Hidden Barriers: What Prevents Child Victims from Revealing Child Sexual Abuse

Do you ever wonder why the harrowing experiences of childhood sexual abuse often stay secret, locked away in the hearts of survivors? As a certified Christian life coach and a survivor myself, we'll be taking a raw, unfiltered look into five factors that often muzzle the voices of these victims. We'll uncover the complex barriers facing young survivors, from their relationship with the perpetrator, the harsh fear they endure, to the guilt and shame that bind their tongues. With this understanding, we'll shed light on the chilling reality that these dark crimes are far more prevalent than what the cold statistics depict. 

On the flip side, we'll explore the powerful influencers that can motivate children to break their silence about sexual abuse. From cultivating a safe environment for these young souls to express their ordeals, to the importance of equipping them with the right education on the subject, and enforcing accountability for the offenders - these are steps that can encourage disclosure. We'll dive into how the choice of words during a child's revelation can make a world of difference, and why it's crucial to remind them that they're never to blame for these vile acts. So join me, as we take this journey to create a more supportive and understanding world for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

RESOURCES FOR SURVIVORS AND THE PUBLIC
https://www.rainn.org/
https://www.acf.hhs.gov/trauma-toolkit/victims-sexual-abuse
https://www.sakitta.org/survivors/
https://www.nctsn.org/

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Chapters

• 0:02 Barriers to Disclosing Childhood Sexual Abuse
• 14:37 Influences on Childhood Sexual Abuse Disclosure

Transcript

Michelle Hall: 0:02

Have you ever heard a survivor of childhood sexual abuse tell their story years after the abuse happened? Perhaps you wondered why did it take so long for them to tell their stories? Well, in today's episode I talk about five very real barriers or reasons why survivors of CSA may not disclose their abuse immediately, or some may not disclose at all. Stay tuned for this very important discussion. This is Broken to Bless, a podcast for women survivors of childhood sexual abuse. I am your host, michelle Hall. I am a certified Christian life coach and I am also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and for many years I felt broken because of that experience. But thank God for his blessings. He pulled me out of brokenness and into blessings Hence the name of the podcast and I want the same for you. Healing is possible if you're willing to do the work. Let's get started. Hello, esteemed ones, and welcome to this week's episode of Broken to Blessed.

Michelle Hall: 1:27

Today I want to talk about some barriers that keep children survivors of sexual abuse from disclosing their experience of abuse that they have endured. There are a variety of reasons for delayed disclosure or for never disclosing. You know, with statistics that shows one in five girls and one in 13 boys will experience some type of sexual assault before their 18th birthday. That makes for a lot of child victim survivors. A lot of young people have the experience of CSA and, on top of that, 90% of all CSA cases are committed by someone that the child knows and that in itself can create a barrier knowing who your offender is. I'll talk about that a little later. Those statistics, honestly, are staggering, but in my opinion, I think that those numbers don't show the true picture. Unfortunately, I believe the number is much higher than what statistics show. Just my personal opinion.

Michelle Hall: 2:51

When a child becomes a victim of sexual abuse and waits for years to tell their story, people sometimes ask the question why did it take them so long to tell? Well, I have some very valid reasons why children do not tell or report right away. I'm going to talk about five reasons, or five barriers that keep children from disclosing childhood sexual abuse. Now I'm using the context of reporting while the child is still a minor. Children who do not disclose as minors will sometimes disclose once they become an adult. So, from this perspective, I'm talking about children who did not disclose CSA while they were a minor. So these are some of the barriers that kept them from disclosing the sexual abuse, and they are in no particular order, and this list is not exhaustive.

Michelle Hall: 3:57

There are a myriad of reasons and barriers that keep children from disclosing their experience, so the first barrier that I want to mention is that a child is too young to comprehend what has actually happened to them. They are too young to comprehend or to understand what the perpetrator actually did to them was something wrong or something criminal. When a child is abused at an early age, you know, like three, five, seven years old, they're not able to process the acts. It's not normal and oftentimes they've been grown by a perpetrator that they know and it is very likely that they may believe that what is happening to them is normal. The perpetrator can convince the child that what is happening is normal, that you know. They could say that it is a game or that it's fun or that it's their little secret.

