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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

#311
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn't something that I have to personally worry about if I'm by myself, but it's something that so many women do have to worry about all the time. I can't even imagine the burden that women must carry. Not just women, but children. I was aware that I could be sexually assaulted/harrassed and what to do about it by the time I was 5, and I started getting uncomfortable comments in person around age 11. I'm also…

This is well off the main thread here so please feel free to ignore my request, but as a loving parent of a 3 year-old girl, I worry about when/how do we explain to her what is and isn't okay for adults (and other kids) to do around her, and how she can protect herself, seek help or otherwise handle a situation. Since you mentioned you were aware of the danger when you were as young as 5 - when and how would you sugg…

A friend who is ED of Safe Shores (DC Children's Advocacy Center) says that Good Touch, Bad Touch has fallen out of favor. Safe Shores uses Stewards of Children, developed by Darkness to Light, and staff members are certified trainers.

Perhaps reach out to Darkness to Light or your local (regional) children's advocacy center. Many states have more than one. Not sure about the status internationally, but in the US, I know this is the case.

In my 20+ years doing public policy advocacy on a number of issues related to children, I came across too many organizations that had the potential to harm children and families, through using poor prevention models, infidelity to the model, not understanding issues, thinking that doing something was enough. While I'm generally a fan of doing something is better than doing nothing, that is absolutely not the case with this topic.

Good luck!

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

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> exactly what the defendant wants Only if the defendant is a fool. People being the way people are, are just as likely to resent the defendant as the root cause of why they have to be there at all as the are to resent the system (and side with the defendant out of spite for the system). The latter will likely only happen in a trial that is between the defendant and the system (i.e. the state). In, say, a criminal tr…

I assume defendants are getting expert advice from attorneys when they make this decision. They should theoretically know way more about this than you or I.

Indeed, the lawyer could, for instance, have a good idea of whether the defendant has a personality and presentation that is likely to be likable to a jury.

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

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you are expected to interact with humans in the VAST MAJORITY of situations is closer to how you are expected to interact with coworkers in a professional setting, than to a speed dating event or a crowded bar after midnight. We're not having orgies in the street. In modern society you are expected to treat humans in the vast majority of situations without "sex" being relevant to the topic of discussion, whet…

Your life must be quite different from mine. My casual conversations with my friend group - who are 20s and 30s liberals, mixed gender - are not office appropriate. I would certainly not bring any of the regular political debates into work either. The amount of sex related conversation in my friend group is, from my perspective, normal but entirely inappropriate for work. Even my female barber talks about her sex lif…

Remember the context: OP literally advocated for never being alone with a woman without a third party present.

Yes, I have conversation with friends that are not work-appropriate.

And I also have conversations with coworkers that are casual and work-appropriate. Yet they can be friendly and reference current events (which are inherently political), religion (e.g. acknowledging ramadan fasting), sexuality (gender of partner), or the existence of sex (parenting). OK that last one is a stretch.

But still, you can do all this without needing to firewall your entire personality.

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

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted this article and it's an issue I became aware of because of my personal connection. I know it is a lot bigger than the suffering I've felt. Although I think the experience of ordinary men is invisible and often systematically erased (such as by people like the one you are replying to) I am not going to say that the paper omits the impact that sexual abuse has on partners because the kind of longitudinal stud…

Indeed the suffering from abuse can reach everyone around them. And the suffering of partners is very real, as a loving intimate relationship is one of life's great joys. I suppose that I was struck by the above comment mostly because it is so focused on the suffering of abused women's partners as to be jarring in the context of the OP. These sensibilities are my own however, and I should not judge so hastily

Thanks for the recognition!

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

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is about power, and in the US African-American and women (and LGBTQ and others) are widely discriminated against, and thus widely lack power. White people are much safer around police because they have power in the legal system (generally speaking about the entire country); they can protect themselves. An African-American teenager complaining about police abuse isn't likely to get far. Women complaining about sexu…

> White people are much safer around police because they have power in the legal system (generally speaking about the entire country); they can protect themselves. This is true statistically, but I think OP's point is that statistics should not be used to dismiss individual experiences. Daniel Shaver was white, for example. Cheye Calvo was a white mayor when his house was raided (speaking of power!). Thing is, police…

> This is true statistically

No, it's true really. White people, overall, really have much more real power. It's not a number in a report, but a hard fact of reality.

And then, any time racism comes up, lots of white people find any way to downplay it.

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

#316

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…

>and I'm sure than many of the men who become victims of it (paying $1000 for a jar of farts, spending $80 for an Aella video) have themselves been victimized ) or are suffering because their partner or potential partners were abused.

I'm puzzled by this choice of words. Why frame it as men being "victimized" by this? Why assume it's something pathological? I feel like the default "occam's razor" take should be that those who engage in this do it because it's what they want to do. Especially the word "victimizes" is throwing me for a loop here.

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

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reg…

If anything it should be more random and less controlled by lawyers. We're all born into a system of laws we didn't consent to. The legal system and the laws we're forced to obey were set up and are maintained by groups of wealthy people looking to protect their own interests and we had no say in the process. Short of revolution, our only means of making changes to this system have also been put in place by wealthy and powerful people looking to protect their own interests and they gave the entrenched powerful every advantage over you.

We can't choose our laws, but we can choose when and how our peers are punished under them. Participating in a jury is the one place in the system where regular citizens have direct influence in the process. It means we can refuse to convict people under laws which are unjust. It means we can hold members of our communities accountable to laws we consent to live under.

I wouldn't be so eager to give that power up.

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

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it does play a part if the jurors lack critical context. If no one on the jury can understand how a victim of sexual assault could be frozen during an attack, they might fall into the trap of thinking things like "how could it have been rape if she never said 'no'?" or alternatively, they could cling to some things like a male victim being aroused and assume that means the act was consensual. One could argue that…

I think it is up to the prosecutor and expert witnesses to deal with that. The presumption is that the defendant is innocent. If the prosecution can not make a convincing case to an impartial jury (not an expert jury), then the defendant goes free. It's not perfect, but it seems better than the alternatives.

I think this is a fantasy - jury trials are the reason why you have patent trolls in the US, they don't understand first thing about intellectual property, it's a total clown show. Such meritless lawsuits get throws out of court in EU with a proffeshional judge.

The jury has to have basic grasp of the situation so that they can decide who is lying and who is telling the truth (and witnesses called by prosecution do lie).

Imagine being tried on sex abuse by people who never had a relationship, or an employment dispute judged by people who never had a job. It would be disaster.

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

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dealing with abused children is unfortunately common in pediatric medicine and is a huge reason for burnout in the field, because a doctor will know about neglect happening that’s not “bad enough” to call someone about, or if they do, they know nothing will happen because even the services to get kids out of neglectful situations are themselves rife with abuse.

Don't they have mandatory reporting requirements? I know they exist in my jurisdiction.

Even where it exists, doctors have to weigh whether the abuse they receive is worse than they'll receive after going through CPS and foster system. Anecdotally I've heard from medical providers they prefer not to actually report unless the kid is literally imminently going to die, because the foster system is often even worse for these kids.

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

#320
post #257
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same. My abuse was very early, which it tends to be for men. My abusers weren't removed from my life until I was six, and even then were brought back over and over again. I am 40. I became a successful software developer. Then I finally couldn't ignore what happened to me. It was a brutal 3 years of therapy and trying to find my way out of the emotional pain I felt. I am just now getting my career on track, but I am…

20 years of therapy never helped me unfortunately

Have you tried EMDR?

It's awful -- like getting slapped in the face repeatedly -- but it works.

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