[Sexual Assault] # 1. Guilt

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

I work with women victims of sexual assault. And I decided to start publishing a series of articles about my work with such requests.

Sexual abuse could occur at different ages: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. There are similarities and differences in dealing with the consequences of sexual abuse at different ages. Speaking about sexual abuse in childhood, I would like to emphasize that I do not work with children, but work with adult women who were sexually abused in childhood: often by some of their relatives.

I know that there are men who have been sexually abused: in childhood or in adulthood, and most likely for them what I will write about will also be useful, however, I have no experience with such requests now. therefore, in my articles I will write specifically about clients.

Since there is a lot of material, I will post articles on the topic of sexual violence and my experience of working with its consequences regularly, at least once a week: therefore, if you would be interested to read my articles on this topic: subscribe to my channel and put like (so that I know that the article was useful and interesting to you)

To begin with, sexual abuse can occur in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

If we are talking about sexual abuse in childhood, then often the adult victim does not remember that it happened at all. If such a client comes to therapy: often with the question of the impossibility of building long-term relationships with men, then I can only hypothesize by indirect signs that the client may have been sexually abused in childhood: and sometimes my hypothesis turns out to be correct, sometimes not.

In this article, I will write about the situation when the victim remembers about the abuse or when he already remembered about it as a result of our previous work.

The first feeling that the client encounters in the course of our work is guilt: and this is not an accusation of the rapist, as one might think in this situation, it is the victim's accusation of himself: that the victim of violence very often blames myselfin what happened: regardless of the age of violence - a woman / girl / girl finds "reasons" for this guilt: I brought him myself, I went with him, I was too defiantly dressed, I did not scream, did not call for help, did not defended herself and so on.

Unfortunately, violence is often the first sexual experience of a girl / girl, and if so, then she often writes down her own curiosity and her sexual desire, if any, in the “reasons” for her guilt.

Indeed, often sexual violence is committed, including on dates, that is, it could be a man who the woman liked and for whom she had a sexual desire, however, the woman was not yet ready for sex: and then the woman blames not only herself, but and her sexual desire - and in the future begins to block it: because it is "guilty" of the violence that happened to her, and the pain, disgust and anger that she experienced during and after this violence. And since she would not want to be subjected to violence in the future, she begins to block her desire for other men.

Therefore, the first thing I start with is to inform the woman that the violence that happened is not her fault and neither her desire nor her curiosity is to blame for it - all responsibility for the violence lies only with the rapist: not with her, and nor on what she herself felt in relation to the rapist!

Therefore, a woman should stop blaming herself - to give responsibility for the violence to the rapist: after all, even if she had a sexual desire for a man, but she was not ready for sex, she still had the right to say "no"! And if the man did not hear this "no" and continued - this is his responsibility.

I have not met this, but even if a woman experienced an orgasm during violence, it still remains violence and the rapist's responsibility is that he raped a woman - not a woman.

That's all, read the continuation on the topic in my next articles.