Re: My story: suspected abuse coming out (long!)

"I'm currently training to be a sexual assault nurse examiner, that's what the acroynm SANE stands for."

You're still sane!  

Memory, memory....  Think I've posted on here before on my opinions about that.  Yes memories do come out 20 years later and in my case almost 60 years later.  It's when they are ready, unprompted.  I did a load of reading about false memories and the False Memory Syndrome (there is no such thing, it's a contrived label that is not a therapeutically accepted syndrome).  If you're in that area, you know that there are decent counselors and lousy counselors.  There have been many counselors who have told their clients what has happened to them.  That is totally unacceptable.  So is hypnotic regression in the hands of anyone but top notch practitioners (as MD, or PhD) and I'm not too trusting of them of them either.  So, memories can be and have been implanted and we went through a rash of it about ten years ago.  With all the adverse publicity surrounding the implanted memories it set back those who have never forgotten, by many decades.  It discourages the abused from coming forward.  I have both never forgotten memories (many) along with terrifying repressed memories that rose on their own.

In my state there is a statute of limitations on recovered memories, which is three years after the memory has been recovered.  I personally know an individual who sexually molested three of his daughters for several years and when the first one came forward as an adult and told about the molestation, nobody believed her.  That is, not until her two younger sisters told that they too had been sexually abused by the same father.  The guy was never ever charged with anything.  It is so difficult to get charges let alone prison time.  I think that the extended family was too embarrassed by what had happened to go to the authorities and I think that if they had done so they would have run into the statue of limitations.  We need children to come forward as soon as they are old enough to talk.  We need education in that area but there are elements in our society that want all sex education of any kind suppressed.

Many thanks to you in your chosen field.  It's still an area that is widely ignored for both male and female children.