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Uncovering The Truth About RapeHi there! Belah here. Today, I have with me Dr. Nina Burrowes, a psychologist and researcher studying sexual abuse victims and abusers. Dr. Burrowes gives brilliant insights on the intricate patterns of sexual abuse and the residue it leaves on the victims. She talks about the biggest reasons victims are not reporting their abusers. We also dive into how offenders can be someone whom you least expected to be capable of abuse. She shares powerful insights about the physiological and psychological effects of sexual abuse and why it’s important to understand these reactions.

Quote:

“[Careful not to] hit the target, but miss the point.” (Old English saying)

In a sense there is no justice for victimsYou’ll Discover:

  • How we have so many rape myths in this society that are just not accurate
  • How most victims don’t fight because of a natural response to terror
  • Why victims most of the time do not report their abuser
  • Who are the “typical” rapists
  • What is it like in prison with sex-abusers
  • The alarming practices or ways sexual offenders often begin their addiction
  • The three main reasons why sexual abuse is left unreported
  • Why some men and women become confused with their sexual responses and even sexual-orientation after sexual abuse
  • How past sexual abuse can hinder intimacy when coming into marriage
  • Tips and advice for husbands who suspect their wives of having gone through sexual abuse
  • How to talk to our children about sexual abuse and what to teach them to keep them protected

A healthy person does not abuseBooks & Resources Mentioned:

We need to raise children that know other people should respect their bodies

Tweetables:

  • In this line of work, the point is often the human being, and sometimes, they can get dropped in the process.
  • In a sense, there is NO justice for the victim. Real justice is that this didn’t happen—but it did happen to them.
  • Most victims don’t fight.
  • The abuser can be somebody that you know, you love, you trust—and you don’t want it to be true.
  • Society’s attitude might be the biggest barrier to justice that we face.
  • A healthy person does not abuse, because love has nothing to do with control.
  • It is correct that many sex offenders report they’ve been abused, but it is incorrect to assume that someone who’s been abused is therefore at a much, much more elevated risk of being an offender in the future.
  • A lot of men who were abused as an adult can end up being confused.
  • Kids are curious, so answer their questions.
  • We need to be raising confident kids who do know their own bodies, who are confident around their own bodies, and who know that people should respect their choices around their own bodies.

 

Thanks for listening! I hope you are encouraged to live in wholehearted intimacy!

 

Love,

Belah

—

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Transcript

0:00
delight your marriage episode 33.

0:04
Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. This show where you hear from amazing and inspiring wives sharing their struggles, triumphs and advice for this journey called marriage. Here’s your host, belah. Rose.

0:21
Hey there, it’s belah. I hope that you are doing well today. Thank you for joining me. This is a hard topic for sure. Before we dive into that, I want to mention two things. First off, you know that we are here every Tuesday and Thursday, early morning. So you can plug in right away to listen in. The other thing is my next show is actually coming out Thursday is a solo show with me and I’m answering basically the question I get asked or the concern I get asked most from husbands. So I would love for you to listen in, because I’m going to give some really clear advice. And of course, as usual, I had my husband listen to it to make sure I cleared it all with him. And in the middle of it, it was pretty funny. He called me over and grabbed me and kissed me because apparently I was right on the money. So that’s Thursday, and it’s going to be talking about his drive his desire for sex in his marriage, and how you can make him wildly passionate for you. So that’s also the topic of the webinar coming up, that’s June 9, at 8pm. So please go to delight your marriage.com/webinar you will not want to miss this one, it is all about how he will be wild for you and figuring out those keys. Okay, let’s talk about today. Today we are diving into a very difficult topic to discuss. And it’s something that unfortunately, so many people are hurting from, that we cannot continue ignoring it, we just cannot. In our day and age, it’s affecting over 2020 to 25% of the population. One in four, one in five people are affected by this. That means, as you’ll hear today, every neighborhood, every street, every family is affected by sexual abuse as very sad as it is. The truth is I mean, that’s the statistics. That’s what’s really happening. And so with a heavy heart I seek in this podcast to give you real information and practical tools and keys to help fight against this, you know, because the enemy works in lies. He’s the father of lies, the Bible says. And he works in deceit and deception and ignorance and the darkness and isolation and so many women are reeling from the effects of being abused. And so many men are reeling from the shame and of the effects as well of being abused or being the abuser even that it’s just a conversation that needs to be had. We need to start talking about this because it’s it’s ripping apart families before they even become families. And if you’ve had any kind of abuse in your past, you know what I’m talking about. Before you ever were married, if you suffered abuse,

3:18
it’s affecting you even now. And I believe that

3:22
Dr. Nina burrows actually she’s a researcher, she’s an amazing background that’s allowed her to speak so confidently on this topic. But I wanted to actually take the extra time this is a longer episode than what is normal for dy M but this conversation is just so important because this is powerful. And it’s really important we understand to protect our kids, our families, our futures and and to heal from our past. And I believe God wants you to hear this message

4:08
All right, well, thank you so much for joining me today delight your marriage listener I am thrilled to have Dr. Nina burrows at Dr. Burrows has actually been recommended to me by a good friend actually in the the no more movement who really focuses in on ending sexual abuse and sexual violence in relationships. And Dr. Burrows has just got a vast experience and expertise. I’m going to let her introduce herself and more thoroughly. But Dr. Burrows, thank you so much for being here today. It’s my pleasure. Well, would you go ahead and introduce yourself and give us an insight about what your work is like a little bit about your day to day life? If you would? Yeah, sure. Um, so I’m a psychologist, and I’m a researcher and I specialize in sexual abuse. And I’m relatively unusual when I look at sexual abuse from every angle I can think of. So I started off my career, doing research with abuse.

5:00
With with people who’d been convicted of sex offenses, and then I moved on and did some work with people who were victims of sexual abuse. And I’ve worked with young people in terms of what kind of messages can we give to young people in terms of awareness and outreach and prevention. And most recently, I’ve gotten involved in law enforcement. So I’m spending more and more of my time working with police forces, helping them to investigate cases and also prosecutors, helping them to use the psychology that we understand about abusers when they’re prosecuting a case. Wow, that’s just fascinating. So you really do have every angle kind of research. And so what is when you talk about your research? Um, what does that kind of entail? I’m some I’m a qualitative researcher. So most of my work is doing in depth interviews with people, but it really depends. I mean, research for me is really about asking smart questions, and then trying to find answers. And I actually work for myself, I’m a freelance consultant. And that’s what’s really enabled me to have this career where I’ve managed to explore so many different aspects of this issue, because there’s not really a career path that helps you work with offenders and victims in the public and law enforcement in the way that I have.

6:20
So yeah, so that’s, that’s been my career to date. And it was when I was working, I wrote a report for prosecutors, and really focusing on juries, and how can you help members of the public come into a case that is a rape case? And how can you help them overcome their ideas of what they think rape might be, and most people think like a rape is always a stranger attack, and there’s always violence and the victim always tries to fight and they tell the police straightaway, and that’s kind of what they’re expecting to hear, because that’s kind of the story. And in society. And, of course, the reality is very different. And most rapes are committed by somebody who knows the victim, most victims do not fight. Most most people never report. So you know, there’s very few people come forward. So you need to help the jury kind of go on a journey, because we have a lot of myths about sexual abuse and what it is. And when you go into a courtroom, you you confront reality. And so it was during that research, that really kind of was a slight change. For me in terms of my work, that’s when I started creating content for the public. Because I could just see that, you know, the really big thing, which is whether no more campaign is really useful. It’s his awareness of sexual abuse is so important. And not just that it exists we all know that exists is in the news every day. And most people would put their hands up and say, Yeah, that’s a bad thing. It shouldn’t happen. But actually realities, like, what does a sex offender look like? How do they behave? How? How would you know if there was one in your life? What is it like when someone’s abused? What is the impact our understanding of these issues is, is is often very inaccurate. And those inaccuracies can make life so much harder for victims, and, unfortunately, so much easier for offenders. So it’s really important that we start to have, you know, much more sophisticated conversations in society, about sexual abuse.

