You've come to the right place. Bravo to your son for finally disclosing! How sad that he's lived with this bottled up inside for all of these years. He is doing everything that is right: DISCLOSING, counseling. Now that he's finally released the burden of secrecy, he can truly begin to heal. His counselor will help him with this. All you can do is love him and make sure he knows you support him. Make sure he knows that disclosing was the right thing to do and that THIS ISN'T HIS FAULT. Our children, the victims, blame themselves because that's what they were told by their perpetrators. The lies the perps have told our children run the gamut such as: you'll be in trouble, you want this, we do this (rather than I'm doing it to you), your mom/dad will be mad, you like this too, you're just like me, it's ok...

It's easy for me to say, but you can't blame yourself. I would recommend that you get into counseling yourself to work through this.

I believe your son can prosecute his perpetrator if he chooses. Only he can decide if this would help him or not. But it might also be considered, how many others has this cousin done this too or will do this to?

It is great that he is getting help he is an adult now and can work through his healing effectively. What you can do is like naive said be a support validate his pain and thank him for disclosing. You May need to apologize for not knowing this may seem like taking blame that isn't yours but for children they often feel you should have known or that they tried to tell you. You can say I'm sorry for not knowing, if I had any clue I would have interviened. What he did was wrong and completely his responsibility you did nothing wrong.

It might be good to go to counseling yourself especially dealing with family there are layers of guilt and anger

Welcome. I found myself in the same position two years ago when my 23-year-old daughter disclosed to me that she had been regularly sexually assaulted by an adult neighbor when she was just about your son's age at the time he was abused. I am so very, very sorry for what you're enduring right now. It is a horrible shock and the worst kind of misery, to know that our children suffered repeated abuse, especially since we would have helped to end it immediately if we had known at the time. And now we must reckon with all that wasted time, the intervening years between abuse and disclosure, when we still knew nothing, and could have helped had we known. My daughter also spent years in therapists and doctors' offices for treatment of a wide variety of emotional and physical pain. She is still struggling with PTSD.

I am on a bit of a working vacation this weekend, and will be very busy, but I wanted to be sure to reach out to you to let you know you have company on this difficult journey of dealing with long-delayed disclosure. Please have a look at www.mosac.net for excellent insights into what your son is facing, and, especially, into what you face as his loving parent, who still deserves to find love and joy for herself in this life. HANG TIGHT -- you are blameless, and you have and deserve our wholehearted support. I will check in early next week, if not before. I AM THINKING OF YOU and have sent up a prayer on your behalf.

Hi, cmankin1, I have a few minutes to check in to let you know I'm thinking of you still, of course. Few communities have any kind of support for parents in this matter. The support of others on this website was almost all I had to get through the past couple of years (and, BTW, my daughter was 24, not 23, when she disclosed). The therapists I turned to couldn't anticipate all the ways this shock and sorrow affected me; I was like the walking dead making my way through settings that involved young children -- I even fought off tears at the grocery store. A few months after disclosure, I had to work full time for two months with children the same age as my daughter was during her abuse; I had to fake it the entire way.

Like you, I thought my daughter was just depressed and suffering from PMS when she was so sad while growing up. She didn't have a single event, like the loss of a parent (and I am so sorry for that loss of yours as well) on which to hook any of her behaviors and, yes, suicidal thoughts. Unfortunately, having all revealed now only explains -- but does not rectify -- matters.

I have to run now. Check in as often as you need to. Friend me on this site and we can message directly, if you like. In the meantime, I am bumping up a list of resources that may be helpful to you.

HUGS.....