I sexually abused sister when I was 14-15 and she was 9-10

I 20M sexually abused my sister while she was asleep. It happened when I was 14 or 15(I don't remember exactly when) that puts my sister around 9 or 10(5 years 3 months age gap) and we slept in a same bad together (because our family had only 2 beds at the moment). I licked and fingered(probably) her. It happened 2 times in a short time period and I've also photographed her for some reason but deleted those photos the next day. Then I stopped despite the fact that we were sleeping in the same bed for the next 2 years, it didn't happen again.
I did it because I was interested in female anatomy and she was sleeping next to me only with her underwear. I feel disgusted when I write this all. I wonder how our parents didn't suppose that it could happen. I didn't have the intention of abusing her, I just wanted to "look it up" to see what it looks like in real life and I don't even remember how it ended up like this. I'm more than sure it wouldn't happen had we separated beds. There were some occasions with my older cousin (3 years older than me) as well when I was 14 too: I touched her through clothes when I was pretending to be sleeping on her lap, sniffed her underwear and had intimate dreams about her, about it only my therapist knows. She didn't notice any of that. It's of course disgusting as well but not as disgusting as with my younger sister. The cousin now knows about the situation with my younger sister, because I told her, but doesn't know about anything that was with her

When I was doing it to my younger sister I surely didn't think of it like I was taking advantage of her. I didn't want to harm her. I didn't really consider my actions as rape because I thought rape should necessarily include penetration by penis and force, pain, threats and something like that. I thought that rape is bad only because it can cause physical harm, but sure as hell I didn't know that any sexual behavior can cause a psychological trauma. And if I remember correctly I thought that sex can be only "with penis", so I thought that other kinds of sex are not really considered as sex, like I didn't even know that "oral sex" was an actual thing, but I'm not sure about that one, maybe it really was like that or maybe I'm just deceiveing myself, I don't know, It's complex, I don't know what the hell was in my head. Maybe it was the way I thought about it, like "Oh, that's not sex, so it's probably not bad". It even sounds hillarious, I'm so much in shame, but anyway, it's not an excuse. It felt weird, unusual and not okay for sure, but I genuinely thought that my actions couldn't cause any possible harm. I was ignorant and delusional. My parents talked about sex with me only when I was around 18 already and my school didn't have any kind of sexual education (or maybe I just don't remember?). I wasn't ever taught about consent or boundaries. I'm from a post Soviet country and it is believed that "in the Soviet Union there was no sex". Parents rarely talk to their children about sex here.

As far as I can remember I didn't want someone seeing me doing this, but not because I didn't want to be prosecuted as a criminal(because I didn't know that such activity is considered a crime), but because I wouldn't be able to explain why I do such a weird thing(and now I know that it's not just weird, it's terrible)

I hit puberty way too late, when I was 13 I think and then I was exposed to porn, before that I had no interest in sex and I thought about it like some strange things I'd never be interested in. I remember the moment when I saw porn for the first time quite vividly and I think that event formed my entire sexuality. The first thing I saw in that porn was oral sex towards a woman. When I was watching this porn I suddenly felt something strange happening in my underwear and at this time I didn't know yet that it's called ejaculation and that the strange liquid is called sperm. I literally thought that I just needed to piss. Can you imagine that at 13 I had no idea about sexuality in general? Or at least had very little and limited knowledge. Many people don't believe if you say it to them, they always say for example "if they're above 12 then they knew what they were doing and should be held responsible just like adults". I feel like I'm a vile creature and the world would be a better place without me. It feels like I'm screwed for life. What hurts the most is the huge age gap and that I was literally 14-15, I should've known better. Why didn't I? Why would I do that? I swear I would gladly break my arm or something in order to undo that

I was touched inappropriately by my classmate in primary school. He squeezed my genitals. Also when I was 12 and played Clash of Clans I chatted with a 25 years old man who talked with me about sex, he asked if I like what he was talking about, I said I don't understand why people do that and he said that I will like it when I grow up. Also at the age of 14 I saw a girl I knew being harassed by a guy, he put his hand into her chest while she was unconscious and everyone was laughing there, even the girl when she woke up. All of them were around 20. I can't say that any of that caused some kind of trauma to me, but it messed up with my understanding of boundaries probably.

