A
female
age
,
anonymous
writes:I am finding out that almost everyone I know has been raped, guys and girls. My daughter just told me she was raped over 3 years ago, in high school. My husband was raped as a teen, but we established early in our relationship that he was OK, and didn't need to talk about it. he felt he let himself get into a bad situation, so kind of "takes" responsibility. My daughter took this long to even realize that rape is what it was that happened to her. I also have 2 girlfriends, both of whom had their first experiences as rapes, and even the one girl's current boyfriend was raped as a child...I don't even know what to say.What do they need? It seems more than anything, personally, they want to move on, even if that means letting a bad person have a chance to do it again to someone else. I think they want their experience known to their closest friends, but are worried that it will "define" them, and really don't want that. My daughter's friend was raped last week, and my daughter has taken it very seriously. She is a very responsible girl and wants to make sure her friend takes all the right steps for her own safety, and to get this guy to stop. They think he used a date-rape drug. Her actions make me feel I didn't respond well to her news when she told me about her experience. I think I related most to the wanting to put it in the past. It was long ago, and she had clearly moved on. She said her dad knew, and he hadn't done anything... but I was wrong. He found out last night and flipped. Pretty much screaming at my daughter for not telling us (3 years ago). So clearly he is impacted hugely, too.I've missed a huge hurt. I need guidance to be the support for these hurting people in my life. Where do I start? Just how common is this? Does someone who's been raped want friends/parents to freak out in their defense, or be quietly understanding?
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reader, anonymous, writes (14 June 2009): i was raped last year by my bro in law and i dint tel my family for over 2 months about everything. i just want to say all the best. with time everything heals. well evryone just says that to me. my best advice would be jst to listen to their problems and not to juge them
gud look x x
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female
reader, joee  +, writes (26 August 2008):
I am so sorry that you are going though this. I was raped about 5 years and i have not told my parents, although I have confided in my best friend about a year ago. What I needed the most was for him to listen to me as I felt my power was taken away.
All I can say is to not push it much, always listen and never judge.
I wish you luck and the strength to get though this
x
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female
reader, honkifuluvnicole +, writes (31 May 2008):
 How horrible. I am so sorry to hear about all of your close friends and family having to go through such a hard time.
I honestly think that you need to listen to what the victim needs. Sometimes, they want you to do something about it and go out and figure something out for them to do.
And sometimes, the victim just wants to forget about it as fast as possible, so you bringing it up again probably isn't the best idea.
So maybe talk to each of them and just ask if they want to talk about it, and if they do, great. And if not, it just means that they want to leave it in the past.
Best of luck.
xo
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male
reader, rcn +, writes (31 May 2008):
 Parent's do freak out when their child gets raped. But their anger is more directed toward themselves, all though they might visiably direct toward someone else. Her dad just got a huge reality check. Parents can't be there all the time to protect their children. I be he feels as if he really let her down, and is taking that hard.
First, make it clear to her dad that it will not be a good idea to make her rellive the incident. It happended 3 years ago, it's time for him to be the compassionate dad, and not the judge.
I have been researching incident related trauma for about 3 years now. With different behaviors I have 15 years research experience. I do this because the mind is complex and simple at the same time.
So often people say, I've moved on from it, and am okay. This lady I recently talked to said the same. She's in her 30's molested as a tean. She showed signs of PTSD "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder", I asked her to get checked. She'd been diagnoesed a couple of years before. This disorder, she'd been living with because of an incident that happened 20 years prior.
What I recommend is forgiveness. During my studdies, which is also biblically written, forgivenenss has huge powers. It does so, because if you truely forgive someone you're releasing your conscious mind and subconscious mind from carrying the hurt and the feeling of being violated. You're not forgiving because they deserve it, you're doing so because those who we're violated deserve to live without being continually haunted from the actions of another. They also need too, on a piece of paper, write out as if they are yelling at the person who did it, and let that person know how their actions affected their lives.
Those who this happened as a child, the same step of fogiving, but an additional step. A letter from their adult self, to their child self. They need to tell their child self it was not their fault and it's okay to let go.
