LW you said "No unclean thing can enter His Kingdom"

I don't see you as unclean any more than I can see myself as unclean after what happened to me. Maybe I haven't been as critical on myself as Christianity demands. But if you and I can both understand how children are overpowered by perpetrators and are not making choices about being abused, maybe God can too. Maybe what happened to us isn't OUR crime?

Either way, whether you select Christianity or Buddhism or Atheism, you're going to have to get over the 'unclean' perspective, or fix it, cause it's going to cause you grief regardless of your religious take. You can't thrive if you feel you're unclean.

My wife, after she was raped, at 15, took showers to clean herself. I remember doing the same taking baths to clean myself. I bet there are a lot of little kids using water to clean themselves thinking they are unclean too. The whole act feels like a filthy act. I don't know what one can do to cure that feeling except to use your reason and your smarts to convince yourself that the filth belonged to someone else.

I think the unclean feeling now, about what happened back then, is about feeling guilty or shame-filled. As kids, we take on the guilt and shame that the perpetrator can not, or will not, feel. We 'invert' or 'reverse' the application of guilt from where it properly belongs (the perpetrator) onto ourselves (the victim). Such inversions or reversals are common - kids take responsibility for their parents divorcing, or for their parents fighting. It's just the way kids think. They think they're responsible for the things that happen to them.

BTW the inversion or reversal of guilt probably happens with adult victims of rape too. But I'd offer that it's probably due to cultural thinking that blames the victim for rape.

I hope, either way, you become sure, within your deepest self, that you're not at fault for what happened to you. I can only assure you that I personally do not think you are unclean and I do not feel you have anything to feel shame or guilty about - again, you were just a kid.

I'm with Blueshift "Dump any spirituality that rejects you". Just please make sure that you know in your soul that there's nothing about you that merits rejecting.

Hi again LW1527'
yep I've had the same feelings and still do.
As a Catholic boy, and while I was abused,and I went into a Catholic orphanage/home, we were there from grades 5-8, we lived there durnin the normal school year and "home" to who ever wanted to put up with you for the 2 & half months of summer vacation, as a boy while all this victimization was going on to me, persons who abused me were strangers just looking for someone like me, young & alone, I never wanted to go home, so I was always sneaking rides on the Boston subway system and that's where I got nailed many times. Now at the orphanage/home I was always praying to our mother in heaven (the blessed virgin) to keep me safe and to protect me, I was really into her didn't think that our heavenly mother would ever let me down. HA What ever made me think that if my earthly mother was abusing me and not protecting me, my heavenally mother would. I "retired" from my religion many years ago. Jus who's God ahould we listen to anyway? Hope that you are doing well.