By Michelle Chalfont

By Zoe Kors

At just 6 years old, Jennifer roamed around Hugh Hefner’s estate because her father was the Playboy founder’s doctor and close friend. She says as a child she would routinely stumble upon things like group sex and rampant drug use, things that “have left an imprint on me for the rest of my life,” she tells The Doctors.

By the age of 10, Jennifer says her father provided her with a drawer in her bathroom that was filled with various prescription medications and by 11, she was addicted to pills. At the age of 14, Jennifer says she had her first sexual experience and it was with Hugh Hefner’s then-girlfriend. During her late teens, her drug use and exposure to sex intensified, along with needing plastic surgery on her nose due to so much cocaine use.

Fearing her life would be consumed by the world inside the Playboy Mansion, Jennifer went to the east coast to attend college. Though she had left, she often returned to the mansion and continued to feel drawn to that world and life, which she describes as a “cult-like mentality” and something she was raised to believe was normal.

While Jennifer is still dealing with her childhood trauma, in 2010 she sought treatment in a medical detox facility to recover from her addiction to prescription pills. She is happy to share that she has been sober for almost 12 years. As she heals from the sexual trauma she experienced at the Playboy mansion, Jennifer says she is now working to focus on how she connects to people spiritually and emotionally, instead of just physically. She also shares she now struggles with feeling very guarded and uncomfortable while being physically intimate.

After meeting with Jennifer, psychotherapist Dr. Holly Richmond says she meets and exceeds the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder with 16 different markers for PTSD. The markers include intrusive thoughts, rumination, flashbacks, lack of sleep, poor memory, disordered eating, and sexual dysfunction. Dr. Richmond says her goals for Jennifer are feeling safe in her body, having sexual autonomy, and feeling empowered in the choices she makes and the psychotherapist offers to continue to work with her at no cost to her.

Jennifer shares she has forgiven her father and Hugh Hefner and let go of resentment for what happened during her childhood. To help with her past trauma, The Doctors offer Jennifer a life-changing PTSD injection from Dr. Eugene Lipov.

Coral community members can opt-in to receive a trauma-informed sex and sexuality series that serves as a primer for post-crisis recovery or a supplementary resource for patients and therapists.

Sexual trauma has consistently been shown to increase the prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder, decrease sexual satisfaction and negatively impact relationship satisfaction. While research in the field of sexual trauma recovery is substantial, resources for inclusive sexual wellness are lacking.

“In the U.S. alone, 25% of men, 44% of women and 47% of trans and nonbinary people experience sexual violence or assault in their lifetimes,”

said Somatic Psycologist, Certified Sex Therapist and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Dr. Richmond.

“As a practitioner, I’m excited by the potential of Coral’s series to help heal sexual trauma in a considered and contemporary way.”

Launched in 2019, Coral is a leader in the sexual wellness market and the only interactive sexual wellness app designed for everyone. The new release advances Coral’s mission to improve the lived sexual experiences of its community, inclusive of sexual trauma recovery, with sensitivity and expertise.

“Coral exists to fill the void created not only by a lack of sex education, but a lack of frank dialogue around sex,” said Coral founder and CEO Isharna Walsh. “There aren’t many resources for survivors of sexual trauma looking to reconnect with their sexuality beyond therapy, which can be cost-prohibitive for many. It’s important that we address the real-world needs of our community, and that includes creating a safe, secure and trusted space for survivors to heal.”

Coral is available on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

Episode 178 of the Sexology Podcast

In this episode Dr. Holly speaks with Dr. Moali about shame after sexual trauma, how survivors can regain their desire, learning to re-engage with positive sexual experiences and the importance of seeking out sex positive therapists.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Why do survivors experience shame around sex?
• Misconceptions around the causes of rape
• How people feel sexual shame after trauma in their bodies?
• Learning to show up for your body
• Navigating having positive sexual experiences
• Unhealthy habits survivors can pick up
• How desire disappears as survivors restrict their sexuality
• Looking at sexual dysfunctions
• Why it’s important to seek out a sex positive therapist

Before I went back to graduate school, I was teaching creative writing at a maximum security girls’ correctional facility in southern California. The stories the girls wrote often included descriptions of rape, gang rape, sexual abuse and incest. They wrote about these horrible acts just like they wrote about going to the corner market or going out partying with their friends. The normalcy of rape in their world was a huge eye-opener for me. Somehow it became my mission to help teach them that this wasn’t normal for adolescent girls and it wasn’t right. There were things they could do, namely reaching out to people who could offer support and help get them out of dangerous situations. Of course, being incarcerated kept them out of danger temporarily, but I wanted it to stay that way when they were released back to their communities and families.

That experience lead me to pursue a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology, an internship at the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center, then a doctorate in Somatic Psychology with a focus on sex therapy. Over the years, not only did it become important for me to try to help survivors heal emotionally, I also wanted to help them heal physically. A huge component of that healing incorporates their sexuality. Thus, the idea for my dissertation was born and I committed three years of my life to researching the recovery of sexual health after sexual assault.

Abstract

Survivors of sexual assault experience physiologically and psychologically distressing symptoms. Sexual health, in particular, can be impaired as a result of sexual assault. Although substantive research exists concerning treatment modalities and outcomes of survivors’ aggregate recovery, little is available in regard to sexual assault survivors’ experiences of healing, particularly the embodied process of regaining sexual health. Toward the goal of better understanding this process, a grounded theory design and analysis was used to determine emergent themes and theories concerning the interplay of sexual assault, sexual health, and embodiment. The embodied experience of sexual health recovery was observed with 12 female participants over the age of 18 who are survivors of sexual assault. The research was unique in that it did not focus on specific therapeutic treatment outcomes, but rather the experience of each participant as they moved through their respective processes of recovery from survival to embodiment and finally to empowerment. The collective data revealed themes and concepts that contextualize sexual health recovery and its corresponding psychosomatic presentations in survivors of sexual assault. Providing insight into survivors’ embodied processes of recovery of sexual health will contribute to professional literature and inform future directions for research in the fields of somatic psychology, trauma therapy, and human sexuality.