After sexual abuse, it’s very common to have difficulties in your sexual relationship. But is that just the way that it is and we have to just accept it? Or is there a way towards a fulfilling sex life after trauma?

‘Child grooming’ refers to a series of actions deliberately undertaken in order to develop an emotional bond with a child in order to sexually abuse them. Grooming increases the availability of the victim for abuse whilst decreasing the likelihood of detection for the abuser.

Understanding the dynamics around child sexual abuse, who the perpetrators are, how they achieve their ends, the impacts of abuse on us—all of this knowledge, this ‘psycho-education’ has aided my recovery. And so these are ten of the many things that I have learned about child sexual abuse, some of the insights that have begun to heal my shame.

It feels a long time ago now, the time when my abuse sat silent within me. It’s been over ten years. Back then, I didn’t understand any of the dynamics of abuse. The things that had happened, the things that had been done to me, the things I had been made to do—they sat silently within me as heavy weights on my soul, fetid non-reminders of my badness, this toxic mush that I thought was me.

Duncan Craig is the founder of Survivors Manchester and talks here about the impact of sexual abuse on men.

Samantha Russell, a survivor of child sexual abuse, talks about her experience of childbirth after trauma.

To experience sexual abuse as a child, as I did, is to experience an act or indeed many acts of powerlessness.  This can have a devastating impact on relationships that continues into adulthood, and it often manifests itself in two extremes – being controlling, or remaining a victim.

It’s not a definition or some bullet-points on a page, a menu of things that were done or could have been done, or might yet be done. It’s something to do with me as a person, the me that I’m so scared to show you, that I’m so scared to be, because of what happened …