mangotree: I was not offended by your example of the broken leg. I get that you were trying to find someway of relating. Some of you may know this already but the statistic on sexual abuse is that 1 in 3 girls are sexually abused and 1 in 5 boys are also. With that in mind, we hardly ever go one day without having contact with someone who has experienced sexual abuse. I mentioned in a previous post that I have read almost everything I can about sexual abuse. (I was actually going to go to school to be a counselor before I switched to business.) Anway, in recent years I read a book called "Threshold of Hope" which I would really recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about sexual abuse. The author (I don't remember her name) is a counselor who has counseled many sexual abuse survivors in her years of counseling. She shares many examples from her patients. She goes into great detail about how sexual abuse affects every area of your life and the many symptoms that sexual abuse survivors have to cope with, work through, heal from. Even though I had been sexually abused, I didn't have all the symptoms that are talked about, but it really opened my eyes to the great magnitude of the damage that can be done through sexual abuse. And it doesn't just affect the victim either. It'll touch everyone in that victims family to some extent and perhaps the worst result is if the victim doesn't get healing, it's very possible for the victim to then become an abuser. I think everyone should read this book. You will also understand after reading this, why it is so aggravating when people say "Just forgive and get over it." It is not that simple. This is also why I think the abuser needs to face some consequences. Why should the victim have to spend the rest of their life suffering as they work through the healing process, and yet the abuser can just say sorry, and walk away. They need to realize the extend of the damage done by their sin.
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