Sexual Abuse Support Group
Sexual abuse is a relative cultural term used to describe sexual relations and behavior between two or more parties which are considered criminally and/or morally offensive. Different types of sexual abuse involve: Non-consensual, forced physical sexual behavior such as rape, incest or sexual assault, or psychological forms of abuse, such as verbal sexual behavior or...
I just learned that my 7 yr old GD may have ? been sexually abused earlier in baby/childhood. I'm raising her( the last several years). She's in play therapy - that's where the info came from. Is there a support group here for people raising kids that have been "molested"? I have questions and want to learn how to best support her.
This group you posted this discussion on that I am replying to is a website group (built-in to the website itself) for sexual abuse in general - here you will see discussions from people of all ages that were sexually abused in many different manners - presently or a long time ago as a child.
There is also a member group (created by a website member) for "Parents of Sexually Abused Children - in that group you will get insight into what other parents of abused children deal with, you can get advice from the parents point of view specifically - which is something you may not see as often in the site group you are posting in now. Here is a link to the Parents of Sexually Abused Children group: http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/parents-whose-children-have-been-sexually-abused
This group (the one this discussion is in) will help you understand how your granddaughter is personally dealing with the abuse since many of us in this group were sexually abused as a child and we are now dealing with it as adults. Our viewpoint (an adult recalling their childhood abuse) is probably helpful to you since you can learn how the abuse is dealt with by your granddaughters point of view - but from an adult who now learned how wrongly they saw things as a child.
I was sexually abused when I was age 7 thru 14, so I understand how your granddaughter feels right now, but I was a boy and I wasnt in therapy until 22 years after the abuse started - so my experiences past her current situation became much different. My life would have been a lot easier if I had been in therapy as a child; it is very good that you are dealing with your granddaughters abuse now and I hope you and her can work thru this early on like you are trying to do now, so she can grow up to become the woman she was supposed to be (had she never been abused).
I have seen many discussions here from women who were abused as a child and then were removed from their homes to live with relatives after the abuse was discovered; past discussions from those people should be helpful to you since that seems to be your situation. I am sure those members can give you advice about all aspects of the abuse even ones that you cannot even think of; children usually dont see what happened in a way that an adult would, so reading past discussions might give you an understanding of how we made sense of the abuse when it happened. We were generally lead to believe that it was our fault that we were abused it is hard for a non-abused person to believe that we blamed ourselves for the abuse as a child and even as adults looking back on the abuse, but believe me that is how many of us saw it. I was completely convinced that I made him abuse me, and I lived with the guilt and shame that stemmed from that for most of my life. The childs viewpoint is often drastically different from your viewpoint as an adult, our viewpoint is usually not logical and wont make sense to an adult I think reading past discussions will help you see all the misconceptions we dealt with as a child trying to understand what happened to us.
I wish you and your granddaughter the best; I will do what I can to help if you have questions about the abuse from the childs viewpoint and how the child feels about or reacted to the abuse and I am sure everyone else here will do the same.