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Childhood Child on child sexual abuse - is blame necessary?

beaneeboo

MyPTSD Pro
So about 33 years ago, when I was 9 / 10 I had a close friendship with a boy around the same age (no more than a year older)... we spent alot of time together... including many sleep overs...he told me he had something really amazing to show and do with me ...I don't remember if he told me it was sexual in nature... or where he'd seen it himself...I knew enough to know I wasn't sure and I didn't think I should... but he continued to try to convince me to go along with it... so eventually I let him... it went on for quite a time...I would guess minimum months... maximum over a year, on a regular basis...

I learnt how to orgasm... how to be stimulated in a manner of different ways... although I don't think he could have penetrated me in any adult way with his own private parts, he certainly got me to do a number of sexual acts and penetration was involved...(without knowing I know he must have been acting abuse or things he'd seen himself)

He told me I was so beautiful and I remember feeling like I was being looked after...I felt wanted and I felt loved and, ironically, protected by him...

But I was at that age where I was becoming increasingly aware of the secrecy and a feeling of shame guilt and fear that we'd be found out... I started telling him I thought we should stop but he didn't think so... I remember him coming across as desperate to continue... it was almost like what we were doing was a drug for him...a need... that i should be forfilling... feeding...and I increasingly felt objectified... not that I knew that at the time- it just felt wrong...

I was petrified of becoming pregnant. I didn't really know how everything worked but I made a pact with God - if God made sure I don't get pregnant I'd forfeit ever being able to have any children later on....

I then realised I had to make it stop. And when I did I was met with anger. Frustration. That I was doing wrong by taking this relationship away from him - the sexual contact away from him. He threatened to tell my brother and in fact he did (by tricking me allowing my brother to hear our convo on the phone when I didn't know he was listening).

It's taken alot of therapy. Alot of incredibly dark moments in my life. Alot of self harm. A split sense of self and a life time of hidden shame has ruined alot of what my life could have been.

I spent most of my life denying my experience as abuse because he was a child too and the same age as me. That it wasn't violent. That there was no physical coercion. But all these facts just added to the difficulty in accepting my experience as being not just traumatic but life changing.... damaging...

For anyone wondering whether their experience is child on child sa... please know that age, whether there was coercion or not whether there was violence or not doesn't change how damaging or serious your experience was... think of it like this. We all have boundaries - physical / spiritual/ emotional / sexual / psychological boundaries... if they are violated in any way, it's irrelevant who has violated them (in terms of deciding whether it's trauma or not)... when boundaries are crossed they are crossed... I don't think there was intent to hurt. But I still got very damaged from this experience.

What I want to know is, is there any forum for child on child sa survivors out there? I would love to discuss where people think healing can go when the person who abused you maybe didn't understand themselves the damage they were doing...or didn't intend to hurt... and have diminished responsibility because they were a child. How can I be angry at this person - I think they were just sharing the load of what was most likely happening to them and trying to understand it themselves... I have no one to blame or be angry at. Is blame necessary for healing?
 
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Is blame necessary for healing?
I know it would be nice to get a black and white answer—seems so simple—someone tells you yes or no and then you can move on.

My answer is that it’s both. Sometimes it’s helpful and sometimes it’s not. It depends on where you’re at in your recovery. I think the beauty of the therapeutic relationship is that you can explore all angles of your question, try different answers and see how your body-mind reacts through the week holding onto a certain position.

Even adult criminal offenders have a whole life of conditioning and illnesses and environmental effects that contribute to their decisions. Blame is rarely a closed case—there are always circumstances affecting a situation. It is a helpful concept sometimes, especially from a grief perspective. Little kids say, “You made me sad!” Then as adults we learn a different perspective. Children still make decisions and still hurt people.

It might be helpful for you to put blame on your abuser or it might not. It might be helpful to put blame on them for a while then that might shift. There is no hard answers as there are too many variables.
 
You aren’t in alone in how you feel, I’ve heard many people sharing similar experiences. I don’t know if there’s a forum specific for child on child, but there’s been many posts here about it. I don’t think blame is necessary to heal at all. The child who hurt you, definitely hurt you, but he was also hurt. It wasn’t his fault, when he didn’t know what he was doing. I don’t know but I think even if kids so young “consent” it would still likely be traumatizing, because it’s too young to be having sex.
 