8:20
Wow, that’s so good. Well, I already have, you know, 20 questions I want to follow up with the first. The first thing I want to just pull out from what you just shared, was that you’re a freelancer, which means you fund or you maybe your business funds, your own research is that yeah, I’m interested Leah like an entrepreneur. Yeah, yes, we’ll see. That’s wonderful. Because you do get to to then choose your own path, which is so helpful for anyone listening because that means her funders are not telling her what to research, she’s able to, I’m the always on message.

8:55
And they nobody, and I have such a diverse range of clients and my my independence to me, that that I value that so much, it means I can take crazy risks with my own personal finances if I choose to. Um, but it also means I can always say the thing that’s difficult to say because yes, you know, I I’m okay with that. And right about politics or not.

9:20
Yeah. Which is, which is essential in this space. Yeah, absolutely. It’s so good. Okay, cool. Well, the other thing I wanted to ask you before we dive in further, I mean, is there a quote, or encouraging thought that has meant a lot to you as you’ve been doing this work? Yeah. You know, I worked for the My first job was for the Prison Service here in England. And when I was there, my favorite phrase that I heard meeting one day because it can sometimes be a lot of frustration because you’re trying to do important work, but you’re working within this huge bureaucracy and there’s politics involved. And the phrase was hit the target missed the point. And I find

10:00
That’s very incentivizing. Because often we’re chasing our targets, whatever that might be in work, but we haven’t sat back and really asked ourselves, and we ask the right question, you know, do we even know what it is that we’re doing anymore? Like we’re hitting the target that someone has told us, it’s important that we have, we have missed the point. And in this line of work, the point is often a human being, and sometimes they can get dropped in the process. So, so yeah, I find that, that that phrase really useful my work, because it’s something I’m always asking myself, can I set a target for myself? That’s just brilliant. I’m so grateful that for that quote, and that thought, because I think it is so easy to get mired in the details and forget what, what what we’re actually trying to accomplish. And I appreciate that you mentioned it’s a person, it’s a person’s heart and, and their livelihood and their future. And their, I mean, everyone that’s around them that gets affected by this. And it’s just so near and dear to my heart, your work because I have a very close personal friend as and others that are not quite as close, but a very, very close one that was raped by someone she knew. And she was too scared to go to any kind of authority. And any kind of I mean, there was no absolutely no retribution on this young man, because it was in her social scene. And if she had done any kind of, you know, rock, the boat, all of her friends, that’s all of her friends knew this person and knew her. So it’s just really sad, but often stacked against the victim. I think we,

11:33
in terms of

11:35
like criminal justice and law, I don’t think people realize how stacked against the victim, is we really asking an awful lot of people when we say report to the police, like that’s, that’s a big ask. Yeah, so we need to make it a lot lot lot easier for them. Because we need them we need them much more than they need us. Like they’ve already been abused at the the worst case scenario, they’ve already lived it. And we can’t take that away. And in a sense, there is no justice for them. My real justice is this didn’t happen. But it did happen to them. But in order to stop it happening to you and me and our kids, we need victims to come forward to report that offender. That’s the only way we get sex offenders off the streets and away from us. But the system just really doesn’t help them do that at all, which is is absolutely tragic. So let’s talk about that. So what what are the items that are stacked against the victim? Can you kind of point them out? point by point? Um, yeah, well, I’m going to miss some. There are so many we can be sure. Absolutely. Yeah, I think okay, let’s, let’s start in on the micro level and actually themselves. Because there you have lots of personal barriers to reporting to the police a lot of victims of abuse.

13:01
We, we have ideas about sexual abuse in society, I call them rape myths, but these ideas of what a real assault is like a real victim will fight and a real victim will scream and a real sex offenders this monster who jumps out on you and all these ideas about sexual abuse, which which are not accurate. And so the first barrier you have when you’re abused is you need to get over your own internal ideas and recognize that that was abuse. And you were not to blame that it was not your fault. And that it does count because you also are holding these myths of what sexual abuse is. So that the guilt and the shame and the could I have prevented it could I have seen it? Oh, he’s such a nice guy. I mean, yeah, he’s been grooming you. He’s, he’s super nice guy superficially, but, but that moment, when you abused you knew exactly what he was. Wow. So and also, because most victims don’t fight and this is because they have a, you know, a perfectly natural fear response, you know, fight or flight and or freeze and most most people freeze. And that’s, you know, that’s a smart thing to do. Like, they’re probably physically stronger than you, you don’t know, at that point that you’re going to survive this experience. So I’m freezing not fighting. I’m trying to locate your abuser. That’s a smart thing to do. Like, and it works because you know what, you did survive, you were, you know, in a sense only raped you were not killed. But you need to kind of get over all of that to have the courage to you know, even enter that police station or or even tell anyone else. What’s happened to you. And again, just to add to all of this, this is most likely somebody you know, like somebody you love and you trust and you want it to be true. You don’t you don’t want to look at that person and think they’re an abuser, especially if they’re a partner or an immediate family member.

15:00
So then you’ve got the, the impact of your relationship with them.

15:06
And then there’s the people around them, your family, your friends, as you were saying the social circuit and the disruption. And it can can almost feel like you’re the person causing the problem by reporting, when of course you’re not is that abuser that is responsible for everything.

15:23
And then, of course, we have our system. And

15:27
different countries have different ways of reporting abuse, some places have got excellent systems, you know, they really tried to make it as easy as possible for you, others not so much. And that can really vary.

15:39
You know, depending on how often there’s, there’s, like the process, but then there’s the individual that you meet when you do it. You know, there are there are excellent people out there. Like I think a lot of people forget, professionals who work in the area of sexual abuse, whether that’s investigating it, or prosecuting it, or being a counselor or anything like that, then they’re mostly choosing to work in that space. You know, most of them are effectively, you know, what they’re paid. They’re volunteering, they’re choosing to do to work on this issue, because they care about it. So there’s a lot I mean, I mean, I mean, a lot of police officers and a lot of prosecutors, I meet a lot of people trying to do an impossible job with not enough resources. And you can you know, you can find a good one there, I can assure you, there are plenty of good ones out there. Yeah.

16:24
But then, if you do want to report, there’s, I think, for me, I think one of my biggest frustration, frustrations and why I’m doing a lot of work for the public is

16:36
because even if we had like the perfect police setup, like the most beautiful reporting system, and amazing prosecutors that are taking every case to court and doing an amazing job, you know, what a jury is deciding, like, it’s, it’s members of the public that are actually deciding the outcome. And this is why society, attitudes might be the biggest barrier to justice that you face. Because because we don’t believe we want to believe your story. We actually, like the idea that all sex offenders look and behave like monsters, you know, that we can spot them that the moments that were at risk, oh, that’s when it’s dark and went outside. And you know, we should watch out for strangers, and then we should probably get a cab home. Or we should watch out for the strange guy in the playground, because he’s the risk as well, those those images of those people that kind of frightening images are actually very reassuring, because they are strangers, they are far away from us. They’re far away from our families. We got them easily. We don’t want to believe that that nice young man who’s the defender, he’s he’s got a loving family and a girlfriend and all these things is capable of what you’re telling us he did.

17:50
And that’s, that can be a huge thing for a, you know, when you’ve got your own doubts as well, because of what you’ve been through, and you’re traumatized and all the rest of it, that can be a huge, huge barrier. Now I want to just focus in on a couple things that you mentioned. So first, we’ll just you know, since you mentioned, of course the system is is an immense there’s so many factors we could put focus on but you focus so far on three things. One, is the victim mentality themselves yawn, really wondering why they didn’t fight? Why didn’t they run away, you know, thinking that maybe they led the person on maybe it was their fault. So that was a huge piece. And I appreciate that bringing that out. The other piece that you mentioned was the actual system, actually coming to the police and, and you know, though, there are good ones that really want to help the victims, there are also a lot of barriers to finding the good ones. And there’s also some bad ones. And, you know, having some too scary people to be like, Well, what were you wearing and those kinds of things. And then the third piece that you brought up is then just society’s perspective in general, because ultimately, the jury is the one that decides so very, very good. Now I want to just focus in on why is it that we want to think of the sex offenders as monsters, because none of our friends or family look like monsters, I think a monster is far away. I mean, they’re there. And I think we want to see abuse in this kind of unexplainable monster way.

