Childhood Sexual Abuse

The news in the UK in 2015 is full of stories of childhood sexual abuse. Is this something that society has always experienced or does it seem more prevalent now because of all the publicity about high profile figures and cases?
In her book ‘The Use of Art in Counselling Child and Adult Survivors of Sexual Abuse’ Maralynn M. Hagood says ‘…thirty years ago there was very little discussion of child sexual abuse: most therapists and counsellors thought it was a rare and traumatic condition that affected only a very few of their clients….now we are wiser and much sadder.’ (Hagood, 2000, p.9).
When I did my Counselling training I couldn’t have imagined how many clients would come to me having experienced childhood sexual abuse. Early on I wondered whether to refer on to someone else but then realized that it had taken so much courage for people to tell me what had happened to them sometimes after several months of counselling. I knew that it would not have been right for me to reject them. They had already experienced so much hurt, rejection and not being listened to that I had no wish to repeat patterns that they had come to expect. Often people had a sense of them being ‘bad’ and that the abuse was somehow their fault.
The more I work with this extremely sensitive issue the greater my empathy and compassion for people who have often kept this a secret for many years for fear of not being believed or even, surprisingly, not being aware that what they have experienced is abuse.
What I have noticed is that clients may present with low self-esteem or anxiety or a vague sense of feeling ‘low’ but seemingly unable to pinpoint exactly what their difficulty is.
It continues to be my privilege to work with clients to validate their experience, to give them time to grieve their pain and to give them a very real hope towards being empowered so that they do not continue to accept the lie that ‘this is just the way that I am.’
As part of my ongoing continuing professional development, I have attended a number of Workshops on working with childhood sexual abuse and the impact that this has physically, emotionally, spiritually and relationally.
I teach grounding techniques to help clients relax when they are triggered. Psycho-education helps them understand what is happening to them when they experience panic and distress in the present which reminds them of what happened to them in the past.
It’s time to bring this terrible crime out of the shadows of darkness and secrecy into the light where it can be looked at and worked through. If you would like to talk – I am listening.