Thank you, Kati. This helped me to accept what happened to me was abuse. For years, I always downplayed it like how you explained, “it wasn’t that bad” because it wasn’t that often and wasn’t prolonged and just happened a few times. But then, I would think “I think it was abuse” because I couldn’t stand to remember because of the icky feeling I’d remember having and that I still get when I remember it. Thank you for helping me finally accept it as abuse. I’ll no longer doubt and wonder “should I just forget it.” Now I know I should talk to someone about it. Thank you 🙏🏽
I second this. I had NO idea this was abuse . Never talked to anyone about this bc it was just so icky and shameful and thought , bc we were so young it wasn’t “bad” . I thought it was exploring? This is the first time I’ve even heard this was a thing. Everything in my life probably stemmed from this . Thanks Kati . Wow.
I'm like you. I am really struggling to understand what exactly happened and what to call it. I thought I was doing something bad but I believe it was being abused. I'm glad to hear and read I'm not alone. This totally sucks. I'm glad I am in trauma therapy and able to begin processing through this whole thing.
@@Katimorton Why does it seems that child sexual abuse on other children is so hard to accept? Why do we call it something else? Do we just not know? I never told anyone what was going on when I was young but I did act out by shoplifting. Thank you for making this video. I can't imagine the ick you had to read through to learn about this subject. I feel icky and I'm 40+ yeas from the events that were abusive.
I use to repeat to myself "it didn't happen" or "you can't focus on it" when I was in high school. Even though I repressed it, my grades suffered. I remeber thinking "what the fuck am I at school for? I need help! Not a fucking math test!" But had to ignore that because my mom wouldn't take this as a legitimate excuse at the time and part of me believed it wasn't that bad. I was so very wrong and I've been pay the price of delayed treatment for years now. Moral of my story? Don't wait for help. The pain will only fester.
I wish more people understood molestation is sexually assault . I hate when people say oh it's not like they raped you, could of been worse . Well it still is worse and feels horrible. Grouping/ touching someone in private parts is sexual assault no matter how you try to spin it.
I was sexually assaulted as a child and what I struggled for years when I was young was the idea because I wasn’t raped it wasn’t so bad but when people started to really say that actually no it was sexual abuse and why I finally was able to stop blaming myself for something that was out of my control thanks for saying this Kendra you really help people just by saying what you’ve said
This was a really rough one. I feel very alone and ashamed in admitting that not only was I abused, but I turned that abuse on other kids. I was curious about the things that had been introduced to me and wanted to understand them, I never felt they were bad because they were "games." But I found other kids to push it onto, and for a very long time didn't want to acknowledge that it was abuse. I did become hypersexual as a way to cope, but through therapy that has gone away and I've gotten to a healthy place with that. But I do still think about those other kids, even though it's been almost 30 years by this point. I'm scared to have possibly caused irreparable damage to anyone, and have no idea how to deal with that.
I am so sorry, and I know that shame is such a huge part of this. From what I read and heard from other members of our community who were affected by COCSA, working in therapy to process that shame, grieve, and forgive that child self who didn't know and was just trying to make sense of it all is our path towards healing. It can get better, I promise. xoxoxo
@Happy_Grateful_Soul you can try to support them through life with whatever they do and be there for them like if their out of gas be there for support and give them money to get home if you can do anything to help do it and check up on them show love and support.
If you can apologize to everyone you hurt, i believe it will help them heal. It doesn't make it disappear but it helps. Also if you can offer them something monetarily to assist in their life.
child on child SA, child on child when the abuser is younger than the survivor.... these are so important and I wanted someone to speak about it for so long thank you for making me feel less alone 😭
@katimorton would you be able to do another video on this subject? Going into even further details of the effects of cocsa, on how to tell your family or others that you've experienced it and how to be ready for comments like 'they were just a child too?' Or feeling like you're making a big deal of it. And I'd be really interested in looking at abusive dynamics where there isn't obvious perceived force involved at the time, but the kid on the receiving end believe they were an equal in it and must have asked for it... in my experience, I was pressured into sexual activity (where the aim was to sexually stimulate me/ him) between aged 9-11... he wasn't significantly older than me. But he was pubescent and I wasn't. So the longer it went on the more serious it got. It ended up in sex. But when I've brought this up before, people have said that if we were both comfortable with it, consented, maybe it wasn't abusive. I wasn't comfortable with it and it made me feel sick. But I didn't know how to say no. So I believed as we were both kids we must have been equal in our consent. Would you be up for going into anther part 2 video of these types of issues? We really really appreciate your videos, they are very validating.
This is why as soon as my child is old enough, I'll explain how we shouldn't touch others or let them touch us. It's important that they know it's not just a game.
Thisss!! Also, please emphasize to your kids the importance of protecting themselves from other children too, even family. I was abused for many years by a close cousin, my parents always advocated not to let anyone touch us but always mentioned adults/teens. Never the children they trusted me with on the weekends. We were only two years apart. As a child, I always felt it was a secret game, nothing like the creeps I should be “scared” of. I haven’t told my parents or family yet, I have felt massive guilt knowing they did their best to protect us and I still was vulnerable for 6 years.
I have trauma from a grooming incident from a girl who slept around as a child. I had transmitted lifelong diseases that effects my body dysphoria and health. I mentally suffered and i have mental health issues.
You are brave and you can work through this. I was sexually abused for 5 years by a young teenage girl then by a teenage boy then a man when I was a young teen! I felt powerless to resist as it happened over and over. I understand now that I had been groomed and manipulated into abuse and the when it reared its ugly head I simply said oh ok…. And went along either way what was asked and complied or performed!! It affected my life in ways that were very violent and destructive! I grew worked out got massive and promised myself nobody will ever force me into anything or manipulate me sexually again!! It caused me to need deep anger therapy. I complied with court orders and ignored the root cause I’m now in my late 50’s and reading working talking and have ADMITTED OUT LOAD I WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED I will win
You are brave and you can work through this. I was sexually abused for 5 years by a young teenage girl then by a teenage boy then a man when I was a young teen! I felt powerless to resist as it happened over and over. I understand now that I had been groomed and manipulated into abuse and the when it reared its ugly head I simply said oh ok…. And went along either way what was asked and complied or performed!! It affected my life in ways that were very violent and destructive! I grew worked out got massive and promised myself nobody will ever force me into anything or manipulate me sexually again!! It caused me to need deep anger therapy. I complied with court orders and ignored the root cause I’m now in my late 50’s and reading working talking and have ADMITTED OUT LOAD I WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED I will win
I was a 1 time perpetrator of child on child sexual abuse. After what I did, I felt immense guilt that has followed me my entire life. This is the first time that I've seen a video where I feel like someone is actually shedding light on the reality of it. parents MUST do a better job. Any time I told adults about what happened, they just acted as if it was nothing and it was just kids being exploratory. To the contrary, at age 5 I was fully abusing and sexually gratified by situation in which I had sexual power over 2 other little girls. I've never spoken of this openly, but this video is incredibly important for people to understand this as a real issue and its so healing to finally hear an adult talk about this to my inner child.
@@gogetyourgun1490 You should be wary of everyone, but this is why you don't go for a drink of water from a dry well. Meaning I'm not going to go to my dentist if I need my mental health checked... Wrong person to go to about my problems.
Needed to hear this .. for so many years I have not found anything on this topic. It made me feel completely alone in what I went through. I blocked it out of my mind for my whole life and it all came up this year and I feel like I’m reliving the situation again because it was never talked about but it affects me daily. Thank you for sharing this video… I needed to hear all of it.
Thank. You. I was 8 and my abuser was 10. Twice he confined and abused me after spending weeks manipulating and grooming me. He involved other kids in the neighbourhood. I told. I was told to shut up and forget it because my mom played cards each week with his mother and it was “just little boys being curious.” I’m so happy that this attitude is changing and that there are voices out there for kiddos today - because little me sure could have used an advocate 29 years ago. ❤️
I was 15 and was groomed by my 16yo neighbor who had been my "best friend" since I was 13. He shared me with another neighbor (15yo), and occasionally other friends. He pretended that he didn't know what he was doing and gaslighted and guilt tripped me all the time. A year later I found out that he was a really good liar and faked all his "feelings".
@@eleah2256 wow faked all his feelings now that doesn't deserve forgiveness or love back he can die for that im sorry for everything he has done to you along with his friend and he doesn't need to hang out with you or be apart of your life ever again so for him just take him to jail and let him face every consequence imaginable and focus on your healing and your boyfriend who will protect you and your real friends who will not include him in their life and be there for you while he is ostrasized from their lives along with yours forever no matter what he does, because to understand what you have done and the reason why this still makes people angry is a big thing and its unforgivable because look at josh duggar molested 4 underaged sisters and a babysitter people forgave him and he grew up and started downloading thousands of child porn and which he was caught and only got 2 charges.
Hi, my son is 5 and his abuser was 10 … similar to yours I am going to get him into therapy do you think that would have helped you and do you have any advice for a mother going through something similar I feel so guilty
i was a victim of cocsa in kindergarten. i remember when i first told a (now ex) close friend about it, they told me it was invalid because we were both kids. it made me feel invalidated and that i was just being overdramatic. but this video helps me thank you💕
As an adult, I’ve only recently admitted to myself that I endured sexual abuse as a child. It messed me up in many ways, from feeling inhibited or even unsure of my preferences, and scared. This just made me realize how badly I need therapy to process this for good, because I still feel so much guilt and disgust over it. What’s worse too is that I even passed on the abuse to another child my same age when it abruptly ended and I wasn’t sure why. It’s taken me so long to come to terms with it even to the point that I could listen to this video. Thank you for speaking out about it because I feel like many don’t.
My heart truly goes to anybody who suffers from child on child sexual abuse or any form of sexual abuse as a child for that matter. I myself have not been a victim of this kind of abuse at the hands of anyone so I don't really know what it feels like exactly, but I do have enough empathy to know that it certainly isn't a great feeling. Great job covering this topic Kati. I'm sure a great deal of sexual abuse victims are very thankful that you are providing a helpful resource on your platform to help cope with their trauma.
I was like 6 when a kid in my grade touched me inappropriately. I told my mom a year later about it and then she told the school. The teacher pulled me and that student out of class had him apologize to me. I felt traumatized by having to receive his apology and then move on like nothing ever happened to me. I felt like it wasn't abuse, because of how to school handled it. I later found out that kid was abused by his uncle. Thanks for posting this .
She was younger than me by 2 months and I've always told myself it doesn't count because she never went under my clothes. It took me 10 years to tell my mum and she still doesn't think it's a big deal. I've been in traffic accidents and my PTSD fladhbacks comes from her, not being hit in the head by vehicles. This video makes me feel like I can breathe again.
@tarmarajohnson2659 because OP said he/she had been in a car crash so typically PTSD could show up after something like that. Instead, their abuser comes as PTSD and not crashing vehicles. 2 different traumas/events but one is clearly worse.
@@tarmarajohnson2659 I had flashbacks of CSA, not of being hit by a bus. Nowadays I'm doing much better, I am divorced from a man who was also abusing me physically during the time I wrote this and was living with daily panic attacks. I also had flashbacks when I was around 21 of a cow being killed in a slaughterhouse- like the image would intrude into my brain as I was walking places and play on a reel. I used to get very tactile flashbacks- I could see and feel hands on me. Now not so much- sad memories and daydreaming but not my brain getting hijacked by memories and emotions all that often.
I am a 61 year old female that just disclosed for the first time ever to my therapist today. My abuser was younger male than I. He is my god brother.I never thought of it as abuse until now and to my understanding he was abused by an older woman. I have interpersonal difficulties my entire life. I had 5 children with abusive men. As well as my mother was emotionally and physically abusive to me and was married to an alcoholic. Although she was married to the same man for 20 years she had extramarital affairs throughout. My brother and I are fathered by her extra marital partners. It took until today for me to face that degrading experience. Thankyou for this platform to express the impact of this issue
After reading “the body keeps the score,” my understanding was that children very often reenact their traumas, and that is where this behavior stems from. I feel like while you touched on it, it would’ve been prudent to discuss that further, bc the two situations are so interconnected
I disagree with that it is a normal behavior for adolescence to masturbate. This is not normal, and that is probably a result of them being exposed to sexual obscene images, raped, molested wether they recall it or have blocked the memory of such trauma or it could be generational patterns that need to be broken from that child’s life. So, it is like one hand she is right, but on the other hand is promoting sexual immorality. Not sure what the speaker’s real agenda is and I do not trust her intention fully.
I’m reeling. Every single one of these points hit way too close to home. I think I need to find a therapist. And I definitely didn’t realize how much I needed to hear some of the things that were said. When my mom found out what was happening, I was 7 and I can still so clearly see and feel the disgust anger and shame on her face. And now I can see how much it affected our relationship and my relationship with myself. It stripped me of my confidence and power and trust in adults and I can now see how I never trusted adults again, never opened up to my mom again. I’m 31 and i can still see how this affects me every single day. How have I never heard anyone else talk about this? Thank you so much for this video.
"it fucks with your head because they're hurt too, but you're hurt". This resonates with me so much, because I've been abused by 2 guys who were 15 and 16 like me, but actually even more because my mother was abusive to me because she struggled with financial issues and PTSD because my father abused her and left us. I tend to make myself crazy by thinking about how this actually applies to many perpetrators, possibly everyone? It's crazy making to feel sorry for someone or to love someone and to feel anger towards them too. I feel like I developed the "cliche BPD" push and pull thing in all my relationships.
I hear you. I was like 6 and my cousin was 8 and she was horribly abused by her father and wanted to “show” me some things. She would get aggressive and then she would apologize at times but because we’re so young and being boy/girl there was some small pleasure in it. The first time she did was at a sleep over at my house. Her and my 2 sis were close friends but she decided she wanted to sleep in my room late that night. She came in quietly closed the door and stood there, mind u my room was dark so I saw her clearly just standing there for like a minute I saw her clearly because I was already in the dark but I bet she didn’t notice I was staring right back at her. She had an enthusiast smile while I was terrified as to wtf is goin on. we both got in trouble even though I was intimidated by her and she caused it. I remember she called my house phone back in the late 90s and told me that it was fun and she wanted to do it again and I told her it wasn’t right. When I slept at her house to hangout with her bros she would be excited to see me.Even to this day Glassdoor knobs give me ptsd i hate em, I hate the memories behind them. Her father is a sick man and unfortunately she wasn’t the only sibling and it led her being in physically abusive relationships and heavy drugs caused her mind to not be there anymore she’s completely dependent on her mother! Isn’t it sad?!
I couldn't believe the title of this video when it appeared on my feed! Thank you Kati for brining attention to this you have no idea how much this means to me. And your spot on when you said how much it "f**ks with your head". Not being able to find information about it has made me believe that it is a very rare event which has made me feel isolated in my experience. So many people struggle to comprehend it which has been the most challenging aspect of it. I would love to be apart of research and understanding in this area as I am very passionate about transforming my experience into something that can help and speak to others
Yes!!! We need more research and understanding for sure!! If there are ever certain issues surrounding this that you want me to address, please let me know. xoxo
@@Katimorton Can you discuss this from the perspective of the abused child who abused other children? I know what they did was wrong and doesn’t excuse their behavior. Is it possible for them to develop PTSD as a result of not only the sexual abuse done to them, but as they get older realizing the severe psychological trauma they caused to the other child? Not understanding how they could do something so horrific. How can they recover from not only what was done to them, but the severe guilt and shame of what they did to the other child.
@@Katimorton the way adults dump on us when caught, like fiveish and being threatened accused of harming them damaging them etc. So much anger no possability to explane because of the adults anger .
