The Grip of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Welcome to our latest publishing venture, an audio book entitled ‘The Grip of Childhood Sexual Abuse’ written and narrated by Joyce, June and Paula Kavanagh.

‘The Grip of Childhood Sexual Abuse’ is a 10 hour – non-fiction audio book in which we share openly and honestly all the knowledge, insights and understanding derived from over thirty years’ experience in recovery work as a direct result of being sexually abused as children.

We were fortunate to have family and friends join us by lending their voices to the many characters within the book.

We have to wonder why no one is shouting about the true extent of the lifelong and life altering impacts of childhood sexual abuse.

It is time.

We have dedicated our lives to seeking answers and understanding of the countless ways we’ve been altered and damaged from our abuse. We believe all we have learned best places us to help others who suffer as we have.

Although we were abused by the same man throughout our childhood and into our teens, our response to the abuse was very different. There is some overlap, but our individual personalities combined with our relationship to our father ensures a somewhat unique and broader perspective of what a victim experiences.

The audio book follows our journey from how the story broke in our family, our decision to prosecute our father, how little help there was and how all the systems failed us.

We consider our sense of humour a gift from God. It not only helped us get through the tough times but also plays a role in our conveyance of a difficult subject, making it easier to hear and understand. We’re grateful for it.  

We each spent a portion of our lives believing we were the only one our father was abusing.  We hope at the end of this audio book; you will understand this as a by-product of the grooming process. 

By telling a child to keep the abuse ‘secret’ the abuser is isolating the child, creating a situation whereby they have no potential for help or understanding. Confusion, loneliness and powerlessness is where our nightmare begins. Over time, family members may sense or witness things they cannot cope with. Denial and dissociation play a large role in an abusive household often without a word ever spoken. Everyone in the home is playing a role like a character in a play. Each one unconsciously protecting the abuse and the abuser. 

The unconscious levels of awareness in a household where abuse is taking place contributes to victims’ ability to cope/survive while also feeling confused and unsure of their complicity in this crime.  We now realise how the trauma of being sexually abused so young caused our unconscious minds to take over to ensure we could push down our feelings, shut ourselves off from what was happening and block off certain memories in order to survive. Dissociation was just one coping mechanism that helped us.  Later in life the coping mechanisms that helped us survive needed to be turned off, but how? This is part of what we have been navigating and what we want to share with other victims.

For us, awareness of the psychological damage took the longest to identify.  Upon much reflection, our thoughts and feelings were still causing us such pain. Feeling responsibility for the abuse, fear, confusion, self-hatred, self-doubt, lack of trust and lots more. And the older we got the stronger these thoughts and feelings were, because there was no intervention, no introduction of the necessary knowledge eliminating any hope of understanding. 

We believe the psychological impacts are not given the recognition they deserve in terms of potency, and the deep invisible ways they harm victims.

We uncovered the many ways sexual abuse psychologically impacted us. Still today all these years later, we are unpacking the residue of abuse. We’ve had many discussions about these impacts.  We realised how the coping mechanisms we each used to protect ourselves as children played a role in ensuring we remained in a downward spiral of negativity as adults long after our abuse had ended.

In the chapter ‘Don’t Turn Away’ we each write in graphic detail about a single incident of abuse, not to shock but rather to ensure that there is clarity around
exactly what a child experiences when being abused. Writing in detail provided us with the opportunity to see our innocence which sadly, victims of crimes of a sexual nature fail to see.  Victims wrongly take full responsibility for something that is done to them. This goes some way to explain why sexual abuse remains the most under reported crime across the globe.

The conversation pieces at the end of each chapter are, we believe, one of the most valuable features of the book.  

Our message can be controversial at times as we encourage inclusion of offenders in consideration of any form of therapeutic help.  We should provide somewhere to turn to if you are thinking of sexually offending. There needs to be a recognised gradient when it comes to crimes of a sexual nature. In normal discourse, it can be considered that someone who touches a child is thought of as no different than a paedophile. There is much need for education.  

Support needs to be put in place for the millions of secondary victims. Families are torn apart irreparably when word breaks of a family members abusive action. We must begin supporting innocent mothers who find themselves in a partnership / married to a paedophile or sexual offender. 

For real and lasting change to occur, we must be prepared to look at the cause, not just the outcome. Victims always should come first but nothing will change if we do as we have always done and what we’ve always done is clearly not working. 

We wish to offer a sense of hope to victims. Helping them identify the impacts of their abuse could allow them to move out of the pain and suffering hopefully much sooner than we were able to and begin living a life rather than merely existing.

Take care

Joyce, June and Paula