My childhood sexual abuse

123Luke123 · 07:28 PM

This is my childhood sexual abuse story please read at your own risk and do not read if you're easily triggered. I have added the trigger icon, but I just wanted to warn people in case. I think it'd help to share my story. I've only ever told my therapist. I will be talking about the grooming, the stages of abuse that built up towards rape and also being abandoned afterwards.

My parents have never been loving or kind people. Whenever I was struggling growing up they never showed me much empathy at all. My father was emotionally / physically abusive and would use anything I tell him about my struggling against me. My mother would just get angry because I'm telling her things that upset her, she would scream at me for upsetting her. I think maybe predators just know which kids to target because they can tell just how isolated and lonely one might be. I never really had many friends during my school years and was always a very shy and quiet child. Not many people ever asked me how I was doing or seemed to care. I was effectively alone with my problems.

Eventually a person came into my life who did seem to care. He was my PE teacher. He would ask me how I was and support me. He would seek me out during breaktimes to talk to me whenever it was his turn to patrol around the school. I never thought about why these things were happening. I never stopped to think if he was an evil man. He always seemed so genuinely interested in anything I talked about, always joking with me. He seemed like a nice guy. In my mind at the time I saw him like a parental figure. I would go to him for advice. I would tell him things, especially how bad things got at home when my dad was beating me. He never told anyone the things I told him. I thought I could trust him. He said he was "mentoring" me. I never understood the word or context to be honest, I just liked having someone who seemed to care about me. An adult who actually would check in on me and cheer me up when I was feeling unhappy. At that point in my life I was very unhappy because I would get bullied at school pretty viciously by other children for not having any friends. Whenever I returned home I would do so just waiting for the moment my father to take his anger out on me.

My PE teacher always made me feel very safe when he was around. He would watch me to make sure nobody was bullying me when he was patrolling around the school. He had actually stuck up for me before and punished people for bullying me. To a child who had nobody you feel so grateful for that. I always felt so unsafe and this man made me feel safe when I was with him. Eventually he began asking me to stay behind after school because I told him how miserable I was at home. He said I could just stay for an hour longer and avoid home for a while. It seemed like a good idea at the time. He let me work out using the gym equipment. He told me he enjoyed spending time with me despite me being a child, he said he thought I seemed a lot older mentally and that I was good company. This confused me, but I didn't think anything bad about it. I thought maybe he just genuinely liked being around me and I was just his favourite student or something.

Possible trigger:

Meeting up for an hour after school soon shifted to two hours. Using the gym would leave me exhausted and he'd offer me "physio". I never questioned it because he explained it so casually. He was a PE teacher and knew what he was talking about, physio is for athletes after exhausting themselves in sports. That first time he touched me felt so strange. I've never had physio, but I don't imagine it ever being like how he touched me. He was very gropey, but I never questioned it. I let him normalize that kind of touch because I trusted him. He was the only person in my life who I trusted. I had never been touched before, not even my parents hugged me.

He made out that he always loved giving physio and found it therapeutic after "a hard day at work". He made out it helped him relax, he asked me if I felt relaxed afterwards. I felt relaxed from his touch because it was kind of like a massage I guess. I feel ashamed about it now for how he made me feel. At the time I was enjoying it.

Eventually meeting after school was less about using the gym equipment. It was about "helping me relax". Slowly but surely he manipulated me into getting more and more naked around him. It didn't happen all at once, it was gradual, he was grooming me and I didn't realize. I didn't even consider a guy could be groomed.

Eventually he suggested this other more "unofficial" way physiotherapists help their athletes relax. He asked me if I wanted to try it, but gave no information about what it involved. I agreed because I trusted him. He then reached for my privates and touched them. It made me freak out. I got up to leave, but he grabbed me and held me in place trying to talk to me like he was scared. He was telling me to calm down and saying that I was overreacting. I told him it didn't feel right being touched there, but he convinced me I was overreacting and to lie back down. I was so stupid and believed his lies.

He mentioned wearing rubber gloves so it's not skin to skin contact and made out like it'd make things better. I agreed to this so he wore rubber gloves to touch my privates. It felt wrong, but I trusted him and didn't want him to say I was overreacting. He made me think that the barrier of those rubber gloves made what he was doing ok and I believed it even though deep down I knew it wasn't. Whether or not it felt right or wrong, he made me feel aroused, which only confused me even more. I have always been straight and I just saw him as my PE teacher, not as anything romantic. The way he was making me feel however went beyond what a teacher should be doing and I knew it, but I couldn't understand it. I remember feeling a lot of inner turmoil questioning if I was gay or not. The fact he didn't take his clothes off with me and wore gloves to prevent skin contact made me think maybe it was all just in my head and I was overreacting / overthinking. He always told me I was overreacting. I was so naïve I worried in the back of my mind maybe this is what physiotherapists do and my PE teacher wasn't doing anything wrong, after all he's wearing rubber gloves and keeping his clothes on. Every explanation he had always sounded so official and made sense. Maybe I'm just overthinking it? Maybe I'm just feeling pleasure from it because I'm gay? He said it's no different to a massage, so why am I so confused by it?

