TwinCities.com reported that during an interview, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo told Dr. Phil McGraw that he was molested as a child. The 22-year-old Tuiasosopo told McGraw he was repeatedly molested, beginning at age 12, by someone who was close to his father, a church pastor and youth minister. "I felt that I couldn't do things, accomplish things, pursue things, live out as Ronaiah," Tuiasosopo said. "And I felt the need to create this. It has everything to do with what I went through as a child."
According to The Public's Health, a newsletter for medical professionals in Los Angeles County, early childhood traumas such as sexual abuse can have lifelong effects throughout adulthood, and the cost to society is high. Ninety percent of cases go unreported and untreated, as the symptoms of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) are often misdiagnosed and unappreciated.
Controlled studies have shown that adult survivors of child sexual abuse (ASCSA) are more likely to show adverse psychopathologies in adulthood, and neuroimaging studies confirm that exposure to sexual abuse in childhood alters the neurobiology and neurostructures in the brain, leading to scarring, an abnormal neurohormonal response to future stressors, and predisposes the victim to a lifetime of negative consequences.
Later in their lives, many ASCSA, whether reported or not, exhibit psychopathology, acting-out behaviors (social dysfunction), relationship problems (interpersonally), somatic symptoms, and sexual disorders. Victims, like Tuiasopo often want to "escape life" and will do so in unhealthy ways.
Childhood survivors may initially seem unaffected by the trauma; but ,by adolescence and adulthood, the consequences eventually become symptomatic, resulting in eating disorders, dissociation, phobias, obsessions, borderline personality disorder, depression, anxiety, bulimia, obesity, post traumatic stress disorder, hallucinations, conduct disorder, substance abuse disorder, panic disorder, antisocial personality disorder, affective disorder, and impaired sense of self.
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