I think this question is ultimately a semantic one. Are children capable of having mens rea to the standard of an adult, and should they be treated as adults when they commit "adult" felonies? For this question I can look to my own behavior as a child, and even as a teenager, and identify that my mens rea ("guilty mind," or intention to commit a crime) was not the same as it now is. Nevertheless, I had enough cognizance to make intentional decisions to harm others, with that goal in mind. To say that my victims had mens rea for my actions would be silly - they did not participate in this decision in any way, and were damaged by it.

David Crane, the prosecutor for the Taylor trials, put the cut off for mens rea (the people that he chose to prosecute) at around fifteen years of age - children who committed atrocities but were under the age of 15 were not pursued and instead were engaged in DDR programs. When I was 14-17, I also participated in one of these programs in my own province, and even at the age of 17, while actively participating in therapy that was directly intended to convey the full and total linear understanding of cause and effect - my mens rea was not the same as it is at age 31.

I simply had no capacity to truly and fully grasp the consequences of my actions as they were. If I had been prosecuted and thrown into an adult prison, I would have been subjected to an environment that was simply not proportional to my actions - due to my developmental (emotional and psychological) delays. Instead of unlearning harmful and damaging behavior and becoming prosocial, my violent impulses would have continued to benefit me for the duration of my incarceration, and that would have transformed me into a brutal adult.

My therapist, a forensic clinician, agrees with me - blaming me the same way one would blame the adults who forced me to participate and who rewarded me for brutality, would not confer any benefit to anyone. Blaming my abusers, on the other hand, I also feel is simply not that relevant? They ultimately were a product of their neurobiology and their environment. It interferes with my peace process to continue to express malice toward them, when they are not a factor of my life any longer.

It is more important to me to contextualize their behavior and put it in its proper place, and then move forward with my existence, than it is to continue to pick at and ruminate on rage. Though, I suppose in some ways, anger is necessary at least partly to that process - you are angry because you recognize that you were mistreated, and that you should not have endured those experiences. Someone else was using you as a tool to work out their "stuff" and in so doing, has affected the remainder of your life (with PTSD). Experiencing anger at that is fundamental to identifying yourself as a victim, or survivor, who holds zero blame in these events.

None of that is small potatoes. But you ask if it is necessary to blame - this depends on how you define "blame." Is it necessary for you to hate and suffer rage toward this individual? Is it necessary to assign the responsibility of their actions solely to them, rather than yourself? Is it necessary to assign only the amount of responsibility that they could have feasibly held as a child under the age of 15, and consider them as a flawed human being as opposed to a sadistic monster? This is a question that is individual to each victim.

All I can say is that I encourage every person to pursue the process of internal peace, so that they are not bound to endless cycles of torment.
 
One of the people who abused me was a child. We were 11/12. I also think he was acting out abuse. He suddenly disappeared from school. I don't know if he was taken into care or what happened to him. I heard, as an adult, he was in prison. I also heard he did it to someone else.

I have no idea if he knew what he was doing was wrong. I don't know if he was capable of caring either way.
I don't blame him. But then, I had trouble blaming anyone for anything, other than myself.


However, I still toy with the idea of going to the police , so maybe not blame but responsibility? Accountability?
He still did what he did.
It still hurt me immensely.
And it set me up, amongst other things that set me up, for more abuse.

I feel sad for him.
But it doesn't excuse or negate the consequences of what he did to me.

So is blame necessary for healing? I think being angry is. Letting that anger out. I see blame as part of anger. And then moving on to acceptance, which is then letting go of blame and moving to accountability. If that makes any sense?
 
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I have no one to blame or be angry at. Is blame necessary for healing?
There are countless causes of PTSD that don’t have someone to blame / no one is responsible for. People recover from those traumas without needing to find someone/something to be angry at or blame.

In those cases the only blame needing sorting would be the misplaced kind.
 
I know it would be nice to get a black and white answer—seems so simple—someone tells you yes or no and then you can move on.

My answer is that it’s both. Sometimes it’s helpful and sometimes it’s not. It depends on where you’re at in your recovery. I think the beauty of the therapeutic relationship is that you can explore all angles of your question, try different answers and see how your body-mind reacts through the week holding onto a certain position.

Even adult criminal offenders have a whole life of conditioning and illnesses and environmental effects that contribute to their decisions. Blame is rarely a closed case—there are always circumstances affecting a situation. It is a helpful concept sometimes, especially from a grief perspective. Little kids say, “You made me sad!” Then as adults we learn a different perspective. Children still make decisions and still hurt people.