Yes I will agree with you too . Is too hard to speak about it but is so real . Still a taboo for so many people but still happens in our days please talk anoitit so our kids in next generation protect themselves of this sad and horrible experience.
fr it's apparently the most common form of sexual abuse that happens to children. crazy how undertalked about it is when everyone talks about pedohpiles etc.
@@skatergrl13 yes and because it’s kept quiet, the children don’t get help and live with shame, guilt, and become true offenders and/victims themselves
Thank you for talking about this, Kati 💗 As someone who was in a similar situation, people believe you when they think it's an adult who hurt you. I even doubted my own PTSD diagnosis for a really long time. I've healed a lot and I understand the circumstances but it doesn't change how it has profoundly affected the way I am today. Thank you, again 💗
Of course! I am so glad it was helpful and validating. COCSA can be so difficult to come to terms with, and I am so glad that you have healed a lot and gotten help for it :) xoxo
This is where my stutter stemmed from. I was about 7-8 and my abuser was a year or two younger than me. It only happened once, but I felt the shame and guilt everyday for literally years. It’s only in the last year that I’ve learnt than I’m not alone and I have spoken about it.
Dearest Ellen, when I read your comment i burst into tears! I never connected my stutter to the trauma of being molested by a brother. He was molested by our grandmother at a young age so the generational trauma is far reaching. It’s healing for me, at 55 years of age, to type it, speak my truth, as i finally unleash my voice that has been stifled and suppressed for decades. Thank you so much for your courage to leave a comment. Your words have inspired and empowered me in my soul healing journey. Sending you much love and light. ❤🙏🏽🌀💫
@@halaniboshard4345 I was sexually abused by my sister and finally confronted her about it after 40 years now about to be 44 it happened to me and I blocked for many years. I suffering on the inside from this and now she doesn't want to talk to me anymore.
@@reginasmith6276 It truly messed my head up so bad. My cousin was 6 months older but we were like best friends. It was in 1979 or maybe 1980, not quite sure but after we found out it was "wrong" we did not speak of it again and I actually forgot all about it. It remained like that for 6 more years until I was 14 when a movie on TV caused me to have a sudden flashback of memory. I turned the TV off and went straight to bed, hoping I might somehow forget what I had just remembered during the night. I still remember my thoughts as I climbed the stairs,.. " If I can't forget this I'm going to have to kill myself". That was the very first time I ever thought about suicide. Unfortunately it wasn't going to be the last. 38 years later I'm still suffering the consequences of that mistake. I can't bear to be in the same room as my cousin but I have never told him why. I doubt he even remembers and probably thinks I have just become "odd" for no reason.
Hey Kati, thanks for making this video. I felt like I needed this, after grappling with it for a long time. But I wasn't the victim - I was the abuser. I've known since early childhood that what I did was wrong, felt the shame and regret, knew that I had hurt them - now, almost 15 years later, I've never forgotten, never let go of remembering how badly I hurt them. I know that my own (physical and mental, not sexual) abuse explained it, but didn't excuse it - and I've grappled with wondering whether I should seek them out to make amends, or if that would just be self-serving - or whether my not doing so is out of a desire to not cause greater harm... or just my own cowardice. I don't want to make it about me - it isn't about me, it's about them, and whatever I can do to help them heal. Perhaps this is rambly, with no direct purpose. And I know I need to see a therapist for it - I've been trying, but I don't feel comfortable in virtual care. But I really, really needed to get this off my chest. I really needed to see this video today.
Hey man, great that you opened up about it. I'd say it's also about you, since it seems to affect you as well. Don't search for the victims of your abuse, but definitely, definitely look for therapy. Here in my country they already offer in-person therapy again, but I am from Germany. Either way, even if it's virtual, you need someone to talk these things through!
I am so glad you found this video helpful and I am so sorry that you were abused as well. I think it's best if we get into our own therapy and work to heal from our own trauma. If our victim wants to seek us out to get their own closure or to confront us or whatever, they can do that, but I don't believe that's a decision that we should try and make for them. Just being available and open to it is enough. And I totally get it that virtual care isn't ideal, so maybe see if you can find someone doing in person sessions (I know many people are starting to again). xoxo
I'm glad you spoke on this. I think their is a stigma that this type of abuse isn't as traumatic as if you were abused by an adult. I was a victim and it was so traumatic I still can't recall all that happened but praise the Lord he was with me and still is. Prayers out to all on here that's experienced this.
Thank you for this❤ i was abused for 3 years when i joined reception by two boys the same age as me. The teachers even SAW it happening and no one did anything. Im traumatised and every time i tell someone they just say its kids exploring or boys being boys. I was never the same after what happned and to chalk it down to that is so damaging i became hypersexual as a kid bc i couldnt process what happened to me as a four year old. My parents saw and were oblivious. Ive told my therapist about this and she said its not abuse since he was so young and he didnt know. Like it makes me feel so bad.
Thank you, Katie. I’ve never seen anyone else speak on this. My family is still trying to keep this secret in the dark, but I’ve stepped into the light & am hopeful others will too. I’ve wanted nothing more than to share about intergenerational abuse & trauma, because there are so many insidious ways it will effect your family if you don’t speak about it. My parent didn’t handle it well because they had their own unprocessed trauma, but they have acknowledged this and have made amends with me in recent years. I masked my pain and pretended I was okay because I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. I grew up with such a distorted view on relationships. I was sexually active at 14 with my first boyfriend, and I didn’t realize I was hyper sexual. I thought that I was doing what normal people did in relationships…except I didn’t realize I was still a child. My shame led me to not feeling my emotions, and I started using drugs as a teen to self-medicate. I entered recovery in 2008, thankfully. But at 35, I am still working on healing myself. I do not believe my cousin was responsible for their actions. It was abuse, but they were too young to understand. We thought we were playing. They were mimicking what was done to them. It damn near cost them their life too because of how traumatized they ended up becoming. No one spoke up for years. So they were also abused by an adult for years. When authorities did intervene, they were not put into treatment - they were punished. This confused them. They were emotionally and behaviorally stunted. Their regression was so severe that they developed tics and bed wetting while older than age 10. They were in unhealthy relationships that were sexually active way too young, like myself. They also turned to drugs and got arrested too. They have turned their life around now. I know this because we have talked about this. I should talk to them again. I would never blame them. I blame the adult. I have my suspicions but might never know who it was, as odd as that might sound. Could have been a parent, another cousin, or someone totally unrelated to my family. But I know that inter generational trauma does exist in my family, and most of us won’t talk about it. I got tired of self-destructing and found my voice at age 23 when I found recovery. But like I said, 13 years later and I’m still healing. You can heal too. The important part is remembering that they took nothing from you. Life happened as it was to happen. Painful things happen to everyone, resilient people turn that pain into a power to help others. Don’t let me fool you, there will be lots of suffering until you hone your superpower. But you are resilient. We are resilient.
Thank you. I was 5ish and my abuser was the same age. I’ve had so many therapists swipe this under the rug and I just found one that’s actually helpful.
So recently I told my girlfriend about me when I was 14 my cousin started touching me and I agreed to go along with it. This happened 3 more times but I never thought I should blame myself because I never wanted to do it. I always felt so guilty while doing it even disgusted and when I told her about this I started feeling like a predator or something supper crazy because she was like how were you willing to want to do something like that with your cousin. After that I started to really worry that I was a horrible person that liked what I did💔 thanks to this video at around 4:50 of this video it describes exactly how I felt. I never wanted to do it. So I beg for help how to help recover from this and most importantly how to help my girlfriend heal from this so she doesn’t see me as this disgusting person 💔🙏🏽
Went 12 years after without therapy. Thank you for making this video. It was comforting to see you say that its important to get your child into therapy right away. I always thought that was what would have been best for me. But my parents never knew.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for discussing this. You're right, it does f**k with your head and there's nowhere to place blame. The fact that adults shy away from discussing this topic, or dismiss it, perpetuates further shame. Children can sense its not an acceptable topic to talk about. We need to find ways to talk about this uncomfortable topic so that our kids feel they can approach us, and go on to develop healthy physical boundaries. Early intervention might also help children who have been abused/turned abuser themselves and need additional support. The lack of support/recognition of this topic in the past has led to decades of emotional damage within my own close circle. I wish for a different future for the next generation of adults.
The topic that I always wanted talk about, thank you katie for bringing this up! I myself was in that situation but now Alhamdulillah I've healed from my past trauma. And I really feel the need to spread awareness with this kind of sexual abuse to help more people out there
Thank you for this video. When I remembered having been molested by my brother (32 years after it happened), I heard myself repeatedly saying, “it’s no big deal” but now I know it absolutely was a huge deal… enough that my conscious mind buried it for decades…and enough that it took me 12 years of processing it all until I was finally able to share my story in my memoir (The Invisible Key: Unlocking the Mystery of My Chronic Pain).
Ugh. I was abused as a child and I turned around and preyed on other children before I was old enough to realize that I was hurting people. I really wish I knew how to make amends for my wrongdoing because I know how much my CSA scarred me and truly damaged me throughout my whole being, and I hate that I even have to try to live knowing I may have caused other people to feel that way, too. I don't know what the right thing is to do. Do I try to reach out to my victims and own it and offer my heartfelt apologies? Do I serve them best by not contacting them, which could potentially re-traumatize them? If so, how do I work through the deep seated guilt I feel for what I have done, which contributes to my severely negative self perception - the idea that I am just as much a monster as the father who mistreated me, if not worse because I should have realized, having gone through it, exactly what pain I was causing while I was doing it and not years after the fact? On many days when I am confronting my guilt, it feels best that I should consider suicide - just the fact that I have a life seems to go against society's harsh view against people who prey on children. Why should I be worth any different treatment just because I was a child, too? If lots of people are abused and do not take out their abuse on others, then surely something is still wrong with me, right? My abuse on others is the worst part of my life, the thing I would most wish to undo, because no child deserved what happened, and I can't forgive myself for having an incomplete understanding of the harm I was causing. It would feel like justice if someone were to murder me.
Check below a similar comment by TempuraFriedJoystick for a reply from Kati that might help you too. But listen, you are not a monster. I have felt like a monster too, I totally get you. Trauma therapy will help you heal the guilt and shame. It is important to remember that when we were kids we did not have the mental ability yet to process the abuse we sustained and repeating the behavior with others was part of how we were trying to understand it or make it seem normal and OK. Meanwhile, your father, a full adult who knew what he was doing, decided to abuse you for his own sick reasons. That is a huge difference. Yes, we might well have caused damage with our actions. That feels awful to live with. But the intent was not to harm. It is like the difference between hitting someone with a car because we were distracted by someone telling us shocking news while we are driving vs running over someone on purpose. We can resolve that if the person we hurt ever comes to us and wants to talk about it we will apologize fully and without making excuses, offer to help in any way we can in their healing, and only give explanations if they are asked for. But we can also understand that we were not morally culpable in the same way as someone like your father is. Please don’t hurt yourself or put yourself in harm’s way. You are a valuable person and you deserve to heal. This can get better as we work through it with a good trauma therapist.
@@estescollins7756 yes I saw that thank you, I agree it is better to wait to see if they contact us, I'm just not sure they can and wish I could unobtrusively give them that opening somehow without traumatizing them. I would like them to see how much I hurt for them. I would like to know if there is anything at all I can do to them to make it better for them. I can't imagine anything can if they feel the way about me that I feel about my parents. I'm just so stuck because I can't find my way out of my own pain about how my caretakers could do such awful things to me, and complicating it all is this idea that I'm no more deserving of love or forgiveness than they are because I turned around and victimized other innocents. Thank you for your kind words. I wish I knew how to make myself believe the nice things you've said about me having value. I wish I had never been born.
hey ive been traumatized and I’ve no doubt traumatized others too. i was hurting and i hurt others. and im still ashamed. first of all, don’t reach out to them. you’re not going to ever get the closure you need from them. it’s gonna come from yourself. you gotta learn to show self compassion. you were a child. you were hurt. you PHYSICALLY couldn’t have known any better. and the adults around who PHYSICALLY could failed you. i know this won’t do much. even i still suffer from my own shame. the closure you seek comes from acceptance of yourself-good and bad. not trying to make their pain better. we’ve all been the villain in someone’s story you know?
I finally see a comment from the other side. I want you to know I LOVE YOU and I don’t even know you. I deal with so much shame ans guilt daily. I always shut off the side of my brain that was abused by others. I tell myself I knew better and it’s my fault they did that to me. But to those I hurt I torture myself everyday and it hangs over me. Jesus is the only way to help us. ❤❤❤❤❤ I felt Jesus tellin me he wanted me to make a video about the abuse and I couldn’t do it. I felt him helpin me form the desire to make it but I told him I would rather me a porn star than to share that shame of what I did. It’s FU@#ING HARD TO DEAL WITH THIS EVERYDAY. Especially If you see the victims or abusers daily. I am not fully on the other side of healing my pain but if you ever wanna talk I will gladly be here for you. You are not alone. You are loved and you are important. Pray to Jesus for help and for the pain. Sometimes the shame is greater than we can bare but he is the only one who knows the better way.
Thank you so much for covering this often unspoken about issue. I was abused by my step brother when I was 3 years old. And I always ended up invalidating everything that had happened because he himself was being exposed to things he should never have been exposed to. Bringing awareness to this topic is something we as a society need to start doing.
I was cocsa'd since I can remember my childhood almost daily until i was 13. You saying that it can result in depression ,anxiety and bpd hit so hard, because that's exactly what I am diagnosed with today as an adult. Talking with children about these things is indeed very important. Looking back, I myself would hate if anyone brought it up to me, but it would be so helpful thinking about it now.
I am so glad you're covering this with accessible language and clear points. This topic is so often ignored when cases of CSA pop up in mainstream media and people automatically place the roles of predator on someone that may also be a victim. This all came as a shock to me when I worked at a mental health facility for victims of CSA. I wrongly assumed all the children there were victims and was shocked to learn that many of them were in the program because they were caught abusing other children. CSA is so complicated and uncomfortable to learn about, but you did an excellent job of explaining some of the complexities that exist.
God I needed to hear all of this... I was sexually abused by two different kids my age and my guilt about the situation was often a tool they used against me to keep me quiet about it. When this all came to light when I got older I wasn't taken seriously. My Uncle called it just kids being curious and it always infuriated me and pushed me further away from everyone around me. My parent's still allowed those kids around me despite it all and I felt so alone. I have always been scared admitting the age of my abusers to people because of the response I got from people around me who were supposed to protect and support me.,.. This is the first time I have felt validated in my experiences.... Thank you so much for this video... I am sure it will help SO MANY people like myself and educate others on this topic.
It means so much to me knowing I am not alone. I am 26 and just now facing what happened. I have experienced many traumas aside from this even into my adult relationships. I recently started declining with my mental health and sought help. This and other things have been coming up.
Thank you for making a video about this. I know from experience that child on child sexual assault is rarely taken seriously. I was repeatedly and at times violently sexually abused by another boy when I was twelve and thirteen years. He was the same age as me and it all happened at school to the point I had to move to another one. I spoke to my Mother about it recently and she out and out told me to stop calling it sexual abuse because he would just have been 'showing off' and 'wouldn't have thought what he was doing was 'that bad' and 'wouldn't have gotten sexual pleasure' from it. He might have been twelve and thirteen at the time, but he said in his own words he 'loved' doing these things to me because of 'the look on my face' while he did them. He used to smile from ear to ear and laugh during every assault. He manipulated me by saying that I wanted these things to happen, which made me feel so much shame and led to me staying quiet because I was scared others would blame me. When people tell you they have been sexually assaulted or abused please let them know you believe and support them. No matter who the perpetrator was or their motives the the long term psychological consequences on the victim can be just the same.
