Surviving childhood sexual abuse

There are women everywhere who have suffered sexual abuse as children. The abuser may have been a stranger, but more often he was a father, brother, uncle, stepfather, grandfather, or a trusted family friend. Women sometimes also abuse children. Often it is adults who abuse children, but sometimes it is older children or young people.

When someone abuses a child they are using their power over the child for their own selfish purpose. Children depend upon adults for physical and emotional security. Many children do not tell anyone about what is happening, as there may be no adult they can trust enough to talk to, or they think they will not be believed. Sometimes the abuser threatens terrible things if the child tells, such as that the child will die or be sent away from home.

It is beginning to be acknowledged that childhood sexual abuse happens a lot more frequently than people believed, or wanted to believe, in the past. The 2001 British Crime Survey revealed that 20-30% of girls and 5-10% of boys have suffered from sexual abuse. Sexual abuse may include the following:

• Being cuddled or kissed in a way that left you feeling uncomfortable

• Being bathed in a way that made you feel uncomfortable

• Having to look at other people’s genitals

• Having to touch other people’s genitals

• Having your own breasts or genitals touched

• Having to pose for photographs of a sexual nature

• Being shown sexual films or having to listen to sexual talk

• Having your vagina or anus penetrated by a penis, finger or object

• Being forced to perform oral sex, or to have it performed on you

The trauma does not stop when the abuse stops

To suffer sexual abuse as a child is a traumatic experience. It may be something that happened once or something that happened every day for many years. Some survivors remember the abuse in vivid detail. Some have only vague feelings that ‘something happened’. Others may have forgotten for many years and only as adults find memories coming to the surface of their minds. This does not mean that the memories are false or imagined.

Forgetting and remembering

Forgetting, cutting off and minimising memories can be an attempt to cope with the pain and trauma. It is a way of controlling the acute sharpness of the pain. Women have described how, as a child while the abuse was going on, they cut their minds off from the pain by going into a ‘trance-like’ state, or dissociating from their bodies. For many women, forgetting or cutting off in the immediate period following the abuse is an important way of coping. The normal method for coping with injury is often anger and pain, but children in this type of situation are not allowed to express anger. Facing their pain alone is unbearable and so they may be forced to suppress their feelings and repress all memory of the abuse.

Nightmares, flashbacks and body memories are some ways in which memories of abuse can surface. Distressing though it is, remembering is often a first step in the healing process. Some survivors find that remembering helps them to understand how present feelings are influenced by what happened to them as a child.

What does it mean to have suffered sexual abuse as a child?

It can mean that you did not experience the love that was your right as a child. It may mean living with chronic pain. It often means carrying the burden of grief, shame and fear all by yourself. There is no one specific way to deal with these feelings, but they cannot be processed until given a chance to do so.

Many women find it helpful to find support, as secrecy and silence are part of the abuse. Others with whom you can share your pain and healing, can be another survivor, a member of a support group or counsellor, or listeners on a helpline like ours. They may be a caring partner, a family member or sibling who also suffered abuse. It is never too late to discuss something that happened to you, or the feelings it has left you with.