Posts Tagged ‘sexual victimization’

The Devastating Effects of Sexual Victimizers

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

Beyond serial killers, our society often tends to see all offenders as pretty much the same. But sexual predators, whether “softly” predatory, or cruelly so, are very different creatures from most offenders. They are much harder to identify; they usually don’t look anything like the imagined archetype. On the contrary, they look like any of us — and that is what makes them so difficult to distinguish. And if we think the average citizen has a hard time distinguishing them, consider how difficult it is for survivors of sexual victimization to live in a world in which they have learned too painfully that  “anyone” could be a sex offender. Consider how totally unsafe the world must now appear to a survivor of sexual assault or exploitation. And consider how all this adds to the complexity of living with the story, or the the history, of this kind of victimization.

We know of victims/survivors of childhood sexual abuse who, decades later, have told virtually no one about what happened. We know of some who wanted to die, afterward, and some who – in their unexpressed anger – later wanted to kill. We know of one person who did end up killing someone. And regardless of the directness of the connection in that case, all would say that entire parts of their lives were lost because of the victimization.

But these are mostly closely-held secrets. “Telling” about them feels like an absolute impossibility to most survivors. And yet the carrying of these stories and these histories is burdensome beyond measure. So what do we do? How can we help, as friends and family members – or ordinary citizens? The first thing we do is BELIEVE them. If we simply listen and believe, we will be offering them the greatest gift of all.

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