These incidents cannot be swept under the rug! The perpetrator most likely need Help! They’ve witness something inappropriate or something inappropriate is being done to them. There are also some kids who are just born predators. I witnessed things and it has affected me to this day, even though it was happening to someone else! I told someone and they did NOTHING about it. What I saw wasn’t discussed with me nor was I told that what I saw was wrong! I just knew within myself that it had to be wrong!!! Some parents, had no business having kids! Lack of supervision, limited privacy and resources for multiple kids is a recipe for disaster!
Thank you for talking about this. When I was about 8yrs old, I was sexually abused by my brothers friend, who was at least 4yrs older than me, while my brother was there. It is very hard to think about and process what happened, my mind is foggy around the situation and what happened, but I know it happened multiple times. I am 18yrs old now, and only just begun to talk about and process what happened. I was diagnosed with PTSD because of it. I don't know what to think, it is still hard to not blame myself for what happened, I know it wasn't my fault, but I still feel responsible. But thank you for talking about this subject, it is something that I have had trouble finding more information on that is relevant to my situation.
I know what you mean about knowing it wasn't your fault but still feeling responsible! That's hard to get past, but working with a therapist who is a trauma specialist can really help. Stuff like EMDR or somatic experiencing can get your feelings more in line with your adult understanding. I'm sorry that happened to you!
this is a very old comment but i still want to share my two cents. i was also sexually assaulted by my brothers friend while my brother and his other friends were in the room around that same age and my brother & co. were in high school. i’m 20yrs old now and the memories are still blurry too but i also have that gut feeling it happened more than once even if i only remember one snippet. the memory was repressed until i was 13 and my gf at the time told me about how her friend had been in a strange almost sexual situation with one of her brothers, and i guess it just opened the floodgates. It’s a very strange feeling to know other people were there and didn’t do shit. part of me thinks my family knows about it because i have that feeling that i was told to stop hanging out with the group as a kid. i feel rlly guilty abt that. my brother is probably one of the nicest people i know with a strong moral compass, but he’s still friends with that guy. it rlly makes me question whether any of it was real. anyways. sorry for over sharing, i just wanted to let u know ur not alone. it’s really scary, especially when you’re left with foggy memories and sick feelings in ur belly and the dread of knowing at least one person was there that could’ve stopped it and if it really happened why didn’t they? very hard to trust yourself and the ppl around u, especially if it’s family a/o happened at home. personally i was getting emdr therapy treatment for a while, it’s very very intense but it’s def an option & i just wanted to share that in case u didn’t know it existed (i hadn’t). wishing you all the love. thank you for sharing this piece of yourself, it’s nice (in a morbid way lol) to know i’m not alone in such a specific form of csa. xx
Thank you for touching on this subject Kati. Being a survivor of child on child sexual, mental and physical abuse myself it's good to have this information available to others. Also, I don't know if you been through any of this yourself (God I hope not), if not then I want thank you again, for going over this dark and painful subject. I'm sure it wasn't easy at all reading over the information on this topic. More so for people that's gone through something similar. But they say "knowledge is power" and learning everything you can about it should help, to overcome it.
Thank you for making this video. So much that has happened makes more sense to me now and I feel like my experience is valid. My heart goes out to anyone who has ever experienced any type of abuse. Keep strong ♡
I was sexually assaulted by two 8 year-old girls when I was 4. I was injured and told my parents, who helped me to wash away the toxins. I felt supported by their concern at the time. I began to be sexually assaulted at around 12 by neighborhood boys who knocked me down and jumped on me, who threatened to knock me out and have their way with me, forced entry into my mouth and vagina, and the list goes on. As my body developed, adult perpetrators were added to the line up. I never told my parents. I was ashamed and afraid I'd be grounded. After listening to you, I made a connection about why. When I was 7 my mother caught me playing doctor in my room with a 6 year old neighbor boy and went ballistic. She threw him out and never let me play with him again. This topic became taboo. I was on my own with no support after that. Therapy? That was out of the question. When I was 14 I began having Autistic meltdowns and displayed some very strange self-destructive behaviors. My parents discussed whether I should see a psychiatrist but decided against it, because they thought I might have to be institutionalized. I became hypersexual by 15, seeking love and acceptance, which I wasn't getting from my parents, and ended up pregnant at 19 without ever understanding how it happened. I told my parents I was going to marry the father, and they let me even though they would have preferred me to abort their grandson. That ended up being a disaster as I was continually raped for 15 years until he divorced me to find a better sex partner. At 68, I've finally given up trying to find love in sex, and I live alone, still wishing there was someone for me. Looking back, I see how so much trauma could have been averted if I had been able to talk to my parents and trust them to support me. They were just not able. I even wished they had taken me to a psychiatrist, risking that I might be taken from them. I'll never know how that might have turned out.
Oh my god. I had to read the video title multiple times to check that your were talking about "child on child" sexual abuse. Thank you. It was SO VALIDATING to hear your voice say that child on child sexual abuse IS abuse.
Thank you for making this! There’s such little content covering this topic online. Most of what i’ve found has been from professionals for other professionals, not so much for those who have experienced child on child abuse. Thank you for making this information more accessible!!
I clicked on this video so fast. I was sexually abused at 15 and 16, weeks apart, by a boy I went to school with. At the time, I told my mother, who was more concerned with her privacy than my safety. She wanted it kept quiet, and discouraged me from speaking out. I have realised how wrong this was. There is also a grey area, because the boy was in my school year but I never knew him well enough to know his birthday. If he was 16 when I was still 15, this makes a significant difference to how serious his attacks were, in the eyes of the law (UK law, in this case). I paused to comment, but shall watch now. Thank you, Kati. 🥰
This was eating me up so much because I just recently got flashbacks of the abuse that I inflicted at 9 years old to a very close family member. It only happened once. And I have never thought about it again and it literally never remembered the details after that. I didn’t mean to cause harm I was exposed to some inappropriate content by classmates in the 4th grade and I was curious about that stuff.I didn’t know what was wrong or right. My parents never liked to talk about sex and stuff because we were too young. But having technology unfortunately exposed me to it anyway. I have flashbacks very little detail but I just feel so guilty and upset. I am now 20 and I often have suicidal thoughts related to what I did that day as a child to that child. The hypersexuality that developed is so real. I still feel ashamed everytime I feel it. I can’t help but hate myself for what I did back then even though I had no knowledge of what I was really doing at the time or remembrance up until recently. I am making an appointment with a therapist to get this off my chest but I really don’t know how to go about starting that conversation. I feel so hopeless and like I will disappoint everyone in my family because of what it caused. This is the most help and closure I have seen since my extensive research on this traumatic event. This was traumatic realizing what I had done. But also what it did to the person I abused. They are so close to me and I just know that the mental health they are experiencing was probably due to me. And I don’t know how to open up about that I just want to help them. I can’t rest until I do but I just feel like I need to speak to someone first. Thank you for your video and if you could reach out to me for some support of any kind that would be great.
Thank you for talking about this, especially the age difference. I told myself for 40 years that it wasn’t “that bad” or abuse because I was 4 years older than the person who did this to me (I was 12, he was 8). This is very empowering. Thank you. ❤
This was a hard one to watch but well laid out and informative. For me, in my experience, I feel like I have been dragging my shame and guilt over what happened for the majority of my life. I've tried to tell myself that worse has happened to others and that i just need to get over it. At the same time, it's still a secret I hold on to.
Thank you so so much Kati! 💕 What you just described was my experience! My cousin lived with us at age 14, unbeknownst to me at the time that the reason he was there was because he was smoking weed at his school and was suspended from there. My single parent uncle had to work and couldn't supervise him. I was 10 at the time. My brother was 12. He slept in my brother's room. One night, he kept calling out my name from the other room. Unfortunately, my single mother had an open door policy with rooms even when sleeping, so I couldn't shut my door. My mother was watching TV at the time and I knew she'd lose it if she heard either of us talking. That's how he lured me into that room because I wanted to know why he kept calling out to me. During the abuse, I was able to make enough noise to rouse my brother without alerting my mother so that I was able to leave the room. I was in total shock. It is weirdly comforting to know that others here went through similar things. I still secretly get angry about my family and how they dismissed me so flippantly, allowing my cousin to get away with it and thinking it wasn't real or it was me just trying to cause trouble/get attention. He was a guest in our home and he should have behaved himself. He was not a victim and he was old enough to know what he was doing. He abused me and violated my trust. I have struggled in every romantic relationship I've ever had with intimacy issues and this is precisely why. I went from extremes of unhealthy, degrading, abusive sexual behaviour to complete celibacy, and I'm completely celibate now because sex brings up far too much emotional pain for me. My family just don't care. It's too inconvenient for them to do so.
My therapist told me about directional arousal, where your trauma causes arousal later on in your life. My therapist said it better, but it explained to me why certain things I thought I should find abhorrent I was being drawn too. Now I understand it it makes my life feel healthier. Being told about directional arousal I found to be a very important factor in my healing. Still healing but getting there.
I needed this. I needed to hear it all. I've been able to heal from my trauma, thankfully, but always thought that I was the only one who was abused by someone so young and that it was extremely rare. And that it couldn't really be abuse. I didn't even know of the term child on child sexual abuse. That's just wrong. It should be out there. Thank you for speaking about this topic, Kati.
This helps me a lot, he was 10 and I was 6. He had knocked down my self esteem over the course of around a year, he them built up my trust buy giving me gifts and being nice. He then used my want for any kind of positive attention and friends to abuse me telling my that we wouldn’t be friends if we didn’t do what he wanted, I was ashamed and disgusted with myself for so long and I didn’t tell anyone until late 2021. It’s been 10 years but it still affects me so much, my parents tried to tell me recently that he didn’t groom me and that he was probably just curious. I as a 16 year old had to explain to two adults how it was assault. I wish more people knew about cocsa…
Ugh, I am so sorry your parents didn’t understand. But I am proud of you for standing up for yourself. That was amazing work. I hope you can process the abuse with a good trauma therapist. 💜
I wish someone would have said this to me and taken me to a therapist right away, but I had/have to fight my way through all alone. :( thank you so much kati...
I wish that too. I also had to cope with it alone as a kid; even though adults knew what happened nobody got me any help. That is so hard! I hope you are able to find some support now, like I have. It feels better to be taken seriously and given support, even though it is later than we would like. You’re not alone!
Could you do a video going more in depth into the process of helping a child perpetrator who is also a victim works through those two different sides of their abuse history?
Hope nobody misunderstands me, but it's so nice to see so many men speaking out in the comments here. It really helps destigmatize this, and all of you who open up (women, too. But especially men) are doing great for yourself and others! Very brave :)
Thank you for speaking up about this. I feel as though I've dealt with it - through therapy and treatment - but now as a dad I am a bit paranoid about my 2 sons experiencing it. One is in kindergarten and one starts preschool next year. How does an adult victim keep from projecting or otherwise hampering their own children's development? I also was raised in a sexually repressed, evangelical household in the south, so sex positivity is kind of a new thing for me, too, but my wife and I want to keep our kids as safe as they can be and free to truly grow into themselves.
Well, you have to teach them about their private parts and explain to them what that means… I also feel like sometimes parents don’t explain to their kids that they shouldn’t touch other kids privates.
Adding to Ana I would also go heavy on consent. Stress consent not just in a sexual contact, but any physical contact. Letting a child have agency in choosing what physical touch they engage in, and teaching them that other people also want this same agency, at least *sounds* like it would be a good and major step, and, coming from a repressed evangelical houshold myself, I know how sorely lacking that teaching was. I was constantly expected to touch adults and to let them touch me through church, family, etc. and not being able to choose for myself if I wanted that contact really kept me blind throughout my teen years and early 20's as to what consent actually is. Furthermore, Cliff, I would stress the importance of not only telling your children explicitly that they can come to you with problems that they might be scared to, but practice earnestly *not* having an overblown reaction when they do so. If you explode in anger because your child comes to tell you that they broke a glass or something, they're going to learn that they need to hide things that upset you or they will be in trouble. I know sadly from firsthand experience how much being afraid of my parents allowed one parent to abuse me safely and I never had even a single thought that I should tell an adult - either my other parent or a teacher or anyone, because all avenues led back to being punished for what I felt was my implicit involvement in something I didn't want. Building up a culture of trust within your family, where your children feel safe enough with you that they can share upsetting things with you without being immediately punished, is going to help so much in so many areas of their life. It just so happens that having that sort of honest communication with your children is exactly what you want happening should they fall victim to an abuser, child or not. You might not be able to control all the variables that lead to a crime taking place, but you can absolutely control the environment that best fosters the avoidance of such crime and should one happen, the means to end it sooner rather than later.
Yes, so hard to deal w pain and shame of what you know deep inside and at times viscerally what happened to you and that caused you to do just what you said - make sense of what happened by trying to explore w others. And yes, that thing about “enjoying” something before you are really mature enough to handle it. Only God Almighty will be able to break this open for me 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 - such a block. Thanks for sharing Katie 💞👊
I am shocked watching this because I just remembered I’ve had sexual interactions with girls before, and I might have been abused and the abuser. I think I had an earlier exposer to the internet and that led me to searching for explicit things, and even going on chats. I grew up repressing my hypersexuality, thinking it was only shameful. And now it makes sense that child on child abuse is something that harmed me, and I never thought about it like this. Thank you for the video.
I was 6 when it happened. The police told my parents not to put me into therapy because it would traumatize me talking about it. Me not talking about ended up becoming traumatized.
I was 6 yrs old. Just lost my sister. My father an abusive alcoholic. Everybody withdrew. A boy, 6 1/2 yrs older than me, manipulated me by starting it all with hugs. I craved loved. As I became older, I knew it was wrong, but it was too late, Things went to far with things I did not understand. He molested me for 6 yrs. I was 12 and he was over 18 the last time he touched me. I’ve always blamed myself.
Ive been struggling with this recently. My abuse happened over 20 years ago. Ny whole family has become deceased in the last 5 years including my abusive older brother. He went first. Then my mom and finally my dad about a year ago...my mother didnt believe me when i went to her as a child. It was never discussed and i found out after she died she never told my dad. When i did tell my dad it was after he was deep into dementia so he didnt believe me and forgot basically immediately afterwards. I spent the last 2 years of his life telling me how much he missed his son. His beautiful first born. The one who could do no wrong. Nevermind the fact that he abused me from 2 years to 8 years old when he was 8 years older than me...and was a miserable aggressive violent drug abuser who also attacked my mother repeatedly over these last 30 years. I needed to hear this today. Thanks kati
I was 6 or 7; he was two years older than me. I never called it abuse because I did nothing to stop it and complied, even though I knew it was wrong. After all, we were hiding from adults. It only happened once, but that was enough for the guilt to torture me all my childhood and adulthood: I wish it had not happened; I wish I had run away, but I didn't, and the fact that instead, I participated killed me. I was so ashamed of what I'd done. I never blamed him or considered it abuse because he was a child too, and I allowed it. Thank you for the Informative video. I'm working on forgiving myself, and it helped me understand that it was abuse and that my emotions are valid; it's okay for me to be freed from the guilt. I hope he heals, too, because what we did as children had many adverse effects on my life, but I'm closing the door. As an adult, I was in disbelief when I discovered my grandma had caught us and informed my parents and his, but they never spoke to us about it. I recalled all the pain, hurt, and confusion I felt and no one helped me deal with it. I thought no one knew. I understand that they probably thought this was the best way to deal with it. I never blamed my cousin, especially the older I grew up because maybe he was abused by someone, which caused his actions. Nevertheless, one day my aunt brought up the conversation and told me, "Forgive him; you were both young," I was angry because I felt like my hurt was downplayed. I never hated him or held a grudge against him in the first place.
