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Sharing – ‘If you’re the bloke it’s your fault’: Why Jeffrey believed he couldn’t be a victim of abuse

ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

We know this is true everywhere, not just in Australia:

On average, men take longer to disclose childhood sexual abuse than women, and many struggle to access support services. Jeffrey* and Digger* are among them.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/child-sexual-abuse-why-male-victims-feel-invisible/uio3etofz

As you read the article, consider the two different stories. Digger was a child abused in an institutional setting by males. Jeffrey was abused by his mother and has been told that he couldn’t be a victim because of this.

Both of them struggle to find resources for male sexual abuse survivors because the funding just isn’t there, and they struggle to find support from the people around them because this isn’t supposed to happen to males. Young girls get sexually abused, and we focus on that, as we should. We do not, however, have to focus on that at the expense of male survivors.

Boys get molested. I was one of them. Lots of other men you know were likely molested, too. Some of them may not even know because we weren’t taught that boys could be victims of sexual abuse. After all, if our bodies reacted, we must have wanted it somehow.

This reasoning is so outdated and harmful. Men who were sexually abused as children deserve to have their stories told. All survivors deserve access to support and resources. It’s the very least we can do.

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