Hi all: I don't have Jay's personal experience (and thanks to her for sharing what must have been difficult to post), but as a therapist I've certainly worked with women who had a variety of responses to many forms of sexual abuse. So to add to Jay's post & try to specifically answer Judy..... When a little girl is growing up physically, she is at the same time "growing" her attitudes about sexuality and who she will be as a woman. Ideally, she has adults to love her & provide models and reference points and to validate her budding femininity. When abuse occurs, this process is short-circuited. Those would-be positive attitudes are, to put it crassly, vomited all over. In addition, larger issues such as trust are also violated. One woman said, "One man's evil became translated into an assumption on my part of evil intent from everyone I met or knew. The abuser's evil spread a curtain of death over my life that colored everything and everyone I saw." Touch--that wonderful human connection that heals and feeds our souls--now becomes something that is filled with fear, dread, and pain. Love & attention are doled out on the condition of sexual concessions by a child to immature to give consent. Some survivors react by avoiding intimacies (i.e. brfeeding) and others by engaging in a frantic, inappropriate self-destructive search for intimacies that only re-victimize them. As you may have read recently, I view brfeeding as a very sexual act, partly because of these very issues. A woman who feels badly about her sexuality will possibly experience this as not wanting anyone to touch her sexual parts, even if that someone is a baby. I remember reading years ago about studies demonstrating the fact that women who choose breastfeeding are more likely to be comfortable with their sexuality in general. Further, and maybe more to the point, the issues of trust in this intensely *emotionally* intimate experience may be overwhelming to her. I don't know if that is a sufficient "walk-through". This is a complex and involved topic, about which many books have already been written. The only other point I need to make is that there *is* healing for those who have been hurt in this way. I believe firmly that we--LCs--can be a vital link in the healing chain by offering our compassion and unconditional caring to these clients. Sometimes we can be vital to her healing by referring her to those professionals who can provide deeper help than we are able. Whether this is as frequent in cultures where a woman's modesty is protected, maybe K. Dettwyler could speak to. However, I doubt that modesty is the issue nearly as much as other factors. A large percentage of abuse happens here in the presence of alcohol or other drug abuse. The US has a multitude of other social problems, which I believe contribute, but that's another post. I hope my ramblings included something helpful to your understanding. Nancy