[Confused213]

Or perhaps, what quantifies child molestation?

Does it have to be:
Repeated?
Without clothes?

And would oral sex be considered rape?
If something happened like this to someone, would they still be considered a virgin?

What if I went along with it? I'm really confused and scared.
I don't know what to think about myself.

I don't know if anything happened to me. I'm just trying to figure some things out right now. None of the above mentioned things definitely happened. I'm just figuring things out.

Thanks

[Badaxe]

Originally Posted by Confused213

Or perhaps, what quantifies child molestation?

Does it have to be:
Repeated?
Without clothes?

And would oral sex be considered rape?
If something happened like this to someone, would they still be considered a virgin?

What if I went along with it? I'm really confused and scared.
I don't know what to think about myself.

I don't know if anything happened to me. I'm just trying to figure some things out right now. None of the above mentioned things definitely happened. I'm just figuring things out.

Thanks

No it doesn't have to be repeated. Once is enough to be considered abuse or molestation.

It doesn't have to be without clothes on. You can be fully clothed and still abused or molested.

I personally think forced or coerced oral sex is rape. I think virginity is a social construct and doesn't necessarily have to involve a penis entering a vagina. That's too centered around the penis and its function, and ignores the sexual validity of other activities and of people who don't or can't have penetrative sex. To some people, losing virginity may mean when they have their first shared, consentual, mutually pleasurable, positive sexual experience. That's how I think of it. If you think of it this way, you can still consider yourself a virgin.

If you went along with it, that's okay. Abusers will manipulate you into going along with it and it isn't your fault at all, and it is still abuse.

Good luck with figuring things out, I wish you the best.

[Gr3tta]

Repetition is not necessary for an act to be abuse, nor is removal of clothing. Oral penetration may or may not be specifically quantified as rape under the laws of your state, but can certainly be abuse.
Victims may "go along with" abuse in order to protect themselves from further harm, or to protect other family members or others that they care about from harm.
I hope that information helps. I am very sorry if something bad has happened to you. Please don't be afraid to seek help if you are struggling.

[unaluna]

Just talking about stuff you shouldn't be talking about to kids in ways you shouldn't be talking about it can be considered abusive.

[Millitoria]

Originally Posted by Confused213

Or perhaps, what quantifies child molestation?

Does it have to be:
Repeated?
Without clothes?

And would oral sex be considered rape?
If something happened like this to someone, would they still be considered a virgin?

What if I went along with it? I'm really confused and scared.
I don't know what to think about myself.

I don't know if anything happened to me. I'm just trying to figure some things out right now. None of the above mentioned things definitely happened. I'm just figuring things out.

Thanks

Hi Confused,

Sexual abuse can take many forms. It doesn't need to be repeated, a single incident can definitely be abuse. It can take place with or without removal of clothes.

Whether oral sex is considered rape or not can depend on who you talk to or where you are in the world, but whatever it's called it's wrong and serious to do this to/with a child or at any age without consent.

Personally, I considered myself a virgin until I chose to engage in sex with a partner of my choice. I don't consider rape or any other form of sexual abuse to be sex, so for me it doesn't count.

I am struggling right now with the realisation that there were times I went along with my abuser. However, as a child you don't understand what is happening and can't consent, plus you are taught to do as adults - particularly those you trust - tell you too. So going along with it wouldn't make you (or anyone) responsible for it. It wouldn't mean you asked for it, deserved it or invited it. It would still very much be abuse.

Sexual abuse - particularly of children - covers a wide range of things. It doesn't need to involve touch even.

It's horrible not knowing exactly what happened to you, I can sympathise. Many of my memories are very clear but others are less so. Please understand though that whatever did happen to you - it wasn't your fault in any way at all. The only person responsible was the person who abused you.

Milli

x

[tinyrabbit]

If you 'went along' with abuse, that doesn't mean you consented. It means you submitted. Very important difference.