19:14
Because it’s off our way from our worlds. So we want to in a way we want them to be people that we couldn’t possibly understand.

19:23
Rather than, you know, somebody’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s colleague, you know, someone’s father, one who’s actually on some occasions, in some ways, a nice guy, like capable of doing good things. But yeah, so capable of doing horrible things. That’s a That’s a scary image for us to to hold by for those in both hands. Yes, that’s exactly right. And now when you have gone into those prisons and gone and talk to these offenders, I mean, what, what have you kind of gleaned from who these people really are and how they got into a place where they could

20:00
Be such abusers. Um, so the interesting thing and when when you go into a prison,

20:06
you know, when you’re on the wing that holds the sex offenders because it’s different to the other wings, the other wings are noisy, and kind of exclusively full of young men.

20:18
And you go on to the wing that houses the sex offenders

20:22
and doesn’t tend to be noisy, but also suddenly every sector of society is there, like the age range is massive, you’re going to probably if I’m interviewing people, I’m going to be interviewing people with PhDs, people who are doctors, people who are unemployed, on like, every kind of,

20:39
you know, income level, because whereas other people are committing offenses, were defeated drug habit, or because of a lack of income, these kind of issues, economic issues, or education issues or opportunity issues, sexual offending isn’t about that, you know, your income does not reduce your risk, your your, your place in society doesn’t reduce your risk. So you’re going to meet professionals and, and people who worked in charity, you’re going to be every everybody, all of society is represented.

21:12
And so that’s kind of the first thing that hits you. Because it actually, in a way, it kind of feels so normal. They could Wow, everybody’s there. And so I guess the first thing to like really emphasize is you cannot spot these people by looking at them, and you can’t rule them out. Because you are in this religious group, or this ethnic group, or this this kind of income bracket or because you’re professionals here. There is no, there is no thing that you could tell me about person. And I would say or they’re definitely not a sex offender, because there’s just nothing. There’s no no way to really no way. No, I mean, I, I cannot I mean, I personally could not spot a sex offender. There. What I couldn’t tell you what it is that I would be looking for that would I would look at someone and say, Oh, no, there’s no way that they are a sex offender. Because you I mean, these are invariably charming. I mean, many sex offenders, they need to be charming in order to commit their offense often. Oh, my goodness, so they can come across as very nice, caring, charming people.

22:23
Yeah. So I think the scary truth, will Dr. Burrows, this is just, I mean, hard to even imagine, for anyone listening to think that, you know, we do have this monster mentality of like, they have a certain profile in our minds. And so for Dr. Nina to say, she studies these people, she speaks to them daily, you know, one on one interviews them in depth, and then she cannot say there is a certain trait that says they’re safe. Nothing along those lines. And now here’s just a quick follow up to that. female or male or mat vast majority male, I mean, massively reduce the risk if someone’s female, but not eliminate the risk? Not. So around? It depends on your day to but six 8% of sex, roughly a female. But yeah, so someone’s a woman that does not rule it out at all. doesn’t rule it out. Okay. Okay. So then, now, when you talk to these sex offenders, one on one, I mean, from your data? I mean, can you determine how these offenses are usually? I mean, what are the most common ways that these are happening? The rapes? It really depends. There are lots of different types of sex offenders, and they offend for different reasons. I mean, some people exclusively offend against children. And a lot of that will be because because the pedophile so they, they’re having sexual desire that is, maybe exclusively or not exclusively towards children, and they’re feeding that desire. So that will be maybe their primary motivation.

23:54
As a Can I ask you about that? Actually, yeah, just really going. So I did some research a while back, but it was talking about how someone who does child pornography uses child pornography. The research was something like the vast majority, you know, six to eight months after beginning that addiction, then they begin to abuse actual children, is that something that’s come up in your research at all? I think one way of understanding this behavior is to compare it to something like drink or drugs. So that so there’s a pathway. So very large number of people may try smoking dope at some point in their life. And, and most of those people, they don’t actually go on to the next step. They try it, it’s not for them or they like that and they stick with that they don’t move on. Some people will go on to the next stage. So they’re taking harder and harder drugs and then a minority will end up you know, shooting heroin. And but there’s a pathway and most people don’t shoot heroin. On day one. Most people start in that early

25:00
kind of dope area and then go through looking for a bigger hit every time. And, and sexual offending can be the same. So you can start with something, you know, if you like, lower, lower lower levels. So I, you know, I mean a lot of people are starting with with fantasy which which isn’t, you know, obviously isn’t an offense because it’s just pure fantasy and and a lot of people, they don’t go any further they have no desire to act on it. They just fantasize either about abuse or they fantasize about children or something like that, but, but do not go any further, in which case, then you know this, that’s fine. Now if no offense caused that if it doesn’t affect them, then that’s, that’s okay. But other people need to feel the need to act on that. And so maybe pornography and as you say, then maybe they need to get a bigger fix. And so

25:49
the internet stuff isn’t working for you, then then you need to do something more extreme, and it can carry on because in the same way, you need a bigger hit, to get away from this thing, whatever they might be. Yeah, I appreciate the mention of a pathway. Because obviously, I mentioned that, you know, this is really a Christian Faith Based podcast that’s really focused towards wives. And I mean, that’s kind of, you know, to our listeners, that’s really the start is in the mind where we let our mind wander away. And we’ve got to take those thoughts captive. So I appreciate that beginnings in the mind. Now you were talking about so I interjected. But you were talking about some other really common abuses. So you were talking about the children abuse? And then what were the next things you were going to mention? So then you have other people who are

26:36
mostly offending against adults? And there can be different reasons. I think, for me that the key thing is understanding

26:44
that any behavior to me has it has a function, there’s a purpose to it, like somebody, somebody’s self harming might, that might look crazy to us. So what are you doing? What how can that possibly help you but but actually, the person who’s doing it that there is a function for them, like, it’s an outlet is a way of feeling alive? It’s a way it’s the only way I know to express my pain, like whatever it is, there is a purpose behind it. And so the same for sex offenders, there’s going to be a purpose, and it’s about understanding, okay, so what could that purpose be?

27:16
For some people they’re at their offending is part of a coping mechanism that they’ve developed. So

27:24
if they’re feeling slightly powerless, slightly impotence, if they’re feeling out of control, they have learned either to use sex as a way of regaining a sense of potency and control, or they specifically learnt to use sexual abuse is doing that. So when they’re abusing, that’s their way of the, like, way of feeling powerful, because they’re able to do this to somebody else. Wow. It’s just so it’s so insightful, because it

27:57
in terms of thinking through,

28:00
getting that sense of these people aren’t aren’t monsters. I mean, all of us want to respond negatively. When we feel powerless, where we feel like we don’t have control over our own lives, we want to respond in a way that gets that control back, you know, my own life. I was bulimic for years. And that was a way of control because I felt so out of control that this was something I had control over. So it’s very interesting. You mentioned that. So is that part of your research is when you talk to sex offenders, that’s a trend that comes up is this I needed something to get control again, is that I mean, someone may not always have the insight to recognize that that’s been there. What’s happened on that evening, but then maybe they tell you the story of that evening, I don’t know maybe something’s happened. There’s normally I mean, something like that there’s often a trigger to maybe you made redundant or,

28:52
you know what, maybe you were rejected by four women that night, and he took how you felt out on the fifth, you know, makes you feel like a real man again.

29:00
So that that kind of thing, but it doesn’t, I mean, it doesn’t always make sense in such an obvious way as that but as an example.

29:10
And for others, it really, the sense of power and control is less of a coping mechanism, but more of this their sense of their entitlements.

29:22
You know, they have a very warped idea of themselves and their place in the world and what they are entitled to.

29:29
And so the offending can be about expressing, it’s about enjoying again, it’s still about power and control. But less about coping, because I feel disempowered this evening, I’m much more about I am just, you know, this entitled, I’m just this powerful. This is what I can do.

