Disclosing Abuse My conundrum

[samocal]

Hi .



I need help determining as to wether I have suffered sexual abuse or child endangerment.



When I was 7-8 years old , I stumbled upon pornography.. for many years after my father allowed me to view pornography and on one occasion even decided to sit down with me and my friend to view the pornography with us.

Around the same time my father would insist on drying me after showering , despite not insisting on drying other friends of mine who were of the same age after showering . Which had always left me confused as to why he would want to dry me if it was not necessary and as to why I would be old enough to view adult content but not allowed to dry myself .



Many years later I had prompted to speak with my father about it which provoked from him a violent and offensive response full of insults , in which he lied and said he wasn't aware of me viewing pornography and it had only happened once so he could explain pornography to me , and also that I never showered at his house , furthermore made a comment " who would want to see your ugly body " . Which I find all very alarming not only because it doesn't seem to be an answer of someone who is innocent and I suspect my perception of what had happened is very unlikely as having had been a misunderstanding.



I am not sure if I can attribute it to the above me mentioned events but as an adult I suffer from dissociation, hyper sexuality and compulsive risky sexual behaviours .



What's more , I feel some sense of urgency to try and guage the seriousness of the situation as my father as of late had a working with children certificate.

 

[Silly]

Corrupting behavior such as this (having pornography laying about, and eventually viewing porn with you and your friends) is abusive for a few reasons I can think of:

● Self-serving bias: An individual's tendency to favor choices with obvious, immediate personal benefits over actions with more hidden, long-term risks.

● The "slippery slope" effect: The tendency for small, seemingly insignificant corrupt acts to pave the way for larger ones over time. It can be easier to justify minor transgressions, which lowers one's moral standards and makes more significant corruption possible later.

What you've said about drying you after showering was inappropriate. This also sounds like grooming tactics.

● Grooming is the practice of preparing or training someone for a particular purpose or activity.

Anyways, just a few thoughts I had after reading your post.

Welcome to Male Survivor. I'm glad you found this awesome resource, but I am sorry for the reasons why ... you aren't alone. Take care.

 

[samocal]

Corrupting behavior such as this (having pornography laying about, and eventually viewing porn with you and your friends) is abusive for a few reasons I can think of:

● Self-serving bias: An individual's tendency to favor choices with obvious, immediate personal benefits over actions with more hidden, long-term risks.

● The "slippery slope" effect: The tendency for small, seemingly insignificant corrupt acts to pave the way for larger ones over time. It can be easier to justify minor transgressions, which lowers one's moral standards and makes more significant corruption possible later.

What you've said about drying you after showering was inappropriate. This also sounds like grooming tactics.

● Grooming is the practice of preparing or training someone for a particular purpose or activity.

Anyways, just a few thoughts I had after reading your post.

Welcome to Male Survivor. I'm glad you found this awesome resource, but I am sorry for the reasons why ... you aren't alone. Take care.

Thanks for your response silly , unfortunately I didn't really get any clarification ... It's very tricky for.me to navigate this situation , as if it's just a case of being inappropriate rather than being a case of sexual abuse , I probably wouldn't be thinking about contacting a relevant authority to see if I can get his working with children certificate contested .

It's what goes through my mind is wether or not he just did have a grasp on what was appropriate for a child as he had faced long term sexual abuse as a child or if it was in fact more sinister but only did not progress because I had told my mum about the pornography I was being allowed to watch .

 

[LittleSteve]

I am not sure if I can attribute it to the above me mentioned events but as an adult I suffer from dissociation, hyper sexuality and compulsive risky sexual behaviours .

Here’s something you I think you should consider, hypersexuality and compulsive risky, sexual behaviors are very common with sexual trauma experience at a young age. There are other reasons for this, but here’s the key thing that stands out for me when I read that.

Disassociation.

Let me give you an example without going into detail that’s not important for you. I disassociated sexual trauma from age 4 to 7. All that remain buried for over 60 years I’m now 65 years old and this just came back to me in the last five months of what actually happened to me. The fact that you don’t have any memories now is no indication that something more didn’t happen to you. If you wanna investigate this further, I suggest that you get a trauma aware therapist possibly one that uses EMDR and can help you explore this further. They should be experience in child sexual abuse.

None of what happened to me was in my conscious memory, but in my subconscious it played out in many other ways you’re describing hypersexuality, risky, sexual behavior and so on. What can happen, especially in childhood trauma of a sexual nature at the age you’re talking about 6-7 is that it can be completely suppressed through disassociation. But what happens is our subconscious reenact those events and tries to fulfill them. I’ve had a lifetime of experiencing that. Once mine started to come out and I was able to look at what was happening my sexual history provided to playbook on what happened to me.

I’m not saying that something did happen to you, but the red flags are there and they’re waving. you have a couple of choices you can try and pursue this with a therapist and see if there’s more there. You can leave it alone per se, and just see what happens. But I can tell you for myself once my subconscious decided that I needed to know this it started coming out and there was no stopping.

I hope this didn’t happen to you and it was nothing more than what you’ve described. But the hypersexuality and those types of things could be a good indicator of that. There are other things that can cause us for example ADHD and autism. It’s not uncommon to experience it in those years as well. And this is not an exhaustive list. So there are other things that can cause this, but the fact that you’re here leads me to believe I think you should look into it further. If nothing else a qualified therapist could help you explore this and maybe there is nothing there, and that could be very reassuring to you.

I would encourage you to read some of the stories here about guys like you and see if things start to resonate, that may give you some clues to help you further understand what’s going on.

 

[GaD3!]

I agree with what LIttleSteve has stated. After I read your post my thoughts were that there may be more than you consciously recall.

 

[vryenn333]

I'm really sorry you went through that. It makes sense that you're confused, what your father did wasn't normal or okay. You deserve support and healing.

 

[Georgie]

Yes, it was abuse. His angry denial reflects guilt.

 

[Jack1]

once my subconscious decided that I needed to know this it started coming out and there was no stopping.

This is a very common aspect of CSA. Remembering little or nothing about the abuse and then later when the memories start, not being able to stop them.

 

[LittleSteve]

Yeah, once the damn broke, there’s no stopping it. I get it whether I want it or not and the pace is pretty hectic the longest I’ve gone without a memory is five days. But normally it’s every other day every two days, I’ve even hit multiples in the same day.

But I work around it, gotta keep going and keep living.