Sometimes the most devastating betrayal comes not from strangers, but from the very people who are supposed to be your sanctuary—the parents who should comfort your pain, not cause it.
When I first read this story, I had to bury my face in my hands. As an advocate for trauma survivors, I’ve heard devastating accounts of medical harm done to children—through my volunteer work in crisis centers and in news stories that haunt me for days. As a woman, I felt a visceral horror at what was done to this person’s body. As a human being who believes children deserve protection, I felt a rage so pure it took my breath away.
What happened to this survivor represents one of the most fundamental failures in pediatric medicine: the treatment of children as miniature adults whose pain doesn’t matter, whose voices don’t count, whose bodies are objects to be manipulated rather than sacred vessels deserving of gentleness and respect.
Their story spans years of repeated medical trauma, from toddlerhood through elementary school—procedures that would be considered torture if performed on an adult, but were labeled “necessary treatment” when inflicted on a child. The physical healing eventually came naturally through hormonal changes. The psychological wounds remain to this day, proof of how profoundly medical trauma can reshape a person’s entire relationship with their own body.
This is their story, shared with permission and told with the fierce protectiveness they deserved all those years ago.
When Bodies Close and Medicine Responds With Violence
The medical condition was likely labial adhesions—a relatively common occurrence in young girls where the labia minora fuse together, often due to low estrogen levels or irritation. In most cases, this condition resolves naturally as estrogen levels rise before puberty. When intervention is needed, medical literature recommends gentle treatments: topical estrogen creams, warm baths, gradual separation with lubrication.
What this toddler received instead was medical barbarism disguised as treatment.
“My mom took me to a pediatric gynecologist and she tore it open without any kind of pain management, it was excruciating, i still remember it.”
Let me be absolutely clear about what happened here: a medical professional looked at a toddler’s genitals and decided the appropriate treatment was to tear delicate tissue without anesthesia, without pain management, without regard for the psychological impact of such a violation.
This wasn’t emergency treatment. This wasn’t a life-threatening condition requiring immediate intervention. This was a routine medical condition that could have been treated gently, gradually, with respect for the child’s comfort and dignity.
Instead, it became the first in a series of medical assaults that would span years.
“And she instructed my mom to tear it open everytime it starts to close. So my mom repeated that every few weeks until i was about nine years old.”
Every few weeks. Year after year after year. A parent, following medical advice, repeatedly tearing their child’s genital tissue while the child screamed in pain and terror.
The image of this haunts me. A small child, held down by the people meant to protect them, experiencing agony in their most private areas, learning that their pain doesn’t matter if adults decide it’s “necessary.” Learning that their body belongs to others, that their protests will be ignored, that medical necessity trumps their basic human right to comfort and dignity.
The Desperation for Control
The child who had endured years of painful violations finally reached a breaking point:
“The last time i was so desperate for control over my body that i did it myself and lied that i had been doing the splits and tore it accidentally.”
Think about what it means for a nine-year-old to prefer inflicting pain on themselves rather than enduring it at the hands of adults. Think about the level of desperation required to choose self-harm over medical “help.” Think about the sophisticated deception a child had to create to protect themselves from further violation by the very people who claimed to be helping them.
This child had learned, through years of repeated trauma, that their body was not their own. That their pain was irrelevant. That their protests would be ignored. So they took control in the only way available to them: by becoming both victim and perpetrator, ensuring that at least the timing and circumstances were their choice.
The fact that the condition resolved naturally after this final incident proves what medical research has long shown: in most cases, labial adhesions resolve on their own as hormone levels change. All those years of repeated trauma had been unnecessary from the beginning.
“It didnt start closing again after that thanks to increasing estrogen before puberty (i was a late bloomer but the hormone levels were already sufficient to prevent it).”
All that pain. All that trauma. All those years of teaching a child that their body belonged to medical professionals rather than to them. And in the end, nature accomplished what medicine had tried to force through violence.
The Body Remembers Everything
To this day, this survivor lives with the consequences of those childhood medical assaults:
“I still have ptsd from that. I show symptoms typical for victims of childhood sexual trauma.”
This isn’t hyperbole or oversensitivity. This is the documented reality of medical trauma. When children experience repeated painful procedures involving their genitals, their nervous systems respond exactly as they would to sexual abuse. The brain doesn’t distinguish between medical necessity and sexual violation when processing trauma—it only recognizes pain, helplessness, and genital contact by authority figures while the child is restrained and their protests are ignored.
The symptoms are textbook because the trauma pattern is identical:
“I have a very hard time going to the gynecologist, and i still havent had PIV sex because of this trauma - i have only done nonpenetrative sexual things.”
