I am a sexual abuse victim as a toddler. I am 60 and I still have cPTSD and need counseling. I cut off all local news to help with depression and anxiety and only read what I choose, yet in the past week there are literally over a dozen new cases with attempted kidnappings, peepers in bathrooms and showers, multiple rapes, CSAM from various religious organizations, and lawsuits going back decades. It seems like a pandemic of predators is happening.
Outrage-bait drives traffic. What you’re seeing is the same amount bad behavior over time being made much more visible by people who seek to profit from the misery, along with an overall increase in our willingness to discuss the issues
There has also been a cultural and legal shift such that family and community members are less likely to cover it up and more likely to report it than a few decades ago.
Exactly, back in the day you just had the neighbourhood pedo. Now people actually do something. Louis CK has a good bit about it.
No, we just openly talk about it a lot more than we used to.
This is partly for “good” reasons, like cultural changes that have made it possible for more children to come forward about being abused; and partly for “bad” reasons like scaremongering and clickbait.
There was DEFINITELY much more before. Look at the Catholic Church, in order for a young priest to get away with it, everyone above him must have gotten away with it or been involved in covering for someone they know.
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Still in the Deep South. Nothing’s changed, improved. Mothers still willingly offer their kids to hang on to providers of money, drugs, food, roofs. Then gaslight the kids it never happened/vivid imagination/bad dreams.
The silence broke down over the late 20th century and cases from decades past came to light
And the Baptist churches deacons and elders covering for the preachers and each other!
I’m sorry that happened to you @snausagesinablanket and I hope the counseling is helping.
I don’t think it’s new, I think the explanation is the tabloidization of mainstream news media. If you stick to things like Reuters it’s way less coverage and what they do cover is quite dry.
It’s more reported. The numbers are surely smaller than before due to deterrent effects from more people being caught.
It’s the same as the violent crime statistics from the FBI. The crime rate pre-1960’s was vastly under-reported. During the 70’s and 80’s cultural acceptance of violent crime declined so more crimes were reported.
An excellent example is pre-1950’s spousal and child abusers were rarely if ever reported. Most people considered it a husbands right to beat the shit out of their wife and kids. As acceptance of the behavior decreased, reporting increased.
The most recent one that has seen a huge change is rape. The highest rate of rape are in communities with the lowest reporting. For example, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Scientologist, baptist and anabaptist groups have horrendous rape victim shaming cultures.
There is still large sections of the U.S. population that are okay with rape. Say anyone wearing a MAGA hat. However this is changing with the younger generations. Acceptance is declining and serial rapist are beginning to be held accountable.
I’m so sorry this happened to you. It should not happen to anyone.
Please filter all your news and social media so that you can enter words into the filters. Filter out all words and topics that upset you. Don’t use social apps that don’t have these filters. Get used to not reading news apps that show you whatever they want. You be in control of what news and social media content you see. Doing this will help you a lot and block out all the awful news in this world. A lot of us who have trauma just are too sensitive to it and must protect ourselves.
Hey just want to chime in and say I’m wishing you the best and sorry for what had happened, I was also a victim of child abuse and I’m late 20s now and have only realised the extent and impact its all had on my life anyway all the best
Most has already been said, but i just want to add that it’s just a mixture of
A) the problem itself is way more “ok” to talk about today than it was 20-50 years ago. More people have acknowledged that it actually IS a problem. Even though we (as a society) still have ways to go. E.g. In germany there is a statutory limit of 10 year on it. So someone who got abused at 1, has his/her last chance to get legal justice with 11.
B) media has transformed from an informational source of events to a click-hungry sensationalism source. It sells better than good or other stories.
C) we have way more media and sources of knowledge and information than back then. 30yrs ago if it didn’t make it into “the big news” you never heard of it.
On a side-note: Hey random Internet-stranger and survivor. I’m proud of you that you managed to get here (place and time). And i wish you, that you manage to find some peace.
Neither, the opposite in fact. People today are more willing to accept false flags as a part of the process than they had been before, and this is what has increased the most (between that and real cases having increased). There are real cases and they deserve to be dealt with using cold hard discipline, but the acceptance of a lack of due process surrounding the particular genre of crime has made it so that there are more falsely accused individuals currently serving time than there are those who truly did do as they were accused of. The sphere of American influence is a culture with a perpetual side effect of sparking a thirst for witch hunts (first with actual witches, then the red scare, the LGBT, terrorists, etc.), so sadly this isn’t out of place as a consideration either.
it so that there are more falsely accused individuals currently serving time than there are those who truly did do as they were accused of.
How could we possibly know this?
There is both positive and negative proofs (i.e. both evidence that proves a negative as well as cancels out the positive claims) about this.
On the one hand, as I said, there is a lack of due process about this. It’s expected as per cause-and-effect this would lead to more false flags, though anyone who could say a thing or two about it is hands-off. It has been noticed across the board with high profile figures. To the point where people could turn it into the prosecution equivalent of a “gotcha question”, and that they have. But in the long run, nobody cares.
The number of people recanting accusations has risen. The number of alibis has risen. So on and so on. This is all legal procedure outside of due process, almost as if there’s a vacuum where it should be. Something I’ve noticed that I brought up in a relevant conversation about this is that you could train dogs to smell when someone is a potential suspect/victim (perhaps a first-hand observation for me). Easy, right? It’s almost as if the prosecution knows this would be a gamechanger. They instead stick to lie detectors, the same ones that have been around since you were booting up your very first Windows 95 for the first time.
You have a bunch of people in here saying no, that its increased reporting and cameras, and that is likely true for some of it, but unfortunately there really was a sharp increase during the pandemic. I haven’t kept up with the numbers since. Here is a random source that I haven’t verified, but this was reported at the time in many places: https://protectchildren.ca/en/press-and-media/news-releases/2021/stats-canada-crime-data-pandemic
I’m sorry this happened to you and that you still have to deal with this
Having said that, out of genuine curiosity, why is it that you’re still dealing with this 50 years later? I’m very sure I’m wrong here, but doesn’t there come a time you can give this a place and go on with life and be happy? Seriously not trying to flake or anything, really just curious how people get stuck in that.
The Wikipedia article on CPTSD would be a good place to start. It does not just go away after a long enough time.
Something like that happening to you at a young age shaped your development and the person you become.
The downvotes are unfair. There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.
No, such things never go away. People can learn to to better deal with it, they can learn to cope better with the pain, they can learn skills to better handle anxiety/panic, they even can go through lenghty programs to learn to overall feel better.
But these traumas never go away, people can’t escape them. In the best case it is no around-the-clock hindrance anymore. The triggers stay, the nightmares stay. The memories stay.
Reading the mentioned article about ©PTSD might expand your view. Everyone should know, so we wouldn’t throw questions like this at survivors. As they all have, at least, PTSD. And often many illnesses more. Not only psychological.
