The child will most certainly feel guilt, shame, self-blame, and may carry the dark secret for years. Sexually abused children struggle with anxiety, fear, and issues of trust, safety, and self-esteem. Teens may become angry, hostile, suicidal, may turn to drugs or alcohol, act out sexually, or engage in other high-risk behaviors. Some adult survivors seek treatment for mental illness or psychiatric disorders which they may not realize stem from the abuse. Behaviors which may have been developed as coping mechanisms to survive the terror of the abuse now may be presenting as depression, panic attacks, dissociative disorders, substance abuse or addiction, or profound sexual dysfunction.
Survivors often remark that the sexual abuse they experienced as children ruined their lives.
Children and teens need good information about sex,sexual relationships, reproduction and birth control, sexually-transmitted diseases, and sexual abuse. Information is power, and in this high-risk day and age, children and teens need all the information they can get. To withhold information about sex and the possibility of sexual abuse, as well as information about reproduction and disease, puts all children at risk. Refusing to talk about sex does not mean that children are safe, that nothing bad will happen to them. Only by opening up the discussion about sex, and beginning to talk to children at young age, will we ever be able to protect them from abuse.