I cannot believe people are making a big deal about this Kids are kids It's human nature Everybody feel sexual Since your babies There's nothing wrong Especially if it's 2 kids I mean come on Have you heard doctors Play doctor Do playing doctors for hundreds and hundreds of years I mean what's the big deal It's human nature and curiosity
It really breaks my heart seeing so many people in these comments saying they relate to this. i'm so sorry to everyone who has experienced cocsa or any type of csa for that matter. what happened to you was not your fault and you are NOT dirty for it. and to the people who were the perpetrators of cocsa that feels immense guilt now, i'm glad you at least feel remorse and now know how it was bad. and im sorry for the abuse you went through that taught you to do it to other children. if you are able to, you can apologize to the people affected. i hope you all can heal from this.
This is such a good topic! I have loved ones that feel their trauma responses shouldn’t be so intense because it was a sibling and not a primary attachment figure like a parent. Ugh! In some ways this type of abuse may be worse! It is sooo much more confusing and difficult to process, especially if the parents have a failure to protect.
Everything you said to DO, my family did the opposite. So the results of not taking the advice you are giving is spot on. PTSD from something that happened at 5yrs old and I'm 33 now and feel all the pain and confusion I felt then. It's like my mind took a mental recording of the moments and whether I have the unwanted flashbacks or not, it is still in my mind and still affects every single part of my life. Work, friendships, relations with my partner of 11yrs even now...not found any counselors I trust.
This is a ,God.send. i know this from experience. And I felt shame and self hatred, so decided to help those who have been abused. I was the abuser because I was abused by a teenager, so it changed me physiologically, so I became an abuser as a child. However, instead of hating myself any more, I am going to turn it around and help others , it's my way to repent and do right my injustice that I had ignorantly done in childhood
i cried while watching this, because i am both a victim and was a perpetrator, so here goes my story, i'm gonna start by saying why it happened and how, i was 6 years old when i was abused by the grand parent of the victim that i abused, i can't remember how many times it happened because i can't remember half of my childhood, so okay it happened, then i had a step mother and she abused me physically, mentally and emotionally as well, by the time i was 12 years old, i began to abuse sexually the kid that i was talking about, it happened a couple of times, but then i felt like it was really wrong so i stopped, it's been 10 years since it happened i am an adult now while she's beggining to be an teenager, she's 12 years old, and i know that she's gonna struggle soon and i'm so angry at myself and i just can't ever forgive myself, and i don't really care about me, i care about her healing and being well and maybe one day to forgive me, i want to spend my whole life to make amends to her and to help her heal, i just don't know how to do it, or when to start, my family also is closed minded and they are not open to situations like this one, so what should i do? my heart is breaking for her, she didn't deserve what happened to her....
Oh, you didn't deserved what happened to you either... I am so sorry. You were reproducing something that you couldn't understand. It's a really tough situation, but I hope both of you can heal.
Thank you for speaking on this issue!! I was four and my abuser was eleven. He made me touch him not vice versa which has forced me to live under a lot of shame and fear that it was my fault. Thank you for shedding light on this difficult topic.
I’m so happy you made a video about this, it happened to me in high school and because we were not adults I didn’t accept it was abuse. It still affects me today as an adult but I’m glad people are being taught about it rather then thinking it doesn’t happen….
I was adopted into a family of three biological of my adoptive mother. My older adoptive brother sexually abused me. And for awhile I was so scared to tell anyone. When I confided in my adoptive mother she said he was curious and that maybe, because I was so empathetic, I was taking on someone else’s trauma as my own. Nobody really talks about sibling abuse but it’s something that needs to be talked about.
As someone that was abused and became abuser to my brother thank you for this video it is so hard i dont now why i started i know should of never happened now and i struggle with that guilt everytime my brother says why did i do it my brother and i are not close anymore and i understand the hatred he has towards me i should of never did it telling others that you did owning up that you were at fault for the action is a major part of the healing process. I have come to terms that my actions have consequences i probably will have a rocky relationship with my brother if i do ever again have brother bond with him its probably gone forever. I have come to terms told my close circle what happened to.myself and what i did why i continued it for years i do not know but i know now im.never going hurt some one like that anymore becausing seeing your brother with that hatred hurts he has drawn boundaries and im respecting them. Im just glad now every one nows i did it its out there and thats important in healing for yourself as both the abuser and the abused
my brother abused me a few times growing up. i never told due to shame and fear of him hurting me. that was 30 years ago. we don't have a relationship anymore, which sucks because I love my niece and nephew. it likely explains why I don't like when people touch me or i get jumpy when someone is close. kinda killed dating for me.
Worked for two years with kids who had done, among other things, child on child SA. I have a little girl now and I can't unlearn that every new friend may be one who will replicate predator behaviors. It's hard for me to trust them, but I am trying very hard to teach my daughter body autonomy with grown ups and even with other kids and trusting that she will say no and come to me if it does happen. 🙄
This happened to my daughter while riding the school bus. She was sexually abused by the young boy sitting next to her. I'm not sure how long it was going on for because she is super secretive about the whole thing. She was only 4 years old when the abuse started and the kid is not much older than her. I finally caught onto to what was happening and removed her from the school. I can't hold the kid accountable because she won't make a clear and detailed confession about the abuse, so the school is not able to proceed with any reprocausions against the abuser child
That’s so frustrating! Especially since the boy probably needs help, he is probably being mistreated too, to cause this. But maybe focus on what you can do - taking your daughter to a therapist will help her, regardless of what happens with the other child.
I rescued my daughters from their monster of a father when they were 2 and 4 years old. I never knew how extensive their abuse was until they shared a couple of experiences with me spontaneously a couple weeks after we left him. Then over the years I would catch them in behaviors that disturbed me and also where they were acting things out on each other which grieved me to no end. I used to scour the internet looking for what to do because counselors wouldn't get straight to the point with them, which never brought about change. They are both in general counseling but I'd really like for them to get a good understanding that they should not carry any bad feelings or immature behaviors into their lives. I want them to have the hope that they can be released and have a good life, which I've been teaching them forever. Thank you for the video and all the honest comments. Peace and love.
Thank you!!! I was 7 when my sister started to sexually abuse me. It last for over 3 years. It was the only time she didn't hate me. I so desperately wanted a real sister. When it stopped my mind blocked it till I was in high school but she convinced my parents that it was only once. So they payed for 2 therapy sessions with a Christian therapist to convince to forgive and forget what she did. I spent years extremely sexually active, popping pills and getting black out drunk. I even ended up in an abusive marriage that almost took my life. (I'm free now 9 years) I finally started working through my traumas and opened up about this. My parents have pretty much cut me out. My sister stopped talking to me because I wouldn't leave my kids alone with her. I'm still struggling with this all. I'm so happy there is more information out there about this. Thank you
Good decision about not leaving your kids alone with your sister. You sound like a good person who has been taken advantage of by many people in your life. You are stronger than you know. 💕🙏
you did the right thing to not leave your kids with her and she should be understandful and because she got angry and stopped talking to you because of said fact its a warning sign from her so you made a excellent choice and you are a good father protect them and make sure nobody does anything to them and teach them about the evils of sexual predators and what not to do ever in life.
Thank you Kati ❤️ I’ve spent so much time trying to think if they knew what they were doing especially at that age, almost as a way to justify their behavior, but you reminded me it doesn’t matter because it still affected me ❤️
I’ve always felt invalidated because I thought it wasn’t abuse. But it was. I was 7 and he was 14. The shame that come along with this is immense. Thanks for making this video. You don’t know how validated I feel watching this.
My abuse was done by a family member who is only a year older then me and I finally told my dad and I begged him not to leave me alone with him and he laughed it off and continued leaving me with him But also my dads an alcoholic and didn’t care to listen but I lived through it and I got into therapy and I’m a stronger person and I will never ignore my kid if I’m told he doesn’t want to be alone with someone
I am so, so sorry all that happened to you. I am glad you have done a lot of healing, but I wish your dad had helped you when you asked. What a terrible thing to do, laugh off his child’s courageously reaching out for help. You deserved so much more love and protection. 💜
God thank you so much for spreading awareness. When I was in elementary school me and my best friend played doctor and it ended up with him telling me to show him my lower parts and touch his thing. It felt so disgusting and I never agreed(it happened anyways), and he told me I had to do it or he would stop being my friend, I think he was joking but after something so shocking I wasn't thinking straight anymore. We have been friends until the end, when he trasferred somewhere else, and I dont see him anymore. I'm 13 and this experience affected me to this very year. everytime my (amazing) friends would even just pet my head, mg mind would illogically connect sexual attraction to it and think they might ask to do more. While typing I also remembered that it happened again, this time a classmate,still a friend, who touched me multiple times in class and I thought he wanted me to be his best friend / girlfriend or something, while he actually laughted and teased me for it. I accepted it as I didn't actually wanted to be with him, I just tought after doing something so personal (and I remember being lowkey scared and he was doing weird sounds and faces, this during lessons) it was kind of a consequence, and a need for me to mean something to him. I've been very isolated in these last years since the epidemic started (some stuff got bad) and I'm having a hard time, shamefully craving touch and love. I recently also saw a video about COCSA, and the comments where full of people saying it can't happen because there's no "inferiority complex" as the individuals are both children or atleast young. But that's exactly why it gets so tricky. And and some point of this video you talked about how adults don't know what to do, and that's so true. When my best friend was on the top of me in his mom's bedroom and our (mine and his) moms opened the door and saw the scene and laughted. My heart goes out to everybody who experienced SA of any kind, you did nothing wrong and you deserve to be heard. You're not dirty and the way you are feeling is very real.
I was abused for years by a classmate and then he assaulted me when we were 10. I was afraid he was going to kill my cat, so I agreed to him pulling down my shorts. He'd just been so pissed off, and it was shocking that he was already hard. 5 years before that, he tried initiating group sex within our kindergarten class after leading us into the forest. I was hypersexual starting at age 8. He took advantage of me for a while after my parents split and my dad tricked my mom into giving him custody. I'm 28 now, and have schizoaffective disorder, and c-ptsd from daily psychological abuse at school and a highly stressful home life, suffering neglect from my dad who treated me more like an animal he only had to feed, clothe, and have some form of roof over. He did not teach me life skills, empathy, defense, consent, and never stood up for me. Some employee in a market laughed behind me, pulled on my hoodie, and tried rubbing my shoulders when I was 9 and when I broke away I told my dad and quietly pointed the man out, he just gave the guy an excuse like "I think he has special needs." I think I continuously suffered abuse in some form or another from ages 2 to 27. I finally found a therapy program designed for schizoaffectives, and I hope that will help with getting rid of the crap from my past. It has been an incredibly lonely life.
Thank you for talking about this topic. Not many people talk about it but it does happen. Another male friend in my neighborhood molested me many times for years starting when I was 6-7 years old. He was only 8-9 years old. He obviously learned those behaviors somewhere else. But I’ve struggled deeply with guilt and shame because he was also a child and maybe I could have done something different to prevent it from happening. But as I’ve healed over the years I’ve realized what little control I had because I was a child and have slowly healed from the shame and guilt from all these years. Hold onto hope.
This video might have saved my life. I'm 32 . I've been sober 2 years now. Been an alcoholic since I was 20. Never could connect with people very well. Scared of everything. Had a hard time making decisions to benefit my life. Just went to work and drank for years. I got sober and all of the gross shit I did growing up came back. I've been thinking I'm just a hopeless disgusting person. That I should die. It's like the part of my brain that looked into the future was broken my entire life. I was afraid of the future. Now I still am. But my story is just like others. My parents were very angry and violent with each other. I know that affected me. I had a boy and a girl suggest sexual things to me before I was 11. The girl was very sexual with me for about a year. I didn't tell anyone. Then I ended up doing similar things. I know I left a mark on my cousin. I felt that it was harmless. Truly. I never had any bad intentions. I wasn't a violent kid. Now my mind won't stop nitpicking every detail of how terrible I was. I'm crying trying to handle all this. I'm just trying to hold on to this small feeling of hope right now.
@@estescollins7756 i did same thing when I was 13 or 14 year old. At that time i don't know anything about sex. I only like to rub my private part with others body. And i try to did this with a little girl. Thank God that my mom comes and i stopped. I am ready to go to jail, what should I do to heal myself
I was abused by adults and other children. I kind of just blocked it out. Honestly, I hadn’t thought about it much until I watched this. You’re making me realize I really need some therapy 😅 (I’ve never ever been to therapy. I’m kind of scared of it lol)
I have to add, psichosis too, I experienced such fear and trauma that my thoughts were leading me to halutinations... And i didn't know that until i was diagnosed years after.. Thank you Katie, you are one of my favorite terapists in the world. 💯💖 Much love, stay safe
Thank you so much for this. I'm 14 and I used to think it was my fault. I won't go into detail because I'm not ready, but I was sexually abused by my peers. When I was younger and during my entirety of middle school. I was in tears this whole video, I honestly feel a little worse thinking about it in this perspective. But I know it's not my fault but I feel like I shouldve done more to make both of our lives better.
Thank you, Kati. This helped me to accept what happened to me was abuse. For years, I always downplayed it like how you explained, “it wasn’t that bad” because it wasn’t that often and wasn’t prolonged and just happened a few times. But then, I would think “I think it was abuse” because I couldn’t stand to remember because of the icky feeling I’d remember having and that I still get when I remember it. Thank you for helping me finally accept it as abuse. I’ll no longer doubt and wonder “should I just forget it.” Now I know I should talk to someone about it. Thank you 🙏🏽
Of course Asa, I am so glad that I could help :) What you went through was abuse, and getting help is the best way to work towards healing :) xoxo
I second this. I had NO idea this was abuse . Never talked to anyone about this bc it was just so icky and shameful and thought , bc we were so young it wasn’t “bad” . I thought it was exploring? This is the first time I’ve even heard this was a thing. Everything in my life probably stemmed from this . Thanks Kati . Wow.
I'm like you. I am really struggling to understand what exactly happened and what to call it. I thought I was doing something bad but I believe it was being abused. I'm glad to hear and read I'm not alone. This totally sucks. I'm glad I am in trauma therapy and able to begin processing through this whole thing.
@@Katimorton Why does it seems that child sexual abuse on other children is so hard to accept? Why do we call it something else? Do we just not know? I never told anyone what was going on when I was young but I did act out by shoplifting. Thank you for making this video. I can't imagine the ick you had to read through to learn about this subject. I feel icky and I'm 40+ yeas from the events that were abusive.
I use to repeat to myself "it didn't happen" or "you can't focus on it" when I was in high school. Even though I repressed it, my grades suffered. I remeber thinking "what the fuck am I at school for? I need help! Not a fucking math test!" But had to ignore that because my mom wouldn't take this as a legitimate excuse at the time and part of me believed it wasn't that bad. I was so very wrong and I've been pay the price of delayed treatment for years now. Moral of my story? Don't wait for help. The pain will only fester.
I wish more people understood molestation is sexually assault . I hate when people say oh it's not like they raped you, could of been worse . Well it still is worse and feels horrible. Grouping/ touching someone in private parts is sexual assault no matter how you try to spin it.
Yes thank you for clearing that up I myself was never what people call full on raped but was indeed sexually assaulted both just as violating
100%
Yes this. They make it seem like it's no big deal when it is
I was sexually assaulted as a child and what I struggled for years when I was young was the idea because I wasn’t raped it wasn’t so bad but when people started to really say that actually no it was sexual abuse and why I finally was able to stop blaming myself for something that was out of my control thanks for saying this Kendra you really help people just by saying what you’ve said
Me to, I was forced by my dad.
