Sexual violence

Being sexually abused as a child by a parent or caregiver

Sexual contact, exposure, or exploitation by a parent or caregiver during childhood. Whether it happened once or over years. Whether you understood what was happening at the time or not.

Abuse by the person responsible for your safety scrambles the deepest wiring a child has, because love, danger, and dependence all arrived from the same hands. Survivors often carry secrecy, confusion, and misplaced shame for decades. The shame was never yours. It belonged entirely to the person who did this, and every voice here will tell you the same.

What can follow an experience like this

No two people carry the same experience the same way. These are some of the effects that people with this experience often describe. Having some of them, all of them, or none of them says nothing about how real what happened to you was.

Hypervigilance The nervous system that learned to scan for danger all the time. PTSD After certain experiences, the brain can get stuck, replaying what happened through flashbacks, nightmares, or sudden intense reactions to things that remind you of it. C-PTSD When trauma happened repeatedly, over a long time, or at the hands of people who were supposed to care for you, the effects go deeper than a single event. Insomnia Difficulty falling asleep. Trust issues Trust that was broken, repeatedly, by people who were supposed to be safe. Depression Not just sadness. Shame Not guilt about something you did. Anxiety The background hum of dread that is always there.

Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and nothing here decides what is wrong with you, because nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. This page exists so that when you are ready, you can find people who understand it from the inside.

You do not have to carry this alone.

Bridge of Hope Recovery is a free, anonymous, peer-led fellowship for trauma survivors. Meetings run throughout the week by phone, by video, and in person. No cost, no waitlist, no one asking for your real name.

Find a meeting Join the fellowship

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