Hello Abby. I'm kind of credentialed to talk about this with you, though our situations are different. You're 15, I'm 60. You're female, I'm...not. Yours was in a much earlier stage of childhood, and though you didn't ID the abuser, I'm suspecting a family member. For me, it was the chapter dad of a masonic affiliated order that had young men ages 13-18 in the ranks.
I mainly realized the effects later in life, and much of that in retrospect. I had to have a girlfriend, and if I had one and was in another place, I had no resistance to an affair. I'm a good man, and no other aspect of my personality fit into this behavior. I came to understand that I was desperate to affirm my attractiveness not to old tubby men but to a member of the opposite sex. I needed that reaffirmation, craved it.
Oddly, I gravitated during college and afterwards to anything that helped anybody. Make a Wish, Big Brothers, Kiwanis, EMT (volunteer), NMT, Chiropractor, reading mentor programs, Sunday school...see the pattern? Reach out and help people who need it. It was a mania almost. That earned a lot of admiration, which felt good, but there was a hunger to do more.
My younger brother was approached by this man and when my bro found out I too was prey to the man, he disowned me as having failed in my duty to him to protect him. I abandoned him to the predator. I had thought at the time I was the only one. It never dawned on me my brother would be a target. But that didn't matter to him. I was now estranged.
Decades had passed since the crime. Statute of limitations was passed. But not with the Masons. I gathered testimony from five others and added my own, and had the local masonic order convene a hearing. The man was expulsed from the order he had served for a half century. I faced the demon and gave others the chance to do likewise. That made a lot of difference.
My soul is much more at peace now. I have, after two previous divorces and a lot of crash and burns, my ideal mate. There is no desire to be reaffirmed. I am content.
Does that help?
Dr. D