You're absolutely right about that, Dianavan. I've seen personal cases of it. There is no simple solution to such heartbreak and trauma. The faith of such a child in themselves and in other people has to be restored a bit at a time. One must help them to understand that:

1. They weren't to blame in any way for what happened.
2. The person who did it to them was absolutely wrong to do that.
3. Other people still love them, and they is nothing wrong with them because they ARE lovable just as they are.

Wolfgang - Really, I can't take you seriously when this sort of thing is being discussed. Why should I even bother talking to you about it? But what the heck, I will anyway...because someone else might be interested... So consider this: A God that intervenes in human affairs must, by definition, be separate to what he is intervening in, mustn't he/she? The God (She/He/It) that I propose as existing is NOT separate from anyone or anything...because all things are part OF He/She/It. Imagine all of reality as a single piece of cloth. The cloth is woven out of trillions of fibers. It is colored in trillions of unique patterns. It is of infinite size (beyond definition or measurement). It is self-governing, eternal, and sentient...which is to say, it has self-awareness. Let's say that every single fibre in that cloth shares in part of the whole collective awareness, but its particular part thinks of itself only in isolation...thinking in effect, "I am alone and separate from all others and all that is around me." That is the mental circumstance of the ordinary person or animal or other sentient embodied being. Suppose that the overall sentient whole that is God/Life/Existence/Manifestation endows each sentient part of itself with autonomy (complete free will to act and think within the limitations of what that embodied part can actually do within its tiny physical circumstances).

That is an approximate description of what I am alluding to. I assert that God in no way intervenes with the free will of any such fiber in the entirety, anymore than you, Wolfgang, intervene in the free will of the individual intelligent cells in your body which are very helpfully processing food and oxygen for you at this moment. (And if their free will goes badly awry, then you can get sick in some part of the body.) You influence them, by your larger decision-making process and your general emtional condition, but they are still autonomous. The overall consciousness that is God also definitely influences people...toward positivity, creativity, courage, and so on...but each person still makes their own decision and can reject or oppose that influence if they choose to, because they have free will.

Now, suppose that one of the fibers actually calms its mind down enough to become aware of God and of its commonality with all the other fibers. Suppose that when it looks at another fiber, it sees that they are one in spirit. If so, it will love the other fiber in an unprejudiced way. In looking at another it will see its own beloved Self and behave accordingly, with only love.

That is precisely what distinguishes any truly enlightened being from someone in an ordinary state of mind. He looks at another person and see himself...because he sees the One, the Great Self which is simultaneously expressing as...ALL of us...as...Everything.

Such people exist. I know they do. They are very rare, but they exist. And what do they do? They help the rest of humanity ceaselessly, with tremendous courage, and with absolute selflessness as long as they are in a body to do it.

If you can't believe that, it just shows me you have either never met such a person, or never even been willing to consider the possibility of one existing. If so, you have deprived yourself of something wonderful.

We all are One. We are parts of what some people call "God" (which is just a word people made up for it...). You could just as well call it "Life" or "Being" or "Love" or "Truth", because it is all those things, and it goes completely beyond organized religions and NEEDS no organized religions. In fact, it might be much better off without them.

You can experience it. You can BE it. Some people have. When you do that, you love yourself, you love others, and you love Life, without qualification or demand or expectation of any sort. You become harmless. You heal. You bless. You give. You create. And you no longer fear anything, not even death, because you know that there is no death.

The God people seek lives inside their own heart, and inside everyone else's, simply waiting to be recognized.