It seems to me like I didn't know that engaging in sexual behavior with a child is a literal crime. It sounds unbelieveble to me now that I used to think like that, but I'm inclined to think it was like that. I didn't know what terms "molestation" or "sexual assault" actually mean. I'm sorry if something here seems like I'm making excuses, I'm actually not, it's horrible and there are absolutely no excuses for my actions and I take full accountability and I am aware how devastating my actions could be. I'm just trying to understand why it happened and not to think of myself as a monster.

I never touched a child since then and I'm not attracted to children. I'm now 20, my sister is 15. She doesn't know that it happened. I'm actually glad that my actions had no actual impact on her life. We have great relationships, we're joking all the time, everything is just okay. I try to do everything that older brother should do. She trusts me, asks me to meet her when it's dark outside, asks for money (I have a scholarship) etc. The whole thing didn't actually concern me till that age because I've repressed those memories, but it's not like I hadn't remembered them occasionally very rarely, I'd been just forgetting them constantly, hard to explain. No one knew that except me. But 6 months ago when I'd remembered I'd suddenly decided to uncover that, I just didn't want to hide something anymore, I wanted to be honest with myself, so I found some random website related to mental health issues and wrote a post about it and when I've been writing it I've forced myself to remember all those things and for some reason it had gotten even worse when I got some responses (it was like realization that I did something really awful) even if those users didn't treat me bad. But my post got deleted because I didn't put a trigger warning about disturbing content. Btw some of those users said that I should tell everything to my sister because "I can't hide it from her forever" and I'm sorry, but I don't think I'll ever be able to tell her. Like what do they mean? If it didn't traumatize her then, then I should traumatize her now? That means my actions would take devastating impact. It would be really selfish to tell her. She's now leaving her life, I'm sure she doesn't want to know this. My cousins, dad and therapist have the same opinions. No way I will ever do it

The next day after I posted on that website I woke up with a feeling that I'm a monster and deserve to die. My sister doesn't know but I do and it destroys me. I feel like I don't deserve good attitude from anyone until they know what I did. It feels like I'm misleading people when they think I'm a good person. My cousin (my aunt's daughter) had noticed that something was wrong with me so she asked me what happened and then I couldn't hold back my tears and I told her everything. I thought she would be disgusted with me just the way I do, but she was very supportive and said that I should go to therapy. But she doesn't know that similar things were happening to her as I said at the beginning of my story

While seeking for therapist I had told about it my dad because he was worried about me and my cousin said he would understand. They both said me a lot of stuff to comfort me like "when a teenager hits puberty he's even worse than a drunk man" or "it's good that you're feeling remorse" or "one bad action doesn't make you a bad person". My therapist said that the situation I was put in was "provocative". Also my therapist said that I should blame my parents for the most part because they put us in the scenario where such a thing could happen and didn't even talk with me about consent and boundaries, but I'm not sure if my therapist was right about it.

I found a job in order to be able to pay for therapy. I have been going to therapy for 2 months, but overall I hadn't felt like it helps me a lot and I didn't like the attitude towards me from some people on my workplace. So I decided to stop working and therapy. By the time my dad said that no one knows me better than I do and that it would probably help if I read some psychology books. So I started to read psychology books, now I'm reading "Don't believe everything you think" by Joseph Nguyen, I hope it will help somehow. I also told the whole story my other cousin (my aunt's son) when he asked why I was in therapy, I thought I could trust him, he was very supportive too.

But even after the loved ones tried to comfort me I still feel like $#%^ and I can't just move on. 2 days ago my sister told me she loves me. It breaks my heart that she loves and trusts someone like me. I thought "Would she still love me if she knew that?". Since the day I've decided to uncover that no day passed by without me thinking "How could it happen?" and experiencing enormous shame.

