Sharing – The Invisible Male Victims of Sexual Abuse and Trauma
There is a lot of good information crammed into this article, but I just want to highlight the raw numbers for you:
About 1 in 6 males have experienced child sexual abuse or adult sexual assault. As of 1998, 2.78 million men in the U.S. had been victims of attempted or completed rape.
I’ve been involved in the Survivor community online for years, and it’s only just recently that male victims of child sex abuse are starting to realize that they are not alone. Imagine that. There are probably over 3 million male survivors of sexual violence in the US alone now, yet we still seem to think this is a rare phenomenon.
It only seems that way because there are even more female survivors, but that doesn’t give us permission to forget all of the males dealing with much the same thing.
What would happen if there were a medical condition that affected 1 in 6 people? Actually, we don’t have to imagine that. Breast cancer statistics show that 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with that condition. There are massive fundraisers, support groups, even the NFL dedicates a month of the season to awareness. It’s virtually impossible not to know about breast cancer risk and fundraisers. It’s quite an amazing thing to behold. (And, I may add, a good thing! I’m not complaining about this.)
The number of males being sexually victimized is higher.
Think about that.
https://trauma.blog.yorku.ca/2019/12/the-invisible-male-victims-of-sexual-abuse-and-trauma/
