I'm a man in my 30s and I was a perpetrator of COCSA as a child. I've been confronting this for the first time over the past five months, and aside from a therapist I've been completely alone in it. It has been hell. The bone-deep shame that other perpetrators describe here resonates deeply with me. But I'm emotionally burnt out at this point, and I have a major decision coming this summer. I'm trying to decide whether or not to talk directly to the person I hurt about what happened. I welcome any advice and caution.

Thank you for reaching out to us. What you are carrying right now is real and the fact that you are five months into this work and still standing is not nothing. Emotional burnout in this process is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a sign that you have been doing something genuinely hard without much support around you.

So let's talk about the decision you are approaching...

Restorative justice practitioners and trauma researchers have learned over decades that when the person who caused harm reaches out first, without being invited to, it can hurt the survivor all over again, even when the intention is genuine. The person you hurt may have spent years building a life where this does not take up space every day. They may not have ever named what happened as abuse. They may know exactly what it was and have made a deliberate choice not to go back there. Whatever the case, reaching out puts them in a position they did not ask to be in, and takes away their choice about whether to engage with this at all.

None of that means a conversation can never have a place. Some survivors of COCSA have described receiving an acknowledgment from the person who harmed them as meaningful years later. But the critical difference in those situations is almost always the same. The disclosure was structured so that the survivor had genuine choice about whether to engage. A letter they can put down, read later, or never open is structurally different from a phone call or an in-person conversation where they are suddenly required to respond in real time to something they were not expecting. The format of disclosure matters as much as the content.

Something worth doing before any decision about contact is to write a letter you do not send, at least not yet. Write it as if you were going to send it. Name what happened clearly, take full responsibility without minimizing or explaining it away, and ask for nothing. The act of writing it often reveals something important: whether what you are really reaching for is honesty with the person you hurt, or relief from your own weight. Both are human impulses. Only one of them belongs in a decision about contact. Decades of research on expressive writing show that putting difficult experiences into words on the page, without any audience, does significant internal work on its own.

The other thing I want to name honestly is where you are right now. Five months in, emotionally depleted, still largely alone in this. Making a significant decision from a place of depletion carries real risk, not because your intentions are wrong, but because exhaustion can blur the line between what is right for them and what would bring relief to you. Before summer, bring this specific decision, not just your general processing, directly into your therapy. Ask your therapist to work through it explicitly, including the format, the timing, and what you would do if the response is anger, silence, or nothing at all.

One more resource worth knowing about: Stop It Now runs a confidential helpline at 1-888-PREVENT, staffed by people with experience in exactly this kind of decision. You have been carrying this mostly alone, and that is a lot to sustain. They exist for people in your situation.

You are doing hard, necessary work. Take the time it deserves. Thank you for thinking so deeply about this.