Survivors Share Stories of Recovering Repressed Memories after Child Sexual Trauma

By Maria Socolof, 5WAVES Cofounder, Author of the memoir The Invisible Key: Unlocking the Mystery of My Chronic Pain and the website healingfromchronicpain.com.

This blog post has been adapted with permission from Maria’s Prologue to Mary Knight’s memoir, My Life NOW.

Click above to hear the firsthand accounts of others who experienced delayed recall of memories of child sexual abuse, on a YouTube playlist, a project of IncestAWARE under Mary and Maria's leadership.

Our stories may differ, but traumatization can occur from many varied underlying events. I had the pleasure of meeting Mary Knight in 2021 through the advocacy group Incest AWARE. After I enjoyed a successful twenty-two-year career as an environmental health scientist, my life’s focus shifted when I was forced to face a past trauma that resulted in debilitating chronic pain. Unable to continue my hard-earned career, I had to concentrate on healing and ultimately found myself compelled to tell my story. I had recently published my memoir and was ready and determined to continue speaking out on behalf of others who have suffered as a result of childhood sexual trauma.

During Incest AWARE’s inaugural meeting, survivor advocates shared about their past anti-incest work and what they hoped to accomplish in the future. It was then that I learned of Mary’s film projects. I was immediately intrigued, and later impressed when I had the privilege of viewing them.

As I continued to get to know Mary through her website and later from direct one-on-one conversations, I learned that our backstories are vastly different. Yet we formed a strong connection based on our shared healing experiences.

What is trauma?

Trauma is how an individual reacts to an unbearable situation. It affects each of us in our own unique way. The US’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration describes it in this way:

“Individual trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”

What are the impacts of trauma?

In many ways contrasting Mary’s upbringing of being sex-trafficked by adult family members, I grew up in what would be considered a safe and loving environment under the guidance of my two devoted parents in our happy suburban home. Yet I was sexually violated on one occasion by my sibling, who had been sexually abused outside of the family. Not fully understanding the consequences of his actions, he passed his trauma on to me. The unfathomable assault on my body by my beloved and trusted sibling caused my protective brain to put this memory in the far recesses of my subconscious, where it stayed for thirty-two years.

What is repressed memory, or dissociative amnesia?

Repressing a memory, clinically called dissociative amnesia, is rather common among trauma and sexual abuse survivors. In fact, research indicates that 32 percent of trauma survivors [1] and 42 percent of sexual abuse survivors [2] do not remember their trauma or abuse for a period of time, lasting anywhere from days to decades.

This is a natural coping method we use to mentally escape from the horror of a situation and is well recognized in neuroscience and trauma research. There are many conditions that might increase the likelihood that a survivor will not remember their abuse [3].These include being victimized at a young age; high frequency, duration, or severity of the abuse; having more than one perpetrator; being psychologically close, such as with a family member; lack of support, particularly from one’s mother, when disclosing the abuse; and a natural tendency for some people to dissociate. Even seemingly minor events can cause dissociative amnesia or have long-lasting effects. What causes us to not remember can vary significantly.

Not until I was forty-two years old, and prompted by a nightmare, did I recall that one of my brothers molested me when I was ten. I later learned that repressing the memory was a survival strategy. It allowed me to remove from my memory what I couldn’t fully process at the time. It allowed me to function in spite of an incomprehensible act. It allowed me to live under the same roof as someone who had violated my body—and my trust. It allowed me to keep my family together and to stay with my parents, who didn’t come to my rescue (to no fault of their own), but whom I depended on for survival.

I had made a cryptic attempt to tell my parents at the time, as evidenced by a note that my parents found in their attic thirty-three years after the fact. Without explaining what had happened, I asked my mother if I could sleep with her the night after it happened. This was not a common request from ten-year-old me, and since my mother didn’t know what had occurred, she rejected my subtle cry for help.

My young mind learned that my parents didn’t protect me. This, however, was in stark contrast to my consciously lived childhood of love and support from wonderful parents.

