Experiencing sexual abuse as a youth often leads to multiple negative effects over time, including at the time it is happening, after the youth tells about the abuse or it is discovered, and/or into adulthood. Many survivors experience the most serious emotional consequences of sexual abuse during youth later in life, as adults. People who have experienced trauma and sexual abuse can heal.
People who have experienced trauma and sexual abuse can heal.
For more information on seeking help to manage, treat, or talk about the effects of sexual abuse, see Why is it good to talk about the abuse?
Traumatic aspects of sexual abuse
Someone who has experienced sexual abuse as a youth may develop post-traumatic stress symptoms, which is the clinical term for the collection of symptoms that follow a traumatic experience. These can include anxiety, depression, and intrusive flashbacks or memories of the sexual abuse.
Sexual abuse is traumatic. A trauma is an event or experience that breaks one’s safety by harming them or exposing them to danger, betrays one’s relations with others by disrupting a connection or breaking trust, and impacts one’s connection to their community.1 This means that trauma affects both the individual who experiences it as well as the relationships they have with other people. There are many different reasons that sexual abuse can be traumatic.
Traumatic aspects of sexual abuse can include:
- Betrayal. Youth who are abused may feel betrayed by different people for different reasons. Youth who are groomed for abuse may feel betrayed that someone who was supposed to have a relationship of trust, care, or leadership with them may have used that relationship to take sex from the youth. Youth may feel betrayed by other people in their life who could not keep them safe from the abuse, or by people who did not believe or support them after they learned that they were abused. Youth may experience betrayal while the abuse is happening. Some youth who have been groomed for abuse may not feel a sense of betrayal until after the abuse ends.
- Stigma. Youth may be wrongly shamed or blamed for having been abused, or may be unfairly accused of lying about the abuse. The reactions that other people have to learning that a youth has been abused have nothing to do with the youth and are not the youth’s fault. Others’ reactions, including a sense of disbelief, are often based on unconscious feelings that they have to protect themselves from the anxiety that results from learning about sexual abuse (such as recognizing that people they know and trust are capable of sexually abusing youth, or that they themselves could have been abused).
- Powerlessness. The very nature of sexual abuse can cause a youth to feel powerless. This is true regardless of whether the youth believes that they could have stopped the abuse or if they felt they knew how to escape. Through grooming, some youth are made to believe the perpetrator’s lie that they wanted the abuse, or that because the youth did not stop it early on it was really their idea. Sexual abuse is known to result in negative beliefs and thoughts, including self-blame, self-criticism, hopelessness, and a sense of helplessness (see We thought we were broken at Stop the Secrets that Hurt).
- Sexualization. Youth who are sexually abused are made to engage in sexual behavior often before they have the developmental capabilities to understand or manage it. As a result, youth may at times develop sexual feelings at a far earlier age than is typical or learn from the premature sexual behavior what is sexually appropriate (even though it may not be) or sexually arousing.
- Secrecy. Almost all sexual abuse takes place in secret, with only the perpetrator and youth knowing about it. Having to keep one’s abuse secret from others can create considerable stress for the youth. The perpetrator often goes to great lengths to groom the youth not to tell, including threatening consequences against them for telling (such as hurting the youth or the youth’s loved ones, or telling others that the youth is lying). Perpetrators may also describe consequences for themselves if the youth tells, manipulating the fact that the youth may otherwise (other than the abuse) like the perpetrator. Carrying such a negative secret also serves to make the youth feel different than others, separated from family and friends, or otherwise socially isolated (see How Sexual Abuse Hurts at Stop the Secrets that Hurt).
Effects of sexual abuse
Experiencing sexual abuse in youth is associated with a wide range of emotional, behavioral, and health problems. These may appear while the abuse is going on, after it becomes known to others, and/or well into adulthood. The wide-range of aspects of one’s life that sexual abuse may negatively affect include:
- Relatedness, which is the capacity to form and maintain healthy relationships with secure attachments and without being avoidant or forming negative relationship patterns. Specific effects include sexual disturbances and poor interpersonal communications, among other difficulties in relationships.
- Emotions and emotional regulation, producing strong negative emotions such as shame, anger, sadness, guilt, and anxiety, and difficulty in managing the emotions so that they do not become overwhelming.
- How one perceives oneself, resulting in damage to one’s self-esteem and self-concept (whether one sees themselves as whole vs. damaged, competent vs. incompetent, deserving of positive or negative experiences, etc.).
- Behaviors that affect one’s own health, leading to high risk sexual behaviors, substance use, and poor self-care.
- Sexual development, leading to intrusive images of the abuse while trying to be sexual with a partner, avoidance of any kind of sexual behavior as an adult, an inability to become physically or emotionally aroused to consensual sexual behavior, and engagement in riskier sexual behavior.2 Some research also suggests a link between experiencing child sexual abuse and developing inappropriate sexual interests, such as arousal to much younger youth or sex taken through force.3
For more information on seeking help to manage, treat, or talk about the effects of sexual abuse, see Why is it good to talk about the abuse?
- 1. Generative Somatics. (n.d.). The approach. Retrieved from: http://www.somaticsandtrauma.org/approach.html
- 2. Senn, T. E., Carey, M. P., & Vanable, P. A. (2008). Childhood and adolescent sexual abuse and subsequent sexual risk behavior: Evidence from controlled studies, methodological critique, and suggestions for research. Clinical psychology review, 28(5), 711-735.
- 3. Seto, M. C., & Lalumiere, M. L. (2010). What is so special about male adolescent sexual offending? A review and test of explanations through meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin, 136(4), 526.