Introduction

Over the last year I have dedicated time to recalling what happened to me when I was sexually abused. I do think that to just get over it is healthy. I often had emotional outbursts thinking about what happened to me during that time of my life, however, I am not doing this to help just myself, but hopefully to help others understand what was going through my mind while I was being sexually abused. I wanted to research this because I feel I can help others who have been sexually abused, and also educate parents and teachers on the subject.

Since writing this I have realized writing this article helped me a lot: I don't feel so alienated by the experience at all anymore. I feel really good about myself for doing this and I have received feedback from many people with great support. This article has had literally hundreds of reads on many sites across the world wide web where I have published it. I feel that growth in esteem and perhaps just getting older in general has made me change a lot.

The Abuse.

How it happened, and how my behavior and esteem were changed by it.

The sexual abuse began when I was only seven years old. It started while staying at my grandfather's house (mother's side of the family). My grandmother was in the room when he first exposed himself to me. I was very curious as to what he was doing and why he was doing it, that manipulation is common. It is not like he physically hurt me to do things, He just told me certain things were nice and other things. Part of me I feel knew something was strange about what he was doing because of the pure silence he wanted that first time. "Shh!" he would say constantly if I said anything that could be considered suspicious by his significant other in the room. He was a very fun person to be around, he did lots of things and showed me lots of things. I have always be the introverted type of person who likes to know how things work, I am naturally intrigued by the world. He fueled that curiosity in me with more than sexual behavior long before it started. I knew for some reason that he did not want people to know, and I loved and respected him. So I always tried my best to keep things that way as best as possible.

As the sexual abuse continued, the way I was treated was appalling due to the ignorance of many of my teachers. Because I was being abused I had images of sex in my mind, ideas in my thoughts, all driving my actions in that 'obscene' direction. To the teachers and the parents of other children I was a risk to the wellbeing of students in my class. I remember in primary school I found other children with similar sexual interests all throughout the school. I know some of these people now, and some in particular were going through the same thing, that same responsibility of silence was on all of us at the time. My abuser did not like the sound of it when I first told him I had expressed myself and experimented sexually. So I was silent about that to him as well, thank god I think now. Perhaps he would have desired to meet some of them, even some of the more innocent people and abuse them as well.

My main problem was that despite I had been stimulated differently than say, your average child, I never really understood what sex was at all. Putting sex into a certain context with our children is a good idea I think, not "Oh My God Ruining Their Childhood from Innocence" and certainly not abusing them or anything like that. If you at least put the basics of these relationships into some context, and it has been tried and tested with some families more open to provide kids the defense they need. After the conviction of my abuser and the discovery of my abuse a psychologist (who I contacted recently for the further editing of this article) showed me through a very good manual for kids. Right then, after it had happened, when it was far to late.

However when I acted upon sexual behavior at a very young age, rather than them seeing something was wrong, I was punished for what I had done (literally, I would say things and get in trouble for things that most kids would never know at that age, personally I think that's as immoral as being a sex abuser for acting like that with a child). This discipline caused me to become even more silent, I started to suppress myself socially and avoid people. This seed of self-hate, and hate of others for their mindless persecution was planted in my mind. This seed grew into a furious tree that erupted primarily in the later years of my life. I had grown a sadistic streak, and a craving for attention from my deep seeded attention seeking behavior.

With a lot of people I have met this same cycle of low self esteem has seemed prone to lead to attention seeking behavior. As my behavior further developed, especially in early high school, I believe in my first year of high school I was suspended for harassment, sexual harassment (primarily verbal, including some very mild physical harassment), and other things, at least around 20 times. I grew to become the class clown, and suddenly became to make friends with who were certainly the wrong people. Some of these people changed just like I have, some of them grew up.

With this behavior getting worse and worse, it was all simply because I hated people deeply. This was because I felt alienated, I was accustomed to this alienation deep within myself - they seemed to hate me, so I really hated them. I recall in year eight, my second year of high school, I was made to see the school psychologist. He once said "I think you want revenge for what happened to you." That statement I would not consider true at all, I never acted on revenge, I acted on attention. The lack of compassion that allowed me to act that way, it was fueled by the simple hate. I did not care about these people, or any people at all, really. I think most of this stemmed also from my mother's constant behavioral problems, her natural tendency to do everything except understand. I took the comment as another blow to my self-esteem. In years nine and ten, I was at a new school. I had become so afraid of myself I would never even speak. I failed year ten from lack of attendance, and amphetamine addiction, a terrible thing I have now surpassed.

Back to when I was a child. When it was discovered by my parents that I had thrush. They could not find how I had possibly caught it, and kept trying to discover what had happened, the question, I never knew the answer to myself. My mother asked me a question "has anyone been touching you?" and explained it a little. "Paa!" I screamed, I immediately had felt like I betrayed my abuser, my grandfather. I felt guilty and I broke down into tears. The tears were more than that, just a sudden crack in thoughts, my mother's response was the same, she started crying. This further led to me to believe that something terrible had happened here. She had to be put on an antidepressant drug to even leave the house after this had happened.

Following this experience, for a long time I had felt what I had done was wrong. I would never tell anybody the things I did, to a high degree I often lied about what he did because it was far too disgusting by then. I remember when I was about 12 I had a friend, a male friend. We started experimenting with sex and other things like a lot of children do. I think this became apparent to his parents, and from that point, I haven't even talked to him. This was my best friend, and that hurt me a lot more than anything did at any point, the alienation, the silence. They would not talk to me, they told my mother something and she just told me not to worry about it, that some people don't understand.

If you suspect someone is being sexually abused, it is not just the right thing to do to speak out, it is your duty and responsibility to do so. If you are unsure of what to do, and yes it is very hard to make a decision, I myself being very involved now in helping people with sexual abuse, rape, and many other things including domestic violence and child abuse have discovered it is not easy for most people to know what to do. I suggest if this is your circumstances you talk to a councilor or a therapist that will know the appropriate path of action for the victim and the child.

I hope this essay can educate others. If you disagree with any opinions in the article feel free to email me at kintarowins@gmail.com and share your points with me. Also feel free to contact me on any of your own problems, questions, regarding yourself, your children, your students. I don't know everything, but I know of many resources, and people that can help you understand things.

I would like to thank Daniel Farmilo for assisting me with editing this article. I would like to thank people like Damon Carrad, Stephanie Attard, Oliver "Ollie" Mazza, Daniel Farmilo, Peta Newey, My father Ken Tate, My mother Marlene Tate, and many others for commenting on it, or at least reading it, and just for being damn good friends when times are tough. I would like to give out a special thanks to Amy Joseph and the late Eddie Balderamma for connecting with me in a way that allowed me to open up and face what happened. You are all beautiful people, and I love all of you.

Ammendment Notice

I cannot remember how this site worked in editing policy, and I would like to leave this document as I wrote it when I was just a teenager but leave some notes now I am twenty-one that are important to understand when dealing with your own sexual abuse, or dealing with your girlfriend or boyfriend in their sexual abuse.

Ammendment One: The Dichotomy

There is a dichotomy between rape and molestation that should be separately noted for I was in the latter category. A child molester uses a hedonistic method of pleasure drive to get a child to act sexually willingly, and a rapist simply rapes someone.