[SERIOUS] What's it like being a child of rape?

Hmmm....It bothers me that you're asking this question. Not because I think you're twisted, more so that I'm concerned that something has happened/is happening to you or someone you know. As long as no one is in immediate danger, I'll do my best to answer. If someone IS in immediate danger, you have a moral and civic obligation alert the police or Child Protective Services....

Now that's out of the way...It's life altering, and can very easily destroy you if you let it...Even if you don't, it still effects you in some ways. It's like growing up in another world. You look like the other children, you play like the other children, but you're not like the other children. You can't really relate to them. You don't understand why they're obsessed with "things' because to you, things have no real value. You crave something deeper, but are lost to know what that is. I think it's your innocence that you're missing, but you're too young to understand and communicate that. You're also missing trust. Typically when this happens, it's almost always a family friend, relative, or someone you've known for a while. People that do this to children, know how to create a web of friendships and comradery with everyone around that child, and know how to work those angles in order to get what they want. So, you're left not knowing who to trust and when you do attempt to trust them, you look for ways to sabotage that trust, not intentionally, but because you need to prove to yourself that that person is trust worthy, over and over and over again.. Suddenly trust is an obsession.

Fear. The fear can be debilitating. You're small, a lot smaller than the person doing this to you. You don't know when it will happen again, you want to tell someone, but you're afraid no one will believe you, you're afraid you wont get to see this person again, (at the point, they're typically webbed pretty well into your entire existence including your parents lives), so you live in fear. How it feels? I don't remember ever "feeling" anything in the sexual sense. I felt uncomfortable. I felt scared. terrified even. I felt ashamed. I felt dirty. I felt sad. I felt confused. Mostly I felt MAD. If you take all of those "feels" and put them together, that's what it's like growing up with that shit, just on a every day basis, that follows you around like a fucking shadow. It has contributed to many failed friendships and relationships in my life. You can know all this shit and it can still effect you. There is so much more, this is just a bullet points summary. Hope you and yours are well.

/r/AskReddit Thread