Sharing – Man who suffered child sex abuse now helps other survivors speak out
Jeremy’s story is a little different than what we might expect, but that’s it’s all the more important that we read it. For example:
‘I was energetic, outgoing, I had loads of friends, was outspoken in class, was doing sports and well at school.
‘I went to college and did an apprenticeship in engineering and ended up designing aircrafts around Europe. I worked in the automotive industry at McLaren and other big companies – I was doing well.
‘But then something changed,’ he recalls.
‘I was in Abu Dhabi and over a period of months started having low bouts of sadness and discomfort and as I was trying to put my finger on why I felt this, I realised it could have been that.’
For Jeremy, the abuse stopped, and then he went on with life seemingly without issue. Until later, when there was an issue. We assume that all survivors keep their secrets because they are ashamed, and many of us do. But there are also survivors who don’t “look” like abuse survivors, they go on with a relatively normal and successful life, until one day they don’t. Someone who looks like your abuser, a different overwhelmingly stressful situation, an inadvertent touch, or a smell, can all bring it rushing back into your consciousness.
This is another reason why people don’t tell until much later. They don’t really have a reason to, they seem to be “over it”, but they aren’t always really over it and we don’t exactly make it easy for people to even want to tell at that point, do we? Especially when our first reaction is to wonder why they waited so long to tell anyone, instead of recognizing their need for help now.
This is yet another example of survivors being unique individuals and the fact that how each of us is impacted can be different too. Just because another survivor has a different journey than you, doesn’t mean much in the end.
