past (as if I had a choice). He was unsupportive about the actual memories and the emotional wreckage the memories brought up. He kept suggesting quick ways to fix the problems. I felt guilty, unsupported, and angry. I subsequently terminated the relationship. Since then my ex-partner has told me that his response was based on his difficulty at seeing me in such pain.
Another survivor admitted feeling terrified when, at age thirty-nine, she decided to tell her parents that she had been sexually abused by her mother’s brother—thirty-three years earlier. She worried that they wouldn’t think it had been sexual abuse, that they’d defend her uncle’s actions, or that they wouldn’t respond. Those fears and worries led her to confront her own doubts about what happened. Was this really sexual abuse? Did it really happen? Not until she felt clear in her own mind about what had happened, and about who was responsible, could she share the abuse with her parents.
By the time I finally dialed my parents’ phone number, I felt strong enough in myself that I knew, no matter what kind of response I got, that I wouldn’t abandon myself. Naturally I hoped for a supportive response from them. But I knew that the benefit for me in my healing was in being able to say it—in hearing myself say it. For me, hearing myself say I had been abused meant I had overcome my shame and doubt.
Sharing is something we choose to do for ourselves, to help us heal. Because it is so risky, we need to be careful and share in ways that we believe will be beneficial to us.
When survivors decide they are ready and want to share that they were sexually abused, they can reduce risk and help themselves increase the likelihood of having a positive acknowledgment experience by planning their disclosure thoughtfully and carefully. Here is a slogan that can help: Share in safety and in steps.
Start talking about the abuse with close friends, with family members or lovers who have shown their emotional support for you in the past, with a counselor in a confidential session, or with other survivors of sexual abuse. These are people you believe will have a nonpunitive, caring interest in what happened to you. A survivor who shared her abuse with her therapist said, “I needed someone safe to tell. I needed a witness where there was none before, someone who would not shame me or intrude with their own reactions.”
There is no formula to determine who the best “witness” will be for you. Consider who will be receptive, supportive, and caring about your needs. Sometimes the best listeners can be found in support groups.
The survivor support group provided me with an opportunity to find out I wasn’t alone, that there were others who had similar experiences. It also provided people who understood and didn’t judge me. It was the beginning of being able to talk about sexual abuse and to trust others.
Not everyone is knowledgeable about sexual abuse. Before sharing your experience, ease your way into the topic, educating your listener as you go. You may even want to give them reading material about sexual abuse to clear away old myths before you proceed. (In chapter 9, we will talk more about how intimate partners can become better informed about abuse and thus more supportive.)
Talk in broad terms at first: “Something happened to me in the past that is difficult for me to discuss.” Test their interest level: “I’d like to share more with you, but I want to know if you’re interested in learning about it.” Tell them what you need: “Since this is a sensitive subject for me, I’ll need your understanding and support in hearing about it. Does that sound okay to you?” Reveal the details of the abuse gradually, as it seems safe: “I was molested by someone.” “My uncle molested me.” “My uncle had oral sex with me.”
Be prepared for varied reactions. If people blame you in any way, you might remind yourself and them that the abuse was the offender’s fault, not your own. If they wonder why you have kept silent about the sexual abuse for so long, tell them most survivors have trouble admitting and disclosing abuse. If they want to confront your perpetrator, remind them they must not do so without your approval, that you must control the resolution of issues related to your abuse.
Don’t be surprised if you get some positive reactions, too. When you share in safety and in steps, this is likely to happen. A survivor described her experience:
When I first told my partner that my brother had sexually abused me, he was shocked, pretty speechless, but he seemed to me to be understanding and nonjudgmental. I felt relieved that at least that much was out in the open. It was a big weight off my shoulders.
And another survivor told of her situation:
When my husband and I came home after a counseling session, he asked me what exactly had happened when I was sexually abused. I felt ready to reveal more. I told him it was hard to talk about. Then I shared with him that my brother had touched me on my breasts and vaginal area and that he ejaculated on me. I cried and was shaking the whole time that I talked. My husband held me. He cried with me. I felt closer to him in that moment than I ever had before.
Sharing the abuse allows you to be honest about yourself with others. It can release you from unnecessary feelings of guilt and shame. Sharing is a sign of your strength and your ability to recover. Although in the short term it may be painful and scary, in the long term it can feel good, an empowering relief. “I’m so glad the sexual abuse is out,” said a survivor. “Most of the ugly little creatures I held in my darkness have hatched out and died in the light.”
By acknowledging abuse, you can recognize the experience of sexual abuse as part of your life history and can learn to use it as a source of strength. By acknowledging sexual abuse, you take back power and can begin doing something about the past. When you share the story of the abuse with others, you can do it with your chin held high. You are no longer a victim. You are a survivor, becoming a thriver.