I am a survivor of rape. I was raped by 3 men when I was in the air force. Two held me down while the 3rd penetrated me. I was told in therapy that it wasn't about sex but about power and control. I don't know what it was about I just know it has screwed up my life since 1978. It ruined my plans of making the air force my career. Since the trauma I was never able to hold a job for long. I have to stop, I'm getting triggered.

While remembering what happened to me when I was a child - sexual abuse from 8-12 - I would often say to my therapist "Why did he do that?" or "How could anyone do this to a child?" and she would reply "You can't make sense out of the senseless" and she was right. There really is no way to understand why these people hurt others this way. I also asked my therapist why some who were abused will abuse others and some don't and she explained that it is because the people who go on to abuse others received no love at all when they were a child. I don't know how accurate that is but I suppose in some cases it is true.

Our minds want to makes sense out of what happened to us but there really is no way to do that. What we end up doing to help ourselves make sense of it is we usually blame ourselves or tell ourselves lies such as "they are doing this because they love me". It's amazing what we will do as children to try to makes sense out of the senseless. But my therapist is right - it just can't be done.

I have to respectfully disagree with Lucky Empath, for whom I have much love and respect!

I think that saying it is beyond comprehension is like attributing it to "evil" and distancing ourselves from it. This has fed into pedophilia being hidden and denied and considered something other than human. Well apparently it's extremely human because it's always been there and it's all over the place right now, thriving in the dark of our denial.

That is not to say it is okay. It is NEVER okay. It is NEVER the child's fault. But there are a ton of people out there abusing kids and making big money off of kids and I think we need to recognize it as being something very common. The same way - as we are finding out on the news every day - rape and sexual abuse are very common.

I also don't think that the people who abuse others are necessarily people who were not loved as kids. I don't know if they were loved or not. I only know that there are kids who were never loved and who were abused and still managed to develope empathy and a loving heart. God knows how, but they did.

I think there are several questions that need to be answered. One is, how do you develope a sexual feeling towards children? Another is, how can you give yourself permission to hurt someone that badly? Or maybe the question is, why do you want to hurt and destroy innocent life?

We all know that there are predators who like to victimize girls, and they are often such "nice guys" that nobody would ever suspect them. One thing that seems to be completely unknown to society at large is how many men want to hurt and abuse boys. It seems there are a ton of men that want to hurt and abuse boys. Even without the sexual element, there is a lot of meanness towards boys in our society - I guess sexual abuse just takes it a step further.

yes, it has become common and the reason is the penalty is not severe enough... the way laws are is everyone deserves a second chance... not those who do that but time and time again they give them a second chance and they do it again... and us, as taxpayers pay for their living in a prison wich, is like I said just a camp for most... free everything
should be a no tolerance law... an automatic death penalty
then Im sure they would start thinking twice about doing anything

DW makes excellent points. My view in what I wrote was from a healing perspective of "please don't let understanding why these people do these things cause you to not be able to heal." My view is healing yourself comes first. Even the medical field doesnt fully understand why these people do what they do. They are all criminals and definitely need much harsher penalties. I totally agree with that.

TRIGGER... aftermath

forgive me for bringing up such a painful topic but I.m 48 now so thats 43 years I.ve never been able to really live... what was done took my soul and all the counseling that I had Im still not right...
theres no recovering from that... all I was able to do was to live the best I could and it breaks me down with every story I hear and to know whats to come...
but I never gave up and although I ended up alone I got a couple children and they brought back a sense of belonging
dont any of you give up...
again Im very sorry

I'm sorry you were never able to fully heal. I am glad you never gave up and that you have children who love you. That in itself can be healing. :-)

The main reasons rapists rape is power and control. That plays into molestation as well but attraction plays a bigger role in child molestation (it makes my skin crawl to type that). The "men" that do that are fully aware of the consequences, they just don't care. I was raped twice before I turned 6. Once orally, once with a toy. I was also sexually abused and molested by my uncle when I was 9. My family doesn't know what happened but my uncle has never once showed remorse. He even knows exactly what to say to twist the knife at family gatherings. It has everything to do with getting off on power. Thats why they do it.