This was a really rough one. I feel very alone and ashamed in admitting that not only was I abused, but I turned that abuse on other kids. I was curious about the things that had been introduced to me and wanted to understand them, I never felt they were bad because they were "games." But I found other kids to push it onto, and for a very long time didn't want to acknowledge that it was abuse. I did become hypersexual as a way to cope, but through therapy that has gone away and I've gotten to a healthy place with that. But I do still think about those other kids, even though it's been almost 30 years by this point. I'm scared to have possibly caused irreparable damage to anyone, and have no idea how to deal with that.
I am so sorry, and I know that shame is such a huge part of this. From what I read and heard from other members of our community who were affected by COCSA, working in therapy to process that shame, grieve, and forgive that child self who didn't know and was just trying to make sense of it all is our path towards healing. It can get better, I promise. xoxoxo
@Happy_Grateful_Soul you can try to support them through life with whatever they do and be there for them like if their out of gas be there for support and give them money to get home if you can do anything to help do it and check up on them show love and support.
This happened with me I’m gonna talk with my therapist about it today
I wish you a horrible life 🙏🏾
If you can apologize to everyone you hurt, i believe it will help them heal. It doesn't make it disappear but it helps. Also if you can offer them something monetarily to assist in their life.
child on child SA, child on child when the abuser is younger than the survivor.... these are so important and I wanted someone to speak about it for so long thank you for making me feel less alone 😭
Of course! I am so sorry you had to go through that, and I hope this video was helpful :) xoxo
Me too
I wish there were more support groups for people like us . I just joined a support group no hear back yet.
Mee too
@katimorton would you be able to do another video on this subject? Going into even further details of the effects of cocsa, on how to tell your family or others that you've experienced it and how to be ready for comments like 'they were just a child too?' Or feeling like you're making a big deal of it.
And I'd be really interested in looking at abusive dynamics where there isn't obvious perceived force involved at the time, but the kid on the receiving end believe they were an equal in it and must have asked for it... in my experience, I was pressured into sexual activity (where the aim was to sexually stimulate me/ him) between aged 9-11... he wasn't significantly older than me. But he was pubescent and I wasn't. So the longer it went on the more serious it got. It ended up in sex. But when I've brought this up before, people have said that if we were both comfortable with it, consented, maybe it wasn't abusive. I wasn't comfortable with it and it made me feel sick. But I didn't know how to say no. So I believed as we were both kids we must have been equal in our consent.
Would you be up for going into anther part 2 video of these types of issues? We really really appreciate your videos, they are very validating.
This is why as soon as my child is old enough, I'll explain how we shouldn't touch others or let them touch us. It's important that they know it's not just a game.
Thisss!! Also, please emphasize to your kids the importance of protecting themselves from other children too, even family. I was abused for many years by a close cousin, my parents always advocated not to let anyone touch us but always mentioned adults/teens. Never the children they trusted me with on the weekends. We were only two years apart. As a child, I always felt it was a secret game, nothing like the creeps I should be “scared” of. I haven’t told my parents or family yet, I have felt massive guilt knowing they did their best to protect us and I still was vulnerable for 6 years.
I explained this to my children an it still happened
@@akaliawynn2286me too
Sad thing is some victims are 3 years old....
As a male, I got abused by a friend I met in the 4th grade..for 3 years straight! 22 years after the abuse, I’m getting vivid horrific flashbacks!
I am so sorry to hear that . I hope you heal from it. You're extremely brave to talk about it . ❤
I am so sorry. I support you and I can recognize so clearly how brave you are to talk about it. Your experience is valid.
I have trauma from a grooming incident from a girl who slept around as a child. I had transmitted lifelong diseases that effects my body dysphoria and health. I mentally suffered and i have mental health issues.
You are brave and you can work through this.
I was sexually abused for 5 years by a young teenage girl then by a teenage boy then a man when I was a young teen!
I felt powerless to resist as it happened over and over. I understand now that I had been groomed and manipulated into abuse and the when it reared its ugly head I simply said oh ok…. And went along either way what was asked and complied or performed!!
It affected my life in ways that were very violent and destructive! I grew worked out got massive and promised myself nobody will ever force me into anything or manipulate me sexually again!!
It caused me to need deep anger therapy. I complied with court orders and ignored the root cause
I’m now in my late 50’s and reading working talking and have ADMITTED OUT LOAD I WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED
I will win
You are brave and you can work through this.
I was sexually abused for 5 years by a young teenage girl then by a teenage boy then a man when I was a young teen!
I felt powerless to resist as it happened over and over. I understand now that I had been groomed and manipulated into abuse and the when it reared its ugly head I simply said oh ok…. And went along either way what was asked and complied or performed!!
It affected my life in ways that were very violent and destructive! I grew worked out got massive and promised myself nobody will ever force me into anything or manipulate me sexually again!!
It caused me to need deep anger therapy. I complied with court orders and ignored the root cause
I’m now in my late 50’s and reading working talking and have ADMITTED OUT LOAD I WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED
I will win
I was a 1 time perpetrator of child on child sexual abuse. After what I did, I felt immense guilt that has followed me my entire life. This is the first time that I've seen a video where I feel like someone is actually shedding light on the reality of it. parents MUST do a better job. Any time I told adults about what happened, they just acted as if it was nothing and it was just kids being exploratory. To the contrary, at age 5 I was fully abusing and sexually gratified by situation in which I had sexual power over 2 other little girls. I've never spoken of this openly, but this video is incredibly important for people to understand this as a real issue and its so healing to finally hear an adult talk about this to my inner child.
Oof, I feel like this was the apology I never received & you have no idea how healing this is to me. I truly appreciate your comment❤
❤
I wonder how people will view you if you share this with them. I'm gonna be honest, if you admitted this to me, I would be extremely wary with you.
@@gogetyourgun1490 You should be wary of everyone, but this is why you don't go for a drink of water from a dry well. Meaning I'm not going to go to my dentist if I need my mental health checked... Wrong person to go to about my problems.
@@gogetyourgun1490They were a child. A CHILD. Both people in cocsa are victims. How shameful of you.
Needed to hear this .. for so many years I have not found anything on this topic. It made me feel completely alone in what I went through. I blocked it out of my mind for my whole life and it all came up this year and I feel like I’m reliving the situation again because it was never talked about but it affects me daily. Thank you for sharing this video… I needed to hear all of it.
Same.
I am so glad the video was helpful!! You are not alone :) xoxo
Same
Sending you love ❤️💯
Same.
Thank. You. I was 8 and my abuser was 10. Twice he confined and abused me after spending weeks manipulating and grooming me. He involved other kids in the neighbourhood. I told. I was told to shut up and forget it because my mom played cards each week with his mother and it was “just little boys being curious.” I’m so happy that this attitude is changing and that there are voices out there for kiddos today - because little me sure could have used an advocate 29 years ago. ❤️
No matter how old you get, you still have that inner child in you that needs to be heard and validated, so you could heal.
I am so sorry you went through that
I was 15 and was groomed by my 16yo neighbor who had been my "best friend" since I was 13. He shared me with another neighbor (15yo), and occasionally other friends. He pretended that he didn't know what he was doing and gaslighted and guilt tripped me all the time. A year later I found out that he was a really good liar and faked all his "feelings".
@@eleah2256 wow faked all his feelings now that doesn't deserve forgiveness or love back he can die for that im sorry for everything he has done to you along with his friend and he doesn't need to hang out with you or be apart of your life ever again so for him just take him to jail and let him face every consequence imaginable and focus on your healing and your boyfriend who will protect you and your real friends who will not include him in their life and be there for you while he is ostrasized from their lives along with yours forever no matter what he does, because to understand what you have done and the reason why this still makes people angry is a big thing and its unforgivable because look at josh duggar molested 4 underaged sisters and a babysitter people forgave him and he grew up and started downloading thousands of child porn and which he was caught and only got 2 charges.
Hi, my son is 5 and his abuser was 10 … similar to yours I am going to get him into therapy do you think that would have helped you and do you have any advice for a mother going through something similar I feel so guilty
i was a victim of cocsa in kindergarten. i remember when i first told a (now ex) close friend about it, they told me it was invalid because we were both kids. it made me feel invalidated and that i was just being overdramatic. but this video helps me thank you💕
As an adult, I’ve only recently admitted to myself that I endured sexual abuse as a child. It messed me up in many ways, from feeling inhibited or even unsure of my preferences, and scared. This just made me realize how badly I need therapy to process this for good, because I still feel so much guilt and disgust over it. What’s worse too is that I even passed on the abuse to another child my same age when it abruptly ended and I wasn’t sure why. It’s taken me so long to come to terms with it even to the point that I could listen to this video. Thank you for speaking out about it because I feel like many don’t.
My heart truly goes to anybody who suffers from child on child sexual abuse or any form of sexual abuse as a child for that matter. I myself have not been a victim of this kind of abuse at the hands of anyone so I don't really know what it feels like exactly, but I do have enough empathy to know that it certainly isn't a great feeling. Great job covering this topic Kati. I'm sure a great deal of sexual abuse victims are very thankful that you are providing a helpful resource on your platform to help cope with their trauma.
What makes it harder is that we won't process it for a very long time because we suppressed it or won't validate the abuse
@@jessicavanhorn8679 exactly 💯
Or any abuse or trauma period
I was like 6 when a kid in my grade touched me inappropriately. I told my mom a year later about it and then she told the school. The teacher pulled me and that student out of class had him apologize to me. I felt traumatized by having to receive his apology and then move on like nothing ever happened to me. I felt like it wasn't abuse, because of how to school handled it. I later found out that kid was abused by his uncle. Thanks for posting this .
Literal same.
You are valid. I am so sorry to hear that.
I am glad your mother took it serious. ❤
How are you now this isn't an excuse for it but ye I agree he didn't realize how bad what he done was
She was younger than me by 2 months and I've always told myself it doesn't count because she never went under my clothes. It took me 10 years to tell my mum and she still doesn't think it's a big deal. I've been in traffic accidents and my PTSD fladhbacks comes from her, not being hit in the head by vehicles. This video makes me feel like I can breathe again.
❤️❤️💖💕🇮🇳
What do you mean not being hit in the head by vehicles
@tarmarajohnson2659 because OP said he/she had been in a car crash so typically PTSD could show up after something like that. Instead, their abuser comes as PTSD and not crashing vehicles. 2 different traumas/events but one is clearly worse.
@@tarmarajohnson2659 I had flashbacks of CSA, not of being hit by a bus. Nowadays I'm doing much better, I am divorced from a man who was also abusing me physically during the time I wrote this and was living with daily panic attacks. I also had flashbacks when I was around 21 of a cow being killed in a slaughterhouse- like the image would intrude into my brain as I was walking places and play on a reel. I used to get very tactile flashbacks- I could see and feel hands on me. Now not so much- sad memories and daydreaming but not my brain getting hijacked by memories and emotions all that often.
@@梨-i5l this isn't addressed to me but I'm happy you are in a much better place. Keep going 🫶🏼
You really don't shy away from any topic, and I applaud your courage and perseverance.
This lady is awesome!
I am a 61 year old female that just disclosed for the first time ever to my therapist today. My abuser was younger male than I. He is my god brother.I never thought of it as abuse until now and to my understanding he was abused by an older woman. I have interpersonal difficulties my entire life. I had 5 children with abusive men. As well as my mother was emotionally and physically abusive to me and was married to an alcoholic. Although she was married to the same man for 20 years she had extramarital affairs throughout. My brother and I are fathered by her extra marital partners. It took until today for me to face that degrading experience. Thankyou for this platform to express the impact of this issue
I am so sorry that you experienced that. I am happy that you were able to disclose what you have been through. Wishing you healing.
After reading “the body keeps the score,” my understanding was that children very often reenact their traumas, and that is where this behavior stems from. I feel like while you touched on it, it would’ve been prudent to discuss that further, bc the two situations are so interconnected
I disagree with that it is a normal behavior for adolescence to masturbate. This is not normal, and that is probably a result of them being exposed to sexual obscene images, raped, molested wether they recall it or have blocked the memory of such trauma or it could be generational patterns that need to be broken from that child’s life.
So, it is like one hand she is right, but on the other hand is promoting sexual immorality.
Not sure what the speaker’s real agenda is and I do not trust her intention fully.
I’m reeling. Every single one of these points hit way too close to home. I think I need to find a therapist. And I definitely didn’t realize how much I needed to hear some of the things that were said. When my mom found out what was happening, I was 7 and I can still so clearly see and feel the disgust anger and shame on her face. And now I can see how much it affected our relationship and my relationship with myself. It stripped me of my confidence and power and trust in adults and I can now see how I never trusted adults again, never opened up to my mom again. I’m 31 and i can still see how this affects me every single day. How have I never heard anyone else talk about this? Thank you so much for this video.
"it fucks with your head because they're hurt too, but you're hurt". This resonates with me so much, because I've been abused by 2 guys who were 15 and 16 like me, but actually even more because my mother was abusive to me because she struggled with financial issues and PTSD because my father abused her and left us. I tend to make myself crazy by thinking about how this actually applies to many perpetrators, possibly everyone? It's crazy making to feel sorry for someone or to love someone and to feel anger towards them too. I feel like I developed the "cliche BPD" push and pull thing in all my relationships.
I hear you. I was like 6 and my cousin was 8 and she was horribly abused by her father and wanted to “show” me some things. She would get aggressive and then she would apologize at times but because we’re so young and being boy/girl there was some small pleasure in it. The first time she did was at a sleep over at my house. Her and my 2 sis were close friends but she decided she wanted to sleep in my room late that night. She came in quietly closed the door and stood there, mind u my room was dark so I saw her clearly just standing there for like a minute I saw her clearly because I was already in the dark but I bet she didn’t notice I was staring right back at her. She had an enthusiast smile while I was terrified as to wtf is goin on. we both got in trouble even though I was intimidated by her and she caused it. I remember she called my house phone back in the late 90s and told me that it was fun and she wanted to do it again and I told her it wasn’t right. When I slept at her house to hangout with her bros she would be excited to see me.Even to this day Glassdoor knobs give me ptsd i hate em, I hate the memories behind them. Her father is a sick man and unfortunately she wasn’t the only sibling and it led her being in physically abusive relationships and heavy drugs caused her mind to not be there anymore she’s completely dependent on her mother! Isn’t it sad?!
I couldn't believe the title of this video when it appeared on my feed! Thank you Kati for brining attention to this you have no idea how much this means to me. And your spot on when you said how much it "f**ks with your head". Not being able to find information about it has made me believe that it is a very rare event which has made me feel isolated in my experience. So many people struggle to comprehend it which has been the most challenging aspect of it. I would love to be apart of research and understanding in this area as I am very passionate about transforming my experience into something that can help and speak to others
Yes!!! We need more research and understanding for sure!! If there are ever certain issues surrounding this that you want me to address, please let me know. xoxo
Same!
For real. I think this type of abuse needs to be taught about in schools
@@Katimorton Can you discuss this from the perspective of the abused child who abused other children? I know what they did was wrong and doesn’t excuse their behavior. Is it possible for them to develop PTSD as a result of not only the sexual abuse done to them, but as they get older realizing the severe psychological trauma they caused to the other child? Not understanding how they could do something so horrific. How can they recover from not only what was done to them, but the severe guilt and shame of what they did to the other child.
@@Katimorton the way adults dump on us when caught, like fiveish and being threatened accused of harming them damaging them etc.
So much anger no possability to explane because of the adults anger .
I wish more parents would speak on in home sexual abuse between siblings
Yes I will agree with you too . Is too hard to speak about it but is so real . Still a taboo for so many people but still happens in our days please talk anoitit so our kids in next generation protect themselves of this sad and horrible experience.
fr it's apparently the most common form of sexual abuse that happens to children. crazy how undertalked about it is when everyone talks about pedohpiles etc.
