Parents Whose children have been sexually abused Community Group
This group is for parents whose children have been sexually abused. We welcome both Mothers and Fathers. Here, we can offer support to one another. We can vent, cry and lift each other up. No condemning or criticizing allowed. We are here for support. We LOVE (((HUGS))) !
During his freshman fall at college 8 years ago, one son called us with his therapist to confess to mild SSA and animal abuse. The counselor said that he had reported to our CPS and they might open a case, but probably not since the offense had been 6 years in the past and the offender, our son, was now out of state. That the one girl was probably too young to remember, and only to take her to counseling if she showed signs of remembering, and that the younger one probably had not been affected. Honestly, I don't really care about animal abuse if someone was hurting my child! My kid is my #1 priority for protecting.
We of course were stunned, and just asked the older daughter every once in a while if she wanted to talk about what happened, etc. She did not want to talk about it and minimized it. Son only came back once or twice for holidays in the last 8 years, and when he got married, we gave her the choice of us attending or not, and made it clear that she could say no more and stop her attendance or all of our attendance if she wanted. It would have been very easy not to go as he made it a difficult date and location for us. We thought it was odd that his in laws barely spoke to us, but in retrospect, he has to have told them terrible stories about us to manipulate them against us.
She is now at college and talking to a good counselor. She withdrew from me this summer after she said she was hurt that I still spoke to him, and I still took his once-a-month calls. I messed that one up. Last week, she told my husband on the phone that the son raped her, that she would not be coming back to our house because it was too triggering, and that we needed to get counseling. Atom bomb drop, right, even though we were devastated with his disclosure of mild, through the clothes touching before. We had no idea it was anything more, but we had already been outraged that he would dare touch her that way. He lied in his confession!
I feel that the counselor who had our son confess to us was *also* at fault. Unfortunately, this guy worked for a college which has become known for sweeping sexual assault under the rug, so it could be institutional policy to minimize assaults or not investigate. We believed the expert who said we should not question the girls or take them to counseling. We parents talked to a counselor here at the time of the confession, and his recommendation to wait for her to disclose was based on the info being accurate that was given by the college's therapist and the confessor.
Hubby and I have an appt with a counselor later this week. I'm discovering so much out there that I did not look for previously because we thought we should wait from what the counselor said. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
Obviously I have no idea for sure, but it seems possible that your daughter is just now remembering what actually happened. It's not that unusual.
II'm glad you're getting started with your own therapist. Sounds like this will be a long road for you, not to mention your daughter. I'm glad she is getting good help too.
It took me a long time to get around to reading Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. It really helped me to get a big picture view with some hope on what the journey of healing might look like for my child. Also Laura Davis wrote a later book "I Thought We'd Never Speak Again" about estrangement and reconciliation, again written in a very real and soothing way.
mosac.net and rainn.org are good resources for you too.
Thanks for the message. I had not considered that she might not have remembered.
About a week before her disclosure, I put together that I had been SA as a child. That was many years ago and I'm just now putting together the pieces of the puzzle. I have been in therapy for abusive parent issues but hadn't discovered this before.
My abuse really does explain why I was so diligent about external protections. Never in a million years did I think there would be SA within the family, yet here we are.
I've been reading your other posts today. Thank you for the recommendations. I'm jumping in with both feet.
There is another support group specific for sibling sexual abuse but honestly it is very quiet. Brknhrt and I seem to be here more, although we both still check in on a regular basis. I would recommend to go to that group and read the posts there. They will be very relatable and help you through. They did me as it was my saving grace when I was going through the worst time in my life.
My story is also one of sibling sexual abuse. My son did the unimaginable and also raped my daughter when she was intoxicated. It happened back in 2019 and those first 2 years were the worst of my life. Of our families life. It was very hard to try to forgive, and to help. I myself had a hard time even looking at my son. My situation was a bit different as he denied everything. After the offense happened I took my daughter in to the hospital to have a kit done. My daughter had told me that it was my son, but at that time she was still extremely intoxicated and honestly, my mind did not want to go there. My kids were best friends and even though this had happened, I think there was a part of her that did not want to get him into trouble. We both agreed that if there was DNA that was found then we would pursue charges. I did not want to at that time but knew that I had to for her sake (as well as his). Things went from the kids talking and doing everything together to not speaking at all. My daughter moved away to a different Province to go to school (she was 18) a week after the incident and my kids did not speak at all for a year and a half. Because we were not forthcoming with the police the case went on much longer than it should have. That is one of my biggest regrets.
After DNA results came back a year and some after disclosure and it was a match to my son he was unable to deny it anymore. He was arrested and released back to me since he was a minor. We hired a lawyer and over the course of the next 6 months had 4 court appearances where end result was jail time and probation. It has been a whirlwind of emotions to say the least!!
It sounds like you are not wanting to have much to do with your son. Trust me I understand if that is the case. I could barely look at my son for 8 months after disclosure and I sure as hell did not want to be around him. I was so hurt, disgusted and saddened of what had happened it was hard for me. I have since changed my ways of thinking. As hard as it is, he is my son too. He was and is still very depressed. He lost his best friend, is family (as he moved out once my daughter moved back home after school was done). That was hard. Having my then 16 year old move out. But I was not going to tell my daughter who needed our support the most that she had to live with him or live by herself. He moved in with a friends family.
