Writing a Letter to Your Sexual Perpetrator Has Therapeutic Value
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As a survivor of incest, I wrote, and hand delivered a letter to my brother twenty-two years after he molested me. Unlike most offenders, he admitted the abuse and estimated that it had gone on for 2-3 years. When asked if he’d been molested, he said, “Nothing I can think of, but I could be blocking that.” He indicated that the abuse caused him anguish and when it troubled him, he made himself think of something else. Writing that 9-page letter and talking with him about it began my healing journey.
Empowerment through Written Expression
Writing a letter to your abuser gives you a chance to label feelings you may have suppressed for years.
It provides a safe outlet for expressing emotions (such as rage, terror, bitterness), and to reclaim your voice, an essential step in healing from trauma. 1
Emotional Release
Writing a letter provides an opportunity to clarify who was responsible for the abuse: the perpetrator.
Studies suggest that expressing emotions in writing can improve emotional well-being. 2
Reclaiming Control
Survivors often feel powerless during and after sexual abuse. Writing a letter can give you a sense of control over your decisions and life path.
A letter allows you to confront the abuser in a way that bypasses direct confrontation. 3 (Please consider reading my blog, Confronting the Perpetrator of Child Sexual Assault.)
Validation of Experiences
The letter serves as a personal validation of your experience, confirming your feelings and the wrongfulness of the abuse.
Survivors often feel dismissed or unheard; writing provides an opportunity to be heard by someone (such as a partner or friend), even if the letter is never sent to the abuser. 4
A Path to Acceptance or Forgiveness
Writing a letter can help you work toward acceptance of the past or forgiveness, allowing yourself time to heal without condoning the abuse. (If interested in the benefits of forgiveness, please check out Forgiving Your Abuser Following Sexual Assault.)
This process does not require actual reconciliation with the abuser but can lead to personal peace. 5
Releasing Shame and Guilt
Many survivors carry feelings of guilt and shame, often internalized from the abuser’s manipulation or the judgment of family or friends.
Writing a letter about how the abuse impacted your life provides an opportunity to explain the consequences to the abuser, distinguishing your actions from the perpetrator’s. 6
Therapeutic Writing as a Cognitive Tool
Writing helps survivors organize their thoughts and emotions, promoting better intellectual processing of trauma.
Research shows that writing can reduce symptoms of post-traumatic stress. 7
Improved Mental Health Outcomes
Regular expressive writing has been associated with reduced anxiety, depression, and trauma symptoms in survivors of sexual abuse.
Writing provides a method for survivors to process complex trauma and work toward healing in a self-paced manner. 8
Creating a Record of the Survivor’s Story
A letter can become a personal record of the survivor’s account of the abuse, which may later be useful for therapy or a reminder of the healing journey.
The letter may serve as a touchstone for further reflection and growth. 9
A Healing Step Toward Recovery
Writing a letter to the abuser can be an important step for survivors in reclaiming their sense of agency and confidence and moving forward in the healing process.
While not necessary for everyone, writing this letter offers a potentially transformative method for addressing unresolved trauma. 10
While looking in my Incest Survivor’s Group folder for the letter I’d written to my brother I found one I’d written to my mother during that same time. I had explained how our male-dominated household contributed to my brother's abusing me and to my fear of telling either parent.
Curiously missing from the folder was a letter to my father, who was the king of patriarchy (I adored him anyway), but my writing in 1987 emboldened me to create a more equitable family when raising my own children. I haven’t shared that letter with my mother (92 years old) but the writing was therapeutic. I encourage survivors to write letters to anyone who contributed in some way to their abuse.
“Healing is a process with good and bad days. But for every bad day I have now, I have 10, 20, 30 good ones,” wrote Phoenix in Stepping Out of the Shadows: A Book about True Healing from Sexual Violence. The book was written by survivors for survivors in 2011 in South Australia and the quote was published in The Women’s and Children’s Health Network newsletter.
My hope is that all survivors of sexual abuse will take on the hard work of recovery, and that letter-writing might be one element on their path.
1 Van Der Kolk, B., The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Penquin Books, 2014).
2 Pennebaker, J. W. & Chung, C. K., The Writing Cure: How Expressive Writing Promotes Health and Emotional Well-Being, (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2002).
3 Barnett, K. (2021). Sexual assault survivor pens powerful letter to her attacker. Psychology Today, March.
4 Herman, J. L., Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. (New York: Basic Books, 2022).
5 Freyd, J. J. Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).
6 Bass, E & Davis, L, The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (New York: Harper and Row, 1988).
7 Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological Science, 8(3), 162-166.
8 Smyth, J. M. (1998). Written emotional expression: effect sizes, outcome, types, and moderating variables. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 66 (1), 174-184.
9 Pennebaker, J. W. & Smyth, J. M., Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain (New York: The Guilford Press, 2016).
10 Siegel-Acevedo, D. (2021). Writing can help us heal from trauma. Harvard Business Review.
