Sexual Assault Are Some People More Prone To Being Sexually Assulted

[Seagreen]

I have been sexually assaulted, or nearly sexually assaulted by 6 men and all on separate occasions between the ages of 7 and 25. Some have assaulted me multiple times, I cant count how many. It seems that some people have never had any kind of sexual abuse in their lives and others have had multiple abusers. Why?

 

[digger]

I think if you are sexually abused from a young age, you maybe don't learn the good boundaries or self worth that might protect you from further abuse later in life, and might make you more vulnerable to it. I don't think it is something innate in people that makes them more prone to it though.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

I really hope that you aren't blaming yourself for this. I don't think its a matter of there being any sort of fault in yourself that makes you to blame for anything that has happened to you. I agree with @digger in that we may be conditioned to have poor boundaries from a young age and when a predator comes along, he can sense these poor boundaries.

 

[Intrepid]

My first thought is that the first predator set up conditions that made you more vulnerable later on. That sounds logical, but that doesn't match my experience, and those of people around me. It's much more complicated than that. (For me, trying to make this PTSD stuff simple gets me sidetracked)

The situations around sexual and other trauma vary so much from person to person.

I would say some people are exposed to a lot of abusive men, and have no one who can or will protect them. Some people don't learn how to protect themselves, because the damage early on was so bad.

The lack of protection in my situation really makes me mad. I learned to protect myself, but by using crappy tools like isolation.

 

[Seagreen]

I think I hold some feelings of blame for the later assaults as I avoid doing anything that could be considered remotely sexually provocative. But that's not really what the post was about. Sometimes it is just hard to understand that some people never have these things happen to them. It seems that those of us who have experienced sexual abuse tend to (seemingly) have had multiple abusers and / or incidents. But what digger has said does make a lot of sense. I know that as I've gotten older I've developed a higher expectation of how I expect to be treated. While being raped or assaulted was never something I allowed to happen, my abusers felt that they could get away with it because I allowed them to cross other boundaries first.

 

[Kefira]

I can't speak for anyone else or a general phenomenon, but I know that personally I was very much conditioned to be more vulnerable for later attacks. I was also actively taught to be dependent upon my abusers' twisted form of 'protection', and until very recently my self worth was basically non-existent. Even outside of abusive situations, it's hard when you hold that much shame and self loathing to have reasonable expectations of others and their treatment of you. My original attackers were also sociopaths, and I can definitely pinpoint a few traits in my early life that would have made me attractive to them.

It's a fine line, because it's not our fault, but yes I believe there are certain traits and behaviors overall (submissive personality, trusting outlook, etc) that make certain people easier targets for predators. Of course many of us were young when our original attacks occurred. And the PTSD may cause us to pursue destructive behaviors that put us more at risk. Some things are good to be aware of: my lack of self worth or self respect has (directly or indirectly) put me in bad situations and is something I can work on.

I think most of the time though, it's more important to put the blame with the people at fault, those who attacked us, and understand that there's no definite answer when it comes to these sorts of questions.

 

[Chava]

I don't know the answer to this. But I've been through periods of zero boundaries...like "do whatever you want to me." So I've had a hard time even considering some of my stuff as assault or even being taken advantage of...like passing out, waking up to find someone on top of me, and just closing my eyes again. I just didn't give a damn about myself. My main issue in being simple prey as a teen or young adult was probably that I was small and super drunk so often. So I just felt gross, like total slut, even though I never participated in sex but just let it happen many times, especially after attempts to have some kind of boundaries failed. But also, I didn't care about myself, so for many years didn't protect myself at all...went away with strangers to parties at hotels, whatever. From a young age my boundaries were crapped on by adults (including body boundaries), including those who were supposed to care for me or protect me.

When I got sober I started feeling freaked out and more hyper-vigilant. I couldn't just live my numbed-out existence. Now I care a little and want to have some boundaries, but I just avoid people and isolate in my own house, all locked up, for the most part. I hope it's a phase on some path to more normalized social connection but I don't really care to ever be in a close relationship with anyone, or at least that's the feeling...everyone needs to stay at least a few feet away from me.

 

[Namenotdiagnosis]

I'm not really sure what the answer is but I do know that I went through life blaming myself for the multiple abusers that abused me. It took many years to accept that wasn't the case. I don't think anyone from the age of 6 understands abuse and I suppose the sick grooming starts and then continues to ruin a life .please don't blame yourself and don't torture yourself thinking about the answers to something that causes you distress and hurt.

