© 2006 Pandora’s Aquarium If you are a survivor of any kind of
sexual abuse then the chances are you have at some point
struggled with the issue of self blame. Often survivors will say
that while they would never blame another survivor for what had
happened to them, they still feet that they are to blame for
being abused. Reading or hearing about the experiences of other
survivors it is easy to see that they were in no way to blame
for the abuse that happened to them. Yet somehow when we look at
our own situations we believe that it is “different." Why Self
Blame? There are many reasons that we might have for blaming
ourselves. These include: Myths about rape are rife in society.
The following quote from Recovering from Rape explains some of
the reasons for this: (Ledray, L. Recovering from Rape, London,
Henry Holt & Company, 1994, p.13). There are many myths about
rape that may cause a survivor to blame themselves for what
happened, the one of the most common being that rape is always
committed by a stranger