It might be helpful for you to put blame on your abuser or it might not. It might be helpful to put blame on them for a while then that might shift. There is no hard answers as there are too many variables.
Thank you OliveJewel... being reminded that searching for black and white hard answers isn't helpful for healing - its good to remind myself of this...

I've held on for so long that because there was probably little intent to hurt that it wasn't abuse. That abuse requires intent to be abuse. But I'm slowly shifting my thinking on this. Sometimes language is important to match how we feel about our situations. I can relate to the word trauma.

You aren’t in alone in how you feel, I’ve heard many people sharing similar experiences. I don’t know if there’s a forum specific for child on child, but there’s been many posts here about it. I don’t think blame is necessary to heal at all. The child who hurt you, definitely hurt you, but he was also hurt. It wasn’t his fault, when he didn’t know what he was doing. I don’t know but I think even if kids so young “consent” it would still likely be traumatizing, because it’s too young to be having sex.
Thanks Roland. Ithink the whole blame thing came from me wanting to know whose fault it was ... but that's from a childish pov....Yes I think a 9 year old consenting to sex or anything of a sexual nature where the aim is to be stimulated for someone else's gratification isn't really consent like you say. They can't (i couldn't) understand what those experiences would do to me when I said yes. I also didn't know how to use my voice to stop when I didn't want to be involved... until the damage was done.

I think this question is ultimately a semantic one. Are children capable of having mens rea to the standard of an adult, and should they be treated as adults when they commit "adult" felonies? For this question I can look to my own behavior as a child, and even as a teenager, and identify that my mens rea ("guilty mind," or intention to commit a crime) was not the same as it now is. Nevertheless, I had enough cognizance to make intentional decisions to harm others, with that goal in mind. To say that my victims had mens rea for my actions would be silly - they did not participate in this decision in any way, and were damaged by it.

David Crane, the prosecutor for the Taylor trials, put the cut off for mens rea (the people that he chose to prosecute) at around fifteen years of age - children who committed atrocities but were under the age of 15 were not pursued and instead were engaged in DDR programs. When I was 14-17, I also participated in one of these programs in my own province, and even at the age of 17, while actively participating in therapy that was directly intended to convey the full and total linear understanding of cause and effect - my mens rea was not the same as it is at age 31.

I simply had no capacity to truly and fully grasp the consequences of my actions as they were. If I had been prosecuted and thrown into an adult prison, I would have been subjected to an environment that was simply not proportional to my actions - due to my developmental (emotional and psychological) delays. Instead of unlearning harmful and damaging behavior and becoming prosocial, my violent impulses would have continued to benefit me for the duration of my incarceration, and that would have transformed me into a brutal adult.

My therapist, a forensic clinician, agrees with me - blaming me the same way one would blame the adults who forced me to participate and who rewarded me for brutality, would not confer any benefit to anyone. Blaming my abusers, on the other hand, I also feel is simply not that relevant? They ultimately were a product of their neurobiology and their environment. It interferes with my peace process to continue to express malice toward them, when they are not a factor of my life any longer.

It is more important to me to contextualize their behavior and put it in its proper place, and then move forward with my existence, than it is to continue to pick at and ruminate on rage. Though, I suppose in some ways, anger is necessary at least partly to that process - you are angry because you recognize that you were mistreated, and that you should not have endured those experiences. Someone else was using you as a tool to work out their "stuff" and in so doing, has affected the remainder of your life (with PTSD). Experiencing anger at that is fundamental to identifying yourself as a victim, or survivor, who holds zero blame in these events.

None of that is small potatoes. But you ask if it is necessary to blame - this depends on how you define "blame." Is it necessary for you to hate and suffer rage toward this individual? Is it necessary to assign the responsibility of their actions solely to them, rather than yourself? Is it necessary to assign only the amount of responsibility that they could have feasibly held as a child under the age of 15, and consider them as a flawed human being as opposed to a sadistic monster? This is a question that is individual to each victim.

All I can say is that I encourage every person to pursue the process of internal peace, so that they are not bound to endless cycles of torment.
Thank you Weemie... Wise words.. particularly to pursue the process of inner peace...

I don't view this person as a sadistic monster.... I do believe he was driven by something greater than he could control to process the urge he had to work their his own need for sexual gratification... regardless of his age...or the reason... but I can't blame him in the same way I would if he'd have been much older or an adult...

