Indicators of Healing Among Female Victims of Sexual Abuse and Their Ways of Coping

Summary

The participants of this study are five (5) female victims of sexual abuse who are housed at a Center run by the Sisters of Mercy. All the participants are at the adolescent stages. This study explores the participants' manifestations of the five healing indicators namely, safety, forgiveness, spirituality, familial factor, and disclosure of the experience. This study also look into the participants' manifestations of the different coping strategies under emotion-focused and problem focused. The following are the summaries of this study:

1. The highest indicator is Spirituality followed by Familial Factor, then Forgiveness, then Safety, and the lowest id Disclosure.

2. Most of the participants call for God's help every time they have problems and they always attend Church masses.

3. Most of the participants need their families but most of them still cannot understand why their respective families react the way they did regarding the abuse.

4. Most of the participants have forgiven themselves and do not blame God for what happened to them.

5. Most of the participants are not afraid with their perpetrators anymore but they still don't feel safe at school and they didn't feel safe with people surrounding them.

6. Most of the participants have accepted the abuse that had happened to them but they still don't want to recall or remember the abuses that happened.

7. Most of the participants practice emotion-focused coping very often than problem-focused coping which is only less often used.

8. Emotion-focused coping, confused awareness and regrouping are mostly practiced by the participants while anger is the least practiced.

9. Unlike emotion-focused coping, problem-focused coping was often practiced by the participants and under that seeking help from others was very often used.