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Literally finally stopped being lazy and made a forum account just to reply about a few things in the abuser letter.
I wanted to say as a therapist, the mandated reporting(have worked in two different states now and has been valid across both) is for child abuse, active/intent/plan suicidal ideation, and homicidal ideation. Like you seriously have to have a plan with those two, or we have to really really sick where we don’t think you can consent. That second one is real iffy, unless you have a therapist who is inexperienced and afraid to ask the hard questions. Then get a different therapist because, I don’t know, it’s our job to ask the hard questions? As far as child abuse it has to be to someone who is a child. Aka the child is/could be in danger. If that person is an adult it doesn’t qualify. If whatever the child protective services have already been involved for this situation, it also doesn’t qualify. So yes, therapy therapy therapy.
On another side as someone who has been sexually abused multiple times by multiple people(I became a therapist for a reason and have been through lots of therapy for a reason) it was incredibly helpful for me when it was acknowledged by my first (teenage years) abuser. He was a boyfriend and even just him acknowledging “yeah I knew you weren’t comfortable with it” was a floodgate to me starting to no longer blame myself for things I thought I was at fault in because I didn’t know how to stop it when “no” didn’t work and I wasn’t violent towards him, continued the relationship for a year, and while wasn’t really consensual blamed myself for.... 10 or so years? I couldn’t really take my own blame out of it until that happened, but( and a heavy but here) that was just me and where I was at in my healing. I think just a general apology and then if he pushes it then the conversation gets open. But also therapy, because otherwise it could quickly turn into all about the abusers guilt and not the survivor’s pain. Or go to a therapist together! I do family work, am trained in it, I would totally do a session about that if it was beneficial to both people.
That was significantly longer than intended. My bad.
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