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The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife was summoned for jury duty, and the case had to do with sexual abuse. At jury selection time they ask if a prospective juror would have difficulty being impartial because of the nature of the case. If you were uncomfortable discussing the matter, you could ask to be taken aside to discuss without the others in the room hearing it. Out of a few dozen people, seven women left the room to explain why they could…

If they came back in tears and were removed from the jury, then the system worked. A clearly impartial potential juror was removed and a past victim was saved from a horrible experience of sitting through such testimony. But what about those who have been abused but aren't in tears? This came up very recently. One of the Ghislaine Maxwell jurors discussed his history of being abused with other jurors. The question be…

> If they came back in tears and were removed from the jury, then the system worked.

Not true, since no abusers came back in tears and were removed from the jury.

Or do you consider abusers impartial but abuse victims biased?

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they came back in tears and were removed from the jury, then the system worked. A clearly impartial potential juror was removed and a past victim was saved from a horrible experience of sitting through such testimony. But what about those who have been abused but aren't in tears? This came up very recently. One of the Ghislaine Maxwell jurors discussed his history of being abused with other jurors. The question be…

If you remove any jurors with history of abuse, do you not remove all the people that have life experience that could be relevant? With a jury of only lets say strong white males that have never been abused or abuse adjacent, but have had several experience where they felt woman didn't give them enough respect are we that would seem a lot worse to me. Obviously this sounds like an extreme example, but the reality is…

I think the whole concept of random citizens being pulled in for jury duty is idiotic.

Jurors should be professionals who are trained in being jurors: who, for one thing, thoroughly understand topics in critical reasoning such as fallacies, and cognitive biases.

They should be properly paid, and so are not sitting there on a Saturday morning, socking it to the defendant out of spite for being dragged out of their regular lives without adequate compensation.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#153

There are many men who suffer through sexless marriages for 20, 30 years or more because their partner was victimized as a child. (I'd assume that some women also have similar problems because their man was abused.) Such a man can work really hard to please and love a woman and try to create feelings of safety. They might blame themselves, thinking that it's because of that argument they had this morning, or yesterda…

It seems rather insensitive to ruminate on future men's loss of sex because of sexual abuse. Perhaps the men in these sexless relationships should analyze if they are capable of sustaining this relationship, considering sex is so important to them and they are not receiving it. This entire comment does not consider the women's suffering and loss in any capacity due to abuse. Maybe it is the case that a similar comple…

I disagree. If the men are doing what you suggest, and find that they aren't capable of committing to a sexless lifetime and leave, that's even more misery heaped on the victim of abuse.

Pretending like one pain cancels another out is counterproductive. Pain causing pain doesn't just stop there, it's nonlinear.

Also suggesting that someone is basically an abuser for mentioning the pain of the families of abused people is more than counterproductive, it's gross.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#154
post #134
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So roughly 5% ( I hope this is accidental bias, or a statistical anomaly. It could be for example that this is overrepresented from the pooled community. I think it would also be important to somehow scale/categorize the level of abuse (physical vs non-physical, penetrative vs non-penetrative, etc). If it really is 5% (1 in 20 girls) then this would outrank something like COVID in terms of importance. > The compari…

> If it really is 5% (1 in 20 girls) then this would outrank something like COVID in terms of importance. If you want more information on this, Besser van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score, considered to be one of the definitive books on the study of psychological trauma, discusses this in Chapter 10, "Developmental Trauma: The Hidden Epidemic". While I don't have the book in front of me to quote explicit statistic…

Wanted to say the same thing.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have hard numbers on kids, but we have some very solid numbers from young adults. From 2020 Statistics Canada study of university students: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2020001/article... >> One in ten (11%) women students experienced a sexual assault in a postsecondary setting during the previous year. About one in five (19%) women who were sexually assaulted said that the assault took the f…

>> One in ten (11%) women students experienced a sexual assault in a postsecondary setting during the previous year. About one in five (19%) women who were sexually assaulted said that the assault took the form of a sexual activity to which they did not consent after they had agreed to another form of sexual activity—for example, agreeing to have protected sex and then learning it had been unprotected sex. Is there a…