Their body learned, through repeated traumatic experience, that genital penetration equals pain, helplessness, and violation. No amount of rational understanding that consensual sexual activity is different can override what their nervous system learned in those formative years when trusted adults repeatedly hurt them in intimate places.
“And i think the trauma also contributed to my genital dysphoria (i am nonbinary).”
When your earliest experiences with your genitals involve pain, violation, and loss of control, it makes perfect sense that your relationship with those body parts would be complicated. When medical professionals treat your most private areas as objects to be manipulated rather than sacred parts of your body, it can profoundly impact how you understand and relate to your own anatomy.
“And my therapist thinks the loss of control over my body contributed to my ocd which started very early.”
Obsessive-compulsive disorder often develops as a trauma response, a desperate attempt to regain control when early experiences have taught us that our bodies and environments are fundamentally unsafe. When you learn as a toddler that adults can and will do painful things to your body regardless of your protests, your brain may develop compulsive behaviors as a way to feel some measure of control over an unpredictable world.
What Should Have Happened
As a healthcare professional, I need to be absolutely clear: none of this was necessary. None of this represented appropriate medical care. All of it violated fundamental principles of pediatric medicine, trauma-informed care, and basic human decency.
Here’s what evidence-based, compassionate treatment of labial adhesions looks like:
Conservative management: Most cases resolve naturally with time and hormonal changes. Gentle hygiene, avoiding irritants, and watchful waiting are often sufficient.
Topical estrogen therapy: When intervention is needed, topical estrogen cream applied gently can promote separation without pain or trauma.
Gradual, gentle separation: If manual intervention becomes necessary, it should be done gradually, with appropriate anesthesia, by experienced practitioners who understand pediatric anatomy and psychology.
Pain management: Any procedure involving children should prioritize comfort and pain prevention. Local anesthetic, conscious sedation, or general anesthesia are all options that should be considered before subjecting a child to painful procedures.
Psychological support: Child life specialists, age-appropriate explanation, comfort items, and parental support should be standard for any procedure that might be frightening or uncomfortable.
Informed consent: Parents should be educated about all treatment options, including the option of watchful waiting, before consenting to any intervention.
Most importantly, the child’s response should guide treatment. If a procedure causes significant distress, if the child develops fear or avoidance behaviors, if parents report behavioral changes, these should be seen as signs that the treatment approach needs to be modified, not that the child needs to be held down more firmly.
The Failure of Medical Education
Reading this story, I’m forced to confront uncomfortable truths about medical training and pediatric care. How does a pediatric gynecologist—someone who specializes in treating children—not understand that tearing genital tissue without anesthesia will traumatize a toddler? How does a medical system allow such barbaric treatment to be prescribed and repeated for years?
The answer lies in several systemic failures:
Minimization of children’s pain: Medical education has historically taught that children don’t experience or remember pain the way adults do. This is scientifically false, but the belief persists and leads to inadequate pain management in pediatric settings.
Lack of trauma-informed care: Many healthcare providers receive minimal training in how medical procedures can create lasting psychological trauma, especially in children who can’t understand why painful things are being done to them.
Paternalistic medicine: The attitude that medical professionals know what’s best regardless of patient (or in this case, child) response allows providers to ignore obvious signs of distress and continue harmful treatments.
Insufficient training in pediatric psychology: Understanding how children process medical experiences, what constitutes traumatic treatment, and how to provide age-appropriate care requires specialized training that many providers lack.
Normalization of medical violence: When painful procedures become routine, healthcare providers can become desensitized to the suffering they’re causing, especially when that suffering is framed as “necessary for treatment.”
The Ripple Effects of Medical Trauma
This survivor’s story illustrates how medical trauma in childhood can affect every aspect of adult life:
Sexual health: The inability to tolerate penetration isn’t a personal failing or psychological weakness—it’s a predictable consequence of genital trauma in childhood. Their body learned to associate penetration with pain and violation.
Medical care: The difficulty with gynecological exams isn’t irrational fear—it’s a trauma response to having their most private areas examined and manipulated by medical professionals who previously caused them pain.
Mental health: PTSD, OCD, and other psychological conditions that developed as coping mechanisms for childhood trauma continue to impact their daily life decades later.
Body autonomy: Learning as a child that your body belongs to others, that your pain doesn’t matter, that your protests will be ignored, creates lasting challenges with boundaries, consent, and self-advocacy.
Gender identity: When your earliest experiences with your genitals involve pain and violation, it can profoundly impact your relationship with those body parts and your understanding of your own gender.
These aren’t separate issues—they’re all connected threads in the web of trauma that began with a pediatric gynecologist who chose violence over gentleness, speed over compassion, compliance over consent.