At this point it's consuming my entire life, every minute I live. I'm daily reminded and I can't leave it behind. I don't feel like I deserve the right to heal, because as long as it's eating me alive — I'm redeeming it, but as soon as I get better — I'm a monster again, because I don't feel bad for what I did. I often question if it really happened, like I desperately want to think it's not true, but I couldn't make it all up, could I?

I look at my photos around the age of 14-15 and I looked so grown and mature. It's very painful to realize. Not to excuse again, but I have a feeling that I had some sort of developmental delay, because I was always slow in everything, inattentive, awkward in communication. Like I really feel I was kinda behind in mental development compared to all of my peers. I was even sometimes told that I'm stupid or retarded. Some of those people were just trying to insult of course, but some were very serious. I also took Aspie Quiz(test to determine the probability of being Neuro divergent). It stated that I am Autistic with the probability of 94%. It's not diagnosis tho. I'm not sure if I could believe that.

After uncovering all this I no longer want to learn coding and math like I did before. I wanted to make a game. I wanted to be a programmer and a game developer. I don't want to take care of myself, take my usual skin routine, or do exercise. Now I'm not really as passionate about things I love as I used to do. I don't care about my looks anymore and my desire to have romantic relationships is gone. I have a hard time motivating myself to do literally anything. I used to strive to improve myself in every way possible and I was excited by the idea to achieve perfection in everything about myself. It's like my life has much less sense than earlier. Now it's like "I will never be perfect in my eyes with that kind of story and I despise myself so what's the point of doing something?". All is gone and all I think about every day is my mistake I did 5-6 years ago, like there is no place for something other than that.

I play games a lot now. Before all of this I didn't because I considered it a waste of time. But now it's the only way I can escape thoughts. In games there's no my personality, there's no this situation and there are virtual problems I need to solve, so I don't need to deal with that huge problem in my real life. When I play games I just completely forget about all this stuff. It's embarrassing to be 20, playing games and not helping the family financially. When I don't play I just overthink about all that stuff and end up crying, if I think about it too much. I always think that "now I will finally figure out why this happened" but it always ends up the same.

I also sometimes watch documentaries about serial killers or pedophiles. Like Peter Scully, you know. When I see something like that I think "Yeah he's evil. I'm not like him for sure. At least I don't want to harm people intentionally and at least I feel regret unlike him".

I have something similar to POCD btw, but it doesn't make any sense. My entire life I was attracted to women or girls of my age and I am now and I hadn't even remotely thought about children. But after revealing all this I no longer feel comfortable sometimes when I see a child. Don't get me wrong, it's not an attraction, I still like adult women, but it's hard to explain, I'm just worried for some reason.

My dad passed away a few weeks ago, he had a weak heart since he was born. I'm glad I had talked about it with him, so I won't think he would hate me for the rest of my life. Even after our conversation he still was telling me he loves me, it kinda helps. Killing myself is not even an option, because mom said that me and my sister are the only reason to live for her now. Killing myself would mean killing my mom. I just can't do that, even though I imagine sometimes that it would be cool to not exist and not have to deal with thoughts that I did something as heinous as that. I heard that in order to be happy you should forgive yourself through any mistake and love yourself despite your own history, but I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to. I apologize if I made some mistakes writing this, I'm not a native English speaker. I'm also sorry if it was too long to read. Am I a monster? Do I deserve to die?

Hello, and welcome!

A few of my opinions...

yamomura wrote:"if they're above 12 then they knew what they were doing and should be held responsible just like adults"

Indeed! I have issues with that. I think it's more 14-15 that young men start to have a brain. I base that on my own experience and the many similar stories that have been posted here. As far as I can tell, boys really don't start thinking of the rightness or wrongness of... how to put this? This was not rape. It was not force. It was not you making anyone do anything. It wasn't malevolent. It was fascination with sex, and I think until you're 14 or 15 a boy really isn't thinking clearly enough and 'I shouldn't do this' doesn't always occur to them. The fact that you quickly stopped, to me shows that you quickly understood that and acted appropriately, not doing it any more.

