In the context of Lucetta’s research, Ian is unusual because he considers himself mentally healthy.

I wish we’d got help together, you know? I might still be married now if I’d got help. But I’m not,” he says with unmistakeable grief. Lucetta recruited the men for her research with relative ease. This may lead one to assume this type of abuse is common. Frustratingly though, there seems to be no reliable data on its prevalence — including the Personal Safety Survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.He was not only sexually abused by his mother from a very young age but when he became older and was able to physically prevent her from abusing him, she engaged another friend to be her strong arm so she could continue the acts of sexual violence against him,” Lucetta explains. While some boys were mentally coerced into “a full sexual relationship” with their mother, Lucetta explains that others were on the receiving end of “incredible violence” if they tried to resist. Mothers might also withdraw of basic human needs, such as food and shelter.

At the time though, it was a different story: “I thought I was enjoying it and I thought I was grown up.”I AM very sorry I brought you so much pain,” Marcus* wrote in his final letter, “Thank you for caring for me. I know I didn’t deserve it.” Ian describes “a paralysis” inside him and states: “I don’t think I’ve loved anybody in my life [and] didn’t know what love was.” The truth is that Hamish had no one to disclose the abuse to — and even if he did, was terrified of splitting up his family. Despite growing up in a wealthy suburb and going to a private school, home life was difficult. His single mother suffered frequent physical illnesses, such as pneumonia and pleurisy. In retrospect Hamish thinks his mother was also mentally unwell. I hated her because of abuse,” he says, “I had a list of people who I wanted dead and she was on that list.”

Our marriage was never the same after I told her about my mother … just telling her wasn’t enough, we needed to get help,” he says. You can’t just bottle it up and think that it will go away, because it doesn’t ever go away,” he says. And he would know. He worked damn hard to do just that. Hamish married in the early 90s and fathered two sons of whom he’s extremely proud.One gentleman, sadly, was completely house bound. He basically just felt that it was completely impossible to trust anybody or to be out in society because he had so little self-regard,” she says.

I was shunned, I wasn’t wanted. I felt that even from my cousins, uncles and aunties, grandparents,” Ian says. I was born illegitimately,” Ian says, “and he [John] knew that because he wasn’t sleeping with my mother.” University of Canberra researcher Lucetta Thomas has interviewed dozens of men who have been sexually abused by their mothers. Picture: Ginger Gorman Ian,* 70, was also sexually abused by his mother. Unlike Hamish, it happened when he was a much younger child.I’ve] spent most of my life trying to repress these thoughts and memories,” he says, “I haven’t talked to anyone for 30 years about it.” Quietly reflecting on this, he says: “It’s really hard to tell someone you love, ‘By the way, my mother abused me and I had sex with my mother’.” The sentence that stayed with her was this one: “The only course of action is for you to do something positive, like finish the PhD.” About 10 years ago a television news story prompted him to briefly mention the childhood sexual abuse to his wife. After the disclosure he promptly told her: “I never want to talk about it ever again, ever.” She saw me as like some sort of de facto relationship, I’ve got no doubt about that. She’d say: ‘You’re the man of the house’,” he recalls.