Sexual abuse

Zora with help from Alana

Trigger warning:

• childhood sexual abuse
• childhood abuse
• explicit/offensive language

Trigger warning: Mention of childhood maltreatment, childhood sexual abuse, bullying, and a lot of swearing.

Trigger warning: This text and the drawing deal with the issues of child sexual abuse, child abuse, and bullying..

The last two days I made a rather big drawing - 146cm x 56cm - of the life of Alex (my inner boy/child), Zora (my inner girl) and Rigby (my inner adolescent). These three are the vulnerable parts of my inner community, the parts that have taken the brunt of my trauma. I felt the need to do this, as two days ago I found a key piece in the puzzle of my life that was missing. Suddenly, things started to fall into place and everything made sense.

The drawing itself is in Spanish, and won't be translated.

I have been a victim of childhood sexual abuse, mistreatment and bullying. I feel vulnerable and also resilient, and that is why I want to tell my story.

Trigger warning: discussion of sexual, physical and psychological childhood abuse

"We know that, regardless of sexual orientation, people who exhibit gender non-conforming (or genderqueer) behaviour in childhood were at much higher risk of sexual abuse to begin with. New research has shown that children who exhibit gender non-confirming behavior (through dress, mannerisms, and/or interests) before age 11 (known to be about one in ten children), are at higher risk of being sexually abused by age 17 than their gender conforming peers. The risk of experiencing sexual abuse for gender non-conforming boys is especially alarming, at rates two to six times higher than gender conforming boys."

Amita Yalgin Swadhin

The process of my trauma - without words.

Since maybe two weeks, my inner community has a new member. My inner boy has appeared. There are now three of us - at least: me, my little girl, who has grown a lot in the last few months, and my little boy.

We are not just a few, but there are no specific services for us, nor specific materials in Spanish. Our situation is very different from that of cis survivors of sexual abuse.

I am a trans non-binary survivor of childhood sexual abuse. And there are many of us in Spain, although I don't know of any research that talks about us.