I had an appointment with a new therapist today. After talking with her, we went over a patient-therapist confidentiality contract...she asked me a series of questions, required by law, and one of them was if I was ever sexually assaulted.

My parents told me that when I was really young, someone that they hired as a house cleaner (we lived in the Middle East at the time) put his penis in my hands and my nanny saw. The nanny told my mom, who told my dad, when then fired him immediately and got him deported. We left a few years later and moved back to the US, where I was born, and where my dad is from, when I was 6. I was probably 4 at the oldest when that happened, but I have no recollection of it.

When I was in third grade, there was a kid around the same age that lived in my neighborhood. All the kids used to hang out outside or at someone’s house. I remember multiple incidents of standing and having him grope me and rub his hand between my thighs while I was fully clothed. This happened to my sister as well. For a long time, I blocked out that memory. It wasn’t until a few months ago that I remembered. When I asked my sister about it, she told me it actually happened. It doesn’t affect me now, and I’ve been sexually active since I was 16 (two months before my 17th birthday, I’m 21 now) without any issues regarding sexual assault. It hasn’t affected my sister either.

Have I been a victim of sexual assault? Is this normal to not remember until many years later?