Have I ever written about my past abuse here? I think its about time I did, or maybe did some more: I am a male survivor of various forms of abuse, including sexual abuse. There - I've said it. I've just come out...
This might sound daft, but I first became aware of this during the mid 1990s. It was during a routine appointment I had with my community psychiatric nurse at that time, when we'd been discussing problems I was having in the relationship at the time - namely that I couldn't cope with my partner's sexual expectations. When my CPN asked if I'd had similar problems before in any previous relationships, I had to say yes - and that led onto the question of whether anybody had ever done anything untoward during my childhood.
My initial answer was an emphatic no - but I went away and thought about the wisdom of this afterwards, as for as long as I could remember I'd had three separate flashbacks, as I now understand them to be.
But I didn't know they were flashbacks then - I'd never heard of the word up until I returned for my next appointment. I didn't know what they were - they kept recurring on a completely involuntary basis, and on one level they were like movie stills - except that they had accompanying thoughts and feelings attached to them. I'd puzzled over them for years actually, dismissing them variously as fantasies, dreams, and hallucinations. I felt guilty about having them at all - even though nobody else had any way of knowing even of their existence.
In addition, I had lots of pretty raw memories of serious ill-treatment by nurses who were supposed to be looking after me, in a certain Scottish psychiatric hospital, where I spent a good deal of my adolescence. One of the flashbacks involved a particular nurse there, in fact.
So, the following week I asked my CPN, if anything had occurred, would I remember it. "Not necessarily," she informed me, adding that the brain sometimes shields us from memories of events it feels would be too traumatic for us to deal with. "But you would probably have flashbacks," and, as she went onto explain what these are, I instinctively knew that I had indeed been abused, both as a small child and as a vulnerable and naive young adult patient, within a psychiatric hospital.
Well you know, that would have bad enough, but the trouble with discovering such abuse is that, when you start to explore what exactly abuse is, you often discover there's a lot more stuff in your past that can be classified that way, too. In my case, a lot of it was stuff I remembered very well - and which I knew at the time was a bit odd, and which I hated; but for which I'd made excuse after excuse in favour of the perpetrator, to whom I'd felt I owed a great favour, and so allowed to have his extremely wicked ways with me, over a period extending to almost three years. I'd been in complete denial about it, but this had been an abusive relationship - and out of all that's happened to me, it remains by far the most damaging, in terms of what I perceive to be my abilities to cope with sex and relationships. In consequence I've led a lonely and rather unfulfilled life.
Oh, I've had years of specialist counselling - twice over; and I've done lots of therapies of various types to try to accept and come to terms with it all. The first four years was with a wonderful counsellor who employed Gestalt techniques: working very much in the present and relating it to the past by identifying why I think and do things the ways I think and do them - and then introducing the possibility of doing them differently in future. Gestalt is often treated with a good deal of suspicion in this country - especially by psychiatrists and other professionals trained within the medical model; but in my view it is far more life-changing than anything else they've ever offered me.
Then for the past three years I've had a person-centred counsellor. He's been very good in many ways, supporting me to completely change the way I relate and respond to my mother, whose behaviour might also have been termed abusive for much of my life; and also the ways I relate to my employers and others. He's also tried to get me to view my bouts of depression not as something that will inevitably happen to me every now and then; but I'm afraid he's been less successful with that!
And throughout all that time, I've completely dismissed and possibility of reporting anything to the police, as I was advised early on in my process that the possibility of being cross-examined in court would re-expose me to the abuse as if it were happening all over again, and I may not be able to survive it a second time.
Well, a lot of water's passed under my bridges, and at length I've managed to accept and file away for good, two of the flashback incidents. I've had less success with the third one however, and although I've not seen him for 25 years, the man who so constantly abused me within the context of my first significant relationship continues to appear in my mind, every now and then - most probably because I still feel seriously handicapped as a result of his abuse towards me.
So I had my first meeting with the police today. It appears they can't take a statement in relation to the flashback nurse, because even after all this time I still have no memory of what actually happened; and there are some questions over issues relating to my consent in the abusive relationship. However, on two occasions he involved a third party without my prior knowledge; and because he always blindfolded me as part of his ritual, I have no idea of who they were or what they looked like. While it will be extremely difficult to prove anything, the police have agreed to prepare statements about these incidents, as he did break the law in setting them up without my consent.
Once the statements have been recorded, they'll be sent to Essex Police for investigation, because that's where most of the abusive incidents took place. As yet, it is unclear as to what kind of outcome might be expected, as the English police forces are known for sending cases to court without much evidence, relying instead on judges and juries to decide on the probability of allegations; whereas that would be much less likely in Scotland, unless there was lots of corroboration available. In any case though, his name will be flagged on police databases and will show up in any future disclosure applications; and in the event of any existing or future allegations being made by others, it is possible my statements will be used as evidence.
I feel a wee bit better than I did before this meeting: during the last week and a half I've eaten about ten boxes of chocolates, amongst lots of other junk - as well as hit the prescribed diazepam, as the anxiety's been pretty intense. And now I'm heading out with a friend, for a well-earned Chinese...
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