After a while almost every afterschool meeting went that way. He'd always wear rubber gloves to fondle my privates claiming it was some kind of physio massage while also telling me not to tell anyone because he could lose his job. I knew deep down it must have been against the rules in that case, but I still didn't understand what exactly we were doing. I wasn't stupid he was surely giving me a handjob, I knew what that was, but he also wasn't taking his clothes off with me so it surely wasn't sex? He always had official sounding excuses for what he was doing too that clouded by judgement. He also never talked sexually to me and always kept up this PE teacher persona. He always had justifications for what he was doing and why. All I had was a gut feeling things weren't right, but he was so good at talking he always convinced me to ignore that feeling.

Despite this grooming it wasn't the thing that messed me up. The thing that messed me up was he eventually progressed to raping me. It was a very traumatic event that I still remember in painful memories. He got me to workout in the gym for so long I was utterly exhausted, then when I was too tried to fight back he pinned me down and raped me. I was too weak to fight him off. That was the moment the trust we had built completely shattered in my mind. He was hurting me and ignoring me when I begged him to stop. It was like that kind and supportive man turned into somebody else, he was only focused on going inside of me and didn't care about anything else. His eyes looked cruel and focused. His aura had completely changed, I did not know what he was actually like. After he was done I couldn't trust him anymore, he wasn't safe anymore, but I had nobody else. He made out again that I was overreacting and apologized. He said he'd had a really tough day and just wanted to relax. He said I enjoyed it too or I wouldn't have reacted in a certain way that I did. (I didn't enjoy it I didn't mean to react that way, it just happened I wasn't in control of it and I didn't want it to happen). I felt so confused and ashamed afterwards, but he hugged me and told me he loved me. He told me he'd "always" loved me. He told me he got me the present because he cares about me. I shouldn't have accepted the gift, but I did. I deeply needed someone to care.

Once that line had been crossed where he didn't have to pretend to be a professional PE teacher anymore the abuse got very bad. Regular rape, sexual assault and humiliation, constant lying and gaslighting. He would always say afterwards that he "loved" me and "needed this". That I was the only reason he got up and went to work every morning. I believed it and was too scared to tell anyone because I had nobody else. He'd tell me if I told anyone it'd ruin his life and he'd lose his job that he worked so hard for, I didn't want to ruin his life. He would also buy me things and listen to my problems to make me feel as though I owed him, I was very emotionally dependent on this man so couldn't leave. I should have left. I should have reported him, but I didn't. I didn't have the strength to ruin his life, I didn't have the hindsight to see how he had already ruined mine.

I eventually ended up leaving high school and progressing to college education. My PE teacher seemed to lose interest in me immediately the day I left. I would text him and call him, but he would barely respond. When he picked up the phone he always had excuses for not being free to talk. I never met him again, which was probably for the best because of how harmful our relationship was. I was just so dependent on him I couldn't handle him leaving me alone. I was dependent on someone who was dedicated to damaging me and needed him even though he was hurting me.

Eventually the calls stopped going through. The texts went unread. I thought he must have changed his number so I stalked him online and found his LinkedIn profile. Through that I found out he had emigrated to Dubai and now teaches there instead. I realized he had abandoned me and fled the country, probably because he thought I'd tell someone about the things I let happen.

It has been several years since then and I still have very complex feelings about my PE teacher. I love him, even though he hurt me. I understand I was groomed. I know that the sexual assault and rape wasn't ok, but I miss him. I miss my abuser even though he broke the trust we shared and discarded me like trash. I owe a lot of my mental health problems to him, a lot of my misery and suffering.

It took me a very long time to come to terms with what happened and to see any level of clarity. I only started to wise up properly after going no contact with him. I also spoke extensively with a therapist about the abuse. I'm still getting therapy for what happened, but I'm very attached to my abuser and still love him. I have been left with a lot of psychological problems, but also phobias and sexual problems. I am straight. I've always been straight, but I'm in love with a man. It sounds stupid, but somehow after all that he did I still love him. I'm not attracted to him sexually and I feel repulsed when I remember what I let him do to me, but emotionally I love him. I don't think I can ever stop loving him because when I was alone and had nobody he listened and supported me. My therapist thinks I love the man he used to be, not the man he became. I think she is probably right. She said I just didn't want to let go because I need someone in my life to make me feel like they care.

Yaowen · Today, 05:13 PM

I can definitely identify with you since I was in a situation that parallels yours although the details are different.

That you have complex and even mixed feelings about your PE teacher is very understandable to me as I am in the same situation although what happened to me happened almost 60 years ago.

I think it is good that you have a therapist in your corner to help you process everything that happened to you and how it affects you today.

Since I am not completely free of the ghosts of my past, I am the last person on earth to offer you any kind of advice.

I do want to say that I can understanding what you are going through and that my heart goes out to you as a fellow sufferer.

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