Today I am going to talk about a very difficult topic. Those of you who read my blog regularly know that I do not shy away from the tough topics. Today’s topic is definitely a tough one: orgasms during rape and sexual abuse. Most people don’t want to think about orgasms during rape and sexual abuse, much less talk about it, but you need to be aware that this happens if you are parenting a child who has been sexually abused.

The ugly reality is that most children who are sexually abused or raped on a regular basis experienced an orgasm, anywhere from one time to multiple times, while they were being sexually abused. As you can imagine, experiencing an orgasm while being abused is confusing at best to an abused child. It causes the child to question whether he really liked the abuse after all and whether the abuse was his fault.

You, as the adoptive or foster parent, need to know that experiencing an orgasm during rape or sexual abuse is both normal and common.

On her blog, Julia wrote a blog entry entitled Adoptees, How Can Adoptive Parents Help Alleviate Identity Issues in Their Children? In the comments, AmyAdoptee wrote the following:

There is this young boy on the ranch. Abuse situation. Honestly his "birth" mother's rights should have been terminated years ago because she gave him an adult dose of meth. However I see in him a sense of loss. Even though logically he will understand why her rights were terminated, he will still mourn what might have been or even what should have been.

I would like to focus on this sense of loss in this blog entry.

All abused children feel a sense of loss, whether they are ultimately adopted into a loving home or not. I was never removed from my abusive home, although I should have been, and I have had to work through an enormous amount of loss. Being forced to stay connected to my biological mother/abuser only made the loss greater, not less.

The loss is about what should have been.

Some adopted children who suffered from trauma, such as abuse, before the adoption will struggle with bulimia nervosa. Bulimia is an eating disorder in which the adopted child consumes very large quantities of food during a brief period of time, followed by some form of purging. Purging generally happens through self-induced vomiting, but it can also be accomplished through laxatives or excessive exercise.

People who struggle with bulimia are often able to hide that they have an eating disorder because they do not become large, like binge eaters, or small, like anorexics. They act as if they simply have a fast metabolism when they are actually taking drastic steps to maintain their weight.

People who struggle with bulimia are typically either drawn to the bingeing or the purging aspect of the disorder, but not both.

Unfortunately, eating disorders are common among people who have endured trauma, such as abuse. If you adopted a child who endured trauma before entering your home, then your adopted child is at a heightened risk for developing an eating disorder. Parenting an adopted child who has an eating disorder can be challenging, especially if you have no experience with an eating disorder yourself.

What most people fail to realize is that an eating disorder is a symptom of a much deeper issue.