One of the people who abused me was a child. We were 11/12. I also think he was acting out abuse. He suddenly disappeared from school. I don't know if he was taken into care or what happened to him. I heard, as an adult, he was in prison. I also heard he did it to someone else.

I have no idea if he knew what he was doing was wrong. I don't know if he was capable of caring either way.
I don't blame him. But then, I had trouble blaming anyone for anything, other than myself.


However, I still toy with the idea of going to the police , so maybe not blame but responsibility? Accountability?
He still did what he did.
It still hurt me immensely.
And it set me up, amongst other things that set me up, for more abuse.

I feel sad for him.
But it doesn't excuse or negate the consequences of what he did to me.

So is blame necessary for healing? I think being angry is. Letting that anger out. I see blame as part of anger. And then moving on to acceptance, which is then letting go of blame and moving to accountability. If that makes any sense?
Thank you for sharing your experience MovingForward.... ican relate to some of what you say...esp feeling sad for him..what you said makes sense..

I think my stumbling block is that because I feel I can't blame him due to the age he was and his diminished responsibility...I therefore can't be angry with him... I think I could relate more to being angry to whatever or whoever caused him to action his abuse towards me... though if I think really deep down I can feel disgust and anger towards him... but it's not accessible.

There are countless causes of PTSD that don’t have someone to blame / no one is responsible for. People recover from those traumas without needing to find someone/something to be angry at or blame.

In those cases the only blame needing sorting would be the misplaced kind.
Thanks Friday. I hadn't really considered this openly. That's useful
 
I think most people would concur there is nothing to be ashamed of or guilty about when it comes to childhood sexual exploration - it is extremely common and a natural part of growing up. At the same time, being manipulated into apparent sexual consent by another child at a young age is wrong and can be profoundly disturbing, which deserves sympathy and understanding and is well worth talking through with people you trust.

I'd be curious to know whether you now feel there was any stage in this childhood sexual relationship that was not abusive, and whether there is a turning point in the nature of the relationship that you can identify. Also, whether you can identify a point in time when your assessment of the relationship changed: when you first perceived it as possibly abusive, which seems to have been a relatively recent perception of it.

Because you wrote: "I spent most of my life denying my experience as abuse because he was a child too and the same age as me. That it wasn't violent. That there was no physical coercion."

And also: "I was becoming increasingly aware of the secrecy and a feeling of shame guilt and fear that we'd be found out"

And finally: "I then realised I had to make it stop. And when I did I was met with anger."

So I am wondering to what extent your first instincts might have been right all along - that in some sense the relationship was not exactly "abusive" but consensual, that your shame and guilt became highly relevant, and that you were assertive enough to make it stop when you wanted it to despite the pressure, and you heroically succeeded.

Could it be that (i) the shame and the guilt was and is the most disturbing aspect, and that (ii) your empowered choice to set the final boundary is what is worth cherishing now from that experience? It might be worth focusing on those two aspects.

Because guilt and blame is the same thing - it's just that in guilt, we blame ourselves rather than someone else. Let yourself off the hook, and you may not even need to put someone else on it.

It might help to see you had nothing to be ashamed of or guilty about for saying "yes", and have every reason to be proud of yourself for your early moment of empowerment, when you first said "no".
 
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I think most people would concur there is nothing to be ashamed of or guilty about when it comes to childhood sexual exploration - it is extremely common and a natural part of growing up.
Agreed. Although I think a key word missing here is 'healthy (childhood sexual exploration).

At the same time, being manipulated into apparent sexual consent by another child at a young age is wrong and can be profoundly disturbing, which deserves sympathy and understanding and is well worth talking through with people you trust.
Yes 100%
I'd be curious to know whether you now feel there was any stage in this childhood sexual relationship that was not abusive, and whether there is a turning point in the nature of the relationship that you can identify. Also, whether you can identify a point in time when your assessment of the relationship changed: when you first perceived it as possibly abusive, which seems to have been a relatively recent perception of it.
Looking back, before talking it through with anyone, I thought everything was my fault. I agreed. I consented to it. Even though I didn't know really what 'it' was. It was only recently through therapy that I realised a 9 year old can't consent to sex or attempted sex or adult sexual acts.

A big clue which keeps coming up in therapy now, enabling me to see the situation as abusive in nature for me, was the fact I couldn't go to anyone about what was happening. I knew it had to be kept a secret. This came from him (from the very start I was told we couldn't tell anyone). And it also came from my own guilt about being bad and doing something bad. But I was petrified of becoming pregnant and there was no one I could speak to about that.

