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Originally Posted by Halx
I think that if having sex with a child was accepted in society, then the act of doing it would not be surrounded with secrecy, deception and shame. In turn, the result would not be damaging, like it is frequently portrayed to be. Sex would just mean a lot different things to us.
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There is a lot of validity in this statement.
Most people around here know that my kids were molested - starting approximately at around the age of 8 respectively (although I did not know it until they were 18 & 15). Now, not under any circumstances do I believe it is right or appropriate to have sex with children - it is an adult behavior that can spread disease, cause pregnancy, and bring all sorts of adult phenomena and anxiety into a child's life that it is really worthwhile to protect them from.
But the fact is my kids are okay and I think in large part that is due to having grown up in a household where there was no concept of shame associated with sexuality. When my kids talk about it now, it is the sense of secrecy, of having kept it from me, of having betrayed me (because their molester was their stepfather) that haunts them. They are not haunted by a sense of sexual shame because they know that their role in the abuse was part of their own
natural curiosity about sex - a curiosity that was exploited by someone who was/is damaged by his own childhood experiences. Now, the former feelings I have been able to help them with - all I've had to do is support them and let them know that I love them.
It is the feelings of sexual guilt and shame, of feeling like you are a bad or weak person for allowing it to happen to you that lead to heavy, lingering emotional damage in molestation victims. Like my former husband - whose own shame was so great that in the 10+ years we were together he never told me about it. He was molested by a male cousin when he was 8. His parents caught them and their reaction was to put him in the bathtub (to 'clean him up' I suppose), beat him, and immediately push the entire episode into the closet and never talk about it.
Now it's really kind of a catch-22 situation though, because if you remove the shame from sexual activity to protect children who are molested from suffering a lifetime of emotional damage (and thereby avoid going on to molest other children) will you be inadvertently encouraging more sexual activity among/with children?
Personally, I think it is worth the risk.