My daughter lived back home for about a year. Unable to work due to depression, lost all of her friends, and was in a bad place. She did councelling finally with a sexual assault clinic here where we live (took 8 1/2 months on the wait list!!) and started to get stronger. She moved out in October this year with a friend and seems to be doing better. She also did not want to be here in the house where it happened as there were triggers every day. I feel for your daughter as she is hurt as was mine. Mine did not understand why we wanted to see my son at Christmas for a couple of hours. Why I was spending money on a lawyer for him. (I was worried he would be tried as an adult) Why I would even talk to him. She was very withdrawn from me due to all of this, and I know it must have been so very hard for her to see her dad and I trying to spend a couple hours a week with her brother.
Best advise I can offer you is to get into therapy. My husband and I never did as I was to ashamed to tell anyone. Looking back it would have helped for sure. I did sit in on each of my kids sessions with their counsellors and was able to get some stuff of my chest so for that I was grateful. I would strongly recommend to be as honest with your daughter and son as possible. It helped my relationship a lot when I would ask my daughter to sit and we just talked about everything. I always wanted her to know that I was there for her, and I know that was not always obvious to her due to having to support my minor son as well. I think your situation is different due to the age of the boys, as I had to remain supportive of my son as he was only 15.
Always be open and honest with your daughter. Make sure that you do things together that are not just related to this. I try to take my daughter for lunch, go for a hike, shopping or just coffee. I was always very close to my daughter and never wanted to lose that. It was touch and go there for a while I will admit but I always just sat and listened without jumping in and made sure that she knew she was heard. I am not going to lie to you, it will be an uphill battle and a very challenging time but be strong and things will get better. I made many many mistakes since disclosure but I know that I always tried my best and did things at the time I thought were right. That is all you can do as well. That is all any of us can do. There is no handbook for this for sure.
Come here often and post. Brknhrt as well as a few others on the Hearts of Healing group helped me keep my head above water. It broke my heart to read all their stories but I did not feel so alone. And it was comforting to know how others handled things that we may be going through. I will be checking in daily to see how you are doing. Just remember you are strong, and although it may not seem like it now, you will make it through this.
Thanks for all your encouraging words. I don't feel like doing anything today, but I'm getting up and putting one foot in front of the other. Therapy starts tomorrow. It really is comforting to know others have gone through this.
The offender has also been incredibly mean to our other son, who actually followed him to the same college. With his own counselor, my younger son thinks that the older "poisoned" his relationship with some friends freshman year, which led to him transferring schools. He has no idea what happened, but after his older brother hung out with those guys while his younger was away for the weekend, the other guys simply would have nothing to do with him. I have to wonder if the offender implied that the younger brother did something to his sister, just to see what the reaction would be.
I've seen his manipulations and gaslighting first hand, and I have lots of reasons to not want to be around the offender. At least he's married and lives far away, so I don't have to worry about running into him at the grocery store right now. He's his own man.
I sympathize with you for needing to still be your son's mother because he was young. I know at one point I was so frustrated I considered sending the older to boarding school for high school and thought my heart would break in two just thinking about it. You are so generous to share your broken heart here.
I agree that disclosure is a gradual, nonlinear process that usually creates turbulence for the survivor as well as for people who love her/him. Been there.
This is for consideration much farther down the road. Your son's wife will need to know about all of this. She will probably disbelieve. Since your son is manipulative, there's a good chance that he has negated a lot of her intuition (which is only very vaguely useful in detecting the sexual abuse of a child). But the truth may set her, and your grandchildren, free.
As for your son, your daughter absolutely (!!!!) takes priority over his report of animal abuse. But there's this, from https://www.sheriffs.org/animal-cruelty-and-child-abuse:
• Children who are sexually abused are five times more likely to abuse animals
• Kids 10 and older who intentionally harm animals are two to three times more likely to have been abused
So your son MAY also have suffered at some time in his childhood. Sexual abuse pervades "civilization," and proof of it rarely sees the light of day. I guess the one point in your son's favor is that he confessed at all.
Thanks for checking in with me. You raised some really good points.
We'd asked him if his wife knew about his issues before they married, and we wanted to believe him that he had told her. She's never returned an email, text, or call of mine, so I have to think he's already engaged in self-protection and turned her against us.
I think the reason he disclosed to a counselor at his college was that he was caught downloading porn on the school servers. It is a religious school and prohibits porn, and warned kids in their orientation that porn was taken seriously. That is what the counselor focused on, getting us to pay for his OP treatment for sex addiction, and that the SA and porn were just symptoms of this bigger problem.
The son much earlier that fall had told me that he was going to go to counseling because the school had put flyers under the doors about a special program for the boys who used porn and wasn't that great. It wasn't until this came up that I realize how ridiculous that flyer story sounds. I think he was caught and that was his story about why he was going to counseling for porn, not that he had some great conviction from a flyer. Perhaps he faced disciplinary procedures and therapy was part of it. I'm sure I will never know.
You do bring up a good point about previous SA leading to animal cruelty. It was not AC in the traditional sense, but SA of an animal, which he may have seen in porn and copied. But there is certainly the possibility that he may have been SA himself.
Thank you for those ideas!