Sexual abuse involves coercion, confusion, manipulation and betrayal, thus making it emotionally devastating. Most adult survivors go on to become loners, avoiding intimate relationships. They become fearful of trusting people as those they trusted have violated them. This self-imposed isolation keeps them from further hurt, but it also deprives them from getting their needs met. Most victims find it difficult to trust people and form meaningful relationships.
Most victims report reactions of fear, hostility and an acute sense of betrayal.
It is this sense of betrayal that often proves to be an obstacle while making new relationships. Blurred role boundaries between adults For many children the abusive experience demonstrates blurred role boundaries between adults and children, parents and children, and often men and women. Children may be frightened to trust, fear intimacy, show extremes in dependency needs, and may often vacillate from being totally dependent to totally independent. Typically they may sexualize their relationships in an attempt to gain affection. In adolescence this can lead to self-destructive patters of promiscuity with a succession of abusive relationships, often with far reaching and emotionally crippling consequences.