The turning point for me (again looking back) is not a black and white point in time which I can pin point. But two key things which happened in my story are: when I started to say that I was worried about being pregnant and wanting to stop. But he didn't. And he didn't make any effort to based on this information i gave. I didn't think I had any choice for what felt like an eternity. He also started threatening me by telling other people and my family - essentially threatening by shaming me - when I got really serious about ending it and stopping our friendship.

So I am wondering to what extent your first instincts might have been right all along - that in some sense the relationship was not exactly "abusive" but consensual, that your shame and guilt became highly relevant, and that you were assertive enough to make it stop when you wanted it to despite the pressure, and you heroically succeeded.
I know your post is really well intended and I thank you for your time and thought put in. I do think wording is really important here and suggesting to someone that they consented to engaging in very adult sexual acts aged 9, isn't (? the right word), helpful/ correct? Saying this I'm not intending to have a go....

A 9 year old can't consent to sex. Alot of the work I've been doing in therapy is understanding that my experience of what happened is separate and can stand alone from the intention of the other child who convinced me to do sexual acts (that were way beyond age appropriate). He may not have intended to abuse. He may have been acting out his own abuse on me. Regardless of his intent, I experienced it as abuse. The power differential wasn't through a significant age gap or through violence. But it was through his knowledge of those acts, his intent to find someone to explore those adult sexual acts with in a secret way (objectifying me). And when I started to understand more and fear pregnancy, he used threats to keep me doing what he knew I didn't want to do.

So whether it was intended as abuse by him or not, that was my experience. I couldn't have consented. And trust was used to get me in the position to have sex (friendship/ convincing me) but was broken by his later actions when I put a boundary down.


Could it be that (i) the shame and the guilt was and is the most disturbing aspect
Absolutely. But not because I consented. Because, like any child experience abuse, I saw it as my fault and turned blame inwards.

and that (ii) your empowered choice to set the final boundary is what is worth cherishing now from that experience? It might be worth focusing on those two aspects.
Yes my therapist has also highlighted this. And it is a very powerful part I can take from my story. Sometimes difficult to connect to but I do see it...
Because guilt and blame is the same thing - it's just that in guilt, we blame ourselves rather than someone else. Let yourself off the hook, and you may not even need to put someone else on it.
I certainly see letting myself off the hook is really important in my journey. And this is a work in progress. I've become alot more aware with the work I've done over the last 8 months for sure.

Not sure where I stand with the feelings on blame for the boy who did this to me. I think this has shifted as I am beginning to feel some anger towards him. He was a child but that doesn't get him completely off the hook. There was enough understanding there to know parts were wrong.

I do feel there is an added complexity when it's COCSA, around the concept of blame with sexual trauma and abuse.
It might help to see you had nothing to be ashamed of or guilty about for saying "yes", and have every reason to be proud of yourself for your early moment of empowerment, when you first said "no".
Thank you, really. This is so helpful to have echoed by someone other than my therapist. And I can take it as a positive.

Thanks @Applecore i really appreciate your time and thought :)
 
Nice work @beaneeboo !! This especially stood out to me as impactful…
The power differential wasn't through a significant age gap or through violence. But it was through his knowledge of those acts, his intent to find someone to explore those adult sexual acts with in a secret way (objectifying me).
I can’t quite explain how this is affecting me but it is.

Just really impressed with the work you’ve done!
 
Nice work @beaneeboo !! This especially stood out to me as impactful…

I can’t quite explain how this is affecting me but it is.
Possibly because part of this speaks about part of your story too? I know there was a big power differential in yours too (with age and relationship to you) on top. But there's something which I think is true for most sexual trauma /abuse stories which is that one person seeks sexual exploration/ stimulation... and even if violence isn't used, it will be outside of a genuinely caring relationship where the abuser has the best interests of the other at heart. Regardless of intention.
Just really impressed with the work you’ve done!
Thanks alot @OliveJewel .. that means alot... I've come from denying what happened (rape) because I was basing my whole perspective from his perspective- that he was a child too. But now I'm learning to put my perspective at the forefront of the story and go with my gut feeling, I'm finally learning to reframe in a way which feels right and is allowing me to move forward. As you know it's a slow process.

I hope you are well.

🙂💛
 
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