Michelle Hall: 5:18

I have interviewed many women who were abused as children and I did have one lady tell me that she was groomed by her father, her biological father, and he was assaulting her as a young girl, like around the age of five, I think. She said from age five to age eight, and she did not realize until she was an adult that what he was actually doing was sexual assault. He had convinced her that what he was doing was normal. She would assault her when he was bathing her and he would use the guys that he was cleaning her. And although she said that, it kind of felt like it wasn't right and nobody else cleaned her that way that she didn't know because she was so young when it happened and she didn't figure out that what he was doing was actually abuse until she was much older, will into her adult life. She also had the dynamic of no mother being in the picture. She was living with her grandmother and auntie at the time, and years ago the way of being for children was they were to be seen and not heard, which I understand the respect aspect there but it can be damaging in many ways as well, but that's another topic for another episode.

Michelle Hall: 7:00

You may also have children who are mentally or cognitively challenged or disabled and they just don't have the capacity to understand or comprehend what someone is doing to them. And this doesn't necessarily have to be very young children. They can be older children, such as preteen or teenagers, that just don't have the mental faculties to know what's happening to them is actually wrong. The second barrier I want to discuss for why children do not disclose or delay their disclosure of sexual abuse is because of the relationship that they have with the offender. Meaning the offender or the perpetrator could be a parent. As I mentioned in with the woman survivor that I interviewed for the podcast, I could be the parent who is responsible for their day to day living situation and well being. It could be a brother or sister that lives in the house with them. It could be a cousin with whom they have sleepovers. It could be an auntie or an uncle or very close family friend that the parents feel safe.

Michelle Hall: 8:15

Leaving the child with the relationship that you have with the offender outside of the abuse can be very confusing for a child when something of this nature happens. They could very well feel like they don't want to upset that relationship. Sometimes, despite the abuse that a child experiences at the hand of a parent, they may still feel like this is my parent and I'm supposed to love them and I don't want to get them in trouble. I don't want them to reject me. They just let it go, for whatever reason. I realize that this barrier may sound a bit strange for someone who has never experienced CSA, but young children tend to love their parents and want to receive love back, and they may sacrifice themselves to keep their family together. Another barrier or reason why a child may not disclose CSA is they just simply may want to avoid dealing with the situation altogether. They may just want to pretend the abuse never happened and internalize it and move forward in life as if the abuse didn't happen. That is my story.

Michelle Hall: 9:34

When I was abused around the age of 10 by two family members, I did not disclose to anyone, and part of that was because it was family and I believed that it would cause disruption in the family. But also I just wanted to pretend that it didn't happen. I just felt like if I could stuff it down far enough and could forget about it and I could just act like it never happened. I have heard other survivors that I've spoken with. You know they do the same thing. They keep the secret and they just don't want to deal with it. And of course, in my situation that didn't work out very well for me. I delayed my disclosure for almost for over 30 years. I pretended that everything was okay. No one knew or suspected that I had been abused, so no one ever knew that I was pretending to be okay. People just don't want to deal with it because it's hurtful, it's painful and there is usually shame involved. I know that's what I felt and that leads to the next barrier or reason why children don't disclose CSA shame, blame and guilt. This is a huge one, y'all.

Michelle Hall: 11:13

There is often a lot of shame associated with sexual abuse. Children tend to blame themselves for what happened and that's where guilt creeps in. They feel guilty because they feel like they did something to cause it. They blame themselves and then there is shame about it. You know there is a stigma and you know a stigma associated with sex and children. It's considered to be taboo, it is inherently wrong. So children feel shame about it and it's unfortunate because it's not the child's fault, it is not their shame, they're bearing it and they are not to blame. As a coach, I work with women survivors to help them understand, to help them deal with and overcome the shame, blame and guilt, and to use their voice to claim their power, because it is not their burden to bear.

Michelle Hall: 12:19

You know, even in other situations, children tend to blame themselves. They find somehow to blame themselves for an unfortunate event such as the separation or divorce of parents. You know, sometimes they think if I were a better kid or if I didn't cause them any problems, then they would stay together. It's all my fault. Of course we know that's not true either, but in the mind of a child it's very true.

Michelle Hall: 12:54

The last barrier or reason that I want to mention for why children do not disclose CSA is due to fear. There's a lot of fear that can be associated with sexual abuse. Sometimes the child is afraid because there are threats from the perpetrator, threats that they're going to harm their family if they say anything or they're going to do harm to the child, and the child doesn't want that. The child may be afraid because the offender is a family member or someone they know and fear that they may be separated from their families, and children don't want that either, although in some cases it may be better for them to be out of that family that they're in. Children often fear, if they disclose CSA, that they may be blamed, abandoned or rejected by their family, and that can be very detrimental for a child to deal with and process. And because 90% of sexual assault, sexual abuse, is committed by people that the child knows. The child may even fear that they would get the offender in trouble. You know, it can be apparent, like we said, and they don't want their parent to get into trouble. Or it could be a sibling or a cousin, family member or friend and they don't want to be the reason for that person getting into trouble. So they keep it to themselves.

