Experiencing Life Post Childhood Physical Abuse:Some Case Studies

Sexual abuse has been happening from times immemorial and is that brutal aspect of society which also talk about spirituality, peace and harmony in the same breath. Youth gets irrevocably scarred by such childhood traumas which linger on in their adult life too. In the present study, an effort was made to study and understand how heterosexual and queer youth in contemporary middle class in Delhi explore the relationship sexual abuse survivors have with their own sexuality and how their negotiate their sexual selves. The secondary aim of the study was to investigate the function and effects of guilt, shame, desire, fantasies and gender roles in their lives and how, if at all, they connect to the experiences of sexual assault suffered by individuals within this socio-cultural group. The approach that frames this study is a discourse analytic approach and this is seen as central to the methodology of this study and the language used to talk about the findings and implications of this research.