What is Child Sexual Abuse?
Child sexual abuse means forcing or manipulating a child to take part in sexual activity, which for a child is always inappropriate. It can take many forms, for example:
- Being made to look at pornography
- Being made to watch sexual acts
- Being watched in a sexual way
- Being touched in a sexual way
- Being made to masturbate or to masturbate the abuser
- Sexual assault (section 4) involving penetration, however slight by a hand or object
- Being raped. This involves penetration of mouth, anus or vagina by any object, by a finger or penis.
Child Sexual Abuse is often not physically violent, but it will always have effects on the development of the child's psyche. The sexual abuse of a child may be something that happens only once or everyday for many years. Sometimes abuse is remembered in vivid details; sometimes a person will only have vague feelings that 'something happened', and others may have 'forgotten' for many years and only as adults find memories coming to the surface of their minds. The abusers of children are as varied as the locations where the abuse takes place, but more often than not the abuser is trusted by the child and is an authority figure.
Why is there such a silence?
Many survivors of child abuse keep silent about what has happened to them. As a child
- They are often too afraid to tell someone at the time.
- The abuser may have threatened them not to tell.
- They may tell someone who does not believe them.
- The abuser may have blamed the survivor, saying they are bad or different.
- Abusers sometimes threaten terrible consequences if the child tells eg death or being sent away.
- The child may be "telling" in ways that people around them do not understand.
- The impact of the abuse may include the child feeling that telling will not make any difference.
- The abuser may continue to be in the child's life, with much more power to control events and circumstances.
As adults abuse survivors often
- Find it is still difficult to trust anyone enough to tell them the full story.
- Feel guilt and shame, terror, self-disgust, depression and fear of being overwhelmed by painful memories that bring it all back.
A child cannot be sexually abused without also suffering emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse.
The abuse will produce profound effects on all these levels, remember that it is possible to recover from these over time.
- Feel they just want to forget the past, but can't.
- Feel they should be 'over it' by now and may be told these things by people who are trying to be helpful.
Effects:
A survivor may:
- Have nightmares or flashbacks.
- Lack confidence.
- Dislike themselves, blame themselves, or mistreat themselves by starving, over-eating or abusing drink or drugs.
- Find it hard to trust people
- Feel they don't deserve to have relationships that help them to feel good.
- Feel that they are over-protective of their children.
- Feel that they do not deserve to be loved or happy
- Find sex is a problem because it triggers off memories of abuse or because they feel under so much pressure to be 'normal'.
Too much to cope with alone
Unfortunately in our society survivors of child abuse often never tell anyone or only find the strength and courage to do so long after the abuse has stopped. The good news it is never too late and many survivors have benefited from counselling. For further information on counselling please click here.
In adulthood memories may be triggered by reports of sexual abuse in the media or changes in circumstances such as a new relationship, having a baby or a death in the family. If you are a survivor of sexual abuse, only you can decide if the time is right for you to talk to somebody. But when you are ready we are here call 1800 750780.
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