I watched the two 3-segment seasons of the British crime drama "Unforgotten" (starring Nicola Walker & Sanjeev Bhaskar) on our local PBS station. For those who haven't seen it, it is about police detectives trying to solve crimes that occurred years earlier.


In the last segment of the second season, DCI Cassie Stewart (Walker) is talking with a suspect who had been sexually abused as a child. And during the discussion, she mentions she has read that people who have been abused can recognize others who have been abused because people who have suffered abuse carry themselves differently. So I wondered if this is something that is actually perhaps considered to be true, or could be true, or if it's just something the writers thought up for the story. What do you think?


The story involved individuals who were sexually abused as children. However DCI Stewart didn't specify people who had been sexually abused. She just said abused. I was never sexually abused. But I certainly was both verbally as well as physically abused for years. One time, while I was talking with my last therapist regarding my life-long gender identity issues, she commented: "Well, you know you don't have the most masculine walk." No one had ever said that to me before nor was it anything I had ever been aware of. But now I wonder if the comment in "Unforgotten", & my therapist's comment could possibly be related. And I wonder if this is perhaps part of the reason that it so often seemed like other people could sense that I was... as the saying goes... "easy pickings". Perhaps those of us who have suffered abuse send out "signals" we don't even realize we're sending.?