at the night child felt (Van Derbur Alton, 1991, p. 80).
Counselors at the Kemper Center for child sexual abuse say it is "common for the child who is traumatized by sexual violation to dissociate" (Van Derbur Alton, 1991, p. 80).
Long-term effects were more severe for Marilyn Van Derbur Alton:
I have never fallen asleep naturally. I have never taken a nap. From age 18 until today I have taken a sleeping medication or lain awake all night. And until the fall of 1988, I had night terrors. On most nights, precisely at 2 a.m., I would awaken in stark terror. I sensed that a man was entering my bedroom. Too terrorized to move, I would lie in bed until morning. When my daughter turned 5, I was hospitalized for three months with paralysis (I didn't understand that her age for me mirrored the age of my sexual abuse). It was the beginning of a long series of mind and body reactions that continued for years. No physical cause was f
...