A reader I'll call Mr. A sent me a long message, and I asked his permission before sharing any of it. What he described is something I hear far too often and almost never publicly: childhood sexual abuse, repeated, by people he trusted. I'm writing about it because his words carry a pattern that survivors recognise instantly and that everyone else needs to understand.
The abuse, he wrote, came from several people across his childhood and teenage years. A shopkeeper who behaved like a friend once tried to force himself on him. College seniors teased him daily on the bus to and from home, and no teacher ever stepped in. Some would unbutton his shirt while he slept, speak filthy things to him, touch him inappropriately. Every one of them was male, none more than ten years older, and crucially, all of them were people he looked up to. He thought of them as elder brothers. That detail matters. Abuse rarely arrives as a stranger in a dark lane. It usually wears the face of someone you are supposed to trust.
The memory that hides itself
One line in his message stopped me. After the first time it happened as a small boy, he slept face down on his pillow, crying, feeling tainted. And then, in his words, the next day he had no memory of it. Things felt fine.
This is not a child being dramatic. The mind protects itself. When an experience is too large for a young nervous system to hold, it can wall the memory off. But walled off is not the same as gone. Years later, the teasing from his seniors acted as a key, and everything he had buried came back at once. He could suddenly remember almost all of it. From there his daily life began to come apart. He felt a constant urge to scrub the filth off his body. He attempted to end his life more than once, then drowned in guilt over the pain it would cause his parents.
Why survivors blame themselves
There is a part of this I want to explain carefully, because it is the cruellest part and the least understood. Mr. A described feeling disgusting, and that hatred turning inward against himself. Here is the biology behind that.
Our bodies have pleasure pathways, parts that respond to touch. They do not check your age or your consent before responding. So a child who is touched in an abusive way may feel a physical response their mind cannot make sense of. That response then gets fused with shame and disgust. The result is a survivor who hates not the abuser, but himself. He keeps asking the wrong questions: why was I there, why couldn't I do anything, why didn't I tell someone.
If that is you, hear this clearly. A response from your body was never your consent. The fault sits entirely with the person who exploited a child. You did not do anything. Something was done to you.
The cost of silence
What broke my heart in his message was how alone he stayed with this. He has been suicidal nearly every day, living with depression and anxiety, surrounded by triggers he cannot control. He keeps going, he said, not for himself but for his parents. He tried psychiatry and therapy but found it almost impossible to hide and manage, because in his home mental health is still a taboo. He recently opened up to his parents. It did not go well.
And yet his own advice to others is generous: get help as soon as possible, and don't worry about what the family will think.
I want to second that, gently. If you are carrying something like this, please reach out to a qualified therapist or a helpline. Healing is slow and it is not linear, but it is real, and it does not require anyone's permission. Mr. A, thank you for trusting me with your story. You are not different, you are not filthy, and you were never to blame.