Another sad story caught my eye today. A 15 year old French teen raped by 3 men in Dubai. His mom has started a web site in order to help bring light to the awful injustices of the legal system there immersed in Islamic law. boycottdubai.com Bright shining towering monument of buildings belie a decrepit archaic social system still calling the shots, despite all the billions invested there.
This little guy has a long road ahead of him. No matter how much and how good whatever therapy he receives, those scars are there for good. Trauma of that degree literally etches a tracing in the brain, as does all trauma, be it combat, gross accidents, scenes of horrific death of others, raging fires, and etc.
As a therapist , you hope he will be able to recover enough to lead a somewhat "normal" life despite the scares that will remain. In time they can shrink, but no therapy can remove them. He will have the long road ahead of him of recovering from the sequelae the rest of his life.
The sequelae is what a therapist tries to minimize or eliminate. Foremost is the feelings of shame, and of feeling dirty and unclean. The pervasive feelings of responsibility despite the rational mind knowing he did not have any choice other than submit. Childhood victims of sexual abuse, rapes suffer lower selfesteem in general and incredible difficulty in establishing a normal sense of sexuality. Developmentally, they are thrown to deal with a trauma that they have had no prior time to developed enough coping skills to even comprehend what has happened to them. This is especially true in victims preteen and under 10. Prematurely sexualized, they enter a world most of us only explore following our own chronologically appropriate time lines. Even then, most of us are not fully prepared to deal with sexual relationships, nor orientations, that may be homosexual or trans gender.
Having being thrown into the physical sensations associated with sexual organs, undeveloped for that purpose, they are quickly sensitized to associating sexual feelings with pain and fear. Avoidance can develop, along with flashbacks and nightmares of the trauma in adulthood. Teenage victims of molestation who have been taken advantage of by trusted others, end up having a slew of conflicting feelings of pleasure, shame and guilt. Pre mature sexualized teens, can often confuse sexual activity as emotional intimacy. This can lead to sexual addiction or promiscuity. Sexual trauma victims may have developed a compartmentalization of separating sexual activity from all emotional ties, a numbing of sorts.
If you think that childhood sexual abuse is not that prevalent, and only reserved for a certain social class or nationality. Wrong. I could say approximately half or more of my patients have had some history of molestation raging from slight to horrific, as in Alex's case. Some trauma memories can be hidden in the unconscious, only to be partial and fully revealed in adulthood. One sees certain constellation of systoms associated with adult victims of childhood abuse that can override the trauma as the presenting problem. Usually these are under the diagnosis of Post Traumatize Stress syndrome. Relationship histories can also be revealing of prior abuse too. Amnesic periods of childhood are often a big red flag, as can traumatic reoccurring nightmares.
Last but not least, pedophiles come in ALL orientations. Though the most published lately may have homosexual priests, most homosexuals are not pedophiles. I can say that heterosexuals pedophiles as perpetrators are much more implicated in childhood sexual abuse that any homosexual population!
Alex is a brave Young man to come forth and bear is fragile self and wounds in an benevolent attempt to bring light to the henious injustices under those shiny modernistic buildings. I pray for his healing and that of his family.
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