 

[Anarchy]

Hi @Seagreen ,
I'm going to put in some quotes from chapter 5 of Judith Herman's "trauma and Recovery" . please read the whole thing, there are some alarming statements in the middle which are put into context later on.

From; The [abused] child grown up.
"Almost inevitably, the survivor has great difficulty protecting herself in the context of intimate relationships. Her longing for nurturance and care makes it dificult to establish safe and appropriate boundaries, with others, Her tendancy to denigrate herself and to idealize those to whome she becomes attached further clouds her judgement. Her empathic attunement to the wishes of others and her automatic, often unconscious habits of obedience also make her vulnerable to anyone in a position of power or authority. Her dissociative defensive style makes it difficult for her to form conscious and accurate assessments of danger. And[sic] her wish to relive the dangerous situation and have it come out right may lead her into reenactments of the abuse.

For all of these reasons, the adult survivor is at great risk of repeated victimization in adult life. The data on this point are compelling. at least with respect to women. The risk of rape, sexual harassment or battering, though high for all women is approximately doubled for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. In Diana Russell's study of women who had been incestuously abused in childhood, two-thirds were subsequently raped.

Thus the child victim, now grown, seems fated to relive her traumatic experiences not only in memory, but also in daily life: "It almost becomes like a self fulfilling prophecy - you start to expect violence, to equate violence with love at an early age, I got raped six times, while I was running away from home, or hitchhiking or drinking. It kind of all combined to make me an easy target. It was devastating. The crazy thing about it is at first I felt sure [the rapists] would kill me, because if they let me live, how would they get away with it? Finally I realized they had nothing to worry about; nothing would ever be done because I had "asked for it""

The Phenomenon of repeated victimization, indisputably real, calls for great care in interpretation" Continued

 

[Kintsugi]

I used to talk about this a lot with a close friend of mine from college. We had both become sexual objects at a very early age, though I far younger than she. It seemed to stick. Neither of us knew how to effectively become non-sexual beings, and we were both chronically vulnerable to being targeted by predators and otherwise unstable men. You would think we had a substance on us that was only and clearly visible to these types, like some kind of UV coating.

I know that I have tried many times consciously and unconsciously in my life to make myself unattractive, androgynous. It doesn't seem to work like that. The only thing that seems to have recently mitigated how I am percieved is having my puppy with me, who is a giant and intimidating-looking dog. Men are less likely to find me approachable when I have a powerful breed dog at my side listening to my instructions, and I know I project a more empowered and no-BS persona when I'm playing leader to such a strong and willful creature. I'm trying to understand and harness this projected attitude.

I have thought so much about this phenomenon that I have named it. I think it's a real phenomenon, but I think it can be overcome and is part of the long healing process from sexual trauma. I've lived my whole life knowing on some level, even as a very very young child, that I am a sexual object. It is difficult to undo this manner of being having gone through every life stage with this deep-seated impression of myself.

 

[Anarchy]

Continued "The Phenomenon of repeated victimization, indisputably real, calls for great care in interpretation. For too long psychiatric opinion has simply reflected the crude social judgement that survivors "ask for" abuse. The earlier conceptions of "masochism" and the more recent formulations of addiction to trauma imply that the victims seek and derive gratification from repeated abuse, This is rarely true..."

"...More commonly repeated abuse is not actively sought, but rather is passively experienced as a dreaded but unavoidable fate and is accepted as the inevitable price of a relationship. Many survivors have such profound deficeincies in self-protection that they can barely imagine themselves in a position of agency or choice. The idea of saying no to the emotional demands of a parent, spouse, lover or authority figure may be practically inconceivable."

"A well learned dissociative coping style also leads survivors to ignore or minimise social cues tht would ordinarily alert them to danger"

In a whole range of respects, many of us have been prevented from learning the basics of being able to keep ourselves safe. I think that the converse of that, is for some despicable, parasitic individuals to have become adept at spotting the tell tale signs of people who never learned how to keep themselves safe.

 

[Whirlwind]

my abusers felt that they could get away with it because I allowed them to cross other boundaries first.

You would think we had a substance on us that was only and clearly visible to these types, like some kind of UV coating.

Everyone has said it so well and my personal conclusion is the same. It is like I have/had a blind spot to certain forms of bad behavior. It just doesn't trigger my alarms bells. I still have a poor "response time" and often figure things out much later so I am very cautious these days.

It is rather disheartening that I do feel I attract these types despite my best attempts to screen for these people. I appear to attract them and there has been nothing provocative about the circumstances or my behavior. Far from it. I feel branded in a way thus my current policy keeping everyone at a distance until I get a handle on this.