How can I help my husband deal with his past abuse?

[helpme2helphim]

Okay, I'm a long time mner but i'm in disguise due the topic and because my sister posts here too.

My husband was abused for two years from the ages of 8-10 by someone in a position of trust. After he spoke up, the person was proscuted and jailed (DH wasn't the only victim) and DH received a very brief period of counselling at the time but said that he didn't find it very helpful.

He's only spoken about it a handful of times in the 10+ that we've been together and never in any detail but last night he'd been out with mates and had a bit to drink and something I said when he came home prompted him to tell me a more than he's ever told me. I won't go into detail but he did say that he thinks about what happened at 40 times a day and that everytime he hears the word paedophile he has flashbacks. Because he never usually talks about it I didn't realise how deeply it still affects him.

What can I do to help him start to deal with this?

i dont really have any advice to give, just i guess keep listening to him when he wants to talk about it. would he consider counselling again?
just wanted to bump this. hopefully somebody has more usefull things to say than i do

He should go his GP and request a referral to a counsellor. You can have (I think six) sessions on the NHS with the GP assigned counsellor to work through these issues.

You can only listen and remind him that nothing like this can ever happen to him again and that you will protect your kids from such abuse.

Hi,
i know excactly what you are talking about because my husband had been abused as a child and he is still very much affected.Like you i didn't know that he is thinking about it every day until he told me when we were watching the news and was smth about a child abuse case. Aparently he has flashbacks every time there is smth like this on the news.
Well every case is diferent and people deal with post traumatic stress in diferent ways so i cant give any advice. But bear in mind that a) he probably needs support but not pity, b)dont snap if he seems to want space and to be alone sometimes, just let him be and dont say anything c) dont comment if he seems to be 'strange' with some things i.e. my DH is obsessed with cleaniless-classic symptom of abused people-do not laught or make jokes about it.
Of course counselling would help, my dh unfortunetely won't go. Alternetevily perhaps you could have one session with an 'expert' who might help you in dealing with dh, it does effect all the family.There is a good website for partners of survivors, will look for it and post it later.
All my best wishes

Oh here it is: www.survivorsswindon.com
Click on 'partners'.

Thanks for the replies everyone and especially Mandalena for your help. I'll have a look at the website and see if I can see where to go from here.

I'm going to sit down with him later and broach the subject of a GP referral for counselling. It just makes me so sad and cross to think about anyone hurting him but also how it's affected him in the last 22 years. I don't want him to have to live with it affecting every day for the rest of his life.

Just a little update. I finally broached the subject last night. I've been thinking how to bring it up since my last post without causing him more upset. I was speaking with his mum yesterday and the topic came up and she told me a bit more about what happened and how close to suicide he was afterwards and I just realised that if he could be brave enough to speak out and tell people then I could be brave enough to bring it up in the hope of helping him.

I bought a book for survivors of abuse and just said that I hoped he wouldn't be cross and I could return it if he didn't want it but I just wanted to help him. He was very sweet and said that he couldn't be cross or upset with something that was such a good intention and I should never be worried to bring up something with him and that he'd have a look at it.

Hopefully he will and maybe it will help.