What Are the Long Term Effects on Victims of Child Molestation?

They can vary from just not being able to trust people, to having trouble with intimate relationships, to drug abuse, and thoughts of suicide.

If you are having serious problems – then get yourself some help.

California Lawyers for Victims of Child Molestation

Whether a victim is a child or adult, mentally and emotionally mature or disabled, sexual abuse can attack a person’s ability to trust and form natural, normal loving relationships. These long-term effects of abuse adversely affect the ability to relate to authority figures as well. The latter consequences are the most latent, slow to surface and difficult to trace and identify.

The understandable concerns of future victims and those who continue to suffer long after their cases have been adjudicated are always uppermost in our minds as we advance victim clients’ rights and interests at Abramson Smith Waldsmith LLP in San Francisco. We’ve been fighting for compensation for our abuse victim clients for the past 30 years.

Our successful trial attorneys have the experience, the reputation and the results to obtain compensation for you and the justice you deserve for the ways you were so cruelly mistreated. Contact us if you, someone you know, a relative, friend or loved one has been subject to the sexual abuse of another.
Long-Term Effects of Abuse

Among the life changing, long-term effects of abuse reported by adult survivors of sexual abuse, are both the logical as well as the unexpectedly dramatic negative additions to a victim’s personality and physical makeup. These effects include:

* Drug and alcohol abuse
* Failed personal and romantic relationships
* Loss of religious faith, in cases of clergy abuse
* Disinterest in family relationships
* Disintegration of a family
* Poor self-esteem
* Feelings of deep depression
* Difficulties with casual social relationships
* Feelings of isolation and despair
* Loss of trust in authority figures and institutions who don’t report child molestation
* Despair in reaction to persecuting attitudes of police
* Anger
* Inappropriate sexual behavior
* Poor work habits
* Unemployment or underemployment

If any or all of these long-term effects of abuse are present in someone you know, we can recommend various treatment resources that could help. Our compassionate sexual abuse lawyers want to help in any way we can to restore a victim’s life to some semblance of normalcy. So call our California law offices toll-free at your earliest convenience.
Contact Us

The effects of sexual abuse on a child, adult or disabled person can be traumatic and last a lifetime. Help prevent these human tragedies by calling our caring attorneys in our San Francisco law offices of Abramson Smith Waldsmith LLP today. We’re available by toll-free phone, fax and e-mail.

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Reactions to trauma may appear immediately after the traumatic event or days or even weeks later. The symptoms of the traumatic reactions may be very individual and depend on the age of the child.

Very young children typically have a strong fear of being separated from their parents. They might show behaviours of earlier developmental stages (regressive behaviour) like thumb-sucking, bedwetting, or they cannot sleep alone in their beds anymore (fear of darkness)

Any change of social interaction to relatives or at kindergarten or school with withdrawal, disruptive behaviour or changes of the attentional functions (inability to pay attention) with additional sleeping problems or nightmares can be due to trauma. Some children only report somatic complaints or other bodily symptoms.

Older adolescents will describe flashbacks or dissociative symptoms. Social withdrawal and avoidance of any stimuli that are closely related to the trauma (traumatic trigger) are very typical for traumatic experiences. Some adolescents try to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs to compensate for flashbacks and major emotional disturbances.

Many children or adolescents are afraid to talk about their traumatic experiences, especially if close relatives are involved. They may even feel extreme guilt over their failure to prevent the traumatic event.

These children and adolescents need intensive care and protection!

There is anger, guilt and questions: why did the person do this? What can help is volunteering for an organization that serves abuse victims and family shelters.