Child Sexual Abuse into Adulthood

I was sexually abused until I was twenty-four years old. There was a man who abused me for over twenty years. Yes, it was still sexual abuse. No, even though I was an adult physically, I was not able to give consent to someone who had sexually abused me since I was a preschooler, because my no was not respected and honored. I had no boundaries, no safety, no protections from this person, no matter what age I was.

Even though I was an adult, I still consider it child sexual abuse.

In the last ten years I have known a large number of adult survivors of child sexual abuse who have disclosed they went through this as well.

I used to think that was rare. It is not rare. I think it is something that is very hard to disclose.

As survivors we blame ourselves, others blame us, abusers blame us, society blames victims. It is hard to put those lies aside and disclose. It is hard to feel this vulnerable and to share it.

It is very common among ritual abuse survivors, especially by ritual abuse members and family members. Being dissociative makes those of us with DID even more vulnerable to re-abuse in adulthood.

It is not commonly talked about in the healing community as a topic. It is not often written about in books on child sexual abuse and healing.

I do not recall reading a book, outside of the topic of ritual abuse, where it is discussed by the therapeutic community or disclosed by a survivor.

There are a number of books that I have not read, so it is possible. I have just noticed that it does not seem to have entered the public consciousness, yet.

I have read and posted lots of resource links pages for survivors, but have never come across an article or website on this topic in the last four or five years. Again, it could be out there, I just don’t know about it and I do a lot of searching.

In the last eight years I’ve been online in many survivor forums. Several of my closest survivor friends met on boards have experienced on-going child sexual abuse into adulthood. There are several brave survivors on blogs who acknowledge they were child sexually abused into their adulthoods. Some of them are my best friends.

I am a survivor of child sexual abuse while being an adult.