The most important aspect of the situation is that you view what happened as non-consensual, abusive, and traumatic.
Yes this goes for anyone who has experienced sa for sure.
This very thread was my first ever post in this forum right as I began (for the umpteenth time in my life) to explore the cocsa trauma. I'm really glad you restarted the thread convo again because it's helped me to see how far I've come in my self understanding on this topic.
The text i wrote which you've quoted from that very first post is what I wrote before learning about my trauma from my own perspective (through exploration in therapy). My understanding of what happened has grown and my perspective has changed.
Of lesser importance is the wording of the law,
Yes. For many years of my life before getting to the point I have with trying to understand my trauma, I trawled through many lawful definitions of sexual abuse, cocsa, consent (much like what you've posted. Thanks for going to the effort of doing that).
What i found for me was that it was pretty detrimental to my own healing because I was trying validate what happened to me by looking for an outside definition - which didn't exist. And like you've pointed out, in the eyes of some laws, both children in a cocsa experience can even be seen as having committed a crime which is pretty detrimental. These are clearly laws which aren't written with the objective of healing in mind but to serve a much different purpose (not necessarily less important, just less relevant if there's no intention to prosecute etc).
As of yet, other than Wiki and some select therapists who tackle COCSA (like Kati Morton), I haven't found a useful and validating definition of cocsa. I think this will change soon. But I'm not interested in prosecuting the boy who did this and my healing has only just begun (with thanks to my therapist) now that I'm NOT trying to use lawful definitions of what happened to validate my experience.
But, definitions and understanding the meaning behind words / definitions used is really important when we're trying to understand our experiences and define them. COCSA is not an easy experience to define. And that's universally accepted, so I'm told, by the therapist community- because of the complexities and multi- faceted perspectives and often the need to protect the child who carried out the abuse (even if the intention of that child was not to abuse because they couldn't understand fully what they were doing, the child on the receiving end can experience it as abuse).
And this has been my gripe with using existing (poor) definitions of cocsa (from the law or otherwise). There is such a focus on whether cocsa is even sexual abuse. There's quite a strict eligibility criteria in some definitions I've seen. Like it can only be considered abuse if the child doing the acts is at least 2 years older than the other and if they use physical force etc. But these definitions fall short because they don't capture the experience of the kid on the receiving end. My abuser wasn't 2 years older. He wasn't violent or physically coercive. But he committed a number of adult sexual acts on me. Including rape.
8 months ago I denied it was rape because I was thinking purely from the perspective of the other boy. Another child can't rape another child i thought. Sorry to be blunt but....(I don't know how to do a spoiler),..the level of penetration he achieved is wasn't as deep or 'bad' as what it would have been if it were a full grown adult...(this was minimisation on my part) ... there wasn't a good understanding out there, no language, to reflect my cocsa experience... so through therapy I've had to let go of all those lawful definitions in order to see what really happened and see what really happened. I've had to let go of the predominant focus of the other definitions focusing on what he did (and whether this is considered abuse or not) and focus on what actually happened to me.
I was wondering to what extent your first instincts might have been right all along that there was a non-abusive aspect to what happened.
I wouldn't call them instincts. I'd call them my experience at the beginning of the relationship where I had no clue what journey he was about to take me on in order to explore his own sexual needs (regardless of why he needed to do that).
At the very beginning I believed and trusted what I was told: he would show me something I would love, which would be fun to do and good for me (but no one must find out about it). When I said yes at the beginning I had no way of knowing what he was talking about. That it would lead to adult sexual acts. Even when I was involved in those acts, I didn't know what they were. I didn't know what any of it was. I had no voice as I had no radar or understanding of what was going on. At that age, there wasn't a cognitive analysis of what was happening to me. I just knew I often couldn't breathe under his weight. That i felt sick. I had no ability or voice to say no and didn't realise there was a choice (until the very end). He'd packaged it up as being something I SHOULD enjoy and so I thought I must be wrong to feel the way I did.
So when you say...
, my wondering whether they meant that “in some sense” the relationship was consensual between two minors even below the age of consent.
No I don't think it ever was (regardless of his intentions) because I didn't know what I was getting into or the consequences involved. It FELT consensual at the time because of the information he has given me - it sounded ok to do. But in hindsight of course it wasn't. I couldn't have known this before or even during. And that is regardless of whether he was intending to be abusive. He may have thought it was consensual. But it never was from my perspective because I couldn't make an informed decision.
Part of our journey of recovery is the journey from victim to survivor.
Really I've never used the word victim or survivor for myself. I can only begin to consider these terms in the last few months in relation to me. Before I just defined myself as disgusting and shameful and this has been my identity in it all. Also, as few definitions of minors having sex out there allow for the 'victim' to be perceived as such, I've never thought of myself to be in either of these boats. My therapist keeps using these terms with me and slowly I'm hearing them.
I believe you’ve got it in you to put the possibly distracting question of blame to one side for a moment; to focus just a little more on why you have felt so much guilt and shame about what happened.
Thanks. I don't think question of blame is distracting. Its been a major part of my own journey of questioning. I need to work through it as I move forward. I think only when I've done this questioning can I move on because it's been a genuine barrier for me to move forward with understanding what happened. But you're right, focusing on the guilt and shame is really key...
Why did I feel so much shame? Wow so many reasons. Because everything was done and upheld in secrecy. Because I couldn't handle the big sexual emotions (orgasm) being provoked in me. Because it was a time in life I was just learning and waking up to what being sexual meant and I lived in a home where being openly sexual in any way at that age would be judged negatively. Because the boy used what he'd been doing to me against me and as a threat by informing everyone of what terrible things I'd done...
Why does any child victim feel shame/ guilt? Because they can't compute that being violated (consistently over a long time in my case) wouldn't be their fault. They turn everything in on themselves unless an adult around can help them through that. I didn't have that.
To also explore what may have been the life-impacting trauma of not being able to tell what happened to your apparent caregivers at the time, and that you were not adequately protected by them.
This is a hard one for me. I can't see my mum's lack of presence and help in this as a reason to say I wasn't adequately protected. But I accept it must look that way.
There are other matters too: you also speak of having made a “pact with God” not to get pregnant as a child in return for not being able to have a child, and you are about 43. So, do you still have that pact with God? Have you had a child?
I have a child. Interesting question about that pact. Actually I'm not sure and I think part of me still does. But having had a child it's certainly helped weaken the hold that belief had over me.
I believe that if you walk bravely into these frightening shadows, you will come out stronger.
That is the reason for the words that I chose.
Thank you
@Applecore ... you've dived in deep to my story and provoked alot of valid questions and I thank you for taking the time and interest to do that.
Sorry for the long post.
