by James Bendall

Created on: July 13, 2008   Last Updated: December 04, 2010

What on Earth, you might ask, would a professional fifty year old heterosexual male with two well-adjusted adult sons know about the legacy of sexual abuse. Well, I'll tell you.

You'd be hard-pushed to find any survivor of childhood abuse wearing a badge or waving a banner advertising their abused childhood. It's far more likely that they are carrying around their experiences day in, day out, hidden away in the most secretive recesses of their subconscious. If they are very lucky, like I am, these memories will surface just once in a while and then quietly sink beneath the surface. But whether above the surface or brooding away beneath it, memories of the experience are real, permanent and dangerous. The subconscious is a mysterious and powerful part of each one of us.

Until the late 80s the world had heard very little of the term "sexual abuse". Then all of a sudden it hit us. It was everywhere; TV news, newspapers, radio phone-ins and documentaries. Everywhere. Clearly it is not a new problem, but probably as old as humankind itself. Only now, though, was it being given a name and being talked about openly. And I suddenly realised, more than twenty years after the event, that I too had been a victim.

Had I been a teenager in the "open" 1990s and 2000s instead of the 1970s I believe I would have been in a position to have stopped in its tracks the experience I endured. I would have recognised it for what it was and I would have known what action to take. Instead, I assumed that what I was undergoing was a situation unique to me, and I felt too ashamed and embarrassed to tell a soul, least of all those closest to me. In fact, to this day I have kept silent on the matter. My embarrassment is such that despite being a regular Helium writer I have felt the need to open a new account account under a pseudonym to write of this experience anonymously.

First of all let me say I'm sure that by many people's standards my experience is probably trivial in the extreme. But to me it is important. Very important. At the time, as an adolescent having just undergone puberty, the experiences weighed extraordinarily heavily upon my mind. The worry of it affected my performance in school and disturbed my sleep, and for over two years I dreaded the arrival of Saturday mornings.

I had been having piano lessons since the age of eight. But when I was twelve the lady who had taught me so well and with such kindness, broke it to my parents that she was going to have to give up teaching.

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