Disclosure as an adult

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'My memories didn't all come back, I knew I had always been interfered with but I also knew that I had been hurt but I couldn't work out how I got hurt, I knew there was a lot of pain there but it wasn't until I was about 34 years old that all that came back.'

Often survivors of child sexual abuse repress some or all of their memories as a way of coping with the abuse. This helps shield the survivors from feeling the hurt the abuse caused both at the time it was happening and in later years.

For some of the participants many years passed before they began to recall the abuse. Often the memory slowly developed over time with a gradual recognition of what had actually happened.

For these participants, being believed and helped when they told people as an adult was very important. This was important for all the survivors whether they were just beginning to recall their abuse or had always been aware of it. Most found telling upsetting but it was also a relief.

'Mention anything to people and their response more so now is that it's all behind you, let it go, don't wallow in the past.'

'I felt a lot of confusion in making people, like the immediate family, aware of the situation; a lot of confusion in myself wondering whether I was making excuses for past behavioural patterns. Am I using it as an excuse for having periods of depression and things?'

'It came back in flashbacks. I didn't want to believe it for a start-off and I had two nervous breakdowns that really shook me up, I was really crook. I thought "what the hell is wrong with me?" I was going down-hill and I started crying and going on, I was having another breakdown.'

'I was sitting watching an ABC documentary about child abuse in general in 1988-89 that brought something back, vague memories. I was watching this with my mother and I said "that happened to me". I said a school teacher did that to me and I jumped up out of the room and I walked outside. It was a female school teacher that had abused me in a continuing relationship.'

'My girlfriend said it would be hard for her to hear what happened and I really loved her for her honesty.'

In some situations the perpetrators still tried to maintain the power and control they had over their victim into adulthood.

'Even when I went and confronted him and told him, the first thing he did was get up and he was going to box my ears in. At this stage he was getting close to 80 years old.'

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