Abuse only needs to happen once. I'm sorry to hear about whatever happened to you. If you feel it was abuse, it was, and from what you're asking, I think it was, too.

[mandazzle]

It doesn't matter if you 'went along' with it... if you did not say yes you did not give consent. I know sometimes we second guess ourselves in our head whether something wrong actually happened.

WARNING: Parts of this are going to be very triggering. Please be careful. I'll white out the really bad parts.

Any time an adult uses a child for his/her own sexual gratification, that is sexual abuse and can affect the child greatly. Even my grandfather's "joking" innuendos, in my opinion, fall into this category. For example, as a child when I was drawing a generic picture of a woman, my grandfather passed by and pretended to be disappointed with my work. "Aww. I thought you were going to draw her nude from the waist down." I was NINE FREAKING YEARS OLD. How inappropriate was that?

Of course it wasn't taken seriously. "Just joking," you know. Don't be so sensitive.

Then when I was 12, under the guise of coming in to wake me up for school, he tried to take the covers off of me completely and said something about how he's always wanted to see me without clothes. Age 14, out of the blue he started kissing me on the lips, and his hands went inside my blouse. I resisted. Later he claimed I had passed his test. He wanted to see whether or not I was a "good girl" who would "fight it off if some boy made a pass." He was NOT "some boy." He was my grandfather. And what he did was not a test of my character. It was incest and sexual abuse, and he should have gone to jail for it. Furthermore, he already knew I had been the victim of sexual abuse by my step-father when I was 12 and an unrelated adult when I was 5, so no rational man would have put me to that "test."

Point being, it started out with "just joking" and built up from there. Even the joking was wrong.

[Confused213]

Originally Posted by Millitoria

Hi Confused,

Sexual abuse can take many forms. It doesn't need to be repeated, a single incident can definitely be abuse. It can take place with or without removal of clothes.

Whether oral sex is considered rape or not can depend on who you talk to or where you are in the world, but whatever it's called it's wrong and serious to do this to/with a child or at any age without consent.

Personally, I considered myself a virgin until I chose to engage in sex with a partner of my choice. I don't consider rape or any other form of sexual abuse to be sex, so for me it doesn't count.

I am struggling right now with the realisation that there were times I went along with my abuser. However, as a child you don't understand what is happening and can't consent, plus you are taught to do as adults - particularly those you trust - tell you too. So going along with it wouldn't make you (or anyone) responsible for it. It wouldn't mean you asked for it, deserved it or invited it. It would still very much be abuse.

Sexual abuse - particularly of children - covers a wide range of things. It doesn't need to involve touch even.

It's horrible not knowing exactly what happened to you, I can sympathise. Many of my memories are very clear but others are less so. Please understand though that whatever did happen to you - it wasn't your fault in any way at all. The only person responsible was the person who abused you.

Milli

x

Thanks, everyone.

Just another question though:
How can you tell if they had intent to sexually gratify themselves?
Because, some things can be taken sexually or just maybe playfully with faulty boundary lines.

Okay, here's what I'm concerned about. I'll copy the idea of an above comment. Anything you might not want to read will be in white. I don't know if this will be triggering to anyone, but it's probably not as severe as what you went through.
Okay, well, I was at my uncles house visiting with my family. We use to visit a lot when I was aged 4-9ish, but later stopped as we grew older, got busier, and my aunt and uncle divorced. My sister was the same age as one of my cousins and they had much in common so they'd often go who knows where together. Anyways, they were like best friends and all of my other cousins were boys and so they'd go do boyish things together. So I was often (as my sister reminded me) left alone with my uncle.

My uncle and I were in the den. Some program about mars was on. He was drunk (he's an alcoholic).
He said, "come here."
I shook my head "no"
He said, "come here" again. He was drink sprawled out on the sectional sofa.
"What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? Is uncle mean? Is uncle stinky? Is uncle gross?"
I shook my head no and came.