29:47
Wow. Yeah, it’s, I think a really important thing to recognize is yes. You know that the healthy loving person, they don’t sexually abused because sexual abuse has offered them

30:00
Absolutely nothing like they recognize that real power does not come from abusing somebody else, they recognize that real love and real intimacy has got absolutely nothing to do with control. And everything to do with the other person choosing you is as much about your vulnerability, you should be taking your vulnerability into the space not making the other person feel vulnerable. And so it is a broken person that abuses and so it’s about understanding. Okay, so how are you broken? And how is the abuse in your mind helping you fix this thing? Unfortunately, of course, whatever it is, whatever your story is, your sexual abuse does not fix it, because you cannot fix yourself by breaking someone else. That just is not how it works, which, unfortunately, is why is a repeat offense, because it doesn’t work. If it worked, you would do it once and you would never have to do it again. It does not work.

30:56
Hence, hence the repeating repeat of offending. Wow, oh my gosh. Okay. So there’s so many things that you just pointed out. Okay, so one, the healthy person does not abuse mean, because love has nothing to do with control, you cannot take someone’s freedom and expect true love. That’s exactly the opposite of yes, you cannot take that freedom. That’s brilliant. Um, the other thing I wanted to ask you bring out also is that that desire to abuse is coming from some kind of brokenness, some kind of pain in their life and their past. That I mean, maybe, and I know that, you know, abuse often is generational, you know, the parents were abused, and then they were abused their kids or, you know, uncle was viewed whatever. That’s, that’s how you would kind of relate, relate those that they had loss of power. And then they felt like that was the way to regain it was to take someone else’s that how the thought is, yeah, it’s not always

31:56
about previous experience of abuse, though. So we know, oh, two abuses, and let’s face it, the abuses I get to speak to they’ve all been caught. They’re all in prison. Gotcha. And so

32:11
self report of abuse by abusers is a lot higher than you’d expect, if you’re just talking to members of the public. So so they’re, so they’re much more likely to report that they’ve been abused than someone you met on the street.

32:25
And there’s lots of reasons why this might happen.

32:28
One, one reason, of course, is that it’s true that they were abused, you know, that, that does, of course, happen. Another is that they’re lying, and they’re looking for sympathy, and they’re looking to actually, you know, have this pet behavior makes sense in a way that’s slightly socially socially acceptable. So they say that they were abused.

32:48
But the other reason perhaps, is also that

32:52
if your abuse stems from this, this awful experience of abuse when you were a child, so you’ve had this your whole life, it is possible that by the time you become an adult, you’re committing the kind of sex offenses that do come to the attention of law enforcement. In a sense, we are we are over.

33:14
These people are more likely perhaps to get caught because of the root of their abuse. But if we if we flip the issue around,

33:24
if you are a victim of abuse, that is very conscious, it’s kind of controversial, where are you much more likely to become an abuser?

33:33
And the best data I’ve I’ve seen

33:36
is no, there’s a sub subgroup that that is slightly elevated risk, but most people who are sexually abused do not go on to become abusers. In fact, oh, well, you could hate me argue that you’ve had this awful experience, like, you know, what is like, you know, you’re less likely to do that to anyone else. Because, you know, the thing is, like so.

33:58
So it is correct that many sex offenders report that they’ve been abused, but it is incorrect to assume that someone who’s been abused is therefore much, much more elevated risk of becoming an abuser themselves. The data I’ve seen is good data as any, is only 1%

34:16
of those people go on to become Wow, small, small, small. Okay, that’s thank you so much for bringing that to light. So just in sum, basically, the point is that yes, it’s true that a lot of sexual abusers were in fact abused.

34:31
Yeah, a report they okay were report that they were abused. But it does not mean that someone who was sexually abused is then more likely to abuse that as Yeah, it’s not the case. So the numbers also don’t work out there. Unfortunately, most abusers abuse many, many people. So the simple maths wouldn’t work out if everybody who was abused became an abuser. There’ll be nobody left on the planet who who’d never had this experience. So, so yeah, it’s absolutely not the case that

34:58
victims, you know,

35:00
Secret risks from becoming abusers themselves. Oh, good. Okay, thank you so much for clearing that up. Because I can imagine people probably have that concern in their own head. I think so especially if you’re male, if you abused as a boy or, or as an adult, I think you can have huge concerns one about your sexual orientation to that you yourself going to come on, you know, become an abuser, that could be a massive risk to seeking a massive barrier to seeking the help that you need and deserve. Wow. Yes. Okay. Okay, so So I do want to follow up with both of those. So one is sexual orientation. How does that abuse then affect how they they move forward with their sexual orientation? On every everybody, of course, is different. But I think a lot of men, especially if they were raped, or sexually assaulted as an adult, they can they can wonder,

35:56
did the perpetrator think I was gay? Like because they’re thinking, well, this is a gay crime, surely, and it’s not. This is this is, you know, very, very often heterosexual men, raping heterosexual men, not on crime that is exclusively in the gay community at all. But but this is what the victim can think, you know, is it because they thought I was gay. And then just like every other victim of sexual abuse, men are also unlikely to physically respond in terms of fight their abuser or shout for help, they’re also likely to freeze.

36:30
And so then they can question and well, I didn’t I should have, I should have punched him I should have fought like, Am I Am I a real man? Did I did I therefore, in some way want this. And, and so there’s all of that to go over. And and then just, you know, to make matters a lot harder, it’s not uncommon for both

36:49
males and females who experienced sexual abuse to have a physiological sexual reaction during the abuse. So so women can, they can get wet, and they can even climax, and men can get an erection. And so if you are males, and you’ve experienced sexual abuse, the added confusion can be that your body did respond to the abuse. And so did you on some level want this to happen to you? And the answer is? Absolutely no, you’re absolutely not in control of those physiological responses. Like it’s just pure biology.

37:28
It’s right. And so it doesn’t say anything about whether you wanted to, and you know, yourself if you, you know, when you were there in that moment, I’m sure the overriding feeling was terror, like absolute fear.

37:43
There’s the there’s no way I mean that the whole point of abuse is you did not consent. You didn’t want this, but it can be very confusing afterwards for for everybody. But that is, like an additional confusion for many men, because they can really wonder whether this means that they’re gay, and absolutely does not fixer. Thank you so much for mentioning that. Absolutely. And I think, you know, something I’m incredibly passionate about is giving more understanding and insight about how the male physiology works, because there’s four different reasons for erections. And some is simply it’s called a reflex erection, where it’s simply the the touch, it creates a reflex. And, and so I think that’s, I just appreciate you bringing that out. Because I think that’s a big reason men even growing up that have had either abuse or, or just, you know, embarrassing experiences in the locker room with just males present. I mean, it can be so incredibly confusing. So also very important for mothers to recognize and understand that, you know, little boys eights, a very natural response, because the flaccid penis does not have blood flowing through it like every other part of our body. But when these certain different kinds of erection, sometimes they’re even random, just direction so that the blood can go in and clean things out with the way that it has to do in every other part of our body. It’s necessary for an erection to happen. So I just appreciate that you bringing that out that this can be incredibly, incredibly confusing. Absolutely.

39:12
So I do want to ask you about the other question that kind of just to circle back a little bit to how people can get help that safe, and that they know that you know, there’s good ways to understand themselves in this, you know, safe place, the way we’re talking about a very victim oriented, very understanding of, you know, abuse, not saying Well, what did you do wrong? How can they start to get resources like that? And I think I mean, my first port of call would be the internet.

39:47
They, I mean, these days, the kind of specialist advices is just a kind of search engine away. And there are loads of charities organizations in every country. I mean, the beauty of the internet, you don’t have to go

40:00
Do one in your own country like,

40:03
and they should point you in the right direction. I think

40:08
one of the things I noticed, though, a few years ago that

40:12
often, like a news piece will cover abuse or something like that. And so if you’re affected by this story, like, own that helpline, and and it’s great the helpline are there, but actually, for a lot of people, accessing support can be a huge step. Because to ask for help. I mean, asking for help is hard for most of us anyway, most of them don’t even want someone to open a door for us, you know, like, it can, it can feel like a lot it asking for help means that you need help. I mean, this thing really did happen, and it’s affected you and it’s real. And actually, you’re not coping. And so it can be. And you also need to say what, and I deserve help. And this can be a huge ask for a lot of people. So

40:55
last year, I actually

40:58
published my first book, which was exactly written for this audience, I say written, it’s actually it’s actually an illustrated book as a drawn drawn book. And that book is available online, you can read the whole thing for free, and it just explains

41:13
what happened to your brain, most likely when you were abused, and why perhaps it’s still affecting you all these years later, why you didn’t fight? Why? You’re not crazy. And also, why you’re not alone. So please, also, yeah, look for that on the internet. Totally. I think when you can understand yourself, and realize you’re not completely crazy, that can actually give you the courage, you need to then seek help. But sometimes you need you need something before you ask for help. Yes, yes, that’s really good. Well, I’ll have that information linked up at delight your marriage.com. So I’ll have all of Dr. Burrows information in this book, specifically all linked up there.

