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Comment by lanstin | Hacker News Reader

Most of the research on child sexual abuse in the US shows that rates have dropped by about 50% since the 1970s.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201120/ search for "Evidence for a Decline in Physical and Sexual Abuse"

(searched for that to post this, and they cite %60 since the 1990s).

Freud himself discovered a tremendous amount of horrible abuse in his patients; depending on the culture, most people just turn a blind eye. People that haven't experienced it and recovered from it a bit are really good at not believing how common it is.

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> not believing how common it is.

I knew someone that was abused as a child. Had trouble with drugs and went into rehab. He said that ALL the people he met in rehab had been abused.

As someone who's spent 26 years in GA and met many folks also in AA and NA, I estimate that at least 80% have had childhood trauma. True for me, true for my eldest child.

It really is a silent crisis and difficult to get a hold on the scale of it. To the point where it feels like everyone has some kind of trauma, but that might just be the circles I'm in.

A friend who is counselor and head priest at a girls’ Catholic school thinks it’s a large factor behind the childhood obesity epidemic too. Not just sexual abuse but childhood trauma in general leading to food as a coping mechanism.

His offhand theory is that the increase in the prevalence of restaurants and hyperpalatable foods gave people an outlet to feel safe (a third place in public where the whole family goes and acts their best) and the hyperpalatable food gave an easy and cheap dopamine boost during hard times leading to a spiral.

True in prison as well. The setting doesn't encouraging grappling with it in those terms like rehab does. But it's easy to see anyway.

> People that haven't experienced it and recovered from it a bit are really good at not believing how common it is.

Also, for people who have experienced it, it's often the last thing they'd ever want to talk about. With anyone, including people they are really close to.

There's a good chance you could have a close personal friend or even your partner and never know they had gone through something like that.

I'm really glad to see courageous people changing the trend on this one, though I hope it continues to be an invitation to others to share, not a demand.

These kinds of things fester in darkness and loneliness. I think bringing them out into the light where we can find out we're not alone is helping.

> it's often the last thing they'd ever want to talk about. With anyone, including people they are really close to.

'Get over it' is the most common response. That's why they shut up about it. People who are close to them are only close because of something positive that is being offered. Nobody wants to deal with anyone else's issues.

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