Long-term Effects of Violence and Abuse
If you were to study 100 people who had been abused and violated in their childhood and teenage years, you would find long-lasting effects. Even in their sixties, seventies, and eighties people still suffer from earlier traumatic experiences. Through the years I have received letters, especially from women saying , "I am in my eighties but I'm still suffering from the terrible things done to me as a child."

This shouldn't come as a surprise because violence and abuse are definitely opposed to the normal, healthy development of a person. It is somewhat like a beautiful highway which has been shaken and torn up by an earthquake or storm. The results can be seen years afterward, unless steps have been taken to repair and restore the brokenness to good health.

The effects of childhood trauma are also long lasting, because the details may have often been secreted away in a person's mind and have been boiling there for many years without the person being able to tell another soul. Since most abuse, and especially sexual abuse, is caused by a close relative such as a father, stepfather, live-in lover, uncle, grandfather, or some other person near the family, the harm seems doubly pernicious.