I previously wrote about how so-called “bad survivors” - those who don’t fit with society’s view of survivorship - are cut off from support and silenced in...
Category: Surviving CSA
The hidden plight of “bad survivors”
What’s your reaction when you hear a child has been abused? Shock? Anger? Disgust? All of these are common (and reasonable) responses. For most people, however, those...
The criminal justice system discourages reporting and fails survivors
The goal of reporting a sexual offense is generally to get help and justice for the victim, and to prevent offenders from harming others. However, the current criminal...
Retraumatization and cultural context
Twenty years ago, the Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study revolutionized our understanding of trauma’s impact on survivors of abuse. Today, more...
BDSM can help heal from trauma
BDSM, or Bondage, Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism, and Masochism, is not usually associated with healing. Instead, BDSM in popular culture is usually portrayed...
Child marriage is not consensual: America’s dirty little secret
If you even think about child marriage, perhaps you think this kind of child abuse only happens in developing countries. Perhaps you think that here in the United States...
5 common problems in socially neglected children
Child abuse, whether intentional or through ignorant behaviors by parents, other adults, and caregivers, are a leading cause of emotional and physical harm to children and...
Serving survivors with trauma conditions
As an infantile incest sexual abuse survivor with a cacophony of lasting trauma-conditions to navigate in the long-term, I got to a point of understanding that left me...
More reasons why boys don’t disclose abuse
The first part of this two-part article explained how sexually exploited boys can find it more difficult to disclose their abuse if they hold to rigidly defined notions of...
Sexually exploited boys: Why they don’t disclose
The sexual exploitation of children has received significant attention over recent years with much being written about the reasons sexually exploited children don’t...