There Has To Be A Way

There has to be a way to cope with this. Everyday in our culture the idea of "me too" is getting bigger and bigger. Everyday I hear a new person come forth about how they were abused by someone in their life and the long reaching effects. Everytime I hear it my heart breaks in two. The guilt and shame shakes me again to the point of not being able to function. But hear me out: if were gonna solve the issue of child abuse, elder abuse, relationship abuse, you have to hear the side of the perpetrator. In giving light to the stories of perpetrators you can find the abused that were abused, the uncomfortable realities of human nature, and even the simple naïveté that leads to this catastrophic problem in society.

My cynical voice is telling me I'm just taking up for myself and maybe I am but I need to find a way to live. it's all still very triggering for me and quite the stone to carry in my head. Thank you snaga and all the moderators before you for being so helpful in this forum. Hopefully there is a more candid way we can all share our stories and help each other heal.

I truly feel that prison is for those who don't feel true guilt or shame. It's for the genuinely bad people that don't really care and will do what they did again. Good people who make mistakes create their own prisons that makes it hard for them to ever be content or happy. For those people, they are punishing themselves far more than society ever could.
You are right, there isn't a lot of talk about perpetrators. I think a lot of people just reduce them to non-human 'bad guys'. But a lot of people who do bad things are truly good people at heart who made a terrible mistake - usually while under the influence. It's not saying that these people are free from blame, but that it's not so black and white as a lot of people would like it to be.
In your case it sounds like you've punished yourself greatly. I think it's right to find a reason to live and motivation for living a life in which you can do some good. I also think this means you will have to do the hard work of learning to accept what happened and, in time, forgive yourself (if not fully, then at least enough to live again). And I think this means doing the scary and hard work of examining what happened, yourself and how you can best live a good life moving forward. I imagine you've already done a lot of that. But fully doing so and then letting that part go once you have, will allow you to stop being triggered to the point of not being able to function.
I wish you all the best and hope you can find a good fulfilling way to live your life.

I agree with you and feel there needs to be the equivalence of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission across several countries (which is not to discount penal consequences, but the need for mass restorative justice).

However, the cultural moment is such that such calls are unlikely to be angrily or contemptuously dismissed [on one side as centering pepetrators; on the other side as "woke"] (which suggests, I think, exactly how much they are needed).

What often disturbs me most about my own pepetration (apart from the act itself and how I harmed another human being callously) is how easy it would have been for me to never see myself as a perpetrator. I'd stayed broadly in line with British law and at the time dismissed the pricking of my conscience by telling myself that I wasn't doing anything really bad... maybe rude or cheeky... seeing myself as essentially ''normal''. I didn't feel badly or think much about what I done until two years afterwards on account of reading feminist blogs for the first time which caused me to reflect.

If I hadn't done that reading I wouldn't have reflected. My victim didn't see anything really criminal as having happened and quite likely would have never confronted or contacted me if I hadn't reached out to apologise.

Ever since, I've wondered how many unself-reflecting perpetrators there are (not only of sexual perpetration and harms, but of other kinds of abuse too) walking around in a state of witless and selfish "innocence"... Sometimes I've really put this out of my mind to try to focus on being better because while I haven't perpetrated again in the same way (or criminally), I've harmed people since in just as serious a way... or, at least, caused as much (if not more) emotional harm. The best way to get clean is not to wade in the mud, but to genuinely be kinder and more careful on a daily basis because you want to make the lives of others better.

However, there are other times where I've felt obsessed with the fact that there must be millions of people walking around who //should// feel guilty but don't. It's not jealousy per se that makes me upset by this, but a dizzy sense of society being out-of-joint... that so many problems are due to people living in a disconnected fantasy land. I read Camus' 'The Fall' and the perspective of the narrator in that really resonanted with me.

However, at my healthiest I know that to change the world you really do have to start with yourself and be good and kind to those in your immediate vicinity. If there is a mass movement (a way) I will gladly and humbly take part it in, but it is important not to be messianic (not saying you are being, just noting the tendency in myself)

As effectively a perpetrator I was definitely subjected to extreme abuse, and nobody taught me anything. I never had "the talk." I was humiliated regarding the topic of sex, even if I just avoided it. The humiliation never ceased, and I broke.

I also became extremely physically ill and endured medical abuse instead of treatment.

I just broke. I couldn't take it anymore.

This does not make me innocent, but I am pleading for mercy. I have wasted much my own life because of feeling guilty.

My dreams have always been of helping people. My fantasies were and are of saving people. I have a pure heart but I had to learn values from first principles because I had an upbringing where I was treated as a subhuman, and that has caused me to hurt others or at least come close in order to cut my teeth. My parents and teachers and peers completely ignored the signs that I was headed in the wrong direction. If only someone had spoken to me, that's all it would've taken.

Some of them derived a sadistic pleasure watching me fail, and they probably would not stop me if they saw me unknowingly headed for a cliff.

More innocent people were educated, and I wasn't.

Again, this does not excuse my actions between me and people I've hurt, but the rest of society should butt out. As mentioned above it has turned into a polarized caricature, with "the bad guys" who are simply evil for no reason. People cheer for prison violence instead of rehabilitation.

Apologies if my thoughts appear unstructured, but I simply yearn for mercy, and understanding how someone becomes a perpetrator would go a long way towards facing this issue.

I am so incredibly sorry to people that I've mistreated. I despise that anyone was hurt because of me. I don't know what to do.

One thing I am thankful for with my OCD is how much empathy it has given me. Realistic or not, I have convinced myself of being the worst of the worst criminals. And I had to find a way to live with that being okay.

I was raised in the church, but eventually left it, partially because of some very judgmental family members. But I have fallen back in love with the message "everyone is a sinner, and no sin is unforgivable, only blasphemy to the holy spirit."

63% of the United States is Christian, I'm not sure why the United States' society doesn't reflect this value. Apparently it is not a new problem. I'm reading the Scarlet Letter right now, written in the 1800s. Same themes, 200 years ago. People have always been judgemental and pious.