Do you tell others about the sexual abuse? — by Barbara Roberts

In addition to other forms of abuse, many victims of domestic abuse suffer sexual abuse from their partner. And it’s really hard to talk about. I’m wanting to explore several challenging questions in this post:

• How many of you (victim-survivors) have stories of sexual abuse as part of your domestic abuse story?
• What kinds of sexual abuse did your spouse do to you?
• Did you tell anyone about it?
• If you did confide or disclose it to someone, who did you tell? Your pastor? A counsellor? A male or a female?
• If you told someone, what was their response?
• Did their response help?  Did it hurt, or hinder?
• What do you think would be a good way to for a pastor or counsellor to respond to a victim’s disclosure of spousal sexual abuse?
• Even if you did not experience sexual abuse in your abusive marriage, please tell us that too…