were these cocsa? please help

[aaaa]

i was wondering if these things i’ve experienced were considered cocsa - i saw one post from last year talking about how they were both a perpetrator and a victim, and i wanted to ask about my own experiences too.

the earliest experiences of me possibly being a victim were when i was pretty young, maybe 7 or 8 if i had to guess, involving a female cousin of mine (i’m female if that makes a difference) she’s about 1-2 years older than me, i believe. we had ended up touching each other sexually (i have no idea whos idea it was, and i’m not sure if i was fully consenting or if i just did it because i trusted her) it wasn’t actually sex or anything, just touching and experimenting. i know neither of us knew it was wrong at the time, but i still feel guilt, even to this day (i’m 18 now.) since it was both of us, i sorta feel like this doesn’t make me a victim. maybe we were both victims, i’m not sure. i still feel really guilty about it and it makes me feel horrible about myself.

i think i was in elementary school when i may have committed cocsa to a much younger girl with a friend of mine. i don’t remember the exact ages but just know the girl was much younger than me or my friend (maybe 2-4 grades behind :c) around the time of the first experience i described i discovered pornography and the idea of sex and i think it really messed with me as a child. we were at a neighbors house and the daughter was the victim. i don’t remember whos idea it was. we didnt do sexual stuff to the girl but i think we asked (or maybe just told) the girl to do something to us. it didn’t last long, it wasn’t a reoccurring thing, we stopped when she didn’t want to do it anymore, but it was still gross either way. i think about the girl often and if she remembers it ever happening. i sort of hope she doesn’t because i don’t want her to have to live through any pain it might cause. i’m not asking for pity, i just really needed to get it off my chest.

was i traumatized and in turn traumatized someone else? i feel like at the time, i knew the second incident was wrong, but at the same time i didn’t realize how wrong it was. i feel so guilty, especially about the second one, and i haven’t told anyone. i’m generally open about a lot of things, so keeping this to myself is killing me because i feel so gross, guilty, and immoral. i feel very bad for the girl, but i also feel bad for myself. i shouldn’t have been raised on certain topics, and i feel like i was traumatized to the point where i thought these things weren’t as bad as they actually were. but on the other hand, i feel as if i’m irredeemable and a terrible person for doing such things.

one more thing i want to ask about is it’s considered cocsa if you’re an “older” teen, my guess is around 14-15. i was sleeping over at a friend’s house, and my friend asked to finger me. i said okay because i was very inexperienced and hypersexual, and i thought it would be fun. there was no prep and it ended up hurting really bad. i wasn’t wet whatsoever and i think they had multiple fingers inside, probably 2. i hadn’t experimented with 2 fingers before so it hurt, as i said, and i couldnt feel anything except a terrible burning feeling. i thought i remembered asking them to stop/take a finger out, but i really don’t think they did (again, i couldn’t feel well, but the sensation was still burning just as much, so i assumed they didn’t.) now i’m doubtful of what really happened because they were and are still my friend, and i feel like maybe i didn’t say anything after all or said it too quietly and they didn’t hear. but thinking about it makes me feel really terrible and i think it messed with me mentally a bit. i see things about sexual assault and i’m wondering if it could actually be classified as such. i’d consider myself a victim if i wasn’t doubtful, or if i hadn’t done anything to that little girl a few years prior. i go back and forth questioning whether i’m making excuses for them and they heard what i asked or they may not have heard at all.

also, i’m editing this to say that i know the second one was definitely cocsa, i know i was the perpetrator as well as my friend, but i was wondering is there a proper explanation, or am i just a bad person? do i deserve to feel as guilty as i do? did i have a personal justifiable reason or is there no salvation to what i did? i really don’t want to invalidate anything i put that little girl through but if there’s a slight chance that i’m not as bad of a person as i convince myself i am, i want to know, please.

i’m really conflicted, all of these things have piled up in my soul and i wanted to ask for advice and get it off of my chest. any kind words or thoughts would be appreciated.

[Sam W]

Hi aaa,

I want to start by saying I'm sorry that all of these experiences are tangling up inside you and making you feel this way.

There's a lot to unpack here, but I want to start by addressing the last incident first. COCSA does indeed capture instances of sexual assault between teenagers. In fact, part of why the term exists is because a legal term was needed to describe a situation where on teen made a choice to assault another, because in the eyes of the law, a 14 year old is still a child.

If you did tell your friend to stop, or you were otherwise giving signals that you were not into what was going on, then that certainly meets the definition of assault, even if you consented at the start, since consent can be revoked at any time. Too, someone can be both a victim and a perpetrator of assault; hurting someone else doesn't somehow erase what was done to them. So, if assault feels like the term that best describes what happened, then that's the term you get to use, okay?

More than that, nothing you're describing here makes you sound like an irredeemable, awful person. This is all clearly a source of a lot of guilt for you, so I want to add some perspective that may help assuage some of that.

With the incident with your cousin, that doesn't sound like COCSA to me, and in fact sounds much more like the kind of sexual exploration and experimentation we know younger children engage in and that isn't considered abuse. You were engaging in that out of curiosity, not out of any desire for sexual gratification, and you were doing so in way where you didn't even have the context that what you were doing would be considered sexual.

With the final incident, there are a few things I want to draw your attention to where it reads to me as that same kind of exploration rather than as COCSA. The most important one is that when the other girl said she wanted to stop, the interaction stopped, and neither you nor your friend pushed for it to continue or tried to repeat it at a later date. Too, even if you had seen sexual media at this point, given the age you were you were likely still missing context for it and reenacting what you had seen. That again falls much more within sexual curiosity, rather than something like abuse where you decided you wanted to get sexual gratification from this person regardless of whether they told you to stop.

There are some more things to touch on here, but that was a lot all at once. Reading what I've written so far, how are you feeling?

[aaaa]

thank you so much for responding. i was so scared to post about it and i had never told anyone, as i previously said in the post, so being able to get it off my chest and have someone respond so kindly is such a nice thing to see. it brought me to tears, in a nice way, so thank you. your response was very helpful and maybe it can help me lose some of the guilt that has been building up. my perspective of what happened has definitely changed a bit due to your explanations. people like you are so wonderful, thank you again <3

[Sam W]

I'm so very glad I was able to offer you a new perspective and help you with all those feelings you were carrying around this. If there are other things we can do to support you, or you have other questions down the line, you know where to find us <3