Episode 5 - CSAReps – Investigating Fictional Representations of Child Sexual Abuse in Contemporary Culture: Myths and Understanding

Male childhood sexual abuse narratives: A psychotherapist’s perspective with Jeremy Sachs

Interviewed by Dr. Ailise Bulfin – recorded on 10th August 2026. Edited with permission from the speaker.

Jeremy Sachs is an integrative psychotherapist, Narrative Exposure Therapy practitioner, and lecturer. He is the author of An Intersectional Guide for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Their Allies (Routledge, 2025), which won the British Psychological Society’s 2026 Book Award, and the editor and contributer of the forthcoming Clinical Perspectives on Working with Men and Shame (Routledge, 2026).

Jeremy lectures on the Advanced Diploma in Psychosexual Therapy at the NAOS Institute and delivers training for Rape Crisis Scotland. He is also the presenter and producer of The Trauma Talks Podcast, which explores the everyday realities of living with a wide range of traumatic experiences.

He spent more than six years at SurvivorsUK, where he designed and led dedicated group therapy programmes for men, boys, trans, and non-binary survivors of sexual abuse and sexual violence. Alongside his teaching and training, Jeremy runs a private practice, offering both in-person and online psychotherapy to people of all genders. His work focuses on relational difficulties, psychological pain, and recovery from sexual violence.

In this episode, we discussed many things, such as:

Male survivors and the difficulty of disclosure, including the shame compass.
Reporting abuse and institutional responses: What usually happens when survivors try to report abuse.
The importance of intersectionality, rather than treating all victims/survivors as having identical experiences.
Fictional representations of CSA, including Sayaka Murata’s 2018 novel Earthlings and the 1996 movie Sleepers.
The need for positive representations of sexuality, including the lack of representations for autistic, trans, binary, and other minority groups in young people.