While my charmed life went on, my subconscious held a dark secret. The one-time violation, and what I perceived as my mother’s rejection, seem to have been enough for me to be traumatized and to push the memory far away for decades.

Experiencing recovered memories, or delayed recall

My mind-blowing recollection–a recovered memory–was ultimately corroborated by my brother who molested me. When I asked him point-blank about it, he immediately took full responsibility for what he did to me. I was immensely grateful for this acknowledgement, and yet I spent the next dozen-plus years working through my trauma via various bodywork and psychological therapies, as well as many self-care approaches. I dug into my mind and body to find deeply buried emotions that were holding me hostage and causing me chronic physical pain. Fear, anger, confusion, shame, unworthiness. Through all this work and countless hours of cathartic writing, I’m now able to tell my story. In doing so, I have learned that I am not alone in my suffering and that millions of others are living with the aftereffects of trauma, too.

Mary reminded me not to compare my abuse to hers and not to minimize what happened to me. Even if what I experienced seemed insignificant compared to the abuse she and others have suffered, I was still traumatized by something that my child-brain could not process, and I need to respect and honor that fact. That is how we heal.

Although Mary and I had quite different childhood experiences, we share many commonalities. We were both traumatized by family members, we both repressed our memories for years, we both have lived with debilitating chronic pain, and we both have undergone many types of therapies and tried numerous self-care approaches to further our healing. We both created websites detailing how we have healed, we both have penned our stories, and we both are driven toward advocacy work. As such, we are building awareness of the diversity of childhood sexual trauma, providing support to other survivors, and demonstrating that there is a path to healing.

1 Diana M. Elliott, “Traumatic Events: Prevalence and Delayed Recall in the General Population.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 65, no. 5 (1997): 811 in Wolf and Nochajski, 2013.

2 Diana M. Elliott and John Briere, “Posttraumatic Stress Associated with Delayed Recall of Sexual Abuse: A General Population Study.” Journal of Traumatic Stress 8, no. 4 (1995): 629–647.

3 Molly R. Wolf and Thomas H. Nochajski, “Child Sexual Abuse Survivors with Dissociative Amnesia: What’s the Difference?” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 22, no. 4 (2013): 462–480.

Power Dynamics & Patriarchy: The Words No One Wants to Talk About

Risa is a sibling sexual abuse (SSA) survivor, author, researcher, and activist. In 2000 she published the first (and still only) anthology of visual art and writings by SSA survivors, Not Child’s Play. The Second Edition came out in 2023. This blog was adapted from a conversation between Risa and Brandy, parent of SSA, cofounder of 5WAVES.org and author of siblingsexualtrauma.com.

Consent wheel and art by Risa Shaw, 2024.

Risa: Like many others, I grew up in a household where power was gendered. I lived in a world where boys and men were valued more than girls and women. That’s still the world we live in. Context is so important; the abuse didn’t happen in a vacuum. 

In the 1980’s I told my family what my brother had done to me. Over the years it became clear to me that neither my mother nor my step-mother felt they could offer me support on anything other than an individual level, and neither one of them could hold my brother accountable for what he did. They felt bad (and I think a lot of shame and guilt), and were pretty paralyzed. 

I grew up being taught, implicitly and explicitly, that girls and women stayed quiet. Some of this was about “knowing your place” and some was about “keeping the family intact.” We did that with silence and acquiescence, always at our own expense. Years later my mother broke her own silence and told me – and this was the first time she told anyone – that she and two other girl cousins had been sexually abused by a male cousin in her childhood. 

Patriarchy is so baked into our daily lives that many people don’t see the harm and consequences of it. We are taught not to think about how we are steeped in patriarchy. In my home, the males were in charge, their needs came first, and their perspectives were correct. I think the abuse had a lot to do with my brother believing that his behavior was okay and knowing he could get away with it, and most anything he chose to do. The boy in our family learned he was entitled to what he wanted, including taking and doing what he wanted with his sisters. My dad told me he could not conceive of his own behavior contributing at all to the abuse; that was supposed to absolve him of not having kept his children safe. That patriarchal attitude goes back a long way, and it’s not just in my family.