@@skatergrl13 yes and because it’s kept quiet, the children don’t get help and live with shame, guilt, and become true offenders and/victims themselves
Thank you for talking about this, Kati 💗 As someone who was in a similar situation, people believe you when they think it's an adult who hurt you. I even doubted my own PTSD diagnosis for a really long time. I've healed a lot and I understand the circumstances but it doesn't change how it has profoundly affected the way I am today. Thank you, again 💗
Yes I feel this!!
Of course! I am so glad it was helpful and validating. COCSA can be so difficult to come to terms with, and I am so glad that you have healed a lot and gotten help for it :) xoxo
This is where my stutter stemmed from. I was about 7-8 and my abuser was a year or two younger than me. It only happened once, but I felt the shame and guilt everyday for literally years. It’s only in the last year that I’ve learnt than I’m not alone and I have spoken about it.
Dearest Ellen, when I read your comment i burst into tears! I never connected my stutter to the trauma of being molested by a brother. He was molested by our grandmother at a young age so the generational trauma is far reaching. It’s healing for me, at 55 years of age, to type it, speak my truth, as i finally unleash my voice that has been stifled and suppressed for decades. Thank you so much for your courage to leave a comment. Your words have inspired and empowered me in my soul healing journey. Sending you much love and light. ❤🙏🏽🌀💫
@@halaniboshard4345 Thank you for your kind words Halani! I wish you well in your healing journey ❤️
Sorry I'm so sorry that we suffer like this :(
@@halaniboshard4345 I was sexually abused by my sister and finally confronted her about it after 40 years now about to be 44 it happened to me and I blocked for many years. I suffering on the inside from this and now she doesn't want to talk to me anymore.
@@reginasmith6276 It truly messed my head up so bad. My cousin was 6 months older but we were like best friends. It was in 1979 or maybe 1980, not quite sure but after we found out it was "wrong" we did not speak of it again and I actually forgot all about it. It remained like that for 6 more years until I was 14 when a movie on TV caused me to have a sudden flashback of memory. I turned the TV off and went straight to bed, hoping I might somehow forget what I had just remembered during the night. I still remember my thoughts as I climbed the stairs,.. " If I can't forget this I'm going to have to kill myself". That was the very first time I ever thought about suicide. Unfortunately it wasn't going to be the last. 38 years later I'm still suffering the consequences of that mistake. I can't bear to be in the same room as my cousin but I have never told him why. I doubt he even remembers and probably thinks I have just become "odd" for no reason.
Hey Kati, thanks for making this video. I felt like I needed this, after grappling with it for a long time. But I wasn't the victim - I was the abuser. I've known since early childhood that what I did was wrong, felt the shame and regret, knew that I had hurt them - now, almost 15 years later, I've never forgotten, never let go of remembering how badly I hurt them. I know that my own (physical and mental, not sexual) abuse explained it, but didn't excuse it - and I've grappled with wondering whether I should seek them out to make amends, or if that would just be self-serving - or whether my not doing so is out of a desire to not cause greater harm... or just my own cowardice. I don't want to make it about me - it isn't about me, it's about them, and whatever I can do to help them heal.
Perhaps this is rambly, with no direct purpose. And I know I need to see a therapist for it - I've been trying, but I don't feel comfortable in virtual care. But I really, really needed to get this off my chest. I really needed to see this video today.
Well done for owning up to this. Your comment is amazing to hear for someone who was abused. I feel as if I am the one who has received an apology. 🌷
Hey man, great that you opened up about it. I'd say it's also about you, since it seems to affect you as well. Don't search for the victims of your abuse, but definitely, definitely look for therapy. Here in my country they already offer in-person therapy again, but I am from Germany. Either way, even if it's virtual, you need someone to talk these things through!
I can't speak for anyone else but I personally would appreciate it so so much if my abuser reached out to me and apologized for what happened
@@violymhi yes I agree.
I am so glad you found this video helpful and I am so sorry that you were abused as well. I think it's best if we get into our own therapy and work to heal from our own trauma. If our victim wants to seek us out to get their own closure or to confront us or whatever, they can do that, but I don't believe that's a decision that we should try and make for them. Just being available and open to it is enough. And I totally get it that virtual care isn't ideal, so maybe see if you can find someone doing in person sessions (I know many people are starting to again). xoxo
I'm glad you spoke on this. I think their is a stigma that this type of abuse isn't as traumatic as if you were abused by an adult. I was a victim and it was so traumatic I still can't recall all that happened but praise the Lord he was with me and still is. Prayers out to all on here that's experienced this.
Thank you for this❤ i was abused for 3 years when i joined reception by two boys the same age as me. The teachers even SAW it happening and no one did anything. Im traumatised and every time i tell someone they just say its kids exploring or boys being boys. I was never the same after what happned and to chalk it down to that is so damaging i became hypersexual as a kid bc i couldnt process what happened to me as a four year old. My parents saw and were oblivious. Ive told my therapist about this and she said its not abuse since he was so young and he didnt know. Like it makes me feel so bad.
Thank you, Katie. I’ve never seen anyone else speak on this. My family is still trying to keep this secret in the dark, but I’ve stepped into the light & am hopeful others will too. I’ve wanted nothing more than to share about intergenerational abuse & trauma, because there are so many insidious ways it will effect your family if you don’t speak about it. My parent didn’t handle it well because they had their own unprocessed trauma, but they have acknowledged this and have made amends with me in recent years. I masked my pain and pretended I was okay because I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. I grew up with such a distorted view on relationships. I was sexually active at 14 with my first boyfriend, and I didn’t realize I was hyper sexual. I thought that I was doing what normal people did in relationships…except I didn’t realize I was still a child. My shame led me to not feeling my emotions, and I started using drugs as a teen to self-medicate. I entered recovery in 2008, thankfully. But at 35, I am still working on healing myself. I do not believe my cousin was responsible for their actions. It was abuse, but they were too young to understand. We thought we were playing. They were mimicking what was done to them. It damn near cost them their life too because of how traumatized they ended up becoming. No one spoke up for years. So they were also abused by an adult for years. When authorities did intervene, they were not put into treatment - they were punished. This confused them. They were emotionally and behaviorally stunted. Their regression was so severe that they developed tics and bed wetting while older than age 10. They were in unhealthy relationships that were sexually active way too young, like myself. They also turned to drugs and got arrested too. They have turned their life around now. I know this because we have talked about this. I should talk to them again. I would never blame them. I blame the adult. I have my suspicions but might never know who it was, as odd as that might sound. Could have been a parent, another cousin, or someone totally unrelated to my family. But I know that inter generational trauma does exist in my family, and most of us won’t talk about it. I got tired of self-destructing and found my voice at age 23 when I found recovery. But like I said, 13 years later and I’m still healing. You can heal too. The important part is remembering that they took nothing from you. Life happened as it was to happen. Painful things happen to everyone, resilient people turn that pain into a power to help others. Don’t let me fool you, there will be lots of suffering until you hone your superpower. But you are resilient. We are resilient.
Thank you. I was 5ish and my abuser was the same age. I’ve had so many therapists swipe this under the rug and I just found one that’s actually helpful.
This topic definitely needs to come up whenever I get a therapist
So recently I told my girlfriend about me when I was 14 my cousin started touching me and I agreed to go along with it. This happened 3 more times but I never thought I should blame myself because I never wanted to do it. I always felt so guilty while doing it even disgusted and when I told her about this I started feeling like a predator or something supper crazy because she was like how were you willing to want to do something like that with your cousin. After that I started to really worry that I was a horrible person that liked what I did💔 thanks to this video at around 4:50 of this video it describes exactly how I felt. I never wanted to do it. So I beg for help how to help recover from this and most importantly how to help my girlfriend heal from this so she doesn’t see me as this disgusting person 💔🙏🏽
watching this hurt so much but it was much needed. thank you, kati. i wish little me had known all that.
xoxoxo
same :(💜
Went 12 years after without therapy. Thank you for making this video. It was comforting to see you say that its important to get your child into therapy right away. I always thought that was what would have been best for me. But my parents never knew.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for discussing this. You're right, it does f**k with your head and there's nowhere to place blame. The fact that adults shy away from discussing this topic, or dismiss it, perpetuates further shame. Children can sense its not an acceptable topic to talk about. We need to find ways to talk about this uncomfortable topic so that our kids feel they can approach us, and go on to develop healthy physical boundaries. Early intervention might also help children who have been abused/turned abuser themselves and need additional support.
The lack of support/recognition of this topic in the past has led to decades of emotional damage within my own close circle. I wish for a different future for the next generation of adults.
The topic that I always wanted talk about, thank you katie for bringing this up! I myself was in that situation but now Alhamdulillah I've healed from my past trauma. And I really feel the need to spread awareness with this kind of sexual abuse to help more people out there
Elhamdulillah
Sadly the right help is hard to find… ending up with a therapist who downplays it… glad there are people like you!
Thank you for talking about this. I no one ever has talked about it with me, acknowledged the pain of this.
Thank you for this video. When I remembered having been molested by my brother (32 years after it happened), I heard myself repeatedly saying, “it’s no big deal” but now I know it absolutely was a huge deal… enough that my conscious mind buried it for decades…and enough that it took me 12 years of processing it all until I was finally able to share my story in my memoir (The Invisible Key: Unlocking the Mystery of My Chronic Pain).
Ugh. I was abused as a child and I turned around and preyed on other children before I was old enough to realize that I was hurting people. I really wish I knew how to make amends for my wrongdoing because I know how much my CSA scarred me and truly damaged me throughout my whole being, and I hate that I even have to try to live knowing I may have caused other people to feel that way, too. I don't know what the right thing is to do. Do I try to reach out to my victims and own it and offer my heartfelt apologies? Do I serve them best by not contacting them, which could potentially re-traumatize them? If so, how do I work through the deep seated guilt I feel for what I have done, which contributes to my severely negative self perception - the idea that I am just as much a monster as the father who mistreated me, if not worse because I should have realized, having gone through it, exactly what pain I was causing while I was doing it and not years after the fact? On many days when I am confronting my guilt, it feels best that I should consider suicide - just the fact that I have a life seems to go against society's harsh view against people who prey on children. Why should I be worth any different treatment just because I was a child, too? If lots of people are abused and do not take out their abuse on others, then surely something is still wrong with me, right? My abuse on others is the worst part of my life, the thing I would most wish to undo, because no child deserved what happened, and I can't forgive myself for having an incomplete understanding of the harm I was causing. It would feel like justice if someone were to murder me.
❤️❤️❤️
Check below a similar comment by TempuraFriedJoystick for a reply from Kati that might help you too. But listen, you are not a monster. I have felt like a monster too, I totally get you. Trauma therapy will help you heal the guilt and shame. It is important to remember that when we were kids we did not have the mental ability yet to process the abuse we sustained and repeating the behavior with others was part of how we were trying to understand it or make it seem normal and OK. Meanwhile, your father, a full adult who knew what he was doing, decided to abuse you for his own sick reasons. That is a huge difference. Yes, we might well have caused damage with our actions. That feels awful to live with. But the intent was not to harm. It is like the difference between hitting someone with a car because we were distracted by someone telling us shocking news while we are driving vs running over someone on purpose.
We can resolve that if the person we hurt ever comes to us and wants to talk about it we will apologize fully and without making excuses, offer to help in any way we can in their healing, and only give explanations if they are asked for. But we can also understand that we were not morally culpable in the same way as someone like your father is.
Please don’t hurt yourself or put yourself in harm’s way. You are a valuable person and you deserve to heal. This can get better as we work through it with a good trauma therapist.
@@estescollins7756 yes I saw that thank you, I agree it is better to wait to see if they contact us, I'm just not sure they can and wish I could unobtrusively give them that opening somehow without traumatizing them. I would like them to see how much I hurt for them. I would like to know if there is anything at all I can do to them to make it better for them. I can't imagine anything can if they feel the way about me that I feel about my parents. I'm just so stuck because I can't find my way out of my own pain about how my caretakers could do such awful things to me, and complicating it all is this idea that I'm no more deserving of love or forgiveness than they are because I turned around and victimized other innocents. Thank you for your kind words. I wish I knew how to make myself believe the nice things you've said about me having value. I wish I had never been born.
hey ive been traumatized and I’ve no doubt traumatized others too. i was hurting and i hurt others. and im still ashamed.
first of all, don’t reach out to them. you’re not going to ever get the closure you need from them. it’s gonna come from yourself. you gotta learn to show self compassion.
you were a child.
you were hurt.
you PHYSICALLY couldn’t have known any better. and the adults around who PHYSICALLY could failed you.
i know this won’t do much. even i still suffer from my own shame. the closure you seek comes from acceptance of yourself-good and bad. not trying to make their pain better. we’ve all been the villain in someone’s story you know?
I finally see a comment from the other side. I want you to know I LOVE YOU and I don’t even know you. I deal with so much shame ans guilt daily. I always shut off the side of my brain that was abused by others. I tell myself I knew better and it’s my fault they did that to me. But to those I hurt I torture myself everyday and it hangs over me. Jesus is the only way to help us. ❤❤❤❤❤ I felt Jesus tellin me he wanted me to make a video about the abuse and I couldn’t do it. I felt him helpin me form the desire to make it but I told him I would rather me a porn star than to share that shame of what I did. It’s FU@#ING HARD TO DEAL WITH THIS EVERYDAY. Especially If you see the victims or abusers daily. I am not fully on the other side of healing my pain but if you ever wanna talk I will gladly be here for you. You are not alone. You are loved and you are important. Pray to Jesus for help and for the pain. Sometimes the shame is greater than we can bare but he is the only one who knows the better way.
Thank you so much for covering this often unspoken about issue. I was abused by my step brother when I was 3 years old. And I always ended up invalidating everything that had happened because he himself was being exposed to things he should never have been exposed to. Bringing awareness to this topic is something we as a society need to start doing.
I was cocsa'd since I can remember my childhood almost daily until i was 13. You saying that it can result in depression ,anxiety and bpd hit so hard, because that's exactly what I am diagnosed with today as an adult. Talking with children about these things is indeed very important. Looking back, I myself would hate if anyone brought it up to me, but it would be so helpful thinking about it now.
I am so glad you're covering this with accessible language and clear points. This topic is so often ignored when cases of CSA pop up in mainstream media and people automatically place the roles of predator on someone that may also be a victim.
This all came as a shock to me when I worked at a mental health facility for victims of CSA. I wrongly assumed all the children there were victims and was shocked to learn that many of them were in the program because they were caught abusing other children.
CSA is so complicated and uncomfortable to learn about, but you did an excellent job of explaining some of the complexities that exist.
God I needed to hear all of this... I was sexually abused by two different kids my age and my guilt about the situation was often a tool they used against me to keep me quiet about it. When this all came to light when I got older I wasn't taken seriously. My Uncle called it just kids being curious and it always infuriated me and pushed me further away from everyone around me. My parent's still allowed those kids around me despite it all and I felt so alone. I have always been scared admitting the age of my abusers to people because of the response I got from people around me who were supposed to protect and support me.,.. This is the first time I have felt validated in my experiences.... Thank you so much for this video... I am sure it will help SO MANY people like myself and educate others on this topic.
It means so much to me knowing I am not alone. I am 26 and just now facing what happened. I have experienced many traumas aside from this even into my adult relationships. I recently started declining with my mental health and sought help. This and other things have been coming up.
