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Russell Brand Conviction: Why Women Protect Abusers
Why Women Protect Abusers: The Childhood Origins of Silence and Shame
The conviction of Russell Brand for rape and sexual assault has brought renewed attention to a question that is frequently asked when women disclose sexual violence.
Why didn't they speak sooner?
Why did they remain silent for so long?
And why do some women appear to protect the very people who have harmed them?
On 5 November 2026, Russell Brand was convicted at Southwark Crown Court of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault against four women. The offences occurred between 2004 and 2009.
The verdict has prompted an important public conversation about sexual violence, consent, power and the difficulties women face when reporting abuse.
But there is another dimension to this conversation that deserves far greater attention.
For some women, the instinct to protect someone who harms them began long before their first adult relationship. It began in childhood.
In my work as an Inner Child Healer, I encounter women who have spent decades trying to live ordinary lives while carrying the consequences of childhood sexual abuse, emotional neglect and profound betrayals of trust.
Women who love their partners but struggle with intimacy.
Women who find it almost impossible to say no.
Women who feel responsible for everybody else's happiness.
Women who can recognise abuse when it happens to someone else but struggle to acknowledge the seriousness of their own experiences.
And women who have spent so many years protecting other people from their pain that they scarcely know how to express it.
To understand why some women remain silent, minimise abuse or feel responsible for the people who hurt them, we need to look at what happens when a child learns that her safety, belonging and relationships depend upon keeping secrets.
How Childhood Sexual Abuse Affects Adult Relationships: The Shame, Silence and Loyalty That Follow Women Into Adulthood
Why do some women protect the people who abused them, struggle to establish boundaries, and spend years trying to feel normal in relationships while carrying the weight of childhood experiences they have never fully understood?
Content note: This article discusses childhood sexual abuse, emotional neglect, shame and the lasting effects of childhood trauma. It does not contain graphic descriptions. Further reading: Inner Child Healing
Why Do Some Women Protect the People Who Hurt Them?
One of the most difficult things to understand about childhood sexual abuse is why a child might protect the very person who is harming her.
Why does she keep the secret?
Why does she feel guilty about telling someone?
Why might she grow into a woman who continues to feel responsible for the wellbeing, reputation or happiness of someone who violated her trust?
To understand these responses, we need to understand what happens when a child is dependent upon the very adults who frighten, neglect, manipulate or abuse her.
And we need to recognise something that is frequently overlooked.
The consequences of childhood sexual abuse do not necessarily end when the abuse stops.
They may follow a woman into her friendships, marriage, intimate relationships, sexuality, motherhood and sense of identity.
She may become a capable, intelligent, accomplished adult. She may have a successful career, a loving partner, children and a life that appears perfectly ordinary.
Yet privately, she may be carrying feelings of shame, guilt, confusion and responsibility that began decades earlier.
She may spend much of her adult life trying to be normal, without ever understanding why the things that seem effortless for other people can feel so extraordinarily difficult for her.
When the Person Who Hurts You Is Someone You Depend Upon
A child cannot understand abuse through the eyes of an adult.
She understands her world through the relationships upon which her survival depends.
She needs adults for food, shelter, affection, protection and belonging.
When the person who harms her is a parent, relative, caregiver or another trusted adult, she faces a conflict she is not developmentally equipped to resolve.
The person who should protect her may also be the person she fears.
The person whose affection she longs for may be the person violating her boundaries.
The person who causes her distress may be someone she still loves.
And because she cannot simply remove herself from that relationship, she adapts.
She may become exceptionally attentive to other people's moods.
She may learn to anticipate anger, recognise disappointment or detect subtle changes in someone's behaviour.
She may discover that keeping quiet, being agreeable or pretending everything is fine makes her environment more manageable.
Sometimes she is explicitly instructed to keep the abuse secret.
Sometimes the secrecy is enforced through threats, intimidation, manipulation or appeals to family loyalty.
And sometimes nobody tells her to remain silent. She simply understands, from everything happening around her, that speaking would be dangerous.
