The other side of the coin involves dealing with the legacies of abuse, sometimes years down the track. To survive child sexual abuse requires a belief in your ability to heal yourself, but when you are left with poor self-esteem, holding on to that belief is a huge challenge in itself. Anna, who was abused as a child by her uncle, has a long way to go. ‘I know I’m fat and ugly. That’s how I want it. I put the weight on deliberately because I don’t want to be attractive to men. The abuse happened from when I was nine until I was eleven and I just keep thinking I must have somehow been responsible for it. I still think everything that goes wrong is my fault. It’s strange you know, I feel as though all my feelings as a child were erased by what he did, and I have big chunks of my childhood memory missing.’
It is common for memories of sexual abuse to be blocked out. One way that memories can emerge is through an experience called a flashback. These are very different to the way you would remember something physically painful like a horseriding accident. Flashbacks are more than just memories or nightmares. They are vivid recollections of sights, smells, sounds, feelings. Survivors say a flashback can feel like they are actually in the middle of the experience again, yet sometimes they can’t be sure whether it is real because there may be no regular type of memory to rely on.
The effects of abuse will vary from person to person depending on your individual way of dealing with problems, how severe the abuse was, how much future contact you had with the perpetrator, how your family reacted to any disclosure, and your religious beliefs.
Kay says she sometimes feels like it all happened to another person. Although she is currently in a relationship with a man, she finds intercourse difficult. T hate anybody touching me, but I am slowly getting used to Tim because he is really patient and sensitive to when I’m feeling tense. When we start having sex I feel myself separating from my body, like I just tune out. I once heard about astral travel and I thought, “That’s how I feel about sex, like I’m floating above us watching it all from a distance.” One thing I will never get used to is semen. If I ever get any on me I stand under the shower for ages washing and washing. I can’t stand it, so we always use condoms. I don’t know how I’ll cope if we ever decide to have babies.’
This feeling when you are having sex — that it is happening to someone else — is one of the ways a survivor of abuse learns to cope. Others describe their genital area being divorced’ or ‘cut off from the rest of their body.
Now in his late twenties, Daryl was abused by his music teacher from when he was nine until he was twelve and he says he has been permanently turned off sex. ‘I was married for a while but I just found sex repulsive. I don’t want anything to do with it.’
When you consider the amount of damage that can be caused by sexual abuse, it is virtually impossible to repair it all on your own. It would be like cleaning up Florida after Cyclone Andrew with a mop and bucket and the best of intentions. It takes help. In the case of sexual abuse, that help can come from a number of sources — close friends, a lover who is able to earn your trust, or a sensitive and qualified therapist who can expertly guide a survivor through the painful process of working through the effects of the abuse.
That process means taking a look at how the abuse has affected your life in the past and what that means to you now. How has it influenced your attitudes towards sex? Has it interfered with your ability to form close and lasting relationships? Do you have trouble trusting another person? Do you feel worthless, dirty, ugly? Do you constantly put yourself down? Do you suffer from chronic stress-related illnesses?
Surviving sexual abuse means facing the memories so that you can get to know yourself better, then putting the abuse into perspective with the rest of your life. At first you might see yourself as a victim. As you work through the healing process, you start to feel like a survivor. Finally, you become a person to whom something terrible once happened. Then the ultimate goal … you learn to like yourself.
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