Sexual Abuse Recovery Counselling in Melbourne

According to the ABS 2021–22 Personal Safety Survey, 1 in 5 Australian women (22%) have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15 — an estimated 2.2 million women. For men, the figure is 1 in 16 (6.1%). The ABS also found that rape and sexual molestation were the traumas most likely to lead to PTSD — more than any other type of traumatic event (ABS Personal Safety Survey 2023). If you have been sexually abused and are struggling with its aftermath, you are neither alone nor unusual. The impacts you are living with are predictable consequences of experiences that should never have occurred.

Recovery from sexual abuse — whether it happened in childhood, adolescence, or adult life — is a significant undertaking. It is not linear. And for many survivors, the decision to seek help comes years or even decades after the abuse, often prompted by something in current life: a new relationship, a difficult anniversary, or the accumulated weight of carrying it alone for too long. However long it has been, it is not too late.

Why is disclosure so difficult?

Many survivors have never told anyone. The ABS found that only 57% of women sought any advice or support following sexual assault — and even then, most turned to friends or family rather than formal services. The reasons for silence are deeply understandable:

• Shame and self-blame — often absorbed from the perpetrator, the culture, or from years of minimising the experience
• Fear of not being believed — particularly when the perpetrator was a trusted person
• Protecting others — not wanting to upset family members, or managing the impact on children
• Dissociation and fragmented memory — the experience may feel uncertain, partial, or difficult to articulate
• Normalisation — abuse that occurred in childhood may have been so embedded in “normal” life that naming it as abuse feels strange
• Fear of what recovery involves — the worry that opening the door will be overwhelming

In my practice in Carlton, Melbourne, I work with these concerns directly. I do not push for disclosure before a person is ready, and I do not require a detailed account to begin. The therapeutic relationship itself — its safety, consistency, and respect for your boundaries — is often central to the healing process for people whose boundaries were violated. We move at your pace.

What does recovery actually look like?

Recovery does not mean that what happened is erased or that it no longer matters. It means developing a relationship to the experience that allows you to live your life more fully. For many people, this involves:

• Reducing the intrusive symptoms — flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, emotional numbness — that disrupt daily functioning
• Rebuilding a sense of safety in your own body, which sexual abuse often profoundly disrupts
• Developing the capacity for trust in relationships — without needing to be either hypervigilant or avoidant
• Working through the effects on self-worth and identity — the ways abuse shapes how you see yourself
• Addressing the impact on sexuality and intimacy — which is often significant, and often unspoken
• Moving from surviving to recovering — from managing the impact to genuinely living beyond it

My approach draws on Lacanian psychoanalytic and psychodynamic thinking — which means I’m interested in the whole person, not just the trauma symptoms. Sexual abuse occurs within a relational context, and recovery involves understanding that context: how the experience has shaped your sense of yourself and of other people. This work takes time and requires a therapeutic relationship built on genuine safety and trust. That is what I aim to provide.

I see clients online via secure video call across Melbourne and Australia, and in person at 96 Elgin Street, Carlton in inner Melbourne. Sessions are self-funded at $120, and no referral is required. Book a session or message me on WhatsApp.