Scarleteen

When I was a kid, I was 10 or 9 years old being assaulted by a 16 year old and being assaulted by my friend who was 8 or 9. This also caused me to be a perpetrator to my sister. I feel extremely guilty and ashamed and idk what to do. I’m trying to go to therapy but I just want to know like what is my fault. I feel bad but I also know I didn’t really know what I was doing bc I learned it from my friend and I didn’t understand what sex was

Hi catdog_067,

I want to start by saying that I'm so sorry other people in your life chose to assault you, and that I'm glad to know that you're already seeking therapy so you can get additional support around this.

Here's the tricky thing: if you did in fact perpetrate assault on your sibling, that's outside the boundaries of what we're able to offer you help with. However, there's also a lot of misunderstandings about COCSA floating around, and a tendency to conflate what's actually very common childhood curiosity and exploration with assault, so I want to see if we can help you work out if what you did would even be considered COCSA.

When we're talking about COCSA, whether or not coercion, force, or an imbalance of power is involved is really important. Often one of the things that happens in abusive dynamics is the perpetrator is much older and bigger, and often at a different developmental stage, than the survivor. In other words, the perpetrator is explicitly using their being older or bigger to force or coerce the survivor into the activity. Too, in a situation of abuse, one child wants to stop or says no and the other refuses to respect that, rather than it being a form of mutual exploration. If it's more about a child re-enacting something they saw, experienced, or just are curious about, that doesn't automatically make it abuse. Does that make sense?