mum doesn't believe my SA experience

[Lyle Lanley]

i've talked about what happened to me multiple times but basically i got SA by this guy (B) when i was 14/15, and that wass not the only offense; there were many memories that resurfaced, when we were preteens he SAed me other times but not as "strongly" as that one, just touches/gropes that he dismissed as 'accidental' and comments that made me unconfortable. when we were much younger (him 7, me 6) there also have been instances of what i think could be cocsa, but i'm not sure. he'd ask to play pretend as bowser and princess peach, which wasn't as innocent as it sounded because it consisted of him gripping my body with force and not letting me go even if i said no, then he'd put me on the bed or couch and lay down opposite me, making me extremely uncomfortable. and when adults walked in on us playing this "game" i always felt horrible, like a deer in the headlights, for reasons i couldn't explain to myself back hten. no matter how many times i explained to him that i didn't like that game, he awlays insisted and always wanted to play it, but eventually he stopped (but that wasn't good, it escalated up to what we know)

but now, when i talk to my mother about this experience and why i absolutely despise the guy, she always tells me "you need to call things by their proper name, what he did wasn't SA, he did not force PIV sex on you, besides when i'd catch you guys playing inappropriate games as a kid, you never said no, you liked it and you wanted it, stop twisting the narrative"
it always infuriates me and makes me cry which makes me sound less beleavable. i never wanted it, but B would put me in a position where i couldn't say no and even if i did he would not take it for an answer.
i talked about my childhood experience so far because that's her main point; when it comes to the last instance of it, she makes the point i said earlier: that it wasn't SA because he did not strip me or penetrate me.
what he did do, though, is try to corner me and then dry-hump/simulate motions of intercourse. by some kind of miracle, i was able to break away from him and get him to stop by screaming like a madman. i stopped at the right moment, and my mum also uses this against me, but i know that if for whatever reason i had not done that, worse things would've happened.

sometimes, though, i doubt myself. did i really want it? and for that last instance, am i jus t triyng to tell myself that it was SA? i don't know, either way i am scarred for life and furious that i do not have empathy or comprehension from my mother.

[Sam W]

Hi Lyle Lanley,

I'm so sorry that your mom isn't treating those experiences with the seriousness they deserve, and that she's accusing you of lying about something that was such an ongoing source of stress and, it sounds like, trauma for you as a little kid. Too, I'd point out that even if this didn't meet the standard definition of assault (which, to be clear, it does), she still shouldn't be dismissing your experiences and insisting that you're lying about how you felt about them.

Sexual assault, at it's most basic definition, is an instance of sexual contact that the person does not want and did not consent to. It doesn't have to involve certain body parts, or someone removing someone elses clothes. For the last situation you described, that does meet the definition of child on child sexual assault; it was something you didn't want, something you did things like scream to try and be free of, and he overrode your consent anyway. It also was part of a pattern of behavior that escalated over time (and one, I'd point out, might not have escalated if an adult in the situation had taken some time to think about what was going on, or asked you how you felt about it).

How can we best support you around this right now? Do you think your mom would be more inclined to listen to you if you brought her some resources or information on sexual assault, including among children? Or is your sense that she's made up her mind and that trying to change it will likely just mean yet another crummy interaction that leaves you feeling unsupported?

[Lyle Lanley]

hi sam w and thanks for the answer.

i must clarufy that the last instance happened when i was in my mid teens, but from my childhood to then he had harrassed me in various "insignificant" ways, multiple times.

and as a kid i knew that the "princess game" was something bad, and i never wanted it but he would still do that even if i said no, so over time i just went with it becuase it wouldn't matter what i said, he would still do it. i never thought of telling an adult. it was traumatic, i don't know if i ever said something to my mum about how it made me feel. and if i did now, she'd once agaisn disagree and think i'm twisting the narrative because i don't want to admit i liked it. her mind is made up.

any support is okay, but i don't think i'll bring this up with her any soon

[Sam W]

It's absolutely okay if you don't want to bring this up with her again any time soon (or ever), especially given the things she's said about it so far. Is that something it's going to be easy to avoid? Or does this come up often enough in conversation that you might need to figure out how to set boundaries around discussing it with her?

I do also want to say that what you're describing--going along with it because saying "no" didn't change things, not feeling like you could tell an adult--are all really common experiences for children who experience sexual abuse or assault. Too, your mom makes reference to "catching" him doing this to you, which means that she wasn't completely oblivious to what was going on, and could have chosen to talk to you about it or pay a but more attention to see if what was happening was abuse.

[Lyle Lanley]

it seldom comes up in conversation, so no worries about that.

and yes, i recall that she has talked to me about it, but then again, i can't recall what i said. i'm afraid that i said i was okay with that game.
also i fear that all of this is a fake memory, i could be just exaggerating things and twisting the narrative, but i remember clearly my distress and how i felt powerless, and i knew that there was something wrong i couldn't quite put my finger on.

if she tries to use this against me, how do i explain that i don't remember much from the event because of how it left me hurt, that even if i said no he'd ignore it, that i felt like i couldn't do anything but deal with it.
and probably i don't remember the talk she gave me but i remember there was one becuase it was ineffective. i wonder if she talked to his parents. if she did nothing happened.

[Sam W]

You know, having vaguer memories related to trauma is common, as the way trauma interacts with our brains can influence our ability to remember things. Too, it's hard for most of us to remember a lot from when we were little kids in a lot of detail, so it makes sense that some of this is more about remembering the feeling than the exact details of what you or your mom said.

For what it's worth, this does not sound to me like a made up memory, and a big part of why I say that is because this person clearly had a pattern of sexually abusing you, and this fits with that pattern (too, the idea that people just generate memories of assault from out of the blue has more to do with the societal tendency to disbelieve victims, rather than with how memory actually works).