Loy Young

Probably one out of every six women who came to me for therapy had been raped as a child. I also worked with some men who were victimized at an early age. These unsuspecting victims had not yet learned how to protect themselves.

One woman from Mississippi stands out the most to me. Imagine the anguish and the agony of being tossed back and forth as an object for sexual satisfaction between four uncles one night! She never dared confide her story even to her mom and kept her secret buried deep inside. Rebecca clamped down emotionally as a consequence of the devastating experience. From childhood on, she hated men. She became a fervent feminist and had head-on collisions with each and every male authority figure in her life.

Rebecca’s last fight was with the highway patrolman who tried to pull her car off the road late at night for speeding. She simply ignored him. Surely the police officer intended to abuse his power and assault her on the lonely stretch of highway. The highway patrolman radioed for backup, and soon three other policemen joined him in the chase after Rebecca. She kept driving, police cars in pursuit, until she found a well-lighted exit. When she finally pulled over, she faced four police officers instead of one. Her mind may have recognized them as such, but her feelings saw four men much like the ones who had abused her as a little girl.

Rebecca flipped out. She started scratching, kicking, biting and spitting at the policemen and rattled off every verbal abuse she could think of. Her emotional nature had taken over instinctively to protect her. She went into shock. The patrolmen testified that she behaved like a wildcat clawing at them. Rebecca made the front page of the local paper the next day.
She accused the cops of assaulting and raping her. Although routine medical examinations would prove her allegations to be false, her childhood drama was re-enacted. Once she was released on bail, her lawyer brought her to see me. I regressed Rebecca through the temporary amnesia to the emotional story that had ruined her childhood. Only then did she realize that the four policemen had not raped her.

Within a few months, Rebecca lost her hate of men, and her fights with authorities stopped, as I helped her become the star of Goodness Triumphs Over Adversity.

Another incest case - The loved-to-death victim

One boy I worked with in Argentina was still wetting the bed at thirteen, even though he was a “macho” young man. He was so ashamed that he never dared to spend the night with his friends to protect his secret. Carlos also seemed guilt-ridden. As I regressed him into his inner consciousness, fragments of dreams, nightmares and long forgotten memories began to emerge.
His father had died shortly after he was born, and in her distress Carlos’ mother gave the boy so much love that he was almost smothered. She found all her love in her son and so delighted in his love and innocence that she did not set any sexual boundaries in the mother-child relationship. She took the trust and love of the baby boy and returned love tainted with shame, guilt, and pain that she had never cleared after her husband’s death.

As Carlos grew up, he had to work through all his mother’s problems as well as his own. Eventually, he was able to do so and went to a boy’s camp the next summer. His bed-wetting stopped, and his mother was freed of the shame that was eating her alive. She in turn had been violated in her childhood by a very loving father who had set no boundaries for his love either.

Most incest cases I worked on belonged to this category, whereas violent rapes like the ordeal Rebecca went through were the exception. Many adults found life hard, work miserable, and their marriages quarrelsome. Only in their relationships with their daughters or sons they experienced the only unspoiled and unconditional love they longed for. The caresses of their children were often the only intimacy they knew.

Many people were never hugged or touched while growing up, and to them therefore any touch had come to mean foreplay leading to sex. The mind knows the difference, but the emotions just feel. And the body acts on the feelings.