A prison might sound like a strange place to learn about the victims of crimes. But in prison, I came to understand more than I ever expected about the sexual abuse of boys—and what it costs men to carry those experiences into adulthood.
For almost thirty years, I have worked with men in secure environments. I encountered men whose lives were understood almost entirely through their behaviour. Men who had been written off as “untreatable”. Men who were considered to be the most dangerous men in the system. Men who some had concluded, treatment would only make worse. Men for whom there was no hope. Early in my career, I was not immune to the same assumptions that shape public opinion: that danger tells the whole story, that violence explains itself, that some men are simply beyond reach.
That changed—not through theory, but through proximity.
Working with these men required looking beneath labels, diagnoses, and risk assessments, and asking a more fundamental question: what happened to this man, and what did it cost him to survive it?
Sitting with men over time, hearing their stories slowly unfold, it became impossible to maintain a simple narrative. I came to see how often rage had grown around terror, how control had once been a necessary defence, how silence had been learned early and perfected over decades. Compassion did not arrive as a moral stance; it emerged as an inevitability once the full picture was allowed to come into view.
This knowledge doesn’t only apply inside prison walls.
Prisons offer a concentration of what is usually hidden. The patterns are clearer, the defences more rigid, the histories more extreme. But the underlying experiences are not unique. The underlying patterns are familiar far beyond secure settings. The same betrayals, the same self-protective adaptations, the same shame-driven silences appear in men who have never been violent, never been convicted, and never been confined.
We tend to understand this when it comes to women. When women struggle, we look for context. We ask what went wrong, what they endured, what support they were denied. We allow for complexity and compassion, meaning and context
With men, we are far less practiced.
Male distress is often framed as a character problem rather than a response to harm. It’s interpreted as threat rather than pain. Anger is seen as aggression. Withdrawal as indifference. Control as entitlement. There is little encouragement to ask what those patterns might be protecting. Yet in every secure setting I have worked in, just as in the wider community, I have met men whose childhoods were marked by betrayal. Often by those they should have been able to trust the most.
These were boys who were not protected. Boys who were physically harmed (boys experience higher rates of physical abuse than girls), emotionally and verbally abused, made to feel unwanted, unsafe, and ashamed. And many who were also sexually abused.
In one high-secure service where I worked as Clinical Director, over 66% of the men had experienced sexual abuse during childhood. Often repeatedly. Frequently by more than one person. Not only by fathers, step-fathers, priests, scoutmasters, or neighbours—but also by mothers, aunts, babysitters, and siblings.
What mattered most was not just the prevalence, but the silence.
These experiences were rarely disclosed early. They did not appear in standard assessments. They emerged slowly, in relationships where men felt safe enough to set aside image and self-protection. Where shame could be examined without fear of ridicule or dismissal. Where curiosity replaced judgement.
Men described how as little boys, they’d learned that trusting an adult came at the cost of being raped. That entering puberty with a desire to be loved by a parent, makes you vulnerable to enticement into sex with a parental figure. That sex is the price you pay for comfort. And resistance just adds to the pain.
The same dynamics apply far beyond prison. Many men in ordinary lives—men with families, careers, and outward stability—carry similar histories. They may never have been asked the right questions. They may have learned early that their pain was inconvenient, unbelievable, or dangerous to reveal.
My work has never been about excusing harm or pathologising men. It has been about understanding how unacknowledged trauma shapes behaviour, relationships, and self-worth—and how change becomes possible when men are met with compassion, respect, and genuine curiosity.
So, when we ask why men so rarely speak about childhood sexual abuse, it is worth asking not only, “Why don’t men tell?” but also, “Have they have learned, again and again, that it is safer not to?”
If you are a man reading this and recognising something of your own story, know this: what happened to you matters. You do not need to have been to prison, to have “fallen apart,” or to be at breaking point for your experience to count. Many men live for decades without naming what they endured, carrying it quietly into their work, relationships, and sense of self. Disclosure does not have to be dramatic, complete, or immediate. It can begin with a single sentence, spoken to one safe person, at a pace you choose. You deserved protection then, and you deserve to be taken seriously now. Speaking is not a failure of strength. It is often the first act of reclaiming it.