41:56
So I want to I want to go back to something else that you mentioned.

42:00
Being that the vast majority of abusers are men. I’m interested, you know, have you come up with some insights about men that you think would be helpful for us to understand why is it most I mean, vast majority is men. It’s true. Yeah. Um, there are lots of different reasons. I’m actually I’m working on a new book at the moment. And it is about why do Why do abusers abuse. And so this is, this is an issue that’s kind of, I’m kind of grappling with right now.

42:31
And they’re

42:33
so Okay, on the superficial level, I guess, our legal system

42:38
is geared towards male perpetrators. So as a woman in England, I can’t be convicted of rape, because you need you in our law, you need to have a penis in order to be convicted of a rape unique to us.

42:52
So, but that bit, of course, we know from other data sources from talking to victims that still, regardless of the laws, the majority of perpetrators are male.

43:05
That’s really,

43:07
if we start to think about what what is the function of abuse for you, how does it help you? Well, if the answer is it helps me feel powerful and potent,

43:16
then sex is a is a way I mean, you know, we call it impotence for a reason. And sex is a way for men to feel potent, and perhaps it doesn’t

43:28
perform that function for women in quite the same way. I think it still makes you feel

43:36
a sense of power as a woman, but but less so I think for men, it’s a much more straighter, shorter line between their sexual potency and their ability to sexually penetrate someone else. And their sense of power, and effectiveness and agency and all these things. So I think

43:57
abuse therefore is able to give males that which perhaps, to women, it will give you a sense of of power, that I think it would be in a different way. I think women can get that sense of power in other ways. Yeah, we do it in in the ways often we have complete power over the children in our lives. And so if you want to feel powerful than being you know, you we get that power from that we often completely in control of that. So we we get off we’re absolutely you know, that that baby pletely dependent on us and so, we kind of get that from other sources, I think. So that sort of sexual component of sexual offending I think giving men something that you have does not provide to Yeah. And then and then you add in the society’s ideas, attitudes to women, these kinds of things. Yeah. That you know, the the man who’s very promiscuous as a stud. Well, it’s not a huge leap.

45:00
Being a stud to being a rapist if you’ve got a mixed idea of what consent is, so, so you’ve then got these kinds of social attitudes to which which, which plane?

45:10
Yep, yep, yep. Yeah. You know, yeah. Oh,

45:14
no, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. I guess when you got that bully thought, yeah. That’s great. That’s awesome. Well, I would also want to just posit something that I read recently, in one of my sex toys, I can’t remember which one it was, but it was a Christian, you know, themed book. But one thing it talked about is a man is most vulnerable, when he asks for sex, and because that’s kind of his, that, you know, that’s his heart on his sleeve right there. Whereas, you know, a woman is much more vulnerable, when she’s maybe I would say, like, asking to be cherished, or acts asking to be given, you know, value or worth, in those kinds of affection ways.

45:53
So yeah, so I’m interested in that kind of area of like, a man then hates feeling vulnerable hate.

46:01
Sex is terrifying. For many men, I don’t think we we talk about it, they’re absolutely putting themselves up to fail in terms of performance and be rejected. I mean, how vulnerable do you feel now? And now you’re supposed to get an erection? I don’t know how that’s supposed to work. So

46:16
yeah, I think a lot of men have fear and intimidation of women fear around their performance and anxieties around their own potency. And so

46:31
it’s not, I think, I could kind of see a pathway where you could, if you like, have very negative experience sexual experiences, you know, because of these, I mean, navigating that space takes work, like you have to kind of be able to look at yourself and be insightful, you have to be able to communicate to your partner, you know, when there’s work, which is, which is beautiful work, which is how you get to have a proper loving, healthy, intimate relationship. But it’s hard. And if you’re not up to the task,

47:02
a route to sex in the future can be bypassing all of that rejection business, and going to a beat Yes, right? That’s right. Yep, you’re gonna reject me because your choice, the whole point of, of rape is, you know, the very definition is, you are not consenting to this, if you’re consenting, this isn’t abuse, this is this is now sex, is the very fact that you can’t reject me because, you know, I’m not giving you the option to, right, there’s no option for me to feel yet rejection, emotional rejection out of the window. Yeah. But what you haven’t done is taken impotency out of the window. So very hard to get good data on this, but it’s not uncommon for the perpetrator of sexual abuse to fail to get an erection. So the link between potency and abusing, there’s I mean, there’s a definite link

47:55
between you know, that there’s, it’s just like power, you know, that the really strong person doesn’t need to go around hitting people, they don’t need to, like, they’re so self assured in their power. They don’t need to use it to prove it to themselves or anyone else. And so the person who’s going around having to tell everybody how potent they own all the rest of it. Like, you know, they’re actually they’re a false promise. Because probably the truth is that pretty knock, potent. Interesting. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. That’s, it’s having to I mean, it’s having to kind of give an excuse constantly for this insecurity that they feel.

48:34
Yeah, absolutely. Wow. That’s so true. Wow. Well, so another question I wanted to ask now. Because you have worked so often with victims, and since, you know, we’re speaking directly to wives and and now is the data. This is what I’m familiar with, I’d love for you to update me. But is it one in four women are sexually abused in their lifetime? It really depends which day you get from and what your definition of abuses and all the rest of it. So certainly 20% of girls under 18 have experienced some kind of sexual abuse, my goodness, and then you know, before the before they’re an adult, so then you got rape and all the rest of it to come in. So yeah, I think those are the one in five is safe, if not defense, depending on your definition. It’s not an underestimate. Wow. And as big as much bigger for men than people realize is 8% of boys under 18. And then certainly, the data in the UK, which I’m more familiar with is, is that 10 10% of rapes, male victims. This is a large number of men experiencing rape.

49:46
So yeah, that is a significant group to wow. And now, are these the data that you’ve just shared? Is that reported, or it’s estimated even those that are unreported estimates based on reports?

50:00
So yeah.

50:02
So which means that there could be vastly more that are unrelated or normally especially for men. Because in terms of the theory, because we we would normally say, around 15 to 10% of rapes actually reported so So you take your reported number, and then the you know, you’ve only got 10 or 15%. Now, I would say in the case of adult men who are raped, I reckon is more underreported. So So when we take that figure and think we’ve got 10%, I think, actually, maybe we’ve got a much smaller sample size of what the real figure is, because because I think men are even more reluctant to afford, I mean, women are to like, 10 15%. I mean, the messages, the vast majority of people never report. That’s right. That’s right. Well, and you see it in the media all the time, where when, you know, 567 1020 women are accusing, you know, the very recent, you know, unfortunate thing 25 Women are accusing this celebrity of rape. And over and over and over again, we got the message of well, these ladies are just trying to get money. They’re just trying to get money. They’re just making this all up. Yeah, I don’t want to. Yes, that is crazy. Well, and it’s so sad, because it then that message is then to everyone else, if you’ve been raped, it’s your fault, or you have an ulterior motive for coming out about it, which is horrible. I mean, completely untrue. And the other thing is, I mean, think about Truly, this is a wife, this is a mother, this is, you know, a woman in society, she does not want to be known for a rape that happens that’s yet to go public in a massive choice. Oh, yeah, like that. And then this is, this is a really hard thing that someone’s doing. I mean, the message that really scares me, though, is what message do sex offenders get, you know, carry on as you are, because 20 people can accuse you publicly. And people still don’t want to believe it’s true. Because you don’t fit the image of what they want to believe a sex offender is. If you if you have some, you know, kind of creepy looking guy, you know, that we’ve never heard of where, you know, we don’t need 20 people to convince us you know, it’s because you were you are you are, we don’t want to believe that someone like you could be a sex offender because maybe you look a bit like me, or maybe you look a bit like my friends or my family too close to home. So it’s like fingers in your ears don’t want to hear it don’t want it to be true.

