Home Child Sexual Abuse - Survivors
Child Sexual Abuse - Survivors
Below are some of the myths that survivors of child abuse are faced with:
'Children are provocative and seductive'. Children are not capable of being sexually provocative or seductive! They do not know what this is or the meaning of sexual body language. Once again this is shifting the responsibility for the abuse from the man onto the child. It gives the impression that we should feel sorry for the man 'taunted' by the 'seductive' child. There is only one person to blame for the abuse of a child, and that is the abuser.
'It's just a bit of a cuddle that's gone too far'. Child abuse is never an expression of love or affection, it is not playful or fun – it is the abuse of a child by an adult in a position of power, trust or authority.
'Children make up stories of abuse and sexual assault'. Children cannot make up stories of abuse because they do not have the sexual language or the explicit sexual knowledge to describe the abuse unless they have had first hand experience of it. To say that children falsely accuse their relatives of abuse is another way of overlooking the crime – a common threat made abusers is 'no one will believe you.'
'If you were abused as a child, you will abuse as an adult.' If you consider that 95% of all offenders are male and 5% are female, and that 87% of all children abused are female, 13% are male – then the figures just don't add up. This is yet another excuse for abusers – the shifting of the responsibility. The only person responsible for the abuse of a child is the abuser.
'Mothers always know when their children are being abused.' In most cases of abuse within the family, mothers do not know that this is happening. Abusers will go to great lengths to cover up the abuse, from bribery of the child to threats of violence to actual physical violence.
Facts
- The largest group of offenders are natural fathers, but the assailant is often a grandparent or even a babysitter teacher or doctor.
- Because of the rape dynamic, the abuser has practically unlimited access to the child.
- As with rapists, men who sexually assault children do not usually do so out of some sudden uncontrollable desire. It is rarely about the act of sex, it is more about power, humiliation and violence.
- Incestuous assault is coercive, but not always violent: this coercion can exist because of the position that children have in our society, and because men hold so much power.
- The incidence of child sexual assault is grossly underestimated.
- In one study, one fifth to one third of all women reported that they had some sort of childhood sexual encounter.
- It is never the child's fault; the blame is always with the abuser.