To Healthcare Providers: Children Are Not Small Adults
If you work with children in any medical capacity, this story should haunt you. It should make you question every procedure you perform, every assumption you make about pediatric pain, every time you’ve prioritized getting a job done over a child’s comfort and dignity.
Children feel pain as intensely as adults. They also lack the cognitive framework to understand why pain is being inflicted on them, making medical procedures potentially more traumatic than they would be for adults.
Children remember trauma. The myth that young children won’t remember painful medical experiences has been thoroughly debunked. This survivor still remembers the excruciating pain from their toddler years. Their body certainly remembers, even if their conscious mind didn’t retain every detail.
Medical necessity doesn’t eliminate the need for compassion. Even when procedures are truly necessary, they can and should be performed with attention to pain management, psychological comfort, and respect for the child’s dignity.
Children deserve informed assent. While parents provide legal consent, children deserve age-appropriate explanations of what will happen to their bodies and why.
Pain is not character-building. The attitude that children need to “tough it out” or that medical discomfort builds resilience is harmful and wrong. Pain without purpose is trauma.
Watch for trauma responses. If a child develops behavioral changes, fear of medical settings, regression in development, or other concerning symptoms after medical procedures, these should be taken seriously as potential signs of medical trauma.
Consider alternatives. Before performing painful procedures on children, especially repeated procedures, explore all possible alternatives. Sometimes the cure is worse than the condition.
Most importantly: When a child is screaming, something is wrong. That scream isn’t manipulation or bad behavior—it’s communication. Listen to it.
To the Survivor Who Trusted Me With This Story
What happened to you was medical abuse, not medical care. You were failed by every adult who should have protected you—the pediatric gynecologist who chose violence over gentleness, the system that normalized your pain, and yes, even your mother who followed harmful medical advice instead of trusting her instincts that causing you repeated agony was wrong.
You were a toddler. You deserved gentle treatment. You deserved pain management. You deserved to have your distress taken seriously rather than dismissed. You deserved medical professionals who understood that preserving your psychological wellbeing was as important as addressing your physical condition.
The fact that you took control of the situation at age nine, despite the pain it caused you, shows remarkable strength and determination. A nine-year-old shouldn’t have to choose between self-harm and medical assault, but given those terrible options, you found a way to reclaim some agency over your own body.
Your trauma responses aren’t weaknesses—they’re evidence of how profoundly your nervous system was affected by repeated violations during critical developmental years. Your difficulty with gynecological exams makes perfect sense given what medical professionals did to you. Your challenges with penetration are a logical result of learning to associate genital contact with pain and helplessness.
Your potential gender dysphoria isn’t something you need to justify or explain to anyone. When your earliest experiences with your genitals involved pain and violation by authority figures, it makes complete sense that your relationship with those body parts would be complicated.
Your OCD isn’t a character flaw—it’s a survival mechanism your brain developed to cope with the trauma of having no control over what was done to your body.
All of these responses are normal reactions to abnormal treatment. You are not broken. You are not oversensitive. You are not making too big a deal of what happened.
You survived something that should never happen to any child. You found ways to cope with trauma that would have destroyed many adults. You’ve lived your entire life with the consequences of other people’s failures, and yet you’re still here, still healing, still brave enough to share your truth.
Thank you for trusting me with something so painful and personal. Your story matters because it exposes truths that the medical community needs to hear, even when those truths are uncomfortable. Your voice will help other medical trauma survivors feel less alone and hopefully help healthcare providers recognize the lasting impact of their choices in pediatric care.
You deserved better then. You deserve better now. And your courage in speaking this truth is helping ensure that other children receive the gentle, compassionate care you should have received all along.
To anyone reading this who works with children in medical settings: this story is not an anomaly. Medical trauma in children is devastatingly common, often unrecognized, and always preventable with appropriate care.
Every time we dismiss a child’s distress as “just crying,” every time we proceed with painful procedures without adequate pain management, every time we prioritize efficiency over empathy, we risk creating the kind of lasting trauma described in this story.
Children are not small adults. They are vulnerable human beings who depend on us to protect them, not just from their medical conditions, but from the trauma that medical treatment itself can cause.
We can do better. We must do better. Their future healing depends on our present compassion.
And to any survivors of childhood medical trauma reading this: your pain was real, your fear was valid, and your ongoing struggles are normal responses to abnormal treatment. You deserved gentleness, respect, and protection. The fact that you didn’t receive these things says nothing about your worth and everything about the failures of the systems that should have cared for you.
Your story matters. Your healing matters. And you are not alone.