Brandy: The influence of patriarchy isn’t simple. Boys are abused too, and sisters also abuse their siblings. And, there’s no denying that the vast majority of siblings responsible for the harm are brothers, and the majority of siblings they harm are sisters. Although it is only one of many factors involved with sibling sexual abuse, and every individual situation is different, I don’t think the phenomenon of sibling sexual abuse can be fully understood without looking through the lens of patriarchy and misogyny. 

Patriarchy may look different in today’s younger generations than it did when older generations of survivors were growing up. In Western cultures in particular, it is less blatant. But it still persists under the surface. We may not advertise separately for “Men Wanted” and “Ladies Wanted” any more, but traditionally female jobs still pay far less than equivalent jobs that were filled by men in the past. Sexualized and violent portrayals of girls and women have been part of patriarchy in many times and places. Now sexualized violence proliferates online; a 2020 survey of internet pornography found that 97% of the commonly-depicted physical violence is directed at females, with no indication of negative reactions or consequences. 

Risa: Yes, it is not simple, and gender roles and power dynamics harm everyone involved. Growing up I had no awareness of body safety or sexual abuse in general; we didn't talk about consent or power dynamics. I’ve made a point to have relationships and conversations with my nieces and nephews, to help them recognize and realize their own agency, so we can break this intergenerational cycle. I think the fact that they know about the abuse in my generation and we talk about it, means that the cycle has been broken in my family.

Brandy: I agree, it’s so important to talk with children, to allow curiosity and openness on both sides. This is true even for those who are sure there is no history of abuse in their family, or who do not feel patriarchy is a factor in their lives.

It’s important to guard against anyone feeling absent from the conversation about sibling sexual abuse. Discussions about the role of misogyny and patriarchy in sibling sexual abuse must be framed to include male survivors and those whose trauma arose from a sister’s actions. We need to ask questions such as, where do the power differentials show up when male siblings are victimized and when female siblings harm? We must also recognize that gender-based roles and power differences are a dominant reality in many families, cultures, and generations. So we need to include all these possibilities when strategizing and messaging to prevent and heal from sibling sexual abuse.

Risa: I invite you, the reader, to join us in thinking about how unequal power dynamics set the stage, encourage, or give permission for certain people (due to gender, birth order, race, able-bodiedness, etc.) to take advantage of and harm others. No matter what you call it, what happens when one person gets to do things others are “not supposed to do”? Does your family, culture, community, and/or institution allow greater agency for some than for others? Have you been taught to value some people over others, implicitly or explicitly? Join us in thinking and talking about how we can have conversation on these issues that harm everyone, including those who have been given (sometimes quite literally) the upper hand. Join us so we all can take action to prevent further harm and continue to heal from the trauma of sibling sexual abuse that so many have experienced. 

Behind the Dark Night

Poem & Image by Maria Socolof, Cofounder of 5WAVES, Survivor of sibling sexual trauma, & Author of The Invisible Key: Unlocking the Mystery of My Chronic Pain. Poem reprinted with permission from Maria's website, healingfromchronicpain.wordpress.com

I cover my eyes Shame held tight It’s safe in here But dark as night In fact, darker than night The darkest I’ve known I keep my hands plastered Feel what it’s like It’s lonely, it’s sad It’s absent of light It’s shielded and sheltered But void of life I keep my hands there To let it sink in As safe as it feels It’s empty within I keep my hands there I juggle the two Comfort and solace Versus nothing anew I keep my hands there Longer than wanted I feel it and feel it and feel it It’s haunting What am I missing In a safe—but dark—place? Freedom and love Wide open space This time I look past The deepest of dark Run through it with courage I’m on my mark I pull my hands off The light bright and brilliant Can safety be found In my untethered milieu? Family and friends give their support I’m learning to take it But what’s more important I’m learning to make it Make my own love That I send from my heart To the one in that dark place To help her get out