Thank you for making a video about this. I know from experience that child on child sexual assault is rarely taken seriously. I was repeatedly and at times violently sexually abused by another boy when I was twelve and thirteen years. He was the same age as me and it all happened at school to the point I had to move to another one. I spoke to my Mother about it recently and she out and out told me to stop calling it sexual abuse because he would just have been 'showing off' and 'wouldn't have thought what he was doing was 'that bad' and 'wouldn't have gotten sexual pleasure' from it. He might have been twelve and thirteen at the time, but he said in his own words he 'loved' doing these things to me because of 'the look on my face' while he did them. He used to smile from ear to ear and laugh during every assault. He manipulated me by saying that I wanted these things to happen, which made me feel so much shame and led to me staying quiet because I was scared others would blame me. When people tell you they have been sexually assaulted or abused please let them know you believe and support them. No matter who the perpetrator was or their motives the the long term psychological consequences on the victim can be just the same.
are you serious im sorry for everything he has done he deserves every consequence imaginable.
These incidents cannot be swept under the rug! The perpetrator most likely need Help! They’ve witness something inappropriate or something inappropriate is being done to them. There are also some kids who are just born predators. I witnessed things and it has affected me to this day, even though it was happening to someone else! I told someone and they did NOTHING about it. What I saw wasn’t discussed with me nor was I told that what I saw was wrong! I just knew within myself that it had to be wrong!!! Some parents, had no business having kids! Lack of supervision, limited privacy and resources for multiple kids is a recipe for disaster!
Thank you for talking about this topic, one of the things people don't even think about kids molesting other kids due to being sexually assaulted to .
Thank you for talking about this.
When I was about 8yrs old, I was sexually abused by my brothers friend, who was at least 4yrs older than me, while my brother was there. It is very hard to think about and process what happened, my mind is foggy around the situation and what happened, but I know it happened multiple times. I am 18yrs old now, and only just begun to talk about and process what happened. I was diagnosed with PTSD because of it. I don't know what to think, it is still hard to not blame myself for what happened, I know it wasn't my fault, but I still feel responsible. But thank you for talking about this subject, it is something that I have had trouble finding more information on that is relevant to my situation.
I know what you mean about knowing it wasn't your fault but still feeling responsible! That's hard to get past, but working with a therapist who is a trauma specialist can really help. Stuff like EMDR or somatic experiencing can get your feelings more in line with your adult understanding. I'm sorry that happened to you!
I hope you find someone who listens to you about this. Go to someone trained for this.
this is a very old comment but i still want to share my two cents. i was also sexually assaulted by my brothers friend while my brother and his other friends were in the room around that same age and my brother & co. were in high school. i’m 20yrs old now and the memories are still blurry too but i also have that gut feeling it happened more than once even if i only remember one snippet. the memory was repressed until i was 13 and my gf at the time told me about how her friend had been in a strange almost sexual situation with one of her brothers, and i guess it just opened the floodgates. It’s a very strange feeling to know other people were there and didn’t do shit. part of me thinks my family knows about it because i have that feeling that i was told to stop hanging out with the group as a kid. i feel rlly guilty abt that. my brother is probably one of the nicest people i know with a strong moral compass, but he’s still friends with that guy. it rlly makes me question whether any of it was real. anyways. sorry for over sharing, i just wanted to let u know ur not alone. it’s really scary, especially when you’re left with foggy memories and sick feelings in ur belly and the dread of knowing at least one person was there that could’ve stopped it and if it really happened why didn’t they? very hard to trust yourself and the ppl around u, especially if it’s family a/o happened at home. personally i was getting emdr therapy treatment for a while, it’s very very intense but it’s def an option & i just wanted to share that in case u didn’t know it existed (i hadn’t). wishing you all the love. thank you for sharing this piece of yourself, it’s nice (in a morbid way lol) to know i’m not alone in such a specific form of csa. xx
Thank you for touching on this subject Kati. Being a survivor of child on child sexual, mental and physical abuse myself it's good to have this information available to others. Also, I don't know if you been through any of this yourself (God I hope not), if not then I want thank you again, for going over this dark and painful subject. I'm sure it wasn't easy at all reading over the information on this topic. More so for people that's gone through something similar. But they say "knowledge is power" and learning everything you can about it should help, to overcome it.
For years this happened to me by my own step brother my entire childhood. It has horrible effects on me and how I see them.
You’re not alone. I hope you have gotten some help to process it!
It happened to me too. I’m still very angry about it. Especially because my parents didn’t/don’t care.
Thank you for making this video. So much that has happened makes more sense to me now and I feel like my experience is valid. My heart goes out to anyone who has ever experienced any type of abuse. Keep strong ♡
I was sexually assaulted by two 8 year-old girls when I was 4. I was injured and told my parents, who helped me to wash away the toxins. I felt supported by their concern at the time. I began to be sexually assaulted at around 12 by neighborhood boys who knocked me down and jumped on me, who threatened to knock me out and have their way with me, forced entry into my mouth and vagina, and the list goes on. As my body developed, adult perpetrators were added to the line up. I never told my parents. I was ashamed and afraid I'd be grounded. After listening to you, I made a connection about why. When I was 7 my mother caught me playing doctor in my room with a 6 year old neighbor boy and went ballistic. She threw him out and never let me play with him again. This topic became taboo. I was on my own with no support after that.
Therapy? That was out of the question. When I was 14 I began having Autistic meltdowns and displayed some very strange self-destructive behaviors. My parents discussed whether I should see a psychiatrist but decided against it, because they thought I might have to be institutionalized.
I became hypersexual by 15, seeking love and acceptance, which I wasn't getting from my parents, and ended up pregnant at 19 without ever understanding how it happened. I told my parents I was going to marry the father, and they let me even though they would have preferred me to abort their grandson. That ended up being a disaster as I was continually raped for 15 years until he divorced me to find a better sex partner. At 68, I've finally given up trying to find love in sex, and I live alone, still wishing there was someone for me.
Looking back, I see how so much trauma could have been averted if I had been able to talk to my parents and trust them to support me. They were just not able. I even wished they had taken me to a psychiatrist, risking that I might be taken from them. I'll never know how that might have turned out.
Everything you mention here reminds me of myself, except I don't really remember anything that happened to me.
So sorry you went through that, I am praying for you. My relationship with Jesus Christ keeps me anchored and I know that He loves me.
I never even thought about this for ages. I think as a kid i just tired to forget.
I'll talk to my therapist.
Oh my god.
I had to read the video title multiple times to check that your were talking about "child on child" sexual abuse.
Thank you. It was SO VALIDATING to hear your voice say that child on child sexual abuse IS abuse.
❤️
It really was
Thank you for making this! There’s such little content covering this topic online. Most of what i’ve found has been from professionals for other professionals, not so much for those who have experienced child on child abuse. Thank you for making this information more accessible!!
I clicked on this video so fast. I was sexually abused at 15 and 16, weeks apart, by a boy I went to school with. At the time, I told my mother, who was more concerned with her privacy than my safety. She wanted it kept quiet, and discouraged me from speaking out. I have realised how wrong this was. There is also a grey area, because the boy was in my school year but I never knew him well enough to know his birthday. If he was 16 when I was still 15, this makes a significant difference to how serious his attacks were, in the eyes of the law (UK law, in this case). I paused to comment, but shall watch now. Thank you, Kati. 🥰
This was eating me up so much because I just recently got flashbacks of the abuse that I inflicted at 9 years old to a very close family member. It only happened once. And I have never thought about it again and it literally never remembered the details after that. I didn’t mean to cause harm I was exposed to some inappropriate content by classmates in the 4th grade and I was curious about that stuff.I didn’t know what was wrong or right. My parents never liked to talk about sex and stuff because we were too young. But having technology unfortunately exposed me to it anyway. I have flashbacks very little detail but I just feel so guilty and upset. I am now 20 and I often have suicidal thoughts related to what I did that day as a child to that child. The hypersexuality that developed is so real. I still feel ashamed everytime I feel it. I can’t help but hate myself for what I did back then even though I had no knowledge of what I was really doing at the time or remembrance up until recently. I am making an appointment with a therapist to get this off my chest but I really don’t know how to go about starting that conversation. I feel so hopeless and like I will disappoint everyone in my family because of what it caused. This is the most help and closure I have seen since my extensive research on this traumatic event. This was traumatic realizing what I had done. But also what it did to the person I abused. They are so close to me and I just know that the mental health they are experiencing was probably due to me. And I don’t know how to open up about that I just want to help them. I can’t rest until I do but I just feel like I need to speak to someone first.
Thank you for your video and if you could reach out to me for some support of any kind that would be great.
Thank you for talking about this, especially the age difference. I told myself for 40 years that it wasn’t “that bad” or abuse because I was 4 years older than the person who did this to me (I was 12, he was 8). This is very empowering. Thank you. ❤
This was a hard one to watch but well laid out and informative. For me, in my experience, I feel like I have been dragging my shame and guilt over what happened for the majority of my life. I've tried to tell myself that worse has happened to others and that i just need to get over it. At the same time, it's still a secret I hold on to.
Thank you so so much Kati! 💕 What you just described was my experience! My cousin lived with us at age 14, unbeknownst to me at the time that the reason he was there was because he was smoking weed at his school and was suspended from there. My single parent uncle had to work and couldn't supervise him. I was 10 at the time. My brother was 12. He slept in my brother's room. One night, he kept calling out my name from the other room. Unfortunately, my single mother had an open door policy with rooms even when sleeping, so I couldn't shut my door. My mother was watching TV at the time and I knew she'd lose it if she heard either of us talking. That's how he lured me into that room because I wanted to know why he kept calling out to me. During the abuse, I was able to make enough noise to rouse my brother without alerting my mother so that I was able to leave the room. I was in total shock.
It is weirdly comforting to know that others here went through similar things. I still secretly get angry about my family and how they dismissed me so flippantly, allowing my cousin to get away with it and thinking it wasn't real or it was me just trying to cause trouble/get attention. He was a guest in our home and he should have behaved himself. He was not a victim and he was old enough to know what he was doing. He abused me and violated my trust. I have struggled in every romantic relationship I've ever had with intimacy issues and this is precisely why. I went from extremes of unhealthy, degrading, abusive sexual behaviour to complete celibacy, and I'm completely celibate now because sex brings up far too much emotional pain for me. My family just don't care. It's too inconvenient for them to do so.
My therapist told me about directional arousal, where your trauma causes arousal later on in your life. My therapist said it better, but it explained to me why certain things I thought I should find abhorrent I was being drawn too. Now I understand it it makes my life feel healthier. Being told about directional arousal I found to be a very important factor in my healing. Still healing but getting there.
I needed this. I needed to hear it all. I've been able to heal from my trauma, thankfully, but always thought that I was the only one who was abused by someone so young and that it was extremely rare. And that it couldn't really be abuse. I didn't even know of the term child on child sexual abuse. That's just wrong. It should be out there. Thank you for speaking about this topic, Kati.
what were the ways in which you healed? did you go to therapy at all?
This helps me a lot, he was 10 and I was 6. He had knocked down my self esteem over the course of around a year, he them built up my trust buy giving me gifts and being nice. He then used my want for any kind of positive attention and friends to abuse me telling my that we wouldn’t be friends if we didn’t do what he wanted, I was ashamed and disgusted with myself for so long and I didn’t tell anyone until late 2021. It’s been 10 years but it still affects me so much, my parents tried to tell me recently that he didn’t groom me and that he was probably just curious. I as a 16 year old had to explain to two adults how it was assault. I wish more people knew about cocsa…
Ugh, I am so sorry your parents didn’t understand. But I am proud of you for standing up for yourself. That was amazing work. I hope you can process the abuse with a good trauma therapist. 💜
I wish someone would have said this to me and taken me to a therapist right away, but I had/have to fight my way through all alone. :( thank you so much kati...
I wish that too. I also had to cope with it alone as a kid; even though adults knew what happened nobody got me any help. That is so hard! I hope you are able to find some support now, like I have. It feels better to be taken seriously and given support, even though it is later than we would like. You’re not alone!
Could you do a video going more in depth into the process of helping a child perpetrator who is also a victim works through those two different sides of their abuse history?
Hi! This other video Kati made a few years ago might help: ua-cam.com/video/N2gmrXHRpes/v-deo.html
Hope nobody misunderstands me, but it's so nice to see so many men speaking out in the comments here. It really helps destigmatize this, and all of you who open up (women, too. But especially men) are doing great for yourself and others! Very brave :)
Thank you for speaking up about this. I feel as though I've dealt with it - through therapy and treatment - but now as a dad I am a bit paranoid about my 2 sons experiencing it. One is in kindergarten and one starts preschool next year. How does an adult victim keep from projecting or otherwise hampering their own children's development? I also was raised in a sexually repressed, evangelical household in the south, so sex positivity is kind of a new thing for me, too, but my wife and I want to keep our kids as safe as they can be and free to truly grow into themselves.
Well, you have to teach them about their private parts and explain to them what that means… I also feel like sometimes parents don’t explain to their kids that they shouldn’t touch other kids privates.
Adding to Ana I would also go heavy on consent. Stress consent not just in a sexual contact, but any physical contact. Letting a child have agency in choosing what physical touch they engage in, and teaching them that other people also want this same agency, at least *sounds* like it would be a good and major step, and, coming from a repressed evangelical houshold myself, I know how sorely lacking that teaching was. I was constantly expected to touch adults and to let them touch me through church, family, etc. and not being able to choose for myself if I wanted that contact really kept me blind throughout my teen years and early 20's as to what consent actually is. Furthermore, Cliff, I would stress the importance of not only telling your children explicitly that they can come to you with problems that they might be scared to, but practice earnestly *not* having an overblown reaction when they do so. If you explode in anger because your child comes to tell you that they broke a glass or something, they're going to learn that they need to hide things that upset you or they will be in trouble. I know sadly from firsthand experience how much being afraid of my parents allowed one parent to abuse me safely and I never had even a single thought that I should tell an adult - either my other parent or a teacher or anyone, because all avenues led back to being punished for what I felt was my implicit involvement in something I didn't want. Building up a culture of trust within your family, where your children feel safe enough with you that they can share upsetting things with you without being immediately punished, is going to help so much in so many areas of their life. It just so happens that having that sort of honest communication with your children is exactly what you want happening should they fall victim to an abuser, child or not. You might not be able to control all the variables that lead to a crime taking place, but you can absolutely control the environment that best fosters the avoidance of such crime and should one happen, the means to end it sooner rather than later.
I can’t even begin to explain how this video has helped me.
Thank you Kati
Yes, so hard to deal w pain and shame of what you know deep inside and at times viscerally what happened to you and that caused you to do just what you said - make sense of what happened by trying to explore w others. And yes, that thing about “enjoying” something before you are really mature enough to handle it. Only God Almighty will be able to break this open for me 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 - such a block. Thanks for sharing Katie 💞👊
I am shocked watching this because I just remembered I’ve had sexual interactions with girls before, and I might have been abused and the abuser.
I think I had an earlier exposer to the internet and that led me to searching for explicit things, and even going on chats. I grew up repressing my hypersexuality, thinking it was only shameful. And now it makes sense that child on child abuse is something that harmed me, and I never thought about it like this. Thank you for the video.
I was 6 when it happened. The police told my parents not to put me into therapy because it would traumatize me talking about it. Me not talking about ended up becoming traumatized.
I was 6 yrs old. Just lost my sister. My father an abusive alcoholic. Everybody withdrew. A boy, 6 1/2 yrs older than me, manipulated me by starting it all with hugs. I craved loved. As I became older, I knew it was wrong, but it was too late, Things went to far with things I did not understand. He molested me for 6 yrs. I was 12 and he was over 18 the last time he touched me. I’ve always blamed myself.