Generally sexual encounters in which there is not informed consent between participants is considered assault. Someone who consents to sex with contraception when the sex doesn’t have contraception isn’t an informed consenting party.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#156

I find this to be the most telling stat: "In a few cases (N So roughly 5% (<5 of 84) of the control group were discovered to have themselves been abused and needed to be dropped from the study. I was once in a law lecture on medical ethics. We were discussing genetic testing of newborns and how this could detect incest/abuse. A medical doctor in the class was dead against such testing. In his experience, amongst preg…

> In his experience, amongst pregnant teenagers (17 and younger) about 10% were pregnant by their own fathers/brothers. I refuse to believe that. I mean, yeah, the man had direct contact with such cases and probably had been in the field for tens of years while I'm just a computer programmer but I still refuse to believe it.

Well, it is his expertise. Have you read “the body keeps the score”? Really enlightening.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#157

[trigger warning] I'm a woman. I was physically and sexually abused by my father as a child. The impact it's had on me is painful to describe. I was working as a software engineer in the tech industry and was constantly experiencing PTSD symptoms being surrounded by men -- though by no fault of their own, it was totally because of what my father did to me. It's been a frustrating journey. The sexual abuse happened to…

I'm also a woman in my 30s, and you're not the only one.

My PTSD isn't sexually related (I was neglected + emotionally/physically abused, but not sexually), but working was so difficult for me until I got my current, WFH job. I didn't realize how much being in a state of constant physical distress was taking a toll on my wellbeing. It's exhausting, and I wish you all the best.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#158

I find this to be the most telling stat: "In a few cases (N So roughly 5% (<5 of 84) of the control group were discovered to have themselves been abused and needed to be dropped from the study. I was once in a law lecture on medical ethics. We were discussing genetic testing of newborns and how this could detect incest/abuse. A medical doctor in the class was dead against such testing. In his experience, amongst preg…

> In his experience, amongst pregnant teenagers (17 and younger) about 10% were pregnant by their own fathers/brothers. I refuse to believe that. I mean, yeah, the man had direct contact with such cases and probably had been in the field for tens of years while I'm just a computer programmer but I still refuse to believe it.

I know it is probably shocking and supremely disgusting to realize but it is important to validate when people are victims of abuse, because they’re already traumatized. It’s even worse when people try to pretend it doesn’t happen or refuse to believe it happens to the extent it does because it’s like being victimized a second time: not only is your body taken from you but your experiences are denied from you too.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their primary directive legal or not is to uphold the oath they took to do no harm. If reporting would cause them to violate this ancient creed then it is for they to decide what they will do.

Sure, if they want to risk being stripped of their license, they can flout the law.

That law (in this case) is so difficult to enforce that it matters very little.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a man, is there anything I can do or avoid doing in the workplace to make it easier for coworkers like you? Let's assume I don't know and don't suspect anything specific about my coworkers. I just want to know if there's anything that would be pretty easy to implement, that would make a difference.

Mike Pence rule. Don't ever be alone with a vulnerable person without a neutral third party being present, it wreaks havoc on the threat-detection instinct. As the saying goes, "you're not paranoid if someone really is out to get you."

He asked how to make things easier for his vulnerable coworkers, not how to cover his ass.

Honestly, my suggestion would be to be open about your own experiences and the impact they've had on you. (Not necessarily abuse, but just offhand comments like 'oh, it's silly but I can't stand yelling because my dad yelled a lot' or 'I don't drink because my family's had issues with it', etc.) Be open and clear that a.) you don't judge people for being 'weird' and b.) you accept things other people need even if you don't need them.

Don't be overly emotional about it. Just accept their human needs in the same way you would if a coworker had a disability. Oh, that person needs more space between us? Alright. Not any different than a hard of hearing coworker who needs me to speak up a bit, or a visually impaired coworker who uses zoom on their computer.

My saying, "Hey, I have a bit of anxiety so I'm going to gather myself for a moment; do you think you could step back and give me some space and we could try to pitch this conversation a bit quieter?" shouldn't be much different than my needing a stepstool. I'm short. It happens.

If you treat the people around you as individuals, then people understand they can ask you for what they need.

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