Dealing With Past Sexual Abuse

There is an excellent series of articles over on the blog site, Abba's Little Girl, that deal with the sexual abuse that the blog owner suffered as a child. The series is dubbed Out Of Darkness and it is very helpful for those who have endured past abuse.

One note, the owner is a convert to Catholicism. Her father, and abuser, was a Baptist minister. She does NOT attempt to paint the majority of Baptists as perverts; I would not link to her site if she was using her experiences to castigate the entire Baptists denomination. It was her former Protestant Church, in fact, which encouraged her to confront her family with her past.

Here is part of her very first article on her experiences. I am printing it in hopes that others in pain from their childhoods will want to explore her series.

It has not been easy discussing this facet of my experience. In fact, I think this is the one facet that continues to be painful. I have heard people comment often that I seem to be able to discuss my experiences calmly and without visible signs of pain. That is because the Lord has done such an amazing job of taking the pain away and I have worked through forgiveness and recovery.

But the one area that continues to be painful and which affects my every day life to this day is the accusation my mother and subsequently my brother have made that I have been the victim of False Memory Syndrome.

You cannot imagine (unless you're been through it) what it is like to have your own family not believe you about something so devastating as being molested. To watch the perpetrator sit quietly by and watching the other members of the family castigate you while he withholds the truth feels like having a pillow held over your face.

To this day, when I express myself about something that means a lot to me, and I find myself not believed, I experience that same feeling of suffocation. I have to guard against the reaction and remind myself that the opinions of others do not determine truth.