52:34
It’s very, it’s very tragic. It’s very tragic. And it’s so so so so common one in four, one in five. I mean, those are very conservative numbers. It’s on I mean, it’s, it’s in, I think you’d be safe to say it’s in every family to some degree, every street. Every definitely every school, like you know, there are people everywhere. And like when you’re someone like me and you kind of publicly speaking about this issue, you kind of, you know, I have a lot of people tell me that in my personal life that they’ve been abused, because I guess they see me as a safe person to tell and get this idea. Sometimes when you start working in this space, oh, my God, it’s everywhere. And you think you’ve overreacted? And then over time, you’re like, No, it really is. It’s everywhere. It is. It is everywhere.

53:25
It’s a huge, it’s like the biggest problem. We’re not having sensible conversations about. Yeah, we’re talking about it. And we’re shouting about it. So we’re not talking we’re not we’re not getting to the stage where we have a sophisticated understanding of the problem. And that is the problem. You know, it’s the fact that we want to put our fingers in their ears and say, well, whose job is it to sort this thing out? They better get on it. And it’s like, no, everybody’s just educated.

53:52
Wow. Oh my gosh, Dr. Burrows. That’s incredible. That’s absolutely the case. Okay, so So let’s let’s dive into the sensible conversations. I got three little questions that, first of all, how does a mother talk to her kids about sexual abuse? So I do an online video channel where I try to answer people’s questions about sexual abuse, so they can ask me anything. And I will video that an answer and the most frequent question I get asked is What do we tell our kids?

54:23
And I’ve been asked this question so much, I’ve made a little book as an answer, because it’s like, so important. This is this is super important.

54:34
And the answer is hard. Like I don’t I wish I had easy answers. Hey,

54:38
because I would love to say you know what, there’s this five point plan and if you follow it, your kids totally safe and righteous right. It doesn’t work like that. If it was easy, we will be talking about these things is the fact that the truth is quite scary that is making these conversations difficult, but it’s just like every one most risks that your children face, there is no

55:00
way to eliminate the risk and in the same way that you cannot eliminate the risk of illness, you cannot eliminate the risk of abuse. But you can I think the one thing you can do to most protect your children is actually open your own eyes to the realities of abuse. Because, yeah, I am, I cannot tell you, it breaks my heart every time how many times people have told me, I was abused as a kid. And I told my mom, and she didn’t believe me. And it’s like, she didn’t want to believe you. She couldn’t through the work that required her to open her eyes to reality, it’s so easy to dismiss a child. And it’s so understandable that you don’t want it to be true. And you can have that sense of guilt as well. Like, why didn’t I protect my children. But I mean, listening and believing children, when they tell you something is so important. And that is going to be easier to do if you actually know what the real risks are, and you understand a bit more about abuse. So educating yourself to the realities and understanding that you’re not certain, I’m not saying that monsters don’t exist, there are some people out there who are truly monstrous, but that isn’t going to be the primary danger for you to be alert to in terms of your children, is going to be you know, the the charming person in your life, whether that’s a potentially family member or friend, or just a professional who’s in your child’s life, a teacher, a doctor, or whatever.

56:27
So part of it is that it’s about opening your eyes to the realities. And the other is the conversations you have your kids. I think, the most you know, it’s like the biggest message we say to children about abuses is we’ve talked about strangers and how dangerous they are. And you shouldn’t go off, you know, don’t take sweets and strangers.

56:46
And I think actually, if we couldn’t see what we’re doing there, and we’re placing the responsibility on our children to the void of abusers. We wait, what you’re trying to tell them that what they can avoid their own abuse, which is so unfair and unrealistic as well. Because they’re much more likely to be abused by somebody who isn’t a stranger.

57:09
Which means that if they are abused, it’s going to be very confusing for that child, because mommy and daddy have always told me to watch out for strangers. And I wasn’t. So what is this? Is this thing that I’ve experienced from this friend of theirs from this person that they love? Is this is this obese? I don’t think it can be because this isn’t the thing that we’ve talked about.

57:28
Wow. So we need to have different conversations with kids. I think educating them about strangers is an okay idea. But just don’t do that and think you’ve covered the risk of sexual abuse, because you absolutely have not. I think there’s an we, but you also don’t want to frighten your kids. And you also need to remember that your your children are children now. But you know, you’re actually you’re raising an adult, not a child. And so we want to raise children that can grow up to become adults who are comfortable about their sexuality, and who aren’t terrified of everybody else in the world. Because we’re all kind of, you know, banged in the wrist with other people to them. So we need to be raising confident kids who know, their own bodies, who are confident around their own bodies, and who know that other people should respect their choices around their own bodies. So if I say to you, don’t touch me in that way, you should listen. And if you don’t, then you’re the one that’s wrong, not me, that I’ve got that kind of understanding, but this is my body. And that means I get to make certain choices. And a key component of my choices is who touches me where, and you can even you can teach small children, you know, to wash themselves so that they don’t need help. It’s simple stuff like that, that can make them independent around their own bodies, but also giving them a sense of pride and ownership and, and you can also teach very young children that

58:52
you know, the parts of their body that would buy their underpants, that they’re special, and that actually you don’t play games with other people that involve touching those bits. You know, the games don’t involve other bits of the body. And I think that’s a way of, of helping children learn what’s kind of safe and not safe or right and wrong in a way that’s that’s not frightening. And it’d be easy for them to understand. Yes. And as they grow older, like kids are curious. So So yeah, answer their questions. Lots of people talk about children going online and finding these awful sites and seeing a lot of pornography on the Internet. They, if they got decent answers from you every time they could talk to you about sex. And if you if you don’t think you’re the right person, because you’re a parent, an adult that you trust an adult in their life like something other than an anonymous website, and you don’t know what the website is, you don’t even know that they’re on it. If you can I help them get access if you can teach them about their bodies and make sure that they’re getting access to the kind of information that you would want them to learn about their bodies and as they get older about sex

1:00:00
They’re not gonna be left to their own devices. I think it’s when you leave a void. You know, when you don’t say anything that yes, people are going to be going off to perhaps sources that you would rather they weren’t using? Yes, yep. And yeah, the final thing we can do with our children is make sure that they can talk to us. And yeah, I think most parents think that they would be able to tell if their child was being sexually abused. And I’m saying that I would not be able to tell if child like being sexually abused, not for sure, I would never, ever assume that it’s too important to lead right down to an assumption. So I would always live with the idea that I’m not going to assume I could tell, and that protect that child even more, because I’m not blinded by my own assumption. And I’m also not going to assume that they would tell me because that is asking a lot.

1:00:50
But I can do the best I can in terms of that. And that’s about making sure that we have lots of conversations not not just about that, I think if it’s the first time your child needs to have that type of conversation with you, is to tell you that they’ve been abused by that, that’s that conversation is gonna be very difficult to have. Whereas Alternatively, it always been able to talk to you about stuff like that, you know, they’re able to tell you about the thing that happened at school and the thing they’re scared about or afraid of, or their vulnerabilities. Right, then this is just going to be, you know, a big conversation, but not like the first conversation of this nature. So it’s important, you can communicate in that way. And the best way to do that is to is to model it to change, to talk to children, and to show them that it’s okay to talk about your vulnerabilities that as a family, these are the things you do you share the things you’re afraid of, or worried about what upset you, you, you know, you apologize when you get angry, but you modeling to them, what you hope them to become, which is an adult who is able to talk about how they’re feeling to the people that they love. And that’s right, one of the best protective things you can do for your kids. Definitely, and they’re much more likely to tell you, yes, if they’ve been if you have that kind of relationship, but that kind of relationship, just like any relationship, just like intimacy with a partner, it takes work and it takes you you have to work you have to bring to that relationship, your vulnerability to because you know what, you may be a parent, but you’re not probably don’t feel like you’re getting it right all the time. And you’ve got the answer to everything. That’s right. Sometimes it’s about sharing that stuff.

