Tuesday Q&A
Every Tuesday, Ignacio answers questions about handling the challenging moments of survivorship, healing, and child rearing in a culture of shame and secrecy around sexual violence. Ignacio emphasizes relationship building with children as the foundation of holistic sexuality education, and encourages caregivers to prioritize trust and vulnerability.
Donate Dear Ignacio, my parenting partner and I are both survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA). He wants to monitor and spy on our daughter’s social media and personal accounts to ‘protect’ her. I want to have open conversations about predators and risks in these spaces. Our child is 13 and I want her to make her own decisions and start to build faith in her #intuition while knowing I’m here. How do we resolve this? Thank you for bringing up an issue that frequently comes up for parents, even when they are not both #survivors. It is normal to…
Donate I’m sorry to hear you had to deal with the fear of harm to your sister on top of experiencing harm yourself. Holding that fear must have been extremely difficult. I’m happy you finally found an outlet for processing all of this and a journey to healing. Telling your mother about the abuse you endured was also a huge step. It’s hard to break the silence and speak about the manipulation and trauma suffered. It is truly unfortunate that your mother is so depressed and suicidal after hearing your truth. However, this is not your burden to carry. I…
Donate “Dear Ignacio, I am the older brother of two other brothers: a 25-year-old and an 11-year-old. A few years ago, I became suspicious that the 25yo was touching our youngest brother in his private parts. Since then my suspicions have grown as my little brother has been acting weird and obedient towards the 25yo brother. I don’t live near them anymore, and our parents are clueless and too closed-up to ever bring this up. How can I help my brother?” It is jarring to become suspicious of a family member and having to decide what to do about it.…
Donate “Dear Ignacio, I have been doing sex work to support my family for years. Recently, a client wanted to do age play, where I was supposed to act like a small child. I agreed to this as I had done some similar stuff before. But this time, in the middle of the scene, I had vague flashbacks to my childhood and an older neighbor. The flashbacks left me extremely unsettled. I have no clear memories as this was around when I was 4-5, but I remember sometimes sitting on this neighbor’s lap and feeling something hard under his pants.…
Donate “Dear Ignacio, this is something that I have carried lots of shame around for most of my life. Since I was a teenager, I’ve been sexually attracted to those younger than myself. I wasn’t sexually active until later in life, but my interest and fantasies in younger people has slowly extended from teenagers to younger children. To be clear, I have never acted on these feelings. I am writing because my wife is now pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl. She is aware of some of my fantasies, but doesn’t know I also think about younger children.…
Donate “Dear Ignacio, my partner and I adopted our child when he was four. At that time, we were told that our child had been a victim of CSA while in foster care. They didn’t give us many details and we have largely been avoiding the issue as we doubt he can remember anything. Our child is now 8 years old and has started to get curious about #bodies. A couple of times, he even made some comments that made me wonder if he already knows too much about sex. We are unsure how much we could or should consider…
Donate “Dear Ignacio, I am a survivor of CSA and incest by my father. When I first came to terms with it in college, I tried confronting my father but he acted like I was crazy. We never spoke of it again. My father is a powerful man with much wealth. Over the years, he has been financially supporting me, especially as I have suffered from mental health challenges and #addiction. Part of me feels like he feels guilty and is trying to make up for what he did. I have spent years in #therapy and tried all kinds of…
Donate “Dear Ignacio, before COVID, I was working at an outdoor education camp for children around ages 7-13. On multiple occasions, I ran into my boss making inappropriate comments about some of the older girls who had reached puberty. I also caught him staring at young girls in a creepy way. I have no evidence of wrongdoing beyond this, but when I talked with other staff, there were some people in agreement. As a survivor of CSA myself, I know I am hypersensitive around this kind of behavior. I also keep doubting myself whether I am making a big deal…