Silence can become an intelligent adaptation to circumstances in which telling the truth feels impossible. Further reading: What is Childhood Trauma? The Origins of Why You Think, Feel & Behave the Way You Do
How Childhood Sexual Abuse Creates Shame That Never Belonged to the Child
Children naturally try to make sense of what happens to them.
But when something frightening, confusing or violating occurs, they do not have the knowledge or emotional maturity to understand the responsibility of the adult involved.
Instead, a child may begin questioning herself.
Perhaps I did something wrong.
Perhaps I encouraged it.
Perhaps I should have stopped it.
Perhaps I misunderstood.
Perhaps it wasn't really abuse.
These beliefs can become particularly powerful when the person responsible alternates between affection and harm.
A child may remember moments of kindness, gifts, attention or apparent love.
She may wonder how someone who seems to care about her could also be responsible for something so frightening.
And rather than question the adult, she may question her own understanding.
This is one of the most damaging consequences of childhood sexual abuse.
The child begins to carry responsibility for something that was never her responsibility.
Shame becomes attached to her identity.
She may grow up believing there is something fundamentally wrong with her, something that makes her unworthy of protection, or something that other people would reject if they knew.
Even when she intellectually understands that she was abused, the emotional beliefs formed in childhood may remain remarkably persistent.
Knowing that something was wrong and feeling free of responsibility for it can be two very different experiences.
Why Childhood Sexual Abuse Can Make Adult Relationships So Difficult
For many survivors, the greatest difficulties emerge in the very relationships where they most want to feel safe.
A woman may long for love, affection, companionship and intimacy.
She may desperately want a relationship in which she can relax, trust and be herself.
Yet the emotional expectations she developed during childhood can interfere with those experiences.
If she learned that affection could be followed by harm, closeness may feel unpredictable.
If she learned that expressing discomfort caused conflict, she may struggle to communicate her needs.
If she learned that other people's feelings mattered more than her own, she may find herself repeatedly accommodating behaviour that leaves her unhappy.
If her boundaries were violated as a child, she may struggle to recognise that she has the right to establish them as an adult.
And if she learned that love depended upon keeping someone else happy, she may become extraordinarily frightened of disappointing a partner.
These patterns can emerge even within a genuinely loving and respectful relationship.
A partner may be confused by her withdrawal, her reluctance to discuss certain subjects, her sensitivity to rejection or her difficulty expressing what she wants.
He may have no idea that an apparently ordinary disagreement has awakened feelings connected to experiences that happened decades earlier.
She herself may not understand the connection.
The adult relationship becomes the place where childhood beliefs about safety, love, responsibility and worthiness are repeatedly activated.
Not every survivor experiences these difficulties, and childhood sexual abuse does not determine the quality of someone's future relationships. But for those who do, the effects can be profound.
Trying to Be Normal When You Have Never Felt Safe
This is something I encounter in my work with women who have experienced childhood abuse and other attachment wounds.
They have often spent years trying to build ordinary adult lives while privately carrying experiences that have never been fully acknowledged.
Some have never told their partners what happened.
Others have disclosed their experiences but struggle to explain how those experiences continue to affect them.
Some have spoken about their childhood in therapy, yet still find themselves overwhelmed by guilt, shame or fear in everyday relationships.
They may become exceptionally skilled at functioning.
They go to work.
They care for their families.
They maintain friendships.
They manage responsibilities.
They appear competent, thoughtful and emotionally resilient.
And yet they may find themselves struggling with things that other people take for granted.
Saying no without guilt.
Asking for affection.
Receiving kindness without feeling indebted.
Expressing anger.
Disagreeing with a partner.
Allowing someone to see their vulnerability.
Believing they deserve to be treated with tenderness and respect.
They may feel that they are somehow failing at relationships, when in reality they are living with adaptations that once helped them navigate circumstances in which their needs and boundaries were not respected.
There can be an enormous distance between the woman the world sees and the little girl whose experiences continue to shape how she feels about herself.
And maintaining that distance can be exhausting.
When Childhood Sexual Abuse Follows You Into a Loving Relationship
The following is a fictional composite vignette, illustrating patterns that can arise in women who experienced childhood sexual abuse. It does not describe an identifiable client.
