Real Stories: I was molested by my female cousin, but no one believed me because I’m a man

I was 12 the first time it happened. My cousin Ada was 19, and we lived in the same house because my parents took her in after her father died. She was like an older sister, until she wasn’t.

It started with “innocent” touches. A brush of her hand on my thigh when we sat together watching TV. Hugging me from behind and letting her hands linger. At first, I didn’t even understand what was happening. I thought maybe it was normal, until one night she came into my room while everyone else was asleep.

She told me to keep quiet. She said it was just “playing” and that I’d like it. I froze. My chest felt tight, my mind confused. She was family. She was older. She was supposed to protect me.

But I didn’t have the words for it then. I just lay there, stiff, wishing I could disappear.

It didn’t stop. She would find ways to be alone with me. Each time, I hated myself more. I thought maybe it was my fault. Maybe I had done something to make her think it was okay.

When I finally told my parents, my father laughed. "You’re a boy. What’s the problem? You should even thank her, she’s teaching you.”

My mother told me to stop lying because “Ada can never do such a thing.”

It felt like the floor disappeared beneath me. No one believed me. No one wanted to believe me. In their eyes, men can’t be victims. If anything, I was supposed to be “lucky.”

That lie followed me into adulthood. I couldn’t trust women. I couldn’t talk about sex without feeling dirty. And whenever I saw stories about men being assaulted, I’d scroll through the comments and see people laughing, “Na enjoyment you dey call rape?”

It made me sick.

I only started healing when I told my therapist, years later. She was the first person who didn’t laugh. She told me it wasn’t my fault. That abuse is abuse, no matter your gender, no matter who does it.

But the scars remain. Even now, at 30, I sometimes wake up from dreams where Ada is standing at the foot of my bed. I still haven’t confronted her. I don’t even know if she remembers, or if she tells herself it was harmless.

What I do know is this: Men get abused by women, by family members, by people society refuses to suspect. And until we start listening without judgment, more boys will grow up carrying silent wounds.

I carried mine for almost two decades. And the silence hurt almost as much as the abuse.

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