You're not a monster, except in the way that teenagers, and teenage boys, can be monsters. Meaning that they're just not developed enough to have a conscience about what they're doing. That's not excusing it, that's just saying that in the absence of having been caught and told 'Don't Do That!', you had to make that realisation yourself, and you were, in my observational and personal experience, just at those ages where you start to understand things like boundaries. If you'd said you were older than you were, I'd have a rather different opinion, and would expect you to know better, much more than I expect you to have known better at 14- I would expect you to suspect that you were doing something you shouldn't, but that's not the same thing as actually having the impulse control needed to not do it.

You're absolutely right in not saying anything to your sister. This is your burden, not hers. Consider keeping that to yourself, as your punishment, if you feel the need to be punished. In later years, a world-wise sister might not even think it was that bad, once she knows how teenage boys work and how kids can be. But for now, yeah no there's absolutely no reason to do that to her. I also believe that's not a kindness to reveal that kind of thing to her and damage her faith in you. Faith which is not misplaced- you're not a pedo, and you didn't do anything lasting to her, and as you state, you didn't force intercourse or anything on her. I'm not trying to excuse what you did, but it does need to be put in the context of your age, and your behavior since that time. You're not the kind of person who would go around doing that, because you have a conscience.

yamomura wrote: I'm a monster again, because I don't feel bad for what I did.

Can't wear the hair shirt all the time. Look, kids do things. And in this case, no one was significantly harmed, except yourself. You can't maintain 'I'm a terrible person' all the time, except in the sense that we're all terrible people on one level or another. Not constantly feeling bad about what happened then, doesn't make you bad. I've done things I deeply regret, and I feel like a terrible person when I think about them, but I also understand I can't go around with the memory of those things I regret pinned on my sleeve every moment. It doesn't undo anything, it doesn't make me a better person to be obsessed with how I have not been a better person in the past. Regret and remorse are useful in being a better person, but only up to a point, I think. I think a lot of the folks who post to this forum go past the usefulness into just dwelling on it but not moving forward.

yamomura wrote:"I will never be perfect in my eyes with that kind of story and I despise myself so what's the point of doing something?"

According to my religion, there was only one perfect human. The rest of us will just have to make do with being extremely imperfect. I don't think being perfect in one's own eyes is really anything we need to be, because then we wouldn't understand just how very not perfect we really are. A favorite author of mine once observed something to the effect that when he's feeling good about himself, he can think he's a pretty good guy, but when he's brutally honest with himself, he understands that he's not a good person at all. Well, that sounds like me, and probably a lot of other people, at least those who can be honest enough with themselves. I think I would suggest that you worry less about being perfect, just being less imperfect, and understand that you're going to do things that you later sure wish you hadn't. I'm a lot older than you, and I feel as if I still do stupid things that I later wish I hadn't. Because none of us are perfect, none of us are going to make the right decisions all the time.

Thank you so much for everything you said. It feels so much better to talk about it, really.

Snaga wrote:This was not rape. It was not force. It was not you making anyone do anything. It wasn't malevolent.

Can you please elaborate how it is not rape? Can't rape be non-violent and not malevolent? Here's the definition of rape I found on official FBI website:

Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.

I feel like I'll read your replies not a single time in the future when I'm at my lowest. Can I ask you one more thing? Can I share it with my partner if I happen to have one? Or is it way too creepy and I will never find a woman that would be okay with me after me confessing to it so it's better to keep it to myself? I feel like in both cases I'll feel miserable no matter if I confess it to my partner or not because if I not say it to her then I will always have the nasty feeling that I'm lying to her and she doesn't know everything about me, but on the other hand if I say her then she'll never see me as the same person again even if she happens to "understand" but maybe will always have the deep down feeling of disgust by me and I will never be as comfortable with her as before, being in the constant state of shame around her, not to say how awkward any sex-related things will feel with her

I'm short on time, so I can't make a detailed reply. But partners..

Some things are just meant to be kept to one's self. There are many things in my past, or things in my head, that no partner ever needs to know. And I would expect the same from a partner: there are things that I never need to know. Do not underestimate the sanctity of keeping some things to oneself.