This was one of the most diffucult studdies I did. A psychologist told me some of the traumatic disorders are the most difficult to treat, and rarely are. Me being a bit cocky believe if a traumatic disorder is created from an experience, then the same should be true about treating it. I aksed people I know to think of something they did when they were a child that made them feel good, and something not so good. What I found is all though they may not take part in the same activities now as they did then, the feelings they had in the past returned with their thinking about the experience. This led to my conclusion that events which happen and the experience of do not mature as we mature. Something that happened 5, 10, 20 years ago, are recorded in the subconscious mind at those ages, if not we'd pull up childhood memories and our adult self would automatically say "what the hell was I doing, I must have looked foolish." So to treat an adult with childhood trauma, using adult treatments would not touch the treatment because the subconscious traumatic maturity didn't mature as the rest of self did.
I hope this isn't too long. I wanted to explain why some of your friends and family are still in a subconscious hell with these past experiences.
Trauma in itsself is a growing memory. Think a baloon on a machine to blow it up. If left along and the machine stays on, eventually it will pop. If taken care of, it can be taken off, until the child lets go and throws a fit. Trauma, if not taken care of grows. This is where you have disorders surfacing years after the events happen. It grows until there is no more holding room in the subconscious mind, then it begins peeking its way through the subconscious into the conscious state of mind, thus changing the victims behaviors. Anger, fear, detachment from self, fear of intimacy with others, mental blocks not allowing someone to really lover or give themselves wholy to others. But when you look at these, they also happens to ones self because of shame and guild. Their identity is lost, their self esteem is crushed, they feel they are not good enough to be around others, and why does this person want to be around me when I'm just not worth it.
This is where personal power comes in. (this is not a threat) But if I went to your home, raped everyone in your family, took all your finances, burned your home and all belongings, threw your family in the street naked, what do you have left? You have you. By these actions one thing no one can ever take away is who you are, your character, your beliefs, your personalities, and the love you hold for yourself. So you are your most treasured person to yourself, and need to be treated by yourself as such.
No matter what you experience in life, no matter who is there to experience it with you, you are the one you always take along. So it's not what happens in life. We all have obsticals, hurts, poor choices, etc. But what does matter is how we view the experience, and how we allow ourselves to be affected by it. This is where positive empowered thought come in. We always believe what we tell ourselves over what anyone else says.
I know a bit long and detailed, but I hope this helps you. I wanted to give enough information to help, because if we understand why something happens with our sense of self, we are then in a better position to make a plan to improve our self worh.
Take care, and as the other poster said, all sexual violations are too common, I don't like the fact people hurt others for self gradification.
Something I just remembered, from my younger days. Their was a rapest at the college I went too, attacking women in the park areas around campus. I so hoped I would run into him, as I carried a 357 magnum in my backpack for that purpose. What cracks me up now is having not many books in my backpack, but had a gun with a 10 1/2 inch barrel (Dirty Harry size gun) I wonder now how many students were walking behind me asking friends if they saw the size of the gun I was carying. As I got older I realized I did not do a good job of consealing it. But still, never got to use it.
Let your daughter and her friends and your friend know, there are people who don't judge, who care about what happens to them, even though they've never met, and all though they went through this, wants to hear how they've taken charge to be strong, and wonderful people because they deserve the best.
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reader, anonymous, writes (31 May 2008): So sorry for you, your family and friends. Big hugs and kisses to you all.
Like you, I find that my world is littered with stories of rape and child abuse. It becomes so common to me that sometimes I just get numb and don't know what to say. This is a very usefull technique, sometimes the person just wants to talk and cry and let it all out. For one friend this was enough, for another I had to get angry and threaten to kill the man that hurt her, I had to get angry because she didn't have the courage to feel like this. For another friend, I listen and am numb by the amount of abuse she's suffered. Nothing seems to help, so I tell her that I refuse to listen to what cannot be changed and she must move on with her life. With men (friends or lovers) I usually hold them close (if their not too angry) and try to heal them with my love, try to make them feel clean and loved again.
Out of all the stories I've heard, only one person wanted to go to the police. But she had no support, and had been a relationship with the rapist previously and had been promiscious in her past. I wanted to nail the guy, but she couldn't face the trauma of what she would go through at court.
As you see, no hard and fast rules. Each person is different, and each person deals with things in their own way. Most people like to keep it secret and forget. Some younger people (with parents) would have loved their parent to step in and beat the guy to death like they always do in the movies. Some people find counselling or church a help.
A listening ear, a willingness to share love and friendship, a 100% belief in their story and loyal support in whatever THEY (not you) choose to do, that's the best advice I can give.
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