Psychological effects are not readily apparent and are difficult to discern for an ordinary individual. 

The survivor and those who premeditated human behaviour comprehend this well. 

According to Karakurt and Silver (2013), young adults are facing psychological distress, and this affects them conventionally and those near to them secondarily. 

Sexual abuse is any activity or action upon another individual by force that has to do with matters of sexual interaction, sexual pestering, and sexism. 

Young people are maltreated by their fathers, older brothers, and uncles, and they are reluctant to disclose it, as they fear that those who offer assistance will, in turn, misuse them (Benoit, Shumka, Philips, Kennedy, and Belle-Isle, 2015). 

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) (2013), young adults who experienced gender-based violence are expected to have long term negative effects, which comprises of psychological stress, self-harm, intergenerational violence, obesity, anorexia, aggression, violence, sexual risk taking, sleeping disorders, low self-esteem, psychosomatic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, phobias, and panic disorders. 

This coincides with Selebano’s (2019) findings that the effects of domestic violence on abused females ranged from physical harm to isolation and emotional disturbance. 

These effects eventually disturb the survivor’s lives, which can lead to suicidal behaviours, nervousness, despair, social dysfunction, and difficulties such as alcohol abuse and substance abuse. 

The signs of psychological stress and post-traumatic stress disorders include flashbacks of abuse, hyperarousal, nightmares, and numbing (WHO, 2013). 

Intimate partner violence is a leading public health and human rights problem in Namibia. 

Moreover, this violence tends to run in relations and generations with slight change over time and overwhelming consequences for the individual, family, and community echelons. 

Violence against progenies, young people, and females has similar consequences for mental health, physical health, and social functioning (WHO, 2013). 

 Sexual abuse and psychological effects are in line with Bandura’s social learning theory (1977), which postulates that behaviours are often learned from one’s surroundings and that the family system plays a crucial role in teaching. 

Descendants unavoidably mimic and acquire relational skills from their parents, and this philosophy enlightens why progenies who grow up observing and experiencing intimate partner violence are more likely to be either offenders or victims later in their own relationship. 

Progenies in these situations learn that violence is appropriate, normal, unavoidable, and foreseeable in intimate relationships. 

Moreover, battles tend to end in violence; hostility is rewarded; and robust retribution for vehement behaviour tends to increase. 

The skills for effective and nonviolent conflict resolution are not learnt, and violent encounter resolution is expected to recur without pro-social alternatives (Bandura, 1977).

Bowlby (1980) stresses that the early relationship between infants and caregiver provides a basis for an infant’s mental health and for all subsequent attachments and bonds in life.  

For progenies growing up in violent homes, prospects of safety are devastated, as their protectors are their assailants, and there is nowhere to go for assistance. 

If parentages are not only the foundation of external danger but are concurrently inattentive in their obligation to defend, “those you love become those you fear”. 

This leads to great suffering and a failure to control devastating emotions. Individuals with a history of child maltreatment imagine others to be antagonistic, refusing, and inaccessible, and consequently reply to others in a way that is unfailing with their hopes, or they act in a way that provokes these acquainted retorts in others. This experience is the consequence of initial attachment interactions with abusive caregivers, as the parent–child attachment relationship is the prototype for later relationships. 

As Bowlby (1980) positions, “hurt people, hurt people”. Attachment theory suggests that people who have experienced abuse or attachment interrelated problems are more likely to experience difficulties with respect to trust and intimacy in consequence and to express aggression and resentment towards others in a range of ways (Bowlby, 1980).

The mental health features of facing this violence should not be underrated. Those who are exposed to violence are expected to suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

 Moreover, the notions of re-enactment or recurrence are concerned with the intergenerational transmission of trauma, which is the result of violence. Hostility with violence tests one’s most basic molds about the personality as invincible and innately praiseworthy, and about the world as prescribed, harmless, and fair.  

After mistreatment, the victim’s view of identity and the world can never be the same again. It must be rebuilt to include the cruel experience. Presumptuous accountability for the violence, “It was my fault,” permits emotions of desolation to be substituted with a delusion (Reiker & Carmen, 1986).