1:02:36
Do you have an age limit of when these conversations can start?

1:02:43
Do you have a guide for that kind of online? Because I’ll link that up? It’s in the book. I’ve gotten kinds of things at different ages, but I mean, children, they tend to get body curious. First. And yeah, they yes, there’s tend to be a pattern there. Lots of kids can vary, but I think it’s a case of sometimes people wait for the right time, Daddy’s like there’s gonna be a moment.

1:03:06
When you find that your child is gonna bring that to you. And you know what it might be in the supermarket? They asked, you know, Mom, what’s the vagina? You know what? Oh, yeah, good. That’s the right moment right there, your child has changed. So, you know, if you don’t answer that question, and you answer every question in the supermarket, why can’t you answer this question? As I as you know, this is something we can talk about. We’re going to talk about it here. If this is where you choose. I think it’s about don’t think the right moment is going to come along. Assume that if if you don’t bring up that your child will, and I would just go with it, wherever it is, and make it something that’s okay to talk about. Because it is. Wow, that’s brilliant. And I wonder how many, I mean, that’s modeling appropriate parenting to the rest of the supermarket, whoever’s around to hear it. So. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Rather than Oh, that’s embarrassing. And you can’t, you know, you just taught your child for the vagina is a bad word. That’s the one thing. You’ve just taught them that really well. And so you’re already on the backfoot. That’s right. Wow, that’s brilliant. And the other thing I like to use the analogy of if you think of like a chalkboard, when you write, when you write a word on the chalkboard, it’s a lot easier to write when it’s blank, when it’s free of any other junk, instead of having to write over the images and the messages that your child has already received. If you’re the first one, to give them a proper framing of what sex should be about, and how to appropriately value your own body. That’s so much better than someone else devaluing it, or the images they get from school or the I mean, I can remember first sex jokes and you know, second grade probably Yeah, the latest you know that I mean, that’s pretty clear in my mind those jet sex jokes, so yep, yep, that’s good. Okay, so I want to ask Yeah, my to kind of follow up to that is the woman that

1:05:00
that is in a marriage. And she knows that abuse in her childhood is still affecting her. And she hasn’t really done any work to kind of get over or get healed or get any kind of I mean, she knows it’s affecting her sex life with her husband. I mean, what could you kind of give her in terms of maybe some processes she needs to think through or some helpful guides to kind of move into a better space around sexuality? Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s, there’s so many people, you’ve just described their reality. Yeah, a huge group. And, of course, loads of variants across that. If you’re, if you’re really struggling and you’re struggling in many areas of your life, then actually, I would probably prioritize getting the kind of therapeutic support you need. If you don’t feel ready for that, then then maybe check out my book, maybe talk to whoever it is you feel that you can talk to, but I guess my, my main message to you, if that’s you is, you’re not alone. It’s not at all unusual. All the things that you may be feeling that it was your fault that you’re now letting your husband down, that you’re so lucky to have here, and he’s going to leave you if you tell him the truth, and all the rest of it is so normal.

1:06:15
But it’s about accessing the support that you need. I don’t think it would be possible if you know, if you’re if you’re struggling, and you’ve had no support network, you’ve never really talked to anyone about this. You’ve not maybe you’ve never met anyone else who has been sexually abused and just had that kind of, oh, it happened to you kind of conversation too, like, Do you worry about this and rest of it, I don’t think you can get over the sex problems that you’re having, without doing the therapy, stuff like that. It’s just the two are so intertwined.

1:06:47
And I would say probably prioritize the therapeutic progress. Because I think you’ll be asking too much of yourself to suddenly feel okay with intimacy. Because you know, what, you’re probably not okay with intimacy, because you had this experience that you can draw a direct line from your experience of abuse to, to how you’re feeling about intimacy now.

1:07:11
And

1:07:13
later on, and I think this is one of the reasons why I think it’s really important we talk about sex, sexuality, intimacy,

1:07:22
after sexual abuse is, is that often people do that do therapeutic work, but then they don’t then do this other piece of work. It’s like, they’re so happy to instance, be able to go back to work or have their family life again, or, you know, that’s kind of coping and feeling good.

1:07:41
And often, you know, because the services that support survivors of abuse often so cash strapped, they don’t really have always the resource now give you let me give you six months more therapy, but we’re going to talk about intimacy and sex with your husband. Not always possible, because there is a waiting list. And there are other people who are deeply traumatized that we need to go and help now. So that that piece of work can get dropped. And that’s, that’s

1:08:07
tragic. In my my point of view, like intimacy is, is so important for you as a as an individual, but for your relationship for your partner for for everything else is where you’re expressing your aliveness with your partner. So it’s really important that you don’t give up. Yes, yeah. And that you do work at it. And how are you go about that, it really, when you start, I would say, whatever you feel comfortable with, because everybody has different comfort levels, some people, some people phoning helpline, which would seem like a huge, huge ask, whereas other people actually know I’m, I’m ready to talk to my partner about this. Because because he or she is the person that I want to support me through this or so I can’t, whatever feels right. And if I guess if nothing feels right, then then search online, find other people, there’s loads of chat rooms, see what other people have done, and then see if any of those options feel right for you. But do not just drop it, because you’ve already lost so much. Because if you’re obese, don’t lose this to that you you deserve to have this back in your life. And that’s right. You know what it might take a different form to what you’re thinking, I think we sometimes have an idea quite a rigid, closed idea of what successful sexuality is. Right? And we can feel like a failure. If we don’t, we don’t hit that mark. You know what, maybe it maybe your full expression of your sexuality now is isn’t going to be that conventional thing. But you’ll find whatever your thing is, you’ll find that

1:09:40
but you need to go on a process as work, you’re gonna have to work. You’re going to have to make yourself feel vulnerable again, and that can be really hard when you’ve experienced abuse. But yes, so that’s, that’s that’s the work of becoming new again. Yeah, and it’s worth it. Yes. Thank you so much for that Dr. Bird

1:10:00
And I think the two elements that you pulled out really was that therapeutic process that’s that support that talking it through with either a therapist, a counselor, or, you know, a very trusted friend. And, of course, being that this is the dy M podcast, I would encourage having a spiritually mature friend, someone that can hold you in the way God sees you and the way God sees your body and the way that he loves you and wants you to be totally healed and totally, totally, just a full person again. And I love that you also mentioned that second piece of getting that comfort in sexuality again, and not again, maybe you’ve never had it, right. Yeah, but but that’s, that’s really the piece that I also really, really focus in on. And so if you haven’t yet come to a webinar, I do these live webinars just about once a month, where it’s totally anonymous, totally free, just you and I talking about what God thinks about your sexuality, and how to get through some of these reservations that have been built up in your mind that you’re dirty, or you’re wrong, or this act is dirty, or wrong or bad, or this abuse that you’ve suffered. It’s just coats everything, the way you perceive what intimacy is supposed to be in your marriage, and maybe your husband, you think that he’s been being an additional abuser in a inappropriate way. And anyway, so I would just, I would love to have you, I’d love to have you because I want to work on that second piece of how can we become fully sexual beings the way God intended, from the beginning that he made them male and female for this reason, Jesus said, they become one flesh. So very, very appropriate to dive into that process. So thank you so much for that, Dr. Burrows. I wanted, then, you know, we’re going to be wrapping up pretty soon. But I wanted to ask you, a husband that might suspect his wife has suffered abuse or knows that she suffered abuse, what are ways that he can supports her? That can be difficult? I guess it depends whether or not you are talking about it to get or whether there is this thing that is kind of known but not talked about? I was going on said

1:12:06
if it is an assumption?

1:12:09
Well, I mean, you have to hold the fact that it is an assumption, and you could be wrong. I mean, maybe you’re picking up on something, but it isn’t that, you know, some something else.