Michelle Hall: 14:37

These are five very common reasons why children do not disclose or they delay their disclosure of CSA until they are older. Often they wait until they become adults and when they do become adults they are responsible for themselves. In a previous episode I talked about how it becomes 100% your responsibility, once you become an adult, to pursue your healing, and oftentimes that's when disclosures come out, when survivors are away from the home, away from the situation, away from the people who sexually abuse them, and they feel safer and they are able to disclose at that time and pursue whatever means of healing that they need as a society. How can we help children to report and disclose at a higher rate and perhaps quicker? What are things that can be done to make the child feel safe and secure so they can disclose what their experience has been? Well, I have three primary things that could help a child disclose sexual abuse sooner rather than later. The first thing is having adequate support. Having support from parents and teachers or grandparents, friends, whoever they feel safe with, is very important. Having that feeling of safety where they feel comfortable enough to share that information without judgment, without getting blamed or questioned in a way that makes them feel more shame or guilt.

Michelle Hall: 16:25

It is very important to me that when a child discloses something of this nature, whether you are a parent or a friend or an auntie or whoever to take the child at their word before doing anything else, hear them out fully, and I caution you to be very careful with your words and your questions. You don't want to ask a child a question that sounds like they are being blamed or what did they do that caused this to happen. One of the ladies that I interviewed on the podcast told me that when she became an adult and talked to her mother about the CSA that she experienced, her mother asked her how could you let that happen? And I think she was about six years old when she experienced CSA and you know what that does, even as an adult, what effect that has on a survivor. It automatically puts the blame on the victim survivor and that is a horrible thing to say to a victim, a child victim, an adult victim. It makes them feel like there was something that they did or could have done differently to stop it from happening, and that is simply not true. Let us all be clear that the blame fully lies on the perpetrator. So we have to be very, very careful with our words when someone discloses a CSA experience, because the support that you offer makes a difference in that person's life.

Michelle Hall: 18:15

Another reason or something else that could help disclosure which kind of piggybacks on the support mentioned before is more education around the subject, you know, education for the adults that are in children's lives and cautioning them on the words that they use, teaching them how to respond when a child discloses something of this nature, and also education for children, you know, letting them know that they are not alone, because a lot of times the children don't realize that this happens to other children. They could feel like they are the only one that this has happened to and they feel alone. Of course we know that's not true, but they feel isolated and they feel alone and education can open the door and let them know hey, this happens far more often than you realize and you are not alone. And also let them know that it is not their fault, that they are not to blame. If a child's survivor can get the understanding that self-blame and shame is not theirs to carry, that would create a much healthier mental and emotional state for that child. It could, if not eliminate, certainly minimize a lot of suffering and a lot of mental and emotional burden for that child. If they could just get the support that they need and learn and embody that it is not their fault, they are not to blame, it would be invaluable.

Michelle Hall: 20:02

And the last thing that I'm going to mention that could help a child disclose childhood sexual abuse earlier is for child survivors to know that offenders will be punished way too often and perpetrators are not held accountable for their actions and they often get the easy out, while the victim survivor is plagued with shame, blame, fear and guilt, and that is the opposite of how things should be. If something is done to hold these offenders accountable, then perhaps victim survivors would be more likely to report. It is fair for children survivors to be holding the bag and holding all the mental and emotional trauma that comes with an assault or abuse while the perpetrator is free to live their life. It doesn't matter if the perpetrator is an adult or another child. It needs to be some accountability for the behavior and oftentimes, more often than not, there is no accountability. It seems that they, the perpetrators, are more protected than the child victim survivors themselves. We could certainly use some help in that area of law enforcement. That would help children be more comfortable with reporting the assault or abuse that they have experienced.

Michelle Hall: 21:36

The five areas that I talked about at the beginning of the show are common reasons why victim survivors do not disclose immediately or don't disclose at all. A lot of children just want to protect themselves. They want to feel safe and secure and they don't want the consequences of other people knowing whether it be fear of rejection, abandonment, judgment, blame, retaliation and so on. They just want to be safe and the mind of a child's safety can equate to it internalizing and just keeping it to themselves. And that is so unfortunate because it has a long term effect on victim survivors lives and we as a society need to do better by the children that are in our sphere of influence.

