Content note: This essay discusses sexual abuse, purity culture, and the impact of shame on survivors. Please read gently and take breaks if needed.

There is something the church and purity culture teachings unintentionally did that caused deep harm.

It taught that when a girl does not wait for sex inside marriage, she is wrong. Damaged. Used. Less valuable than she was before.

I remember hearing it explained this way in youth group: a girl who has sex before marriage is like a piece of chewed gum. Once it has been used, it is never the same again.

That image stayed with me.

What purity culture did not talk about was abuse.

It did not talk about coercion.

It did not talk about what happens when sex is taken, not chosen.

And it did not explain that something taken by force is not something given at all.

Something that can only be given freely.

I believe you do not lose your virginity until you give it willingly.

If sex is forced or coerced, then nothing has been given. Something sacred was violated, not surrendered.

Growing up in purity culture, I knew I had been abused. But I did not tell anyone. Not even my parents.

I was ashamed.

I had learned that girls were responsible for guarding purity. That purity was fragile. That once it was damaged, you carried that mark forever.

I did not have language for abuse. I only had language for failure.

And because I believed I was spoiled, I stayed silent.

That silence came at a cost.

Because I felt spoiled, I did not just hide my past. I hid my needs.

I accepted things I should not have accepted.

I believed I did not deserve better.

Shame does that.

It teaches survivors to police themselves so abusers do not have to.

Purity culture does not intend to protect abusers.

But it creates the perfect environment for them.

Abuse thrives in silence.

And silence thrives in shame.

When a survivor believes they have something to hide, an abuser already has control.

Shame becomes the abuser’s greatest tool.

This is not just a theological problem.

It is a safety problem.

Purity culture framed morality as something that could be taken away by force. As if a child’s worth could be destroyed by someone else’s violence.

That framing benefits perpetrators.

It isolates victims.

And it keeps the truth buried.

Purity was never meant to be about untouched bodies.

Purity is not something that can be destroyed by abuse.

Purity is integrity.

It is the soul’s resilience.

It is the part of a person that remains whole even when something terrible happens to them.

This distinction matters.

Because when we fail to make it, survivors carry shame that was never theirs to hold.

They grow up believing they are already broken. Already wrong. Already used.

And that belief shapes everything that comes after.

I am writing this because I know how long it took me to unlearn that lie.

And because silence protects harm, not holiness.

Something that is taken was never given.

And what was never given was never lost.