Summary
Contents
Subject index
Based on a 12-year study with 60 survivors of child sexual abuse, Catherine Cameron sets out to understand their early trauma and its impact over subsequent years and to monitor their progress toward recovery. The difficult but rewarding process of their recovery unfolded over time, along with increasing societal awareness of the problem. In 1998 a final survey provided the epilogue for their story. Cameron grounds their personal stories by citing parallels to the larger field of national and international trauma. The result is a compelling and deeply human story of trauma and triumph.
Long Silent Years
Long Silent Years
I was the too-good child. No one could tell that I was damaged. Denying my feelings was the only way I survived, but it made me a stranger to myself.
In this chapter, I describe the results of the children's sexual abuse in their later lives, up to the time when the women began to remember the abuse or to work on it for the first time in therapy. These consequences include the façades that they developed to hide their suffering, the emotions that they felt behind the façades, their personal and interpersonal problems, the coping mechanisms that they developed to survive, and the types of somatic and emotional symptoms they exhibited during the years before they received help.
Façades
The validity of ...
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