1:12:18
So I guess, I mean, I would always want to be in the kind of relationship where you could have that conversation, that’s gonna be a really hard conversation to have. I wouldn’t go with you know, have you been abused? I would go with look, I would make it about you. But look, I just feel that there’s this thing between us. And there’s some thing that maybe I want to help you in a way, but it’s almost like, I’m not sure what what it is that I want to help you with. But I just, you know, I’ll be really honest about how vulnerable you feel about asking and how you feel. And and to own it and not say, you know, I’m going to assume this about you to tell me because that’s quite confrontational. Yeah. So So make yourself vulnerable, and see what happens. But you know, not everybody is able to

1:13:04
able to confide in their partner and you know, have some compassion for that in because they don’t necessarily trust you or love you dearly, it could be that they are absolutely terrified that you’ll leave them it could be that they’ve told people before, and it didn’t work out well, for them. It could be that they hate themselves and blaming themselves. And when you see this side of them, you’re definitely going to be up and leave so so don’t assume it’s because the negative in terms of you don’t don’t take offense that they haven’t told you.

1:13:35
And a lot of the help lines and support agencies out there will will offer advice and support for partners too. So I would encourage you to speak to other people who are in a similar position, you know, other partners, because it can make you feel inadequate.

1:13:52
And I think especially when it comes to sex, because you can almost feel like, I feel bad because I want sex and I’m getting it and I feel bad because I’m kind of, you know, there’s a piece of me that’s angry about that. Right? You know what it’s okay to desire your partner want to have sex with them and

1:14:11
thing, and it’s okay to be disappointed that you’re not going to be exploring that side of your relationship in the way that you want to right now, that’s, that’s really okay. I mean, the most important thing at this point is that you can find a way of communicating about this.

1:14:27
So that would be what I would advise them to do to try to communicate but also to get support for yourself, and to talk to people about how it feels because then you’re neglected.

1:14:39
And I think the more you’re able to communicate to the partner, actually, the better you can help them too. And they may try to sometimes survivors of abuse can try to own their experience fully. And in some ways that’s absolutely right. Because it is their abuse, it is their life. It is their recovery. It’s you know, it’s

1:15:00
about them, and they need to be able to own it to the extent that it applies to them as an individual. But when it comes down to your relationship with them, and your intimate relationship with them, then that is about to have you as a couple. And so you should be having conversations about that you should feel included. Does that bit that that is about you as well.

1:15:21
Wow. Yeah, that’s brilliant. Yep. And I do want to do ask, because you’re so right, there’s so many even people that have either abused or thought about it, or all, you know, all sorts on the spectrum.

1:15:36
Where can they get help? Where are safe places that they can start talking about this stuff? First of all, reading your book, reading your resources, going to the YouTube channel, any other things you want to point them to just search online? Because it’s such a large site? So search terms survival, yes, sexual abuse, rape, support, help, if you put in those kinds of terms, and maybe if you want something local, then your local area, and you’ll find loads? And if you’re really struggling, find one of them, find them up and say, Look, can you help me find that thing I’m really looking for, they should help you. That’s right. That’s great to hear. And, and anyone that’s working in this space understands the level of privateness, and the courage that it takes to come out to ask for support. But at the same time, you know, someone like Dr. Burrows, where you specifically have an in on with the work, she’s doing also no more.org, I can point you to that’s, you know, people that really have a pulse on resources and how to move forward in your understanding. And I think, you know, Dr. Burrows has really pointed out the need to learn the need to understand this stuff. If any of this is new information to you. And for me, I’m just My mind is blown. I’m just amazed at the good work that Dr. Burrows has been doing. Do check out her resources. And can you go ahead and share some resources that you can point people to you mentioned your book, but can you give us more clear instructions on how to find find you online? Yeah, if you if you search for my name, so Nina burrows, and my surname is bu double R O W E s, and you’ll find my websites. Nina burrows.com, is my website for like the public. And my illustrated book, for people who’ve experienced sexual abuse or rape is called the courage to be me. And you can buy a copy of that if you want to. But you can read that whole book online for free, it’s all there waiting for you. My book for parents

1:17:38
is also on that website. That’s called eyes open to sexual abuse, what every parent needs to know.

1:17:46
And when you search, my research website might come up, which is N B, hyphen, research.com. And that’s where I’ve got all of my resources for professionals in this area, specifically law enforcement. But there’s loads of videos on there and research reports. And so there’s an awful lot of research resources online.

1:18:07
And you’ll also find my my YouTube video channel where I’ve answered lots and lots of questions about sexual abuse, and like, look forward to answering your question when they may be. Well, Dr. Burrows, I just cannot be more grateful for how generous you’ve been with all of your wisdom and insight and, and also just how generous you are with giving these resources away for free. I mean, I just want to encourage anyone listening that if you’ve been moved by what she’s doing, again, she is an entrepreneur, this is her business. And so will you just take some time to just write out a check or do a quick online? Is there some kind of donation button that they can push? Or how do they get money to you Dr. Burrows, buy my books. Try you’re trying to monetize myself by making a living through my books, cuz then I can be super independent. So please buy

1:18:58
well, and stop giving your books away for free Dr. Burrows. Yeah, that one book, because because of the nature of the audience, if you if you’re not ready to find a helpline, I think you are not ready to go into a bookshop and buy a book.

1:19:11
So, ya know, it’s important to me that that fair, but but I’d say a lot of people and a lot of organizations are buying it. So anyway, good, good. We’ll keep that in mind. Then anyone who is you know, interested in buying it for their church or the, you know, people that you know, that need it, would you consider purchasing it, maybe, maybe read it first and then purchase it after that or something along those lines, that would be very, very helpful.

1:19:36
Great, any last pieces of advice that you’d like to share with the listeners? I think? I think a lot of people hold a lot of fear and frustration around sexual abuse. And so might like my message to kind of every one is if you want to do something about this, if you want things to change, I think it’s about recognizing that the best thing you can do is open your eyes to the reality to have the courage to do that as well. So

1:20:00
reason why most of my content is there for free. It’s because I want you to educate yourselves. So please, you know, other psychologists are available. There’s other information out there. But if you go nowhere else, please check out my website, watch some of the videos and share them, put them on Facebook. Let’s have start having some different conversations about sexual abuse. Because what we’re doing right now, it’s not working. And this issue is too important. It’s too important for us. And it’s too important for our kids to not have the courage to start having better conversations.

1:20:31
Wow, wow. Again, this is just brilliant. And you can tell the genuineness you have Dr. Burns, she’s just willing to just, she just wants this to change. She just has seen too many broken lives and too many broken people that it just needs to change to take the courage, you know, take the courage from what she’s sharing and and have those hard, difficult, challenging conversations, you know, because that could save someone just like you said, you know, the person that’s actually been abused doesn’t actually get justice in this lifetime. They can’t, it’s already happened to them. But we can have those conversations, do the hard work, talk to your husband about, you know, difficult things that you’re seeing happening. Talk to your wife, talk to your kids, I mean,

1:21:13
so good. Again, thank you so much for everything you’ve done. Really, Dr. Burrows, this is just incredible. You’ve done. Thank you very much for having me. My pleasure. We’ll talk again soon. Thank you.

1:21:28
Wow, it’s just so powerful. I mean, I don’t know if you could sense but while I was on the call with her, I’m just awestruck at how many lives this is affecting. It’s not a joke. It’s not a game, it’s something we need to take so seriously. And if you know anyone who could benefit from this kind of material, I asked you to be brave, and I asked you to be bold, and share it with them. It’s just a simple link to share, whether it’s on your Facebook page, Twitter, or just a simple email, because people need to know that they are not alone. And God sees them and He loves them. And if you my dear sister, my dear, maybe a husband is listening. I just want you to know that God loves you. And he understands that what what happened to you was not okay. And he is the one that vindicates he is the one that holds every tear, every pain point that you have. He carries those it says he holds them in a bottle. I mean, he cares about your heart, and he wants to seal totally, totally free, totally healed and renewed. He loves you and He hates that this happened to you. So please check out the resources go to the light your marriage.com There’s resources that Nina mentions, and it’s all linked up there. But don’t don’t let the silence when it’s not. Not okay for you to hide and feel embarrassed and all by yourself when you’re not. There’s so many out there who want to help you. It’s time to reach out. It’s time to reach out.

1:23:05
I love you. Thank you again for listening. God bless you.

1:23:11
Thanks for listening. If you’ve been blessed by this, why not share it? Until next time, live with love, wisdom and passion

 

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