Ive been struggling with this recently. My abuse happened over 20 years ago. Ny whole family has become deceased in the last 5 years including my abusive older brother. He went first. Then my mom and finally my dad about a year ago...my mother didnt believe me when i went to her as a child. It was never discussed and i found out after she died she never told my dad. When i did tell my dad it was after he was deep into dementia so he didnt believe me and forgot basically immediately afterwards. I spent the last 2 years of his life telling me how much he missed his son. His beautiful first born. The one who could do no wrong. Nevermind the fact that he abused me from 2 years to 8 years old when he was 8 years older than me...and was a miserable aggressive violent drug abuser who also attacked my mother repeatedly over these last 30 years. I needed to hear this today. Thanks kati
I was 6 or 7; he was two years older than me. I never called it abuse because I did nothing to stop it and complied, even though I knew it was wrong. After all, we were hiding from adults. It only happened once, but that was enough for the guilt to torture me all my childhood and adulthood: I wish it had not happened; I wish I had run away, but I didn't, and the fact that instead, I participated killed me. I was so ashamed of what I'd done. I never blamed him or considered it abuse because he was a child too, and I allowed it. Thank you for the Informative video. I'm working on forgiving myself, and it helped me understand that it was abuse and that my emotions are valid; it's okay for me to be freed from the guilt. I hope he heals, too, because what we did as children had many adverse effects on my life, but I'm closing the door.
As an adult, I was in disbelief when I discovered my grandma had caught us and informed my parents and his, but they never spoke to us about it. I recalled all the pain, hurt, and confusion I felt and no one helped me deal with it. I thought no one knew. I understand that they probably thought this was the best way to deal with it.
I never blamed my cousin, especially the older I grew up because maybe he was abused by someone, which caused his actions. Nevertheless, one day my aunt brought up the conversation and told me, "Forgive him; you were both young," I was angry because I felt like my hurt was downplayed. I never hated him or held a grudge against him in the first place.
I cannot believe people are making a big deal about this Kids are kids It's human nature Everybody feel sexual Since your babies There's nothing wrong Especially if it's 2 kids I mean come on Have you heard doctors Play doctor Do playing doctors for hundreds and hundreds of years I mean what's the big deal It's human nature and curiosity
@@JamesLee-fy4tfPlaying doctor is done consensually between kids, a child molesting or raping another child is not playing doctor.
It really breaks my heart seeing so many people in these comments saying they relate to this. i'm so sorry to everyone who has experienced cocsa or any type of csa for that matter. what happened to you was not your fault and you are NOT dirty for it. and to the people who were the perpetrators of cocsa that feels immense guilt now, i'm glad you at least feel remorse and now know how it was bad. and im sorry for the abuse you went through that taught you to do it to other children. if you are able to, you can apologize to the people affected. i hope you all can heal from this.
This is such a good topic! I have loved ones that feel their trauma responses shouldn’t be so intense because it was a sibling and not a primary attachment figure like a parent. Ugh! In some ways this type of abuse may be worse! It is sooo much more confusing and difficult to process, especially if the parents have a failure to protect.
Everything you said to DO, my family did the opposite. So the results of not taking the advice you are giving is spot on. PTSD from something that happened at 5yrs old and I'm 33 now and feel all the pain and confusion I felt then. It's like my mind took a mental recording of the moments and whether I have the unwanted flashbacks or not, it is still in my mind and still affects every single part of my life. Work, friendships, relations with my partner of 11yrs even now...not found any counselors I trust.
thank you so much for this. Like so so so much. My abuse story has never felt more validated. Your words genuinely have changed my life for the better
This is a ,God.send. i know this from experience. And I felt shame and self hatred, so decided to help those who have been abused. I was the abuser because I was abused by a teenager, so it changed me physiologically, so I became an abuser as a child. However, instead of hating myself any more, I am going to turn it around and help others , it's my way to repent and do right my injustice that I had ignorantly done in childhood
I was a child abused by an older child. 😞 thank you for making this.
I'm sorry that happened to you
Me as well… Unfortunately!!! 😢
i cried while watching this, because i am both a victim and was a perpetrator, so here goes my story, i'm gonna start by saying why it happened and how, i was 6 years old when i was abused by the grand parent of the victim that i abused, i can't remember how many times it happened because i can't remember half of my childhood, so okay it happened, then i had a step mother and she abused me physically, mentally and emotionally as well, by the time i was 12 years old, i began to abuse sexually the kid that i was talking about, it happened a couple of times, but then i felt like it was really wrong so i stopped, it's been 10 years since it happened i am an adult now while she's beggining to be an teenager, she's 12 years old, and i know that she's gonna struggle soon and i'm so angry at myself and i just can't ever forgive myself, and i don't really care about me, i care about her healing and being well and maybe one day to forgive me, i want to spend my whole life to make amends to her and to help her heal, i just don't know how to do it, or when to start, my family also is closed minded and they are not open to situations like this one, so what should i do? my heart is breaking for her, she didn't deserve what happened to her....
Have you tried contacting her and apologizing for what happened?
Oh, you didn't deserved what happened to you either... I am so sorry. You were reproducing something that you couldn't understand. It's a really tough situation, but I hope both of you can heal.
@deloresbreedlove8864same damn it , If we were born to a better parents invronment would it been better?
Thank you so much for bringing this painful subject up. Spesciaily for those voiceless and ignored 💘
Thank you for speaking on this issue!! I was four and my abuser was eleven. He made me touch him not vice versa which has forced me to live under a lot of shame and fear that it was my fault. Thank you for shedding light on this difficult topic.
I’m so happy you made a video about this, it happened to me in high school and because we were not adults I didn’t accept it was abuse. It still affects me today as an adult but I’m glad people are being taught about it rather then thinking it doesn’t happen….
I was adopted into a family of three biological of my adoptive mother. My older adoptive brother sexually abused me. And for awhile I was so scared to tell anyone. When I confided in my adoptive mother she said he was curious and that maybe, because I was so empathetic, I was taking on someone else’s trauma as my own. Nobody really talks about sibling abuse but it’s something that needs to be talked about.
As someone that was abused and became abuser to my brother thank you for this video it is so hard i dont now why i started i know should of never happened now and i struggle with that guilt everytime my brother says why did i do it my brother and i are not close anymore and i understand the hatred he has towards me i should of never did it telling others that you did owning up that you were at fault for the action is a major part of the healing process. I have come to terms that my actions have consequences i probably will have a rocky relationship with my brother if i do ever again have brother bond with him its probably gone forever. I have come to terms told my close circle what happened to.myself and what i did why i continued it for years i do not know but i know now im.never going hurt some one like that anymore becausing seeing your brother with that hatred hurts he has drawn boundaries and im respecting them. Im just glad now every one nows i did it its out there and thats important in healing for yourself as both the abuser and the abused
my brother abused me a few times growing up. i never told due to shame and fear of him hurting me. that was 30 years ago. we don't have a relationship anymore, which sucks because I love my niece and nephew. it likely explains why I don't like when people touch me or i get jumpy when someone is close. kinda killed dating for me.
Worked for two years with kids who had done, among other things, child on child SA. I have a little girl now and I can't unlearn that every new friend may be one who will replicate predator behaviors. It's hard for me to trust them, but I am trying very hard to teach my daughter body autonomy with grown ups and even with other kids and trusting that she will say no and come to me if it does happen. 🙄
This happened to my daughter while riding the school bus. She was sexually abused by the young boy sitting next to her. I'm not sure how long it was going on for because she is super secretive about the whole thing. She was only 4 years old when the abuse started and the kid is not much older than her. I finally caught onto to what was happening and removed her from the school. I can't hold the kid accountable because she won't make a clear and detailed confession about the abuse, so the school is not able to proceed with any reprocausions against the abuser child
That’s so frustrating! Especially since the boy probably needs help, he is probably being mistreated too, to cause this. But maybe focus on what you can do - taking your daughter to a therapist will help her, regardless of what happens with the other child.
I rescued my daughters from their monster of a father when they were 2 and 4 years old. I never knew how extensive their abuse was until they shared a couple of experiences with me spontaneously a couple weeks after we left him. Then over the years I would catch them in behaviors that disturbed me and also where they were acting things out on each other which grieved me to no end. I used to scour the internet looking for what to do because counselors wouldn't get straight to the point with them, which never brought about change. They are both in general counseling but I'd really like for them to get a good understanding that they should not carry any bad feelings or immature behaviors into their lives. I want them to have the hope that they can be released and have a good life, which I've been teaching them forever. Thank you for the video and all the honest comments. Peace and love.
Thank you!!! I was 7 when my sister started to sexually abuse me. It last for over 3 years. It was the only time she didn't hate me. I so desperately wanted a real sister. When it stopped my mind blocked it till I was in high school but she convinced my parents that it was only once. So they payed for 2 therapy sessions with a Christian therapist to convince to forgive and forget what she did. I spent years extremely sexually active, popping pills and getting black out drunk. I even ended up in an abusive marriage that almost took my life. (I'm free now 9 years) I finally started working through my traumas and opened up about this. My parents have pretty much cut me out. My sister stopped talking to me because I wouldn't leave my kids alone with her.
I'm still struggling with this all. I'm so happy there is more information out there about this. Thank you
Good decision about not leaving your kids alone with your sister. You sound like a good person who has been taken advantage of by many people in your life. You are stronger than you know. 💕🙏
If you didn't like it why didn't you tell on her?
@@henryrcrosscross7714 he didin't have the guts to, this fucks with your mind and she probably threatend him.
you did the right thing to not leave your kids with her and she should be understandful and because she got angry and stopped talking to you because of said fact its a warning sign from her so you made a excellent choice and you are a good father protect them and make sure nobody does anything to them and teach them about the evils of sexual predators and what not to do ever in life.
I have many family members that need to watch this video. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you Kati ❤️ I’ve spent so much time trying to think if they knew what they were doing especially at that age, almost as a way to justify their behavior, but you reminded me it doesn’t matter because it still affected me ❤️
I’ve always felt invalidated because I thought it wasn’t abuse. But it was. I was 7 and he was 14. The shame that come along with this is immense. Thanks for making this video. You don’t know how validated I feel watching this.
My abuse was done by a family member who is only a year older then me and I finally told my dad and I begged him not to leave me alone with him and he laughed it off and continued leaving me with him But also my dads an alcoholic and didn’t care to listen but I lived through it and I got into therapy and I’m a stronger person and I will never ignore my kid if I’m told he doesn’t want to be alone with someone
I am so, so sorry all that happened to you. I am glad you have done a lot of healing, but I wish your dad had helped you when you asked. What a terrible thing to do, laugh off his child’s courageously reaching out for help. You deserved so much more love and protection. 💜
God thank you so much for spreading awareness. When I was in elementary school me and my best friend played doctor and it ended up with him telling me to show him my lower parts and touch his thing. It felt so disgusting and I never agreed(it happened anyways), and he told me I had to do it or he would stop being my friend, I think he was joking but after something so shocking I wasn't thinking straight anymore. We have been friends until the end, when he trasferred somewhere else, and I dont see him anymore. I'm 13 and this experience affected me to this very year. everytime my (amazing) friends would even just pet my head, mg mind would illogically connect sexual attraction to it and think they might ask to do more. While typing I also remembered that it happened again, this time a classmate,still a friend, who touched me multiple times in class and I thought he wanted me to be his best friend / girlfriend or something, while he actually laughted and teased me for it. I accepted it as I didn't actually wanted to be with him, I just tought after doing something so personal (and I remember being lowkey scared and he was doing weird sounds and faces, this during lessons) it was kind of a consequence, and a need for me to mean something to him. I've been very isolated in these last years since the epidemic started (some stuff got bad) and I'm having a hard time, shamefully craving touch and love. I recently also saw a video about COCSA, and the comments where full of people saying it can't happen because there's no "inferiority complex" as the individuals are both children or atleast young. But that's exactly why it gets so tricky. And and some point of this video you talked about how adults don't know what to do, and that's so true. When my best friend was on the top of me in his mom's bedroom and our (mine and his) moms opened the door and saw the scene and laughted. My heart goes out to everybody who experienced SA of any kind, you did nothing wrong and you deserve to be heard. You're not dirty and the way you are feeling is very real.
I was abused for years by a classmate and then he assaulted me when we were 10. I was afraid he was going to kill my cat, so I agreed to him pulling down my shorts. He'd just been so pissed off, and it was shocking that he was already hard.
5 years before that, he tried initiating group sex within our kindergarten class after leading us into the forest. I was hypersexual starting at age 8. He took advantage of me for a while after my parents split and my dad tricked my mom into giving him custody.
I'm 28 now, and have schizoaffective disorder, and c-ptsd from daily psychological abuse at school and a highly stressful home life, suffering neglect from my dad who treated me more like an animal he only had to feed, clothe, and have some form of roof over. He did not teach me life skills, empathy, defense, consent, and never stood up for me. Some employee in a market laughed behind me, pulled on my hoodie, and tried rubbing my shoulders when I was 9 and when I broke away I told my dad and quietly pointed the man out, he just gave the guy an excuse like "I think he has special needs."
I think I continuously suffered abuse in some form or another from ages 2 to 27. I finally found a therapy program designed for schizoaffectives, and I hope that will help with getting rid of the crap from my past. It has been an incredibly lonely life.
Thank you for talking about this topic. Not many people talk about it but it does happen. Another male friend in my neighborhood molested me many times for years starting when I was 6-7 years old. He was only 8-9 years old. He obviously learned those behaviors somewhere else. But I’ve struggled deeply with guilt and shame because he was also a child and maybe I could have done something different to prevent it from happening. But as I’ve healed over the years I’ve realized what little control I had because I was a child and have slowly healed from the shame and guilt from all these years. Hold onto hope.
This video might have saved my life.
I'm 32 . I've been sober 2 years now. Been an alcoholic since I was 20. Never could connect with people very well. Scared of everything. Had a hard time making decisions to benefit my life.
Just went to work and drank for years. I got sober and all of the gross shit I did growing up came back.
I've been thinking I'm just a hopeless disgusting person. That I should die. It's like the part of my brain that looked into the future was broken my entire life. I was afraid of the future.
Now I still am.
But my story is just like others. My parents were very angry and violent with each other. I know that affected me. I had a boy and a girl suggest sexual things to me before I was 11.
The girl was very sexual with me for about a year.
I didn't tell anyone. Then I ended up doing similar things.
I know I left a mark on my cousin. I felt that it was harmless. Truly.
I never had any bad intentions. I wasn't a violent kid.
Now my mind won't stop nitpicking every detail of how terrible I was.
I'm crying trying to handle all this.
I'm just trying to hold on to this small feeling of hope right now.
That spark of hope is real. I hope you can bring this to a good trauma therapist and get help with it. You don’t have to keep carrying this alone.
@@estescollins7756 i did same thing when I was 13 or 14 year old. At that time i don't know anything about sex. I only like to rub my private part with others body. And i try to did this with a little girl. Thank God that my mom comes and i stopped.
I am ready to go to jail, what should I do to heal myself
I was abused by adults and other children. I kind of just blocked it out. Honestly, I hadn’t thought about it much until I watched this. You’re making me realize I really need some therapy 😅 (I’ve never ever been to therapy. I’m kind of scared of it lol)
Its normal to be nervous when starting therapy, I was, and Im still going and good so far
Don’t be afraid. I’m so sorry you experienced this ❤️❤️❤️ therapy is tough but worth it!
I have to add, psichosis too, I experienced such fear and trauma that my thoughts were leading me to halutinations... And i didn't know that until i was diagnosed years after.. Thank you Katie, you are one of my favorite terapists in the world. 💯💖 Much love, stay safe
💓
Thank you so much for this. I'm 14 and I used to think it was my fault. I won't go into detail because I'm not ready, but I was sexually abused by my peers. When I was younger and during my entirety of middle school. I was in tears this whole video, I honestly feel a little worse thinking about it in this perspective. But I know it's not my fault but I feel like I shouldve done more to make both of our lives better.