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The demons of childhood sexual abuse are stubborn, but can be banished
The trauma of being abused by an authority figure, and not protected by other adults, can linger for a long time.
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Much of what happens to us in our childhood sets the course and character of our later life.
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Even as I have grown older, I can still recall from my distant childhood some disconnected images of my father sitting by my bedside when I was sick; our walks along the seafront promenade that was then called Queen Elizabeth Walk; of my mother teaching me to write by tracing the strokes of the Chinese characters on my palm; and of the chicken noodles redolent of sesame oil she cooked on my birthdays. To this day, I still dream of my childhood – happy dreams, never troubled.
When I became a psychiatrist, I became more grateful that my parents gave me a stable and secure childhood that a number of my patients did not have. I remember a chronically depressed man, orphaned when he was eight; another with panic attacks and recurring nightmares of his father beating him with a chain when he was a boy; a woman with borderline personality disorder whose mother abandoned her as a 10-year-old to her stepfather who sexually abused her, and many others where there was this thread that spooled out from a traumatic childhood to a subsequent disruptive and even destructive life.