So we laid on the couch for a bit. We were spooning and he was rubbing my butt and running his fingers up and down my legs.
I was just going along with it. Looking back on it, I didn't really protest at all. I just let things go like this. His hands were going everywhere I think. I really don't know. The most disturbing things are the most vague.

So, here's where I get confused. He opened his legs and told me to lay on his butt. I said no. And he said, "what's wrong? Have you never laid on your papas butt?
So I assumed it was normal and laid on him there.
Then he straddled my head with his crotch and was squeezing really hard.

You see, I don't know if this was sexual. I mean, I know he probably felt something since my head was there, but I don't know if he had the intent to.

Also, I have really really fuzzy memories of us dry humping and I was enjoying it
But I don't even know if that happened


But I don't even know if that last part happened, because your subconscious can make things up, right?

How can I know which memories to trust?
Thanks

My opinion is that if he was touching you in any way that made you uncomfortable, it was wrong, even if "intent to gratify self" is denied. The situation you describe sounds like an incident of sexual abuse to me, especially since it did involve touching you on your rear end. Even if the last part of the memory were not included, this would be bad enough.

The fact that you were reluctant to approach him at first is a red flag. Children are sensitive to that kind of thing. Then the fact that he was not accepting of your reluctance is another one. It shows he does have boundary issues. An enlightened and sane adult would have let it go, and not coaxed you. It's a shame when a parent says to a child, "Now, stop that! Be a good boy and kiss Aunt Martha," if he doesn't want to. The lesson taught there is, your body is not your own, and you don't have the right to say no.

But it is, and you do. A child should never be made to be affectionate to any degree, if he/she doesn't want to.

Of course you didn't protest. You didn't know to. When the unrelated adult molested me at age 5, I didn't know what he was doing and had no way to attach "right" or "wrong" to it, but I knew it made me uncomfortable. When he didn't accept "no" for an answer, I went along with whatever he wanted me to do. Why? Because children are taught to obey adults.

A situation like this is NEVER the child's fault, even if the child does not resist at all. Not putting up a fight doesn't mean you were party to it. It means you were doing what the grownup told you to do, as any child would have done.

I want to add an important point here.

If it feels good or the child seems to be enjoying it, **this does not make it OK.** It doesn't mean the incident is not abuse, or that the child is in any way at fault. Our bodies are biologically programmed for certain ways of touching to feel good, and responding is a built-in reflex. I used the sneezing analogy in another thread, and it fits. If an adult tickles a child's nose with a feather, and the child sneezes, nobody would call it the child's fault for sneezing, or accuse the child of provoking the adult into tickling him. Same thing applies to sexual responses.

Furthermore, so what if a child does actively encourage the adult because it feels good? The child doesn't know right from wrong, but the adult does. Babies aren't born with a sense of morality when it comes to sex. It has to be taught. With no frame of reference, there is no way any child is going to be able to understand, "this is wrong and shouldn't be happening," or figure out what to do to stop it.

Finally, in no situation, sexual or otherwise, is an adult's behavior ever the responsibility of a child to control or correct.

The main point to take away here is, no matter what the child may have done or left undone, it is never the child's fault. It is always the adult's.

[PurpleFlyingMonkeys]

I struggled for years with the "What if I didn't say no" mindset and felt like it was my fault. But here's the thing... It's not, and it's not your fault either, no matter what happened.

Any kind of sexual interaction from an adult is molestation. Any sex act, and I believe this includes oral, is rape. Even if you didn't stop it, the adult was in the wrong and the adult took advantage of you.

Please do not blame yourself, I know it's easier said than done. If you ever have trouble seeing that it's not your fault look at it as it was another child that age, would you blame another child for what happened? The way you're looking back on it now is through the eyes of an adult, so you're expecting that young child to know everything you know,, to know to stop, to know it was wrong, to know to tell someone... But you were a child, you did not have the mind you have now, you are not responsible for anything that happened to you as a child.

((hugs)) please take gentle care of yourself.