The March, rally and handing in of a petition to 10 Downing Street happened yesterday at Parliament Square, London.
Step Up, for parents of abused children, was already linked in from the Rally’s official site. Here’s a list of the other charities that featured in the rally;
Survivors Manchester (male only)
AMSOSA (male only)
Breaking Free (female only)
Surviving Together (female only)
ASUK (both)
– CBG
It’s difficult to get anyone to talk about being sexually abused, and we also know that for male victims they also get the additional stigma attached to not being “man enough”. But then there’s this: The study, which examined child rape laws in 40 countries, found that just under half of jurisdictions lacked legal protections…
Anne Wheaton, yes Wil’s wife, has written an insightful piece about dealing with a loved one’s depression. What I like about it is the honesty she shows in talking about what chemical depression can look like to a spouse. It doesn’t often look like depression, it looks like anger and frustration, etc. Depression symptoms are…
When I was undergoing treatment with a therapist, she actually tried to get me involved in group sessions. The sexual abuse survivor group I attended a few times was not for male survivors, it was for any survivor, and I just happened to be the only male in the group. It didn’t last long. To get any help for me, as a male survivor, I had to kind of be wedged into programs and tools that were designed for female survivors. It still helped me, but it could have been better, and might not have helped a lot of men. I do believe it’s gotten slightly better over the years, but only slightly. It’s still a huge problem. We still don’t have any real idea of how many male survivors there are, or how to make resources available to them. Partly because we don’t talk about it enough, and partly because when men do talk about it, they aren’t listened to.
We pay the price for that. Those survivors grow up, and struggle, on their own, with mental health and other issues. They don’t feel safe coming forward, and they are often made to feel weak if they even consider asking for help.
That’s no way for anyone to go through life.
“Community misconceptions can lead to the vilification of parents as being inattentive or not adequately protective, based on the idea that attentive parents will instinctively detect grooming and know their child is in danger.” “In reality, it is difficult for people to process relevant information and reach accurate conclusions at the time of the…
I’ve talked about this before. As a male survivor, I have spent years on this site dealing with people that simply assumed I was gay, for no other reason than the fact that I was abused by a male perpetrator. I’ve known plenty of other men who’ve been shunned because of a similar assumption, or the much worse assumption that survivors, especially male survivors or gay men, are likely to turn around and also sexually abuse others.
None of this is accurate. Yes, the abuse can leave you feeling unsafe and uncomfortable in your own body and with your own sexuality. That is a side effect of being raped sometimes. That is not something anyone should be ashamed to talk about and no matter where they land on the spectrum of gender and sexual preference they deserve the respect and privacy to figure that out themselves. None of us asked your opinion, and none of us want to hear about your own illusions of how sexuality works after being sexually abused at a young age.
The more mature attitude is to recognize that healing from sexual abuse is a process that looks different for everyone, whether they are gay, straight, bisexual, non-binary and any other thing you want to consider. We all deserve a better response than to be accused of bringing it upon ourselves.
On a much-discussed topic around this blog, I found this NPR feature to be a very worthwhile read. Not only doers it define one of the huge problems with mental health care in the US, but it goes to talk about some solutions: “It has put the jails in an awkward position. Today the three…