Michelle Hall: 22:30

If you are a woman survivor of childhood sexual abuse, clearly you have a different understanding than someone who has not had that experience, and I encourage you to be there, to be a safe place for children, or even another woman survivor, to share their stories, and for you, as a survivor, to be understanding, to be empathetic and to be non judgmental and to help them in the reporting of the abuse, if that is what they want to do at that time. I just want to say one last thing on this topic, and that is to please understand that for children who have experienced sexual assault, sexual abuse, disclosing this information is usually not a one and done experience. Disclosure is usually over a period of time. Let me give you a personal example. I didn't disclose the abuse that I experienced for well over 30 years, and sometimes it seems as though the older I got, the less relevant it became and there was no need to tell, and I had actually made the decision not to ever tell because I just really didn't want to deal with it all. I didn't want my family to know and I just felt like I've waited all this time, so why even bother?

Michelle Hall: 24:01

But when I did tell, I fully disclosed to my now ex husband the experience that I had as a child, and that was when I got into therapy to get help to deal with all of the internalized emotions and the mental load that it was taking on my life. But before I told him, I did what I call dipping my toe in, and what that entailed for me was casually mentioning my experience to a female friend of mine because I wanted to see what her reaction would be. And she was like oh, I'm so sorry, you experienced that. And that was pretty much the end of that. There were no questions, there was no did you get help or do you need help? And no shade on her because it was not her responsibility to do anything about it, as I was an adult woman at that time, well into my 40s and responsible for my own healing.

Michelle Hall: 25:05

But I wanted to gauge what the response would be. I was looking for a safe place to share, but I didn't find it there, so I didn't mention it to her again. Later on I tried again with another friend I shared with her and she told me that she had experienced the same thing and had never told her parents either. And that's when I knew. That's when I truly knew that I was not alone and that there were other women, mature, older women that had the same secret that I had, and after that I became a little more optimistic about disclosing, I got a little bit more courage and, most importantly again, I knew that I was not alone, that there were people out there who had experienced the same thing, and that gave me courage and eventually I was able to share my experience with my now ex-husband and got the help that I needed. But even after doing that and going through a few years of therapy, I still did not disclose to my immediate family and I had no intention of doing that, but I actually did, and that came about several years later, when the time was right to do so. So for me it was several years, probably over maybe a six or seven year process that from the time that I initially talked to the first friend to the time my immediate family became aware of what had happened. So it's not just a one-time thing. So that's it.

Michelle Hall: 27:07

I hope you have a better understanding of why children don't immediately disclose CSA and consider, instead of questioning why it took so long, just be understanding and sympathetic for that child's trauma. And if someone comes to you with the story of this nature and you don't know how to handle it. That's understandable Many people don't but please don't leave a child survivor hanging, because what that does to a victim survivor is it tells them that you don't care. Even if that's not what your intention is or not true, that's what the survivor believes in their head. That's the message that it sends. So if a survivor chooses you to share their story with it is probably because they feel safe with you. And if a survivor shares with you their experience and you don't offer any support, that often shuts them back down, because they made an attempt to share and to be vulnerable with someone with whom they felt they could be vulnerable with and they didn't get any traction. They didn't get any support. Perhaps they didn't get anything.

Michelle Hall: 28:30

So if anyone comes to you and share their story of sexual assault or abuse and you don't know how to deal with it, I am going to put in the show notes some resources that you can look into yourself to get information on how you can help a victim survivor or you can provide the information to the victim survivor. I recommend that you can do that for the adults maybe not so much for minors, maybe teenagers, because there are a lot of hotlines that can be called and that are confidential. That can help them. But the goal is to help them, believe them, listen to them and be that safe place. If they come to you, it's because they feel safe enough to tell you Please don't leave a victim survivor on red. Don't ghost them and say you're going to help or say you're going to do something. Then you don't, because that sends a completely different message, probably different from what you intend, but it sends a very different message to the survivor about their plight and the lack of importance that it has to you.

Michelle Hall: 29:54

So I'm asking everyone to be aware and if you have a gut feeling about a child being abused, please don't ignore it. Please don't ignore it. You can save a child from furbosexual abuse if it is something that's ongoing. Let's all vow to be better informed about this subject and to help each other and to help these children, these innocent children who are victims of childhood sexual abuse. Until next time. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Broken to Pleast. Subscribe to the podcast and share it with all of your sister girlfriends. This podcast may be the catalyst to their healing journey. And remember life can get better. You just have to do the work. God bless.