Matthew Lawrence: ‘My Agency Fired Me’ After I Refused to ‘Take My Clothes Off for an Award-Winning Director’

I am a psychologist. I routinely talk with folks about their trauma histories. One thing I have learned that we as a society don't talk about is there is a surprising number of big sisters, aunts, older fame cousins, mothers, babysitters, teachers, and some friend's female relatives who have sexually abused someone. It is no where near the rates of abuse perpetrated by males that is reported to me, so males sexual abusers get the spotlight and rightly so, but it still is a lot of abuse. If I had to wager, 1/8 instances of abuse occurs by a female based on the rates of report I see. If I had to wager, I wouldn't be surprised if up to 1/3 Americans (I work in the US) have been sexually abused in their lifetimes based on the rates of report I see. It is an epidemic and our base rate stats aren't even close to the real rates IMO. There is no way only 1/30 men get abused (last base rate I heard per RAINN) while 1/5 women do. The male victimization rate is probably 1/10 based on what is reported to me.

The other thing we don't talk about is if you were sexually abused once, odds are far higher you will be sexually abused again. Why? Well, the vast majority of abusers will not receive consequences, as over 95% will go uncharged, so we can't even hold abusers accountable. Now if its someone abusing you in your home? Good luck getting away from it. Some of those abusers can rack up insanely high rates of victimization. Look up the "Dark Figure" of sexual abuse sometime if you want to get angry at how poor a job we do stopping this behavior. No way we can help survivors or get an accurate idea of the toll of this until we do a better job catching abusers as well as supporting the survivors of abuse.

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