Imagine a woman in her fifties who has been married for twenty years.
Her husband is a decent, loving man. He has never abused her. He wants her to be happy, and he cannot understand why she sometimes withdraws from him or becomes upset over seemingly insignificant things.
She loves him. She wants to feel close to him. She wants the easy affection, spontaneity and intimacy she imagines other couples enjoy.
But there are things he doesn't know.
As a little girl, she was sexually abused by someone she trusted. Someone who was supposed to protect her.
She learned to keep the secret. She learned to behave as though nothing had happened.
She learned to put other people's feelings before her own, even when she was frightened or uncomfortable.
And she became extraordinarily good at appearing normal.
Decades later, she still struggles to say no.
When her husband wants intimacy and she doesn't, she may agree because disappointing him feels unbearable. Sometimes she becomes emotionally distant, almost absent, without understanding why.
When he is quiet or preoccupied, she worries that she has done something wrong.
When they disagree, she may apologise simply to restore the peace.
And when he asks what she needs, she often cannot find the words.
He may interpret her behaviour as rejection, indifference or a lack of trust.
She may interpret his disappointment as evidence that she is failing him.
Neither fully understands what is happening.
The little girl who learned that her feelings and boundaries did not matter has become a woman who struggles to believe that her needs can exist alongside someone else's.
She may understand intellectually that her husband is a different person from the adult who abused her. She may know that he loves her and would never deliberately hurt her.
Yet understanding this does not automatically change the feelings that arise when she experiences vulnerability, disagreement or the possibility of rejection.
Perhaps she has never told him what happened.
Perhaps she told him years ago but insisted that she was over it.
Perhaps she has spent her entire marriage believing that if she could just become more relaxed, more affectionate, less sensitive or less complicated, everything would be fine.
And beneath all of this lies a terrible loneliness.
Because the person who loves her most may have no idea how hard she is working to be the woman she believes she ought to be.
She has spent so many years protecting other people from her pain that she has never learned what it feels like to let someone understand it.
This is one of the ways childhood sexual abuse can continue to influence adult relationships long after the abuse itself has ended.
The woman may have built a successful life. She may have raised children, maintained friendships, developed a career and created a loving home.
But somewhere within her, the beliefs formed during childhood remain:
My feelings are less important.
I mustn't upset anyone.
If someone is unhappy, it must be my fault.
Love means putting myself aside.
And perhaps the most painful belief of all:
If someone really knew me, they might not want me.
Healing can involve beginning to recognise these beliefs for what they are: conclusions formed by a child trying to make sense of experiences she was never responsible for.
And gradually, with appropriate support, she may begin to discover that she can express a need without apologising, establish a boundary without betraying someone, and experience closeness without surrendering her own sense of choice.
That she can be loved while remaining fully herself. See: Inner Child Healing
The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Intimacy and Sexual Relationships
One of the most painful and least openly discussed consequences of childhood sexual abuse concerns adult intimacy.
Sexual intimacy involves vulnerability, trust, choice and the ability to recognise and communicate personal boundaries.
For someone whose early experiences involved sexual violation, these things may have become complicated long before she entered her first adult relationship.
She may genuinely love and desire her partner, yet experience anxiety, emotional distance or discomfort during intimacy.
She may struggle to identify what she wants.
She may feel responsible for meeting her partner's sexual needs while overlooking her own.
She may find it difficult to refuse intimacy because saying no evokes feelings of guilt, fear or anticipated rejection.
Some survivors experience dissociation, feeling detached or emotionally absent during sexual experiences.
Others avoid intimacy altogether, while some seek closeness or reassurance through sexual relationships.
There is no single pattern.
And none of these responses should be treated as evidence that a woman is incapable of enjoying healthy, loving sexual relationships.
What matters is understanding that a history of childhood sexual abuse can influence how a woman experiences choice, consent, vulnerability and emotional safety long after the original abuse has ended.
A compassionate partner can make an important difference, but even a loving relationship cannot automatically resolve beliefs and fears that developed in childhood.
These experiences deserve understanding rather than judgement, and some survivors may benefit from specialist trauma or psychosexual support.
Why Some Women Become People-Pleasers After Childhood Abuse
People-pleasing is frequently described as a personality trait.
We speak about someone being too nice, too accommodating or unable to stand up for herself.
But for some women, chronic people-pleasing has its origins in childhood experiences where keeping another person happy was closely connected to their sense of safety.
A little girl may learn that disagreement leads to punishment.
That expressing anger makes matters worse.
That saying no is unacceptable.
That her needs are inconvenient.
That keeping the peace is her responsibility.
Over time, these lessons can become deeply ingrained.
As an adult, she may automatically consider everybody else's feelings before her own.
She may apologise when she has done nothing wrong.
She may tolerate disrespect because confronting it feels more frightening than enduring it.
She may become the person everyone relies upon, while finding it almost impossible to ask anyone for help.
And she may feel an overwhelming sense of guilt when she finally tries to establish a boundary.
The difficulty is not necessarily that she lacks confidence or assertiveness.
It may be that asserting herself activates an old expectation that disagreement will cost her love, approval or safety.
Understanding the childhood origins of people-pleasing can help explain why simply telling someone to be more assertive is often insufficient.
Why Women Sometimes Protect Their Abusers Even as Adults
When we ask why women do not report sexual abuse, we often overlook the powerful emotional conditioning that may have begun in childhood.
A girl who learned to protect an abusive adult may grow into a woman who feels responsible for protecting other people from the consequences of their behaviour.
She may worry about destroying a family.
She may fear damaging someone's reputation.
She may feel guilty about the distress disclosure could cause to innocent people.
She may worry that nobody will believe her.
She may question whether what happened was serious enough to justify speaking about it.
And she may continue to feel loyalty or affection towards someone who harmed her.
These feelings can exist alongside anger, grief, fear and an intellectual recognition that what happened was abuse.
They are not evidence that the abuse was acceptable.
Nor do they imply consent.
They reflect the complicated emotional consequences of betrayal, dependency, fear and attachment.
There are also very real external reasons why survivors may remain silent, including threats, financial dependence, social pressure, discrimination, fear of retaliation and previous experiences of not being believed.
We must be careful not to reduce every woman's silence to childhood conditioning.
But where those early patterns are present, speaking the truth can feel like violating rules that were established long before she had the power to question them.
She may feel more responsible for the consequences of telling the truth than the person who harmed her feels for their actions.
And that is a devastating burden to carry.
Why Survivors Sometimes Minimise Their Own Experiences
Another common difficulty is the tendency to minimise what happened.
A woman may describe serious childhood abuse in a remarkably matter-of-fact way.
She may insist that other people had it worse.
She may laugh while describing something deeply painful.
She may say that it happened a long time ago and should no longer matter.
She may be able to recognise the seriousness of another woman's experience while struggling to extend the same understanding to herself.
Minimisation can serve an important protective function.
For a child who cannot escape her circumstances, fully recognising the danger or betrayal involved may feel overwhelming.
Reducing the significance of what is happening can make daily life more manageable.
But when this pattern continues into adulthood, a woman may repeatedly dismiss her own distress.
She may remain in harmful relationships because she has learned to question whether her experiences are serious enough to justify leaving.
She may struggle to recognise emotional manipulation, coercion or repeated boundary violations.
And she may feel that she has no right to complain because other people have suffered more.
The seriousness of your experience does not depend upon whether someone else experienced something worse.
Pain does not have to be compared before it deserves attention.
Can Childhood Sexual Abuse Affect Relationships Decades Later?
Yes. The effects of childhood sexual abuse can persist for decades, although their nature and severity vary considerably between individuals.
Some survivors experience intrusive memories, nightmares, anxiety or symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress.
Others experience difficulties with self-worth, emotional closeness, trust, sexual intimacy, boundaries or feelings of shame.
Some do not recognise the connection between their childhood experiences and their adult relationships until much later in life.
A woman may spend years believing that she is simply too sensitive, too needy, too guarded or too difficult to love.
She may enter successive relationships in which she feels unseen, responsible for everybody else's happiness or frightened of abandonment.
She may wonder why she continues to tolerate behaviour that she would never accept for someone she loves.
And sometimes a particular relationship, life event or experience of becoming a parent brings childhood memories and feelings into sharper focus.
There is no timetable for recognising the effects of childhood trauma.
There is also no requirement to remember every detail of an experience before seeking support.
What matters is understanding how the beliefs, emotions and relationship patterns that exist today may have developed, and whether they continue to affect your wellbeing.
How Inner Child Healing Can Help Women Who Experienced Childhood Abuse
Inner Child Healing offers an opportunity to explore the emotional beliefs and adaptations that developed during childhood and consider how they continue to influence adult life.
In my work as an Inner Child Healer and qualified clinical hypnotherapist, I use guided inner child work and clinical hypnosis to help clients explore the relationship between earlier experiences and present-day emotional difficulties.
For a woman who experienced childhood sexual abuse, this may involve recognising how early experiences shaped her understanding of love, responsibility, boundaries, trust and self-worth.
It may involve exploring the guilt she feels when she says no.
The fear she experiences when someone is disappointed in her.
The shame that arises when she expresses her needs.
Or the sense of responsibility she continues to feel for people who have treated her badly.
Importantly, this work does not require someone to disclose every detail of childhood abuse or relive traumatic experiences.
The pace, boundaries and emotional readiness of the individual matter enormously.
Inner child work can be one supportive approach to understanding longstanding patterns, but it is not a substitute for specialist sexual-trauma treatment when that is needed.
Different survivors benefit from different forms of support.
For some women, a particularly meaningful part of healing is beginning to recognise that the beliefs they developed as children were understandable responses to circumstances they could not control.
A child who learned to remain silent may have been doing everything she could to preserve a relationship upon which she depended.
A child who learned to please others may have been trying to prevent further harm.
A child who blamed herself may have been attempting to make sense of something that no child should have been expected to understand.
Recognising these adaptations can open the possibility of developing a different relationship with oneself.
One in which personal boundaries are respected.
One in which expressing a need does not automatically provoke shame.
One in which love does not have to be earned through compliance.
And one in which the woman begins to distinguish the responsibilities she carried as a child from the choices available to her as an adult.
Learning That You Were Always Entitled to Protection
Perhaps one of the most painful consequences of childhood sexual abuse is that a little girl can grow up believing she was responsible for protecting everybody except herself.
She may have protected the adult who harmed her.
Protected the family from discovering the truth.
Protected other people from discomfort.
Protected relationships by suppressing her own feelings.
And eventually, she may have become a woman who finds it easier to recognise everybody else's needs than her own.
But the responsibility was never hers.
She was a child.
She was entitled to protection.
She was entitled to boundaries.
She was entitled to be believed and taken seriously.
She was entitled to affection that did not come with fear, manipulation or violation.
And she was never responsible for protecting someone from the consequences of harming her.
The little girl who learned to keep the secret deserves to grow into a woman who no longer has to carry someone else's shame.
For some women, recognising this is the beginning of a profound change in how they understand themselves, their childhood and their adult relationships.
And perhaps, for the first time, they can begin to imagine a relationship in which being loved does not require abandoning themselves.
Private Online Inner Child Healing with Stella Dove
If you recognise yourself in this article, perhaps you have spent years trying to understand why you struggle with boundaries, intimacy, people-pleasing, shame or fear of rejection.
You may have built a life that looks perfectly ordinary while privately carrying experiences that continue to affect your relationships and your sense of self.
My private Online Inner Child Healing sessions provide a confidential space to explore the childhood beliefs and emotional patterns that may be influencing your life today.
Stella Dove MBSCH | Inner Child Healer
Guided Inner Child Work & Clinical Hypnosis
Important: Childhood sexual abuse can have complex and lasting psychological effects. If you are experiencing significant trauma symptoms, dissociation or distress, specialist trauma-informed psychological care may be appropriate. Inner Child Healing and clinical hypnosis should not be understood as guaranteed treatments for trauma or replacements for specialist care.
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