Nefertiti, a violated body, a violated body

im-permanence, helplessness and non-belonging in the experience of child sexual abuse

Abstract

The violation of a child's innocence can happen in thousands of perverse ways, sexual abuse in childhood is a reality experienced in Brazil by more than 4000 thousand children over the last year of 2022, this taking into account the numbers of complaints, since there is an unimaginable number of cases that are not reported, being largely caused by family members and acquaintances in at least 70% of cases. The objective of the study was to understand the pluridimensionality of sexual abuse in childhood and its consequences in existing under the bias of Existential-Phenomenology. This is a qualitative research, using the phenomenological method of research, based on an experience report of a survivor of sexual abuse in childhood and based on Heideggerian thought, on the phenomenology of perception by Merleau-Ponty and on the perspective of the clinic of three looks of Ewerton Castro. The following categories were elaborated: The being-child is transposed in confusion, assured of silence; Innocence vanishes amid the tangle of unnoticed helplessness; The perpetual succession of being-violated; Living with the rapist; Silence protected by facticity; Freedom embodied by fear, towards fullness. It is concluded, therefore, that in the midst of all the violence and helplessness to which the victim of sexual abuse in childhood is subjected, it is possible to become the being that cares and supports.