** Sexual Abuse, Incest and Rape **

The Catechism Of The Catholic Church states:

"Rape is the forcible violation of the sexual intimacy of another person. It does injury to justice and charity. Rape deeply wounds the respect, freedom, and physical and moral integrity to which every person has a right. It causes grave damage that can mark the victim for life. It is always an intrinsically evil act. Graver still is the rape of children committed by parents (incest) or those responsible for the education of the children entrusted to them". (Paragraph 2356)

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It is like a rabbit that is chased by a fox or wolves. The rabbit was made by God to run rapidly, but when cornered, and no place else to run, the mind of the little animal shuts down, it stops working. It is not that the rabbit resigns itself to the fate of destruction. No. Instead the tiny creature no longer resists, while its mind stops processing the event that is happening. For in the beginning, God did not make the mind to absorb trauma, insisting that it make sense or endure the event of it's own destruction.

The same is true for adults and children raped and incested. Not knowing how to make sense of what's happened to them, the delicate soft personality of the one abused, made remarkably in God's image, fractures, implodes upon itself. Creating, as it were, a "compartment" inside the one traumatized. This "compartmentalization" is more than a suppression of feelings, a repression of emotions (i.e.,shame, fear, humiliation, loneliness, despair). ... It is more dramatically a suppression of an "entire event". ..... A little girl or boy locked in a closet by no wish of their own. Forced to stay there, alone and feeling blamed, keeping their mouth shut for a lifetime quite possibly. Burying the secret, living a lie, going on with life as if life would somehow make sense afterwards.

Has this happened to you? If so, I am certain you have wondered in your heart, "Why did God let this happen?" ... and ... "Where was God when this happened to me?"

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For now let me say this to you. When God made you in the beautiful way you are dear one, God did not make you so that you would be violated in this way. On the contrary, He made you to be cherished, loved and protected.

Then where was our Lord when this terrible injustice was done (and maybe done over and over)??? ..... Listen to me. God was there with you and He wept. If you were too frightened to cry, then He cried for both of you.

And it was not your fault. Mary our Mother, all the saints and angels, the Triune Person of God Himself, knows intimately every dynamic of trauma psychology that echoed through your hurting soul the instant you were wronged, then blamed for the wrong by the perpetrator who took no responsibility.

Take care of yourself. You are "not" living a lie. Christ Himself was raped and mocked before he was nailed to a cross. He knows how you feel.

Finally, as to the closet, the "compartment" the child inside you sits inside, frightened and alone. Remember what Jesus said In Revelation 3:20-22 ...

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches."