By Dr Mariya Ali
Sipping my latte, my gaze wanders towards the fireplace. The flames licking the logs occasionally spit sparks. It warms my heart and brings a feeling of safety. But fire doesn’t mean safety to everyone. There is a duality to fire. It symbolises energy, power, passion, action, sensuality, creativity, authority, consumption, etc. I am a painter who has painted fire in positive and negative ways, and know for some it has sinister connotations.
In my first job after school, I sat in with a social worker to learn how to help children affected by trauma. A six-year-old girl shared that she couldn’t sleep due to nightmares of her abuser coming toward her with flames on his hands. I will spare you the other details that had us both in tears, but the burning hands remain vivid in my mind.
I often wonder how she is. She never had the healing modalities available to recover. Every time she sees fire she might be reminded of the abuse. Culture shapes the expression of trauma, so she could have buried it so deep that it is inaccessible. Survivors of sexual abuse store anger in the body, including in the muscles of the genitals and rectum, which can result in physical and mental health issues later in life. Having worked in this field, I have met thousands using various addictions to numb the feelings that arise from abuse: work, shopping, food, drugs, toxic relationships, sex etc.
Various conversations with women over the past year include some experiencing recurrent infections, cysts and other reproductive ailments; some who have not been able to be intimate with their husbands because they kept seeing their abuser on top of them; some being triggered by smells; some being scared to sleep because the abuse happened at night; some saying their bodies are constantly tense that that state has become their normal; some being disgusted by their sexual organs; and so on.
The viral #metoo hashtag in 2017 gave many survivors a voice. In 2006, Tarana Burke founded the Me Too Movement to raise awareness of epidemic sexual violence.
A courageous survivor, or maybe I should say thriver, Madeleine Black, shared her story of being violently raped by two men when she was thirteen, and experiencing three more rapes before eighteen.
Madeleine shared her story in the Maldives, a completely Muslim country, at the International Women’s Empowerment Events (IWEE)’s launch conference in 2019. Following her talk, a participant shared that she was a victim and asked others to stand with her if they had experienced sexual abuse, assault or rape. 95% of the room stood. This is not only relevant then but now – arguably even more so now with the growing discourses on Incel culture and misogyny.
This was a mini #metoo movement at the conference. I had goosebumps knowing we had been able to provide a safe space for these women and that this could be their first step in their healing journey. As the trauma specialist Bassel van der Kolk in his book The Body Keeps The Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma states, “…as soon as the story starts being told, …it changes – the act of telling changes the tale.”
Madeleine explained that when she started sharing her story the healing was exponential. Through forgiveness, she was able to thrive. Her book and her talks release others from the shame they have been mired in. She emphasises that not everyone needs to go on stage. One must choose whom to share the story with; someone who will consciously listen without judgement, be present and acknowledge the pain and hurt.
References and further reading
Van der Kolk, B.A. (2014) The body keeps the score: mind, brain and body in the transformation of trauma. London: Penguin Books
Kamiya, Y., Timonen, V. And Kenny, R.A. (2016) “The impact of childhood sexual abuse on the mental and physical health, and healthcare utilization of older adults,” International Psychogeriatrics, 28(3), pp. 415–422
Kerr, K. Et al. (2025) “The impact of childhood abuse on future military sexual assault and PTSD symptomology in Australian veterans,” Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 59(1), pp. 40–47.
Fletcher (2021) “A Systematic Review of the Relationship between Child Sexual Abuse and Substance Use Issues,” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 30(3), pp. 258–277.
Sugiura, L. (2022) The incel rebellion: the rise of the manosphere and the virtual war against women. Bingley, U.K.: Emerald Publishing Limited. Available at: https://openresearchlibrary.org/content/6bce95a7-84a2-4b06-aff0-092afdca7d3a (Accessed: November 17, 2025)
Adams, N.N. and Smith, D.S. (2025) “I didn’t Leave Inceldom; Inceldom Left me: Examining Male Ex-Incel Navigations of Complex Masculinities Identity Rebuilding Following Rejection of Incel